Worldbuilding - Tumblr Posts
A drawing of my character Israel, a tdp half-elf oc (or mostly elf some human) from a augmented tdp universe not alternate- augmented.
My favorite thing to do in fandoms is read all the info on a species than break all the rules. Wdym these aliens only have two body types and only have two skin tones? No! Purple!
This was genuinely so genius! I adore the subtle worldbuilding shown in MC's internal monologue.
The Night Hunt
I need to eat. It’s not eating anymore. It doesn’t feel like thirst or hunger. It’s not something I would have understood as a human. I feel like I’m going to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t think anyone would mind if I did. My mouth is shaped so differently than it once was, I can’t move my jaws, I feel empty, I need it to fill me, and I feel empty.
The upper west side vampiric community center was cramped, getting everything it could from limited funds and real estate. The walls were white and the lighting sterile, their deadness only broken by overly enthusiastic posters. It was strange looking at the other vampires in the building, most of them seemed to be doing much better than me. Even most of the ones that ones you could tell weren’t human at a glance usually looked more human than me. It felt like everyone I saw was doing better than me, the petite girl in a black dress talking to her parents on the phone, the bearded man with cats eyes dressed in fancy clothes he had probably owned some version of for centuries, the snake mouthed person guzzling down a can of commercially sold blood like it was soda. I could assume a lot of the vampires I saw here had supportive families, and many others were old enough to be well adjusted to their lives. It almost hurt looking at vampires who could pass better than me, or who could better mask vampiric traits, this embarrassing envy, that I was a monster even by the standards of monsters.
I could have socialized, but I was too tired, and too thirsty. I had just been denied a good behavior slip by the New York State government, and thus denied a month’s supply of donated blood, and the building stopped being somewhere I wanted to be. Most vampires can’t get a good behavior slip, A lot don’t even try just because of how humiliating and restrictive life during the audit can be. A lot of them live off of relatives’ and friend’s blood, or buy it wholesale. I don’t have the option for either of those, at least not consistently.
I walked up Broadway, when I left, below the safety of the dark sky, and the calming yellow light of the windows, past the old brick buildings of a childhood that now seems alien to me. Best to get outside time in while I can, it’s summer, giving me few hours before the sun rises. It’s strange to remember when I walked down that street as a human. That deep loss of something I can remember but will never feel once more. Remembering how easy things were. When the restaurants smelled good to my body, instead of sickly sweet. It would’ve made me cry to see myself reflected in a window, if my eyes had tears to cry. To see I was the type of vampire other even other vampires shunning, too vampiric perhaps, to close to what they all fear being, too close to what they’re all accused of. I used to think of losing my humanity was a horrible fate, and now I am the bad ending for so many other nonhumans. I wonder how many of my kind’s advocates think I’m worthy of oppression. They say not all vampires look horrifying to humans, but I look horrifying to humans. They say not all vampires think violent thoughts about humans automatically, but I find myself doing that so often. They say not all vampires are weak to sunlight, or are hurt by symbols of their prior faith, but I am, and it hurts, and if acceptance means telling people it doesn’t hurt I’ll just get hurt more.
I tried to think of something to distract myself. Tried to think of friends who still cared about me, about that show I wanted to finish, tired to think about that Lord of the Rings fanfic that I wrote in middle school that I had though about on that street, on a bright day so alien to the humid night I walked through. No matter what I thought about there was always blood in the back on my mind. Even when a vampire isn’t thinking about blood directly, when they’re low, as almost fatally low as I was, it’s always able to be felt in the background. I could feel my body’s desire for blood, feel the pain and weakness of not having it. It was strange, to know that my body hurt because it wanted like, that my body only transformed into a vampire because it would have died from being bitten by one if it hadn’t. My body wanted to live as a vampire so much more than I did. My hands shook, my gate more unbalanced, more stumbling than it usually was, my twisted and inhuman mouth, the most inhuman part of my body, salivating. The staggered and almost animalistic walk must have made me look even more like a monster. The pigeons flew away when they saw me, they must have known, or maybe that’s just what pigeons are like.
My once tan skin now so pale my organs are visible, my once fit body now skinny, my brown eyes forever white, and my mouth perfectly round and unmoving and filled with sharp tooth after sharp tooth like a lamprey. All so perfect to drink blood, all built to drain blood. It hurts to think I’ll probably be in this body for centuries. The same hoodie I’d been wearing for days still covers me a bit, as does my mess of uncut hair, I don’t really have to wash these things without human oils on my body anymore. It’s not good to think too long about that fact. There is no wonder my parents would rather consider their precious daughter basically dead, than know that she lived as this. I might do the same if I had a choice. I think about when I was turned sometimes, how I didn’t get to be turned out of love, or lust, or spite, how the bite was meant to kill me, how it would have killed me if I wasn’t rushed to the hospital, or if I hadn’t fought the attacker off. I never even knew the name of the vampire who attacked me. I didn’t know why he did at the time, I assumed it was from hate, I understand now, I would never defend attacking someone like that but I understand, he was hungry, I know how it feels to want blood like how he must have. People would have had me better in their memories if I had died, nobody admits it, but it’s true, my parents convinced themselves I had on religious grounds, saying my soul had left my body, I understand why, my reputation was not tarnished.
As I walked past stores and restaurants that had closed hours earlier, saw how little the world wanted me. I wondered how I would keep existing. I remembered that my transformation has made it so I wouldn’t age, couldn’t die a natural death at all, I realized how strange it would be for me to exist in a body like the one I did for hundreds more years, thousands if I got lucky. There was the feeling that maybe I’d be murdered, most of society didn’t even want the most human passing, most privileged vampires to live, it sucked even for people who had it so much better than me, maybe I’d just die, maybe one of those monster hunter gangs would finally due me in like they always threaten to online. But what if I didn’t, what if I had to still live. If I actually had put the work in to having positive relationships with the community maybe some vampiric elder would be able to tell me. As it was I felt lost, I didn’t know what I could be doing a hundred years from where I stood. Would things be better than, for me, for us? Would I be ok?
For a moment my eye caught a girl around my age. As a human I would have felt lust for her, she had that exact look that I used to like. Glistening hair dyed a candy colored red, a pale pink Cowboy Bebop t-shirt covering her chest. I would have felt lust, or perhaps a more noble sounding attraction, but now that part of me is gone, and seeing a young healthy body like that just makes me think about what it would be like to drink her instead of making me think about being in bed with her. I knew it was wrong, but it would feel so good, to feel my mouth punch into her neck, and drain her dry. I don’t want to feel this way, the logical part of my brain doesn’t like feeling this way, but it’s a feeling in my body. When I looked at her soft skin my teeth ever so slightly extended outwards, and the tiredness from the pain of thirst temporarily ceasing as my body filled with energy, my dreaming mind fantasizing about holding her as I drank her blood, as ashamed as I am of such thoughts, as little as I’d want to ever hurt someone like her, it felt so good in the moment just to fantasize. It was the closest I still had to feeling anything sexual or romantic, as many social media posts as there are telling you it’s a myth that all vampires lose their sexual or romantic feelings, it’s true for me, I don’t even have breasts or sex organs anymore, as horrifying as that is to even acknowledge about myself. Just another thing that makes me seem less human, and just another thing that makes drinking human blood seem to desirable. I didn’t want to hurt her, just looking at her walking, she seemed so happy, so pure.
I did nothing, yet she still crossed the street. I understood, it was late, and I was a ragged looking vampire walking near her, she had a right to feel safe. I ran, as thirsty as my body was I didn’t want to be near her, and didn’t want to cause a scene.
Best to flee uptown, Time Square is filled with Faeries, and Central Park with werewolves, and neither take kindly to my kind in the places they tend to hang out. There is a safety in being human, despite all the stories of young maidens scratched up in monster’s arms, with blood contrasting on top of their pretty white skin, most monsters with ill wills are way more likely to target other species of monster rather than humans. Humans are often well armed, and well defended by the law, and so many monsters are so eager to prove their kind’s validity through their hatred of another species of monster.
My running only stopped when I had to cross the street to avoid a church. One of those big ornate ones you’d see a vampiric villain hang out in in a thriller movie, with that shining stained glass they haven’t built in generations. They say it’s not anything divine that burns vampires that are weak to holy symbols, it’s just the memory of faith that hurts, the memory of the most human of all actions. Doesn’t change the fact that the pope still says we don’t have souls. The church ghosts all fled, they floated somewhere else just from seeing me, I wanted to yell to them “What? Are you too good even to haunt me.” I didn’t of course, I didn’t want to cause a scene. Maybe I would have if I wasn’t so weak from thirst.
I can’t get blood. The state won’t give it to me. My friends would say no if I asked. I can’t afford to buy it. I dropped out of school when I was turned, there wasn’t accommodation, and late classes were hard to get. Most of the friends I still have either treat me like a tragedy to fawn over, or like I could kill them at any time, they’re only human after all. I guess that’s why they recommend socializing with other monsters. I barely look for work anymore, even well-meaning humans are uncomfortable around me, though to be fair I’ve done nothing not to make them uncomfortable, and it’s impossible to ask them to close daytime windows, or keep silver and garlic away. I spend so much time on the internet. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be this thirsty. I don’t want to look this way, and I don’t want to need blood. I never chose any of this, never chose to be bitten, never chose to be saved.
For a moment I saw another person on the street, alone with me. Some rich kid staggering drunk and barely knowing where he is, a sweatshirt from some fancy wizarding school clinging on to his body. His rosy yet pale cheeks, so vulnerable, not so privileged that he could hurt me, just privileged enough to feel like every bad though I could have towards him was punching up. He was the exact type of asshole that I’d expect to call me a slur, to be proud that wizards like him had engaged in just enough vampire hunts in the thirties and forties to be considered another type of human. But he didn’t. He didn’t notice me at all, he just sang to himself with his earbuds in and his eyes glued to his phone as he stumbled past closed stores.
I can smell blood on his lips. I remember that there is another way to quench my thirst. I’d have to drain him dry so that nobody would know. I don’t want to. I don’t want to be that type of vampire. His body is so fresh, I’d be full for like a year. I can’t stop looking at him and remembering my life. He’ll run but I can catch up to him, and he’ll taste so good. And I would be so hard to catch if I drained him to death, he’s a stranger, the case would go cold. I need blood, and he has blood, it’s like a trolly problem, you don’t need sadism to pick yourself when you’re tied to the tracks. And I can’t think of another way I could get blood before starving to death. It feels weird to grab his wrist as he struggles, too thirsty to think too deeply. I don’t want to look at his face when he screams, but something deep within me is excited to hear a human scream. I feel sorry for him I think, he didn’t deserve this, I didn’t deserve this, if things were different… well they aren’t different. God my voice sounds demonic with this mouth. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.”
More dystopian fiction lore just for funsies (and I'm sorry for the inaccuracies and not-very-knowledgeable Geography stuff and continuity issues. This is just me having fun with fiction so do with it as you will as long as you credit me for it hahahahaha yes I know I'm an amateur but I'm just expanding this lore for funsies)
Cordelia was actually a perfect clone of Past-Cordelia. Present-Cordelia is actually Cordelia II. Cordelia I (the original from the Surface) was genetically engineered in a lab on the Surface, so the first Cordelia also didn't have parents. She was literally created to be a child soldier. This leads Cordelia II to feel like she has no identity at all ("I mean, none of us in the Colony ever had an identity of our own to begin with," she recalls.)
When the very first Colonists dug Underground, they used their advanced technologies to push back the magma so there would be more space Underground to build their Colony. This led to the Core overheating, which could possibly cause it to explode, so they quickly had to construct some tunnels leading away from the Core to certain parts of the Surface. This led to lava leaks on the Surface in those areas, creating more volcanoes and volcanic eruptions in the process.
This led to the Surface becoming more dangerous than it already was. Jasper still feels bitter towards the Underground for having endangered his home and his family. When the Colonists had started pushing back the magma, it led to the Surface getting colder, with occasional startling bouts of lava spurts. Therefore, the temperature on the Surface became more unstable than it already was.
Mystery/maybe-fantasy fiction world building stuff for funsies
Rowena "Winnie" Hart was accepted into a prestigious fantasy school. Her primary motivation is to find the people who murdered her parents and restore justice to her family. She believes that the murderers are linked to a secret society connected with the school.
Her parents, Jacques Hart and Lorelei Hart née Preston, used to study at the school. Her parents were part of the secret society, and were very prominent, high-ranking members. Therefore, Winnie was very famous in the school. The Hart Family was a very prestigious family with good standing. The Preston Family, Winnie's mother's family, was a family of renowned Healers and Potion-brewers.
Jacques and Lorelei had a very romantic and happy love life together, but tragically died young (for a reason that I am still trying to figure out, BTW. I'm also tryna figure out the circumstances of how they died, and whether they died when Winnie was a baby, or more recently).
Lorelei also used to be the Poisoner for the secret society; she was very good at Healing, but found Poisons to be more fascinating. She therefore exercised this talent (secretly, of course; only the society knows about it and they themselves gave her that job) to take out the enemies of the society and the school (the rest of the school didn't know about it). Of course, Lorelei also used her Healing talents publicly when needed.
Fantasy fiction featuring orphan-hero and chosen-one tropes (and this fic just so happens to have a teeny bit of inspiration from Harry Potter stuff, and maybe a bit of Lion Guard stuff, idk)
There was a boy who grew up in an orphanage for ten years, before getting adopted by his father's best friend.
The boy's uncle-figure had been looking for the boy ever since he heard that his best friend (the boy's father) and his wife (the boy's mother) died.
The boy's parents died separately, in two separate incidents. The boy's father (Aaron Edelhert) sacrificed himself to let his wife and baby son escape when there was a threat against their village. The mother took their baby boy to a different village to take refuge.
Unfortunately, when the boy was two to three years old, he was bitten by a dark snake, whose venom was lethally cursed. That snake also came from the same threat those two to three years ago, which the boy's father had partially succeeded to destroy before succumbing to his death. The mother acted quickly and extracted the curse, but at the cost of her own life. This left the boy with a scar over his eye, and his blood being laced with venom (without the curse). The venom gave him a certain immunity to some poisons, venoms and curses. It also prevented him from being recursed years later. The boy attributes this immunity to his mother's sacrifice rather than the venom itself.
POV
A tall, handsome young man stepped into the orphanage. He spoke politely to the orphanage staff, asking for a certain Augustus Jason Edelhert. They kindly obliged and gestured to the light-haired boy with a strange-looking blotch on his face.
The boy was sitting at a table with some friends, drawing pictures (really good pictures, the young man thought, he has his dad's talent).
The staff called the boy, and he walked up to them obediently, warily eyeing the man. The man stifled a gasp when he saw the blotch for what it was; a large, fat slash mark over the boy's left eye, from just above his eyebrow all the way to the bottom of his jaw. What have they done to you?
The man fought back his tears and smiled as welcomingly as he could at the little version of his brother. It stung him to know that he was a stranger in the boy's eyes (rather piercing eyes at that), but he would soon fix that.
"Augustus Jason Edelhert, this is your godfather, Cyrus Kane Waterbury. He will be looking after you in place of your parents."
Fantasy school world building for fun
Rowena Snow is the name of a distant ancestor of Winnie Hart's. Winnie was named after her. Rowena was the youngest of seven Snow children, with one of her sisters being Hildegard Snow. Hildegard Snow was very influential and remarkable in her day (for whatever reason I don't know yet). Winnie Hart looks and acts very much like Rowena Snow, but Hildegard Snow is the direct distant ancestor of Winnie Hart (whether through Winnie's mum or dad, I'm not sure yet).
This gave me a good laugh thank you 💀/pos
AND AWESOME ART STYLE GR
There are things all around you in the world, trying to survive, that you'll never get a chance to notice.
There's a werewolf in the café that you always go to, working on his laptop. It's already far enough into the lunar cycle so that he's becoming semi wolflike at night. He'll spend to weekend upstate this month when the full moon finally hits, like he always does. He tells himself it'll be nice to get the fresh air, and he's glad he's privileged enough to not end up hurting anyone. You just think of him as taking business trips every month.
There's a ghost whose possessing a human body for the first time in a long time, standing on the subway platform with some of her living freinds. She's laughing about how weird it is to walk around as a person, and slightly nervously commenting on how there's plastic in this body's blood. This is her first time she's possessing a male body, and the awkwardness of it has given way to a strange fascination and euphoria as to how it feels compared to her body when she was alive, she likes how people look at her, and how handsome she feels.
There's a goblin whose been stealing food from that deli that you always go to, and petting the cat every time he get a chance to. He lives in subway tunnels, because it's safer to dodge trains then dodge the eyes of humans. The world is a much bigger place to someone so small, and the streets and buildings weren't built for him, and neither were the trees or animals. He wakes up every day hoping to survive, in a world where humans are giants that stalk the streets, and where scaring someone is a crime that may cost him his life. He prays he won't die for the crime of being small, or the crime of being ugly.
There's a vampire on your college campus, trying to still have a normal life after being turned. She knows everything from her human life will be gone in a hundred years, it was supposed to be gone the momment she was bitten but she tries to make it so she can still keep moving forward. Her body lacks so much that it used to, she doesn't sleep, doesn't desire sex, doesn't eat, but she's still a person, who can talk to her freinds, and still go to classes like she used to. She'll survive like this as long as her family is supportive enough to let her stay in their apartment, and as long as her girlfriend let's her drink blood from her hand, as if she was handfeeding an animal. And for awhile it'll be like she's still a person.
There's a demon on the sidewalk near your campus, standing right near the subway station, whose having to focus their energy on a spell that makes them look human, knowing their true form would terrify the humans around them. They're walking every street so excited, so amazing by the city around them, by the world around them, the glistening towers, the people outside talking, the sky that's so very blue. It's all so mundane to the humans around them, but to a demon, who was told they never deserved any of it, that they'd never see anything but the underworld, it's the most amazing thing possible. And the world is so pretty, so hopeful, through their doomed eyes.
Dream Hub map concept:
i swear world-building isn’t for the weak. i have always been enamored with fantasy novels and films, so i highly feel like it would be such huge accomplishment for me if i were to finish my fic with my very own fictional world ! 🌳 ⊹ ︶⠀𝅄 ࣪
❀ Pansy n°6 = Oneiric inspiration.
oneiric |ə(ʊ)ˈnʌɪrɪk| adjective - formal → relating to dreams or dreaming. ORIGIN = mid 19th century: from Greek oneiros ‘dream’ + -ic.
I love this word. In my opinion it is a formal but beautiful way to put into words the subconscious universe that is a dream.
I love dreaming.
As I wrote in a former entry, getting too far in my head and imagination is something I do a lot, enjoy and try to make healthy. My fascination for the oneiric world started at a young age with my ability to remember my dreams. I remembered them so well that more often than not I was able to continue them on multiple nights. It was also really cool to be able to count them back to people - it created many laughs, thanks to the weird dream logic.
Then I started working (it was not really a difficult or boring task, still it took time) on being able to remember more by forcing myself to think about what I saw straight when I woke up. Sometimes - when I was not too lazy - I wrote them down to get all the details. It is by working on those details that I started creating universes, worlds and stories of my own. I ended up with multiple characters, their backgrounds; future, relationships and development in a made up world. That is how started my first ever draft for my fantasy story. Based on dreams and worked on in my dreams. I could not stop thinking about it. In fact, that’s what happens when I get really inspired for a story, I just can’t stop picturing things in my mind, trying to make sense of it and developing my ideas. I get so focused yet I struggle to write - writer’s block am I right ? :/
However, there was one time when I had difficulties expanding my dream into a story. Why ? you may ask. Well, dear reader, it was because I was inspired by a nightmare and at first thinking about it again made it difficult for me to fall asleep - obviously… I won’t go into much detail about this nightmare because I plan on making a thriller out of it, but what intrigued me the most was that it was one of those dreams…
A lucid dream.
In fact, I knew I was dreaming and could control some of the things happening around me. I LOVE those types of dreams - except when they’re nightmares, and of course it happens to me quite a lot. Lucid dreaming was the next step to improve my “dream ability”. Those dreams are when you realize you are dreaming and can control what you can do (sometimes ^^).
Usually, to work on lucid dreaming, we are told to try and have the reflex of looking at your hands - because they’ll never be normal in your dreams. Or try and read something - yet again you’re not supposed to be able to see coherent words written. Even though I know these tricks - called “reality checks” - work, I personally just let them happen normally.
Indeed, I have been blessed with the ability to lucid dream without much effort since I was a child - only realizing it was that as I grew up. So often do I have periods during which many lucid dreams come to plague my mind at night. It usually happens when I am in a semi-state of sleep, like half-awake. So it happens that sometimes I am too tired and the control slips out of my grasp. Still, I think it’s an amazing experience.
I guess my lucid dreams are triggered thanks to the fact that I tend to fall asleep making up scenarios and fully controlling my dreams - at that moment. And what gets me to recognize I am lucid dreaming is that I am almost always in first person p.o.v. Nevertheless, what I like the most about lucid dreams and inspires me the most - as I remember it more and it shocks me - are the sensations I get.
Yes, sensations.
Call me crazy if you want but I happen to feel so many things while dreaming - it’s mainly why I believe in shifting. Most of the time I can feel the warmth of things in my dreams, especially when I am close to someone or being embraced. Things definitely don’t feel real but they feel extremely similar. And I think it is extraordinary that you can feel in your head.
What’s even more unreal and that I particularly love, is the dream feeling of being kissed. It is just ethereal… I am someone very fond of physical affection - like, that’s literally one of my love languages - and it is just so awesome and astounding to be able to feel these types of things in your head.Once, I remember, I had a dream in which I kissed someone’s cheek and it had a little stubble, and the feeling I thought I had on my lips was just so weird and felt so real !
So it’s when I started having more and more of those feelings filled lucid dreams that I realized how fascinating and powerful the human brain really is. We can truly trick ourselves, with our own imagination ! And it is why I believe shifting to be possible/real. I, personally, am not an active shifter. I have tried, succeeded a bit and tried again sometimes but I prefer not to force it. I also think that I have succeeded a few times without realizing, so I let it come naturally.
The shifting community can be quite biased and not of the best advice on certain platforms - *cough cough* tiktok… - but also because there are “conflicts” within the community. I don’t associate with it mostly because I don’t really keep myself informed about it, so I don’t want/can’t to appear as a specialist on the matter. But… I have my opinion on how shifting might work.
I think that you are just diving so deep in your subconscious that you can explore all of its power. I like this explanation better than projecting your mind into another dimension. Moreover, I think that both the opinions I gave - among many others - still work to explain reality shifting because in the end we explore other realities regardless.
Anyway !
Shifting is harder for me as I ask myself too many questions and don’t really like to plan my dreams with scripts. Don’t get me wrong, I loved writing scripts for universes I knew I wanted to shift to, but I am always so scared of forgetting something. Plus because of my dream obsession I am scared that if I succeed, I will never want to come back. Still, I know I am never going to stop being inspired by what my mind creates.
→ Quote I like = “Everything that is or was, began with a dream” - Lavagirl.
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🔺Original work please do not steal or copy, Thanks.🔺
My interpretation of Minecraft Piglins and a species based on them, the Cowlins.
As opposed to their cousins the Piglins, Cowlins live in the surface world in forests or plains, similar to Villagers. They're far less common though, with only five known villages that they populate. Due to their small numbers they're rather secretive, although not unfriendly.
This is leading up to something I promise, in the meantime enjoy :}
A dnd homebrew project two years in the making
Hey folks!! I’m a part time dm, and as mentioned in previous posts, i’ve been working on a comprehensive dnd homebrew world with different countries, cities, homebrew races and classes, monsters, languages, and more. I’ve been looking to spread my art more, and I was curious, would folks join a discord server where I could share my work and allow folks to collaborate? Please reblog/comment if so!! I want to widen the nerd circle to others <3
Does anybody have any ideas for creating a power system like rules, origins of powers, history, etc.?
I’ve been working on a Google Doc with every god in the Lost Omens setting, Paizo’s setting for Pathfinder.
I’ve discovered a bunch of really interesting gods that way, and really gave me an appreciation for religions and their role in world building!
I’ve even made a handful of my own pantheons based off of descriptions of religions in the source books!
(Also holy shit a ton of these gods have daggers as their favored weapon. Like, a massive amount of them)
hi I'm from your pseudo-medieval fantasy city. yeah. you forgot to put farms around us. we have very impressive walls and stuff but everyone here is starving. the hero showed up here as part of his quest and we killed and ate him
Ghoul Worldbuilding Headcanons:
Ghoul kitchens are always clean. Very few ghouls actually cook to begin with, which makes most of their kitchen indefinitely clean. And all of them can’t afford to leave evidence of their meals, so they clean up immediately.
Because of this, ghouls are commonly known as very tidy people among their human friends.
Koalas and Panda Bears are common favorite animals (or at least, animals of heavy interest) among ghouls for the fact that they also live on a single food source (albeit both plants — eucalyptus and bamboo)
Carnivorous animals that get demonized as “eating machines” like Sharks are also common favorite animals / animals of interest
Because of this, a lot of ghouls take interest in animals and want to go into a work field of either studying or working with animals. (If you can't work against the demonization of your own species, might as well work on helping other species!)
Given that Hide can keep Cain’s mouth shut in the novels to make him swallow human food, what if ghouls are like crocodiles and alligators? Incredible bite strength, but the muscle that opens their mouths is really weak.
Acting human requires a lot of suppression, far beyond what canon covers. Think about it: They have to ignore the scents they smell, everything they overhear, keep their strength and agility in check, avoid dangerous objects because they can't be harmed by it. And they have to guess and estimate all these limits, because they can't just ask. They even have to play dumb and fearful about knowledge of their own species, as public knowledge on ghouls and even the CCG is very low.
And it requires a lot of supplementation, too. They have to catch up on the importance of food in human culture, from favorite foods to grocery shopping. And be able to recognize the variety of human food, and pay attention to and prepared for common eating times. They've probably never experienced a true human restaurant besides coffee shops. They also have to make up family history since most ghouls are orphans, and stick to a single believable backstory.
Given that the CCG take ghoul bodies after killing them and turn them into quinques, having a body at all is a big deal amongst ghouls, and in recent history makes their death ceremonies not entirely unlike humans'
Having a real disconnect when it comes to the blood and gore side of horror. They can tell its meant to be terrifying and disgusting, but it gives them the complete opposite reaction. Which could either be really fun and enjoyable, or the source of alienation and guilt, depending on the ghoul
Whether its through chemosignals or simply overhearing heartbeats, ghouls can sense fear
(And lying too, probably)
If they can sense chemosignals, then that would make communicating through masks easier for them, as they don't need to read each other's expressions to tell emotions
Cats don't just purr from contentment, but also often purr when stressed, and there's a theory that cat purring aids in healing, which feels really ripe for worldbuilding considering that ghouls have regeneration. Maybe they go hand-in-hand — purring whenever their regeneration kicks in, or maybe they tend to purr when their regeneration gives out — instinctually using a more primative form of healing
(The theory also says that cat purring can lower stress and aid healing in humans too, so consider that for your ghoul x human ships! It wouldn't be an enhanced form of healing for humans, but it would still be comforting and have minor healing properties like the cat purring theory!)
Ghouls' eyes glow. Their kakugan glowing is pretty accepted as canon, but what if even their "normal" eyes glow too?
(Examples of :re Donato because I thought it was cool)
Also bonus headcanon for this specific scene: Donato really likes to sit in the dark and let his eyes glow creepily, just another fun little way to freak out cochlea's doves. But they quickly caught on to this and started keep the lights on. As Donato's friend, Haise's the only one who lets him sit in the dark during interrogations anymore. Enrichment :)
Ruminations on boss monster SOUL power transfer and aging
So, uh. That one bit of Gerson dialogue. What did he mean by this???
Taken from Hushbugger's Undertale Dialogue Dump page on Github.
There are a few different headcanons/theories about how exactly this piece of lore should be interpreted – and, specifically, what its implications are regarding the children's growth rates in different scenarios. So, let's discuss it.
Personally, I'm REALLY not a big fan of the one that implies a boss monster whose parents die would be stuck as a child forever??? For instance, how would this theory of power transfer work with boss monster families that have 3+ children? Because like. Some couples having at least 3 children would be the only way for the population to to ever grow in size (unless we also headcanon that new boss monsters just spontaneously appear sometimes or something, which has absolutely no basis in canon lore). And by that logic, generations of this happening would eventually yield boss monsters who stop aging stupidly young. Not to mention, what about boss monster kids like Asriel, with no biological siblings? Would them getting both of their parents' SOUL power mean they go through super-puberty that turns them into double-mature adults??? So, yeah, not only would this all have pretty horrific implications regarding boss monster dating, but it'd also just be... really cursed worldbuilding that falls apart when you give it in any amount of serious thought. That's why I think it's a lot more likely that SOUL power transfer is simply that: a transfer of power.
I think Gerson's word choice is key here: "causing the child to grow" – rather than "mature", "age", or " develop" – "as the parents age" – as in, "into old age", becoming physically weaker due to giving up SOUL power.
I believe it's FAR more likely that, if a boss monster was orphaned, their growth would be stunted and their power would never reach its full potential – something more akin to malnutrition, rather than them literally being frozen in time; this would also happen, but to a lesser extent, to a boss monster who has to share their parents' SOUL power with more than one other sibling – and, inversely, a boss monster who's an only child would inherit both of their parents' power, growing far stronger than either of them separately by the time they become an adult.
This would also explain Asgore's absurdly high stats compared to Toriel's – like. ok. he has 8 times her total HP??? If we are to assume Asgore started out with similar stats to Toriel, plugging the numbers into the LV-based HP calculation formula the game uses for Frisk – 3/4 base HP + (1/4 base HP * LV) – gives us this equation: 330 + 110*LV = 3500. Solving for Asgore's hypothetical LV, then, gives us LV of roughly 29. Which might not sound that bad... until you realize the EXP required for getting to LV 19 is more than than all of the EXP it takes to get to LV 18 combined. Even assuming the EXP you get from killing just one human is equivalent to killing every monster in the Underground, while also assuming that the amount of EXP you need to level up no longer increases after you've reached LV 20 for some reason... it still wouldn't be enough to explain Asgore's dummy thicc HP bar after killing only 6 humans, if we are to assume his base HP is at all similar to that of Toriel. (Accounting for the possibility that monster history books lied, or at the very least didn't tell the full truth when stating that "not a single human SOUL was taken" during the war just leaves us with another problem: Toriel's also a veteran, and in fact seems a lot more comfortable with the idea of actively going to war as opposed to Asgore's approach of stalling for as long as possible, so if monsters actually were getting insane amounts of EXP by killing humans during the war, how come her stats are still so low? Killing even just a few humans would beef her up quite a bit; again, it's only once the numbers get higher that you see the sharp increase in EXP required to level up.)
I think Asgore was born into royalty, and Toriel married into it. Again: if a pair of boss monsters had only one child, that child would have the combined power of their 2 parents – now, let's suppose a family decided to do that for many generations.... with each new kid in such a family, the base power of the resulting offspring would grow more and more and more, wouldn't it? Perhaps one such family also has the means and prestige that allows them to easily find suitably strong partners for their kids, further increasing the rate at which the family's power would grow. (Also, the idea of Toriel originally being a commoner is further reinforced by the fact that the surname "Dreemurr" is confirmed to come from Asgore's side and, at least as far as we know, Toriel just... doesn't have her her own surname, as she switches to just going by "Toriel" after the two break up. Given that we only have about 3 examples of surnames within the Entirety Of The Underground, it appears that family names just aren't really a thing used within monster society, unless said family is really notable in some way).
...I may or may not be overthinking boss monster biology.