#It started as very basic simple sci fi

[femboty2k]

The Great Trans Girl Exodus Commission Post

Hello once again! To make a long story short: My darling wife and I are trying very hard to be able to move from Texas to Colorado ahead of how bad legislature is getting here. We have savings and a plan but its shaping up to be a very expensive and stressful finding a place to actually move in to. Our lease here is up at the end of June so we're starting to really crack down on trying to find places to apply to. I'm making this post because we would really appreciate some extra funds to add to what we have saved to make this move possible and if its an option: comfortable. We're a pair of trans lesbians trying so very very hard to make a life for ourselves in this country that hates us. Below I've attached some basic pricing and examples of the type of pixel art I do as well as some of my writing as I'm A-Okay writing for other folks if you like my prose or brand of article jank. If you have any questions about anything here please feel free to send me a DM on here and we can talk more about what you want and what I can do for you. Thank you so much if you end up commissioning anything or even if you just share this post. Examples and pricing below the cut:

Y2K Stylized Piece: $50+ (Price can range based on piece complexity desired)

Flat colour piece w. basic detailing: $60+ (Price can range based on number of characters desired and background complexity, basic BG is included in piece)

Detailed/Low-Poly Style piece: $75+ (These ones take the longest due to the by-hand editing needed to ensure the style is cohesive or detailing is done on the whole piece. Price can range based on complexity desired.)

Pixel Chibi: $20 (Pixel Chibi pricing is locked at $20)

Emote Suite: $35 (Price covers up to 9 custom emotes sized for usage in Discord and other messaging use cases)

Doodle: $25 (A flat simple piece with a simple concept done on a small canvas)

WRITING EXAMPLES:

Fiction: Tactile Sensations, a Sci-Fi short story Article Writing: Bloodborne PXS: One of the best fanworks on the web Writing prices start at $30 and can fluctuate upwards based on piece length. Thank you so much for checking out my work and/or sharing it. We're trying to start a new life for ourselves in a safer place, and we really do appreciate any help. Thank you!

[quasi-normalcy]

Which Star Trek series should you start with?

The Original Series: Advantages: + The one that started it all + Has some sophisticated and socially conscious science fiction that has held up exceptionally well + The lead characters all have really good chemistry and fun to see play off of one another + It's what most people probably think of when you say Star Trek (together with TNG) Disadvantages: - It can feel very dated and kind of sexist, particularly in its treatment of women - The sci-fi and social commentary may have held up, but damn it, the special effects really haven't - When TOS is bad, it's really, really bad.

The Animated Series: Advantages: + Basically just more TOS. Disadvantages: - Basically just more TOS, but substituting extremely cheap animation for bad special effects

The Next Generation: Advantages: + Probably the most popular one at this point + The crew is full of interesting characters and they're fun to spend time with + Just really smart people solving Space Mysteries + Socialist space utopia + Geordi-And-Data! + Lots of cool sci-fi concepts and social commentary + It's what most people probably think of when you say Star Trek (together with TOS) Disadvantages: - Although not in the same way as TOS, it can feel dated at times, particularly in terms of its treatment of women and it's near complete refusal to acknowledge queerness - Without wanting to bias viewer opinion, the first season is widely considered to be pretty bad - The series makes no bones about the fact that the socialist space utopia is better than every other society that has ever existed and will reiterate this point over and over again

Deep Space Nine: Advantages: + The most popular Trek series on Tumblr + Has a complete story arc, as well as arcs for all of its characters, including the extremely minor ones + Plain, simple, Garak. The humble tailor. + Garashir, if you're into that + Seriously has a really sophisticated treatment of things like post-colonial politics, anthropology, worldbuilding, and the horrors of warfare + Just the characters in general + Is the only Star Trek prior to the 2010s to even look meaningfully at queer representation Disadvantages: - Has an absolutely massive inferiority complex with respect to TNG and this drives a few poor writing decisions that seemingly exist just to poke the Socialist Space Utopia in its eye - Introduces a space religion and then just slowly turns it into Christianity with the numbers filed off - Seems to think that sexual harassment is just a quirky eccentricity - There's no women in its writers' room, and frankly it shows

Voyager: Advantages: + Probably the clearest instance of found family in space + Lots of really good episodes + Lots of fun new characters + Strong female role models + "Set a course...for home." Disadvantages: - Continuity? I never knew her! - Probably about 90% of Trek's reputation for technobabble comes from this one series - Even less queerness than TNG. - Only like...3 characters actually get arcs. - The first few seasons lean very hard into bullshit fake "Native American" spiritualism with one of the characters - How do these guys have warp drive but can't find any water?

Enterprise: Advantages: + Chronologically the first series + 90% less technobabble + The only series to plausibly frame our heroes as astronauts...on some kind of...star trek. + Still has probably the best production values of any series + Makes alien cultures of the week feel somehow richer and deeper than other series + Faith of the Heart is good, fuck you. Disadvantages: - Oh my god, the decon scenes - Seriously, if you've ever wondered what a "sexy" series written by a 14 year old boy who's only ever seen a bit of scrambled softcore porn on late-night cable would be like, this is the show for you - Somehow feels more sexist and racist than the show from the '60s - Seriously, the POC characters mostly exist to fill seats on the bridge; the women constantly have to undress themselves - Hellooooo, Bush II-era political analogies - Scott Bakula is a good actor but you wouldn't know it from this series - In season 3, they add a tambourine beat to Faith of the Heart and ruin it

Discovery: Advantages: + Noticed the lack of queer characters in the first 50 years of Star Trek canon and decided to make up for lost time + Seriously, the "Bury Your Gays" tally for this series is like...negative two + Just incredible representation in general + Some really good science fiction plots, particularly in later series + Some really fun, memorable characters + It's still running, so it has an active fandom on Tumblr Disadvantages: - Makes Elon Musk out to be one of the great visionary geniuses of history - Not really representative of Star Trek as a whole - The series swerves wildly in tone because of constant, behind-the-scenes churn in the writers' room - Offputtingly grimdark first season - Let's be honest, none of the season-long arcs have actually had satisfying conclusions - Half the cast feels like it's just there for exposition and to be killed for cheap drama

Picard: Advantages: + Has the best dramatic acting of any Star Trek series by a fair margin + Has the best musical score of any Star Trek series + Introduces a whole crew of fascinating new characters + Introduces all kinds of fascinating transhumanist concepts + AGNES. JURATI. Disadvantages: - You know all of those fascinating new characters that I mentioned? Yeah, it unceremoniously gets rid of all of them to bring back the old TNG gang. - You know that all of those fascinating transhumanist concepts that I mentioned? Yeah, it gets rid of those too so that to give us some generic action - Oh my god, someone teach the set designers to operate a fucking light switch - Grimdark - Nossssstalgia - Each season is basically unrelated to every other season - Depends so heavily on TNG that its final season is basically unwatchable if you haven't already seen a 30-year-old TV series

Lower Decks: Advantages: + It has probably the most efficient storytelling that I've ever seen; seriously, it's incredible how much it can fit into a half hour episode + It has a bunch of delightful, archetypical characters you get to know and love + You like hanging out with these people + The ship is kind of crap and you will learn to love it that way. + Basically a sitcom version of TNG. + Has a big fandom on Tumblr Disadvantages: - The art style is pretty Rick & Morty-ish - It takes most of its first season to really strike a good balance between being a sitcom and being a Star Trek series - The main character, Mariner, is kind of unlikable for the first season or so (she gets better) - Lots of callbacks to other series (though always either incidental or clearly explained) - Given that it's the first Star Trek sitcom, the comedy is honestly kinda the weakest part? Subjective I know.

Prodigy: Advantages: + Absolutely gorgeous to look at; the most visually stunning Star Trek by quite a ways + Lots of fun new characters on a cool ship + Gives you clear on-boarding notes to the Star Trek franchise if you're watching it for the first time + Can be watched on its own, but also works as a direct sequel to Voyager and a prequel to Picard (making both of them retoractively better, in fact) + Kind of like the Clone Wars or Rebels of the Star Trek universe, I guess? + Found family in space! The next generation! + Soon to be running on Netflix, so if you already have a Netflix subscription, you don't need to pay for another service + Written for a younger audience. Not necessarily an advantage, but nice if you happen to like family friendly animation or YA. Disadvantages: - *sigh* You basically need to pirate it. Thanks, Paramount. - Has a second season that we may or may not ever actually get to see even through piracy. Thanks, Paramount. - Isn't airing on the same streaming service as all of the other ones. Thanks, Paramount

Strange New Worlds: Advantages: + Basically what the original series would be if it were released today, rather than 57 years ago; all of the cool, socially consciousness sci-fi adventure, none of the weird 60s sexism + Fun, awesome characters you get to like spending time with right away + Incredible visuals + Nifty sci-fi concepts, mostly without the 90s-style technobabble Disadvantages: - A huge cast with only ten episodes a season, so many of them feel underdeveloped - Unfortunately, a bunch of its characters are younger versions of the characters from The Original Series, and they hog most of the spotlight; and the characters whose futures aren't locked in stone are kind of treated as disposable - In general, it needs to spend less time being a prequel, and more time being its own thing - "What if Starfleet ran into the Xenomorphs from Alien?" "Well, they'd probably kill them." "Okay, let's spend several episodes on this."

[simon-roy]

The idea of logging on a colonized alien planet brings my mind back to the planet Lalonde from Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn books - a world that had very hard wood as its only meaningful export, and was also stuck developing its economy from agriculturalism (due to investment shortages, though).

All this is to say - Hey! What are some foundational inspirations for your sci fi verse? You gotta have some like recommendations of classic or older sci-fi for us, right? What are some of your suggestions of books and authors to read?

OK SO - My sci-fi tastes have sort of ended up in some very specific niches. Growing up, I was a Larry Niven +Jerry Pournelle man, in part because my dad amassed a huge collection of their books - then gave 90% of them away before i was old enough to read them. So one of my teenage missions was rebuilding that library, trash and all!

Stuff like Footfall, Ringworld, Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, Protector (yes i attempted to name a comic series similarly, and paid for it) "The Mote in God's Eye"... you name it, I read fuckloads of these books. And while they tend to land on a sort of human chauvinist "mankind will win based on his inherent adaptive human-ness, and the aliens will fail because of their rigid alien-ness", this shit was very foundational to me.

Their more collaborative series, The Man-Kzin Wars and War World, also loom large in my teenage mind. The Man-Kzin wars are super fun - humans meet a race of tiger-men, and go from being NWO peaceniks to roughneck cat-skinners in a generation! PEACE AND LOVE WONT DEFEAT TIGER MEN!

Similarly, war world (like lots of that 70s/80s military sci fi) was a sort of catch-all for western military nerds to play with their favorite factions - it was a planet where all the un-ruleable ethnic groups and nationalities had been deported by the authoritarian earth government, and left to rot... until a race of genetically engineered fascist super men land on the world, and start trying to rule the place. Pretty fun shit.

As I got older, I turned hard into William Gibson, and read the absolute shit out of both the Neuromancer trilogy and the Bridge trilogy, as well as his short stories. Bruce Sterling was part of that wave for me, too, and I religiously sought his old paperbacks out too. In terms of novels, "Distraction" is my favorite coherent Sterling Novel - though the short stories in the "Schismatrix" novel/collection of his remain my absolute favorite space opera pieces.

At this age, too, I found my top-top fave Sterling Stories - "Taklaman" and "Bicycle Repairman", both gritty pseudo-cyberpunk stories of the highest degree, in this collection:

This thousand-plus page collection of short stories and novellas was basically my bible for a few years - i put sticky notes on each story i loved and meant to return to, until the book was so festooned with sticky note bookmarks i abandoned the practice altogether. If you have the chance, just buy this book and chew on it for a few years.

As i got into my 20s, Charles Stross became my lode star - his books like Accelerando and Glasshouse were total game changers for me. They come with their own peculiarities, but I loved his transhuman/posthuman musings (or at least i was obsessed with his stuff for a good few years - the venn diagram of his obvious interests and my own overlapped enough that his books were great fodder for a growing sci-fi loving brain).

But since then, my main literary squeeze has been the great man, JACK VANCE. Working on Prophet, my friend @cmkosemen made a remark about how much the early issues of the series reminded him of a book series called "Planet of Adventure" or "the Tschai Cycle", by Jack Vance. The book has a beautifully simple setup - a man from an entirely undescribed spacefaring human civilization crash-lands onto a weird planet. But on that planet, he finds four separate civilizations, each who possess a population of enslaved humans, culturally and physically molded to the needs of their masters. And each book of this series covers our generic hero's interactions with each bizarre expoitative culture. I was extremely intrigued.

Soon thereafter, I found my current absolute favorite book - "THE DRAGON MASTERS". A book about an isolated medieval world... which gets visited, once every few generations, by a black pyramid starship, flown by a reptilian race known as the Greph. The greph capture humans to (surprise surprise) breed them into hyper specific slaves... who in turn become Greph-like in their thinking and demeanours. But the last time the BLACK PYRAMID landed, a bunch of angry medieval dudes stormed the thing, blew it up, and captured a bunch of greph... who became the breeding stock for a whole new human world of slave labour. By the time we meet this planet, the two rival lords of the human-populated regions have been breeding greph slave warriors, or "dragons", for generations, for combat against one another. But soon, the black pyramid will return...

I love this book I even spent a good few months during covid talking with the Vance Estate and several publishers about developing it into a graphic novel, but nobody could quite agree on how it could get made with old Simon getting a paycheque... so sadly it fell apart. There are concept drawings floating around my patreon and other corners of the internet. But one day I'll use 'em...

My other favorite books of his, to name a couple of the MANY books of his I love:

THE BLUE WORLD: A caste system of humans, descended from a crashed prison ship, live on floating settlements on an ocean planet, paying protection to a giant long-lived intelligent crustacean. But one man is tired of giving up all his crops to this tyrannical megafauna...

THE MIRACLE WORKERS: Rival lords on a planet descended to medieval tech (surprise surprise) fight using armies... and rival SORCERORS who employ the powers of suggestion to voodoo each others' warriors... but when facing non-human intelligences, these sorceror's skills fall short.

But there are heaps more, and I love most (thought not all) of the ones i've read. They're generally short, concise, and full of all sorts of bizarre bullshit.

THere are more books i've read and enjoyed in my life, of course, but these are the core ones that I think of when I think of my career as a sci-fi reader... let me know what your top recs are!

[keplercryptids]

I know this was posted like. a week ago. but as someone thinking of running a forged in the dark game I would love to see your homebrew xp mechanics

hell yeah! so let me start by saying, forged in the dark games (at least, the two i've played, blades in the dark and scum and villainy) are designed to be run either 1. in campaigns with a maximum of 12-20 sessions, OR 2. in campaigns where you're running through characters frequently and telling a story of the crew as a collective, rather than focused on a specific group of characters. so if you do either of those things, i don't think you actually need to tweak the xp.

i am a longwinded bitch lmao and i also prefer running campaigns that don't switch out PCs often. so the rapid xp acquisition of these games is. troublesome. i've actually very recently decided to simply hand out milestone xp (which is what i did when i ran d&d 5e). basically, every few jobs, when something narratively Big happens, i'll give the players [x] amount of xp. but! i did come up with these narrative xp rules, which i like and i'm having fun with, so for now, any xp the players accrue by making desperate rolls will be added to their narrative xp bank to spend in the following ways:

(under a readmore cuz it's long!)

Narrative XP

At the end of each job, the maximum amount of XP that can be used for character advancement is 50% of the XP gained that session, rounding up. This is called Advancement XP. The remaining XP is called Narrative XP.

When Narrative XP is spent to increase or reduce a clock, 1 XP = 1 tick. Personal Narrative XP can be spent on campaign clocks, personal clocks, connection clocks, long-term projects or resolving traumas, as described below. With the exception of campaign clocks, any given clock can only be affected by 1 Narrative XP, per player per session.

At a player’s discretion, Character Advancement XP may be spent as Narrative XP, with the same restrictions as above.

CAMPAIGN CLOCKS

Throughout the campaign, there will be clocks tracking organizations’ goals, external forces outside the scope of the PCs’ sphere of influence, or events looming on the horizon. During downtime, these clocks can be increased or reduced by the use of Narrative XP. This is almost always going to be a meta decision made by the players and GM, rather than anything the PCs are doing within the fiction (though there may be some exceptions - talk it out!). The progress of campaign clocks can also be leveraged as Devil’s Bargains during play. There is no limit to how much XP can be spent on a campaign clock per downtime.

PERSONAL CLOCKS

Each PC can accrue personal clocks, tracked on your character sheet, that reflect potential complications, goals, or outcomes affecting your character. During downtime, Narrative XP can be used to increase or reduce ticks on these clocks (maximum 1 XP per clock per downtime). To use Narrative XP this way, describe or roleplay a scene to illustrate what your character is doing to affect the clock in question.

CONNECTION CLOCKS

[note: this text is taken basically word-for-word from Beam Saber by austin ramsay - a really cool game i haven't gotten to run yet! check out beam saber if you're interested in sci-fi forged in the dark games!]

The crew sheet contains separate 4-tick Connection Clocks for each other member in your crew, representing your character’s relationship with that crewmate. Make a belief about that crewmate for each tick on that clock (checking in with that player when you do). When the Connection Clock fills, ask the target crewmate for a truth about one of the beliefs tied to them, then reset the clock to 1 tick as you see them in a new light. When a Connection Clock resets, erase all the previous beliefs you had about that crewmate and write a new one related to the truth you just learned—it’ll take time and effort to understand them again.

A belief is a brief statement about how a character feels about another crewmate. Beliefs are simple, quick, and influential in the rapport between the two crewmates. However, the players need to remember that their beliefs are not necessarily true as they are based on incomplete information and gut instinct. A good belief is:

Something a character might say about their crewmate to a confidante.

Easily summarized, so that it can be quickly remembered when relevant.

Potentially true.

Suitable for the game’s setting and tone.

Something the player is interested in exploring.

During downtime or free play, Narrative XP can be used to add a belief and tick a Connection Clock with another crewmate (maximum once per session). To use Narrative XP this way, your character must have a one-on-one scene with a crewmate, which challenges their perception of their crewmate, and/or shows a new side of them, and/or during which the characters bond in a significant way. After this, spend 1 XP to tick the Connection clock with that character, and gain a new belief (see above).

LONG-TERM PROJECTS

During downtime, you may spend 1 XP to add a tick to a long-term project clock (maximum 1 tick per clock).

RESOLVING TRAUMAS

[note: there isn't a way in the rules as written to resolve traumas, but being able to do so is important to me, so i included this as a way to use narrative xp.]

When you gain a trauma, start a 6-tick Trauma clock on your character sheet. During downtime or free play, Narrative XP can be used to tick a Trauma clock (maximum once per session). To use Narrative XP this way, describe or roleplay a scene to illustrate what your character is doing to work on resolving their trauma. Once a trauma clock has been filled, you may remove that trauma from your character sheet.

[autistic-beshelar]

Hey! I'm very interested in what you've told me about antisocial personality disorder, neurodivergence, and empathy vs. compassion so far. I would love to hear more!

hi, sorry this has taken me a bit to get to, i've had a hectic few days, and i knew i'd end up writing a lot!

ASPD:

i'll start by saying that i don't have ASPD, so i'm just going to give the basics and hand you off to people who DO have it. it's important to bear in mind that ASPD is primarily considered traumagenic, and that, like any other disorder, it can manifest in a bunch of different ways, and people with it can behave very differently from one another.

ASPD is a cluster b personality disorder characterised by low empathy, limited range and depth of emotions, disregard for other people's feelings, disregard for societal conventions and morality, chronic anger, and chronic boredom. the common view of pwASPD is that they are violent criminals, but that is primarily because research is only ever done on the worst kinds of people, and i'm sure many of them are misdiagnosed. i'm sure i don't need to explain to you why basing a disorder solely off of people in prison is fucked as a concept, given how both the prison system and psychiatry are both incredibly flawed. (it's also for this reason that i have no scientific studies to give you, because the only ones i've come across are grossly ableist)

having ASPD comes with a lot of challenges, but having a disorder - any disorder - doesn't make you a bad person. from what i have seen, a lot of pwASPD don't so much 'not have morals' as have a deep distrust of authority and base their morality on logic or serving their own interests. in fact i've seen an awful lot of pwASPD who are very left leaning or are anarchists. of course there's also plenty who are right wing assholes, but that kind of goes to show that a disorder doesn't dictate your morality, it just might lead you to approach your sense of morality differently.

ASPD resources, from actual pwASPD:

https://shitborderlinesdo.tumblr.com/post/115096247519/the-anti-social-personality-disorder-checklist

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/life-with-antisocial-personality-disorder-aspd/ (cw for mention of csa)

https://inanawesomewave.tumblr.com/post/177638772232/the-bones-of-it

EMPATHY:

my favourite thing to rant about. empathy is wildly misunderstood by most people, so let's start off with a proper description. there are two main types of empathy: cognitive and affective. you will also see some people say that there's a third type, 'compassionate empathy', but i have never seen a definition of it that isn't based on the idea that empathy is necessary for compassion, so i'm ignoring it, and i'll get to compassion later.

cognitive empathy: basically, thinking about feeling. cognitive empathy is the ability to recognise and understand emotions. it is involved with reading people's expressions, or understanding why a certain situation might cause a certain emotional response.

affective empathy: this is typically what people mean when they talk about empathy - the ability to feel what someone else is feeling.

it's extremely important to note that this is fucking impossible. 'feeling what someone else is feeling' is some sci-fi nonsense. it isn't real. the belief that it is causes a lot of harm.

affective empathy, properly defined, is the a person's emotional response to an emotion that they perceive someone else having. it isn't always as simple as 'i'm happy because they're happy'. affective empathy can also be involved in more complicated situations, like feeling afraid because of perceived anger (which leads to a whole conversation about hyperempathy and hypervigilance and the relationship between them, but that's a whole other post that someone who actually has feelings would be more qualified to write)

so that's empathy. it's really just a bunch of feelings that we have about or in relation to other people's feelings. there's no moral component to feelings whatsoever. morality only comes into play when action is involved. which leads me to...

compassion: being kind, not as an inherent state of being, but as a choice.

i'll talk about my own experience here, but i've heard similar from other people with low/no empathy, and i've heard similar from some pwASPD as well.

i choose to be kind because i believe it's the right thing to do. i see a lot of injustice in the world, and it makes me furious - in fact, for me, it's primarily my anger that fuels my compassion. my morals have been based partly on feeling, but also on logic, and on a lot of research. to me, being kind is logical and sensible. it's logical to want people to be happy and safe and free. it benefits me too, for starters.

i don't need to feel sad about people's suffering to want it to stop. and though i don't really feel much empathy, i do still get emotional about things - i can still be sad or angry or happy about certain things happening, it's just... less than other people.

i look at the world around me and i try to find things that i can do to make it better because i think that's my job as a human. sometimes i'm bad at it, and sometimes i'm too tired to, but at the very least i can refuse to cause harm, and when i do, inevitably, cause harm, i can make amends.

(there's also a long discussion to be had about how basing your morality on your ability to empathise with people makes it extremely easy to no longer care about people who have been dehumanised, but that's a post i don't feel qualified to make)

a book i am desperate to read on this subject is Against Empathy by Paul Bloom, but here's an article about it, which is of course not perfect, but makes a lot of interesting points: https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/19/14266230/empathy-morality-ethics-psychology-compassion-paul-bloom

i hope that helps explain some things. if you have - or anyone else has - more questions, feel free to ask, and i'll do my best to answer.

[potato-lord-but-not]

hi jay!

so, i've been staying up until at least 3am as of late due to the simple fact that i cannot fucking sleep, so!

i've decided that i'm going to listen to all of these podcasts you make art for because i actually want to know context and whatnot for your art becuase your art is rlly fire and you're one of my favorite artists but pretty much the only fandom i know anything about that you do art for is will wood, and i love will wood. so,, automatically i think you probably also have good tastes in podcasts so im going to listen to them.

which should i start with?

(srry this is so long btw i like talking)

Well I’d say camp here and there since you’re a Will Wood fan !!! it’s very goofy and silly but also slightly disturbing and horrifically sad <3 also Will did the soundtrack so <33 AND if you enjoy that you can try welcome to night vale because they have similar vibes although it tends to stay more light hearted then chnt :))

Wolf 359 is both absolutely hilarious and also gut-wrenchingly tragic. it gets its own category bc it’s not entirely horror nor supernatural, I mean yeah there’s aliens but that’s sci-fi supernatural so it doesn’t count. Really really good one to start with if you like character centric stories !!!

Malevolent is like. really fucking good. I’m not even sure how to sell it it’s just amazing. Definitely the scariest out of the one’s I’ve listened to so far, but damnnnnn it’s so worth it. the themes… the growth…. the divorces……

And the Magnus archives also,, it was my first fiction podcast I really got into and it’s so so so good!! if you’re a causal r/nosleep enjoyer you’ll love this one. it’s basically spooky short stories with a plot happening in the background (at least. that’s how it seems)

Anyway yeah sorry !!! I’d say camp here and there and if you don’t like that one perhaps tma or malevolent, depending on your preferences. hope the sleep situation figures itself out tho !!

[semi-imaginary-place]

Should you play 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim? YES

The game is visual novel adjacent with 50% of gameplay being reading/listening, and maybe 30% point and click adventure, and 20% real time strategy combat but its structured in a way to basically be turn based combat there's maybe 2 second of real time happening total per map.

You start the game at the final battle and spend the rest of the time piecing together how everyone got to that point. The story is told in non-chronological order so you can choose what characters to progress their story in whatever order you want. 13 playable characters whose stories all intertwine and are relevant to the other stories. So in that sense it's a mystery story as the main draw is you and the characters figuring out what is really going on. The story is intricate and complex and rich and very well executed. The game pays homage to the sci-fi genre in general referencing a lot of sci-fi and kaiju media and tropes while doing interesting things with those concepts. It's great for people like me that like connecting dots and theory crafting. I started taking notes while I play the game.

Combat is robust and you can get into it as little or as much as you want. I had little experience with real time strategy before this (mostly a JRPG player) and I loved the combat so much I ended up playing part of it on the highest difficulty. 13 Sentinels really eases you into the combat system, starting out very simple and gradually and consistently raising the difficulty.

Really everything about this game is top notch from the story to the characters, gameplay, and aesthetics. The game has strong art direction and a stunning soundtrack. The themes are eloquently integrated, compelling, both emotionally moving and with soul wrenching depth. Everything just works really well together. This is one of the best made games I have ever seen.

[thekristen999]

Seven Sentence Sunday

Making more headway on the Sci-Fi of Doom fic. I'm excited to finally start escalating the situation. *evil grin*

...

Colonel Wilkes’ answer was simple.  “Convey. Our enemy is smarter and stronger. All we can do is keep it at bay while we fight our way out.”

That didn’t sound like  a plan at all. Buck couldn’t be the only one who thought that was a very bad idea. 

“Fight with what?” A civilian demanded. “Throw beakers at them.”

“She made something,” Athena said, pointing at Becky’s flamethrower.

“This is a lab,” Wilkes barked. “Figure it out.” 

The botanists started whispering with each other. 

Colonel Wilkes regarded Athena and Bobby with less hostility. “Do any of your people have military or weapon's experience?”

Buck’s heart thumped inside his chest. 

Bobby and Athena had a whole conversation in silence, debating between them. 

“I do,” Eddie said. 

Of course Eddie volunteered that tidbit of information about himself.  Buck resisted the urge to shake him.

Wilkes looked over in surprise. Eddie held his head up high. “I was a combat medic. Did two tours in Afghanistan.”

“And did you ever handle your weapon outside of basic?”

“I was a Staff Sergeant conducting medevacs in multiple hot zones. What do you think?”

Buck groaned internally at the attitude. Because nothing pressed Eddie’s buttons like being talked down to. A by-product of his childhood, Buck suspected. 

But the bravado left an impression on Wilkes who regarded Eddie in a whole new light. A light that Bobby didn’t appreciate based on the way crossed his arms in front of his chest his implication crystal clear. He's, my guy. Not yours. 

..

tagging a few people who might be interested or who want to share words.

@elenaazra @dangerpronebuddie @homerforsure @mellaithwen @spotsandsocks @the-likesofus @spaceprincessem @sunflowerdiaiz @shyaudacity @hippolotamus @spaceprincessem @thebestbooksaround @andavs @fleurdebeton @exhuastedpigeon @steadfastsaturnsrings @diazsdimples @eddiebabygirldiaz

[internetgiraffekid1673]

ThePandaRedd Appreciation Post: Bill and Ted

This is me screaming into the void that I think my two favorite characters in the comic scene are Ted and Bill from the Pandaverse (the comics universe created by ThePandaRedd's tiktok skits). I freaking love these two because they are hilarious and I gotta say it somewhere.

Consider this a ThePandaRedd appreciation post.

Bill is a very long running Pandaverse character and is a professional henchman in Gotham City. He has been henching long enough to see the formation of the goonion, have batman steal so many of his bones that they're kept ground up in a jar, see the rise and graduation of every robin, batgirl, or other, and become so tired that he can backtalk his most consistent employer---the Joker.

Bill is a jaded henchman, mostly in the job because it's the easiest way to get money in Gotham, and because he's kinda in too deep to quit now. He's one of the best advertisers the goonion has, strongly discourages other people from henching in Gotham, and has so many residual medical issues from getting brutally beaten up by the batfam that he just doesn't care anymore. While he is regularly employed by the Joker, he has also been seen working for the likes of Penguin, Black Mask, and Bane, presumably when the Joker is in Arkham. Most other characters treat him with some instinctive respect for having stayed in the Gotham henching game this long, and he could absolutely go toe to toe with Superman if not just easily secure some Kryptonite and whoop his ass. Fortunately for Superman, Bill sticks to the Gotham scene.

Ted, meanwhile, is a relatively new character, and he has recently moved to Gotham from Coast City (where the Green Lantern lives). Suffice it to say, he is not aware of all of Gotham's idiosyncrasies and is still learning the wheel. If Bill the henchman is to be believed, Ted dropped out of the high school they both attended and may or may not have moved to Gotham for ease of employment.

One of his first appearances was when he'd just joined the GCPD and was trying to covertly get some info on the villain scene by asking Bill about how to start a career in henching. While Bill did not discover that Ted was working for the GCPD, he also gave away pretty much no valuable information since he instead launched into a rant about why anybody would be so suicidal as to try to START henching in Gotham City. His most recent appearance has him presumably out of a job again and noting some of his findings about Gotham as a Coast City Transplant (batburger's overrated, gang territories are gerrymandered, Robins are scarier than Batman, you'll be gifted with a water filter a gas mask and a gun upon moving houses if you send advance notice, etc.)

So, why are these two gag characters from a comic book tik-tok creator my favorite comic book/comic adjacent characters? Because they do exactly what they are designed to and narrow in on the every day.

Comic Books are a sci-fi/fantasy genre that focus on impossible stuff happening, frequently at a pretty grand scale. And while it is super cool to read or hear about stuff like Batman and his adoption problem or Superman being a basically god while still being the most human ray of sunshine ever, that's not even close to my favorite stuff.

No, my favorite type of media to consume is the kind where we get a peek into the everyday of someone in a vastly different circumstance from ours, and feel just how normal they are. I find a lot of comfort and humor in recognizing that even in very unfamiliar circumstances, there will still be simple, everyday things that persist.

Bill might be a goon in a city with some of the most insane and terrifying vigilantes ever, working for some of the most insane and terrifying villains ever, and the city is explicitly a commentary on the general shittiness of urban environments like New York, but that's not what he cares about most of the time. Instead he's busy explaining why you shouldn't smoke to his fellow goons, or dealing with the fact that his employer won't keep a reliable schedule, or having a crisis that he regularly has to run away from a 12 year old dressed like a traffic light or else die trying, or trying to convince people to mask up during quarantine, or promoting that fellow goons "do bad shit safely." And I like to think that if I somehow ended up as an evil goon in someplace as nonsensical and dramatic as Gotham City, I might respond similar to Bill after a while. And that level of normalcy and sanity persisting in such a fantastical environment is both very funny and very comforting. Human nature will persist.

Ted is similar. Everybody who has experienced moving cities knows that it can be disorienting and confusing and even a little scary as you try to figure out how things work, but you'll figure it out regardless and probably have a fun(ish) time doing so. Ted shows that the same principle applies even when those differences get cranked up to 11 and include superpowered and/or impossibly determined and crazy people. He makes my own experience moving cities where I joke and complain about the differences feel validated and it's just so funny to see someone react so normally to such an abnormal situation.

Ted's experience is something that can actually he applied to my own life, like when I learned about Rural vs. Urban stupid zoning laws or trying fry sauce after moving to the mountain west and having to defend my stance that it is an abomination. So seeing someone like yourself doing the EXACT same thing in such an insane circumstance both strikes a chord of truth and makes me laugh myself to the floor.

I also really appreciate that the PandaVerse in general has connected lore for what is basically a gag series used to affectionately parody comics. Something about people actually caring about their jokes enough to make connected lore makes me so so happy.

So thank you ThePandaRedd for creating Ted and Bill, continuing along with them, and making me smile.

Seriously, all this was to say that ThePandaRedd is cool, you should go watch his stuff, and that Bill and Ted are hilarious.

[gamebunny-advance]

Doodle Dump

Been a while since I've posted a collection of bad sketches. Notes under the cut~

1-2) AC:OS Seals. So, I didn't want to give up on making those seals for you guys even though my enthusiasm for it kinda went away~ The melon soda seal feels like it's missing something, and I think the sea captain seal is giving too much Admiral Bobbery for its own good, so I might redo that one entirely. I don't hate them, but somehow they're not reading as very "Animal Crossing" to me. I think I need to get more creative about the facial features.

3) Pudding. Another attempt of designing Yuru's main mask. I think it's cute, but I'm still not sold on it. I like the colors at least, but I think I want the mask to have a big gaping mouth so he doesn't need to take it off to eat. I'm just having a hard time keeping it cute when the mouth is open.

I dunno if Pudding is gonna be their final name, but I guess it suits them.

4) Kun3h0 ver. 4(?). I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but I just can't stop trying to redesign Kun3h0. Lately, I've been thinking that I'd like to try and make her a little less symmetrical for more visual interest. Originally the change was as simple as just adding the gauntlet to one arm (similar to be VERY early iterations of my "vtuber sona" with their one-paw glove), but then I started changing her more, and ended up with this. It's cute, but somehow I think it makes her theming even less apparent XP (her tummy lines were doing A LOT to sell the fact that she's a robot and not someone just dressed in sci-fi-ish gear).

I changed her eye color to green to draw in focus to her face (which is important for a V-Tuber design). Originally I thought I was achieving that by making the hair so much darker than everything else, thus drawing attention to the head, but I think changing the eye color to something unique helps even more with directing your eyes straight to the face.

I dunno. I like it aesthetically, but I feel like I'm losing the story here. In the last design, even though it was kinda generic, just having the clear indicator that she was inhuman did a lot to inform her character, but when I lose that, I lose the one real point of interest she had.

Then again, I've never truly had a good grasp on Kun3h0 as a character, so maybe that's what's wrong. Maybe if I sit down and actually write even a basic backstory for her, then I'd have some more direction besides, "girly robot Y2K inspired game character with a heart/bunny motif".

5-6) P2 Kliff (Banana Split/Original). So, I wanted to make a version of Kliff that fits more into my aesthetics. (Read: I wanted to make him pink). It isn't meant to be a replacement for him, just an alternate palette. In fact, I kinda liked this outfit enough to try it in his original colors too, and I think it works~

However, I dunno if I completely like the Banana Split colors

The outfit is based on this sketch from Kliff's original concept drawings.

I have NO idea what's going on in his chest area. They can't be the buttons on the top because he's wearing a turtleneck (unless it's a vest, and he's seriously wearing 3 layers in this fit). I don't think it's a lanyard because he already has a name tag on his shirt.

So I interpreted it as a necklace. I dunno, I've always felt like one of Kliff's understated traits is that he's clearly fashion conscious given how much he accessorizes and that he has the confidence to even run around in a coat that yellow, so I don't think it's out of the question that he'd wear more jewelry.

[onepiece-oc-archives]

Heyy, any tips for dressing OCs? I struggle a lot coming up with outfits that look unique while looking like it fits in with the rest of the characters and the world.

Hi, thanks so much for your ask! Boy oh boy do I have tips for you, so buckle up! I'll try to keep this as straightforward as possible, but if you get lost on the way, I'll give examples at the bottom of the post.

First of all, it's important to have a feel for the character's personal style. One of the first things I do for every new OC I create is usually to hop onto Pinterest and make an aesthetic board for them because it just helps with so many things. Sometimes, you'll just stumble across the main design detail of your OC on accident! For example, my OC Aurelia's signature claws just showed up when I searched "gold aesthetic", and I decided that this was the way to go.

But let's go back: How do I even know what to search for? Well, you might want to have a basic concept for your character. What are their inspirations? What is their background? Do they prefer clothes that are more practical or more stylish? Do they have any signature colors? How do they come off in the eyes of other people and does that match their fashion sense? How rich are they?

The last point may be helpful to get a basic idea but, in the end, it doesn't have to be the deciding factor. Let's take the Straw Hats, for example. At the start of the story, they're not exactly rich. Still, both Sanji and Nami are walking around with nice clothes. Nami steals her clothes or bargains with (or threatens) the vendor until they give her a huge discount. Sanji, meanwhile, probably had a good bit of money before he left Baratie since it was a fairly successful restaurant, and I'm willing to bet that he probably only has one or two good jackets, so he might look high-end, but he's actually not very rich at all.

What I'm trying to say is: Knowing how your OC acquires your clothes can be a huge help both for their character design and for fleshing out their story.

Otherwise, just throw anything about your OC you can think of into Pinterest's search bar, glue "outfit" or "aesthetic" to it, and you'll probably find some good inspo for your OC's clothing style.

Now that you have an idea of their fashion sense, time to make it fit in!

I'll be the first to admit, the early animanga art style doesn't really leave a lot open for detailed character design, but once you get further into the story, you can practically go completely wild.

The first thing I'd think about is: What's your OC's place in the world? Are they a Marine? Great! You can draw them in uniform! A noble? What culture is their kingdom inspired by? A pirate? What are their crewmates dressed like? After all, some crews practically have their own version of a uniform or at least a theme.

In the end, someone's clothes "fitting in" probably isn't as much of an issue as you think. Yes, the Straw Hats' outfits look pretty simple in the early animanga episodes, but... take one look at OPLA or even try imagining their outfits in real life and you'll figure out at that isn't necessarily the case. They're just simply drawn because it's a simple art style. One Piece is such a diverse world that almost anything goes. You can go surprisingly far into sci-fi or steampunk or historical, whatever you like, if you play around with it a little.

A thing that I like to do is to take inspiration from the characters that my OC is close to. The Straw Hats are especially great here because, for a lot of story arcs, their clothes collectively have a theme, but they still manage to be individual and unique. How?

The details. It's all in the details. Even if your OC is a Marine, you can make them unique through the details. Think about Coby! How is Coby unique? Pink hair and those signature glasses! Most of the Straw Hats have one design detail that carries on throughout pretty much all of their outfits, be it an accessory, a color scheme, a pattern... Luffy has his straw hat, obviously. Zoro has his swords, earrings and bandana. Nami has circles and stripes. Usopp loves himself some overalls and, in the animanga, his goggles. Sanji almost always wears a suit or at least a dress shirt and, if he doesn't, the outfit is most likely blue. Think about how this works for your OC. What's the one detail that carries on throughout all of their outfits? That's what makes them unique and recognizable.

But details can also help tie your OC into the greater world. Remember that you are an artist making character design and you're free to throw in as many easter eggs as you want. They can really add to an outfit. Adopt an accessory from a character that your OC is close to! Make the pattern of their clothes a nod to someone or something or someplace else! That's what brings your OC to life because it's what people do. We steal each other's clothes, we buy matching outfits, we unintentionally and subconsciously pick up on or play off of other people's sense of style... It's a natural process, maybe even a sign of love, and it's one of my favourite things to see in art or character design.

To maybe put this all into perspective, let me walk you through how I came up with the outfits for two of my OCs, from two different backgrounds and parts of the world.

OC no. 1 is my beloved Akaito Coraline. Cora is a tailor of considerable fame throughout the East Blue and ends up joining the Straw Hats because she's childhood friends with Sanji. Finally, she ends up dating both Sanji and Zoro.

Practically the first design detail I had about her was a nod to her family, because her family and their tailoring tradition is a very important part of Cora's character. So, it was decided that she would have a sewing needle pierced through her ear. Her profession as a tailor also made it pretty self-explanatory to me that she would prefer clothes that are, well, tailored, and she most likely makes all of her clothes herself. So, she could wear fitted blouses and other fairly intricate or expensive stuff without actually being rich or being able to go shopping often because she can sew those clothes herself - which is also a lot cheaper. It also occurred to me that Cora would have a love of fashion and would probably put fashion over functionality in her outfits. Because of her backstory, I also knew that she would keep her back covered. Lastly, as a pirate, she would have to have some kind of weapon, and I decided on a rapier, because it's elegant, feminine, fashionable, and long and pointed like a sewing needle.

In the end, I threw all of those things together, picked reference images from Pinterest, slapped them into my drawing program, and, through trial and error, came up with this:

Base by Hevis-Swan on DeviantArt by the way - use and credit bases, kids, it really helps!

We've got the sewing needle through the ear and one of Zoro's earrings to link her to him. We've got a form-fitted blouse and vest where I made sure to actually draw the different panels so you could have an idea of the sewing process. The black things on her sleeves are sleeve garters, which are meant to hold your sleeves up while you work, and I figured Cora might wear them as one of the few things she wears for practicality's sake - but they're also made of lace because she loves her fashion. The idea to have her wear pants was more of an afterthought because I absolutely wanted the holster for her scissors, but the pants are based off a pair that I own myself! The belt is based off of historically accurate belts used to hold rapiers in the 16th and 17th century. Those boot covers are extremely impractical to button up, showing Cora's "fashion over function" principle. Finally, she wears heels because she's short and likes the extra height, and the anklet is a gift from Sanji, hence the blue and silver.

On a different note, we have OC no. 2: Dracule Aurelia, the wife of Dracule Mihawk. If you've ever seen Mihawk, you know that he's one fancy man, and the same applies for Aurelia. She is rich, filthy rich, and she's an incredibly powerful pirate. Her vibe is that of a mafia boss, a femme fatale, of power and deadliness through beauty. Her epithet is "Black Widow" because all of her lovers keep dying one way or another. Either by her hand or through other mysterious circumstances.

With those things in mind, I was already pretty sure of how I wanted to draw Aurelia and what clothes she should wear. "Aurelia" roughly means "the golden one" and, combined with her incredible wealth, that already guaranteed that she'd be wearing a lot of gold. Secondly, I knew her clothes had to be sexy. There's no other way to put it; she had to be turning heads. She also needed to be able to kick people in the nose. And lastly, I wanted it to be easy to see that her and Mihawk were married, so I took a lot of inspiration from him.

Bases by Fluffy-foxgirl and Alex-Hime on DeviantArt

This outfit is essentially one big easter egg hunt. The flower symbol is found on Mihawk's sleeve, the long coat is inspired by Mihawk and the collar is both a reference to him and Aurelia's father (whom I will not name here for spoiler reasons), she wears crosses just like Mihawk, the feathers on her headpiece are a nod to the feathers on Mihawk's hat, the petal-like sleeves are a nod to the island she's from... But the outfit is still 100% her! The way everything is very revealing, the gold chains, the claws, the high slit, the dagger with the spider in its pommel...

So yeah! I hope this helped at least a little. Hope you're having a wonderful day! ^^

[mangi-is-struggling]

How i self-study

This is by no means a method of its own nor is it a guideline. This is simply what works for me and gets the brain juice boiling. It's been a lot of trial and error to get to a comfy place where I feel able to retain informations.

Audio!!! Most of the time, the language I've chosen is extremely auditory pleasing to me so it's a win/win situation : I get to listen to my target language w/o visual distractions and my brain soaks up the speech patterns, the flow and the overall expressiveness of the language. I love starting the day with a podcast while I make my coffee and get ready. Even if I only understand about a bazillionth of the whole thing.

In that same vein, any kind of audiovisual content. Movies, dramas, series, documentaries, News channel, ytb vlogs etc. I turn on the subtitles and try to figure out basic patterns. My latest game has been "Spot as many 是's, pronouns and 不' s as you can" when watching chinese movies. I never hesitate to pause the movie and go back a few seconds. It's literal hell for the people watching with me but I don't care. Furthermore, I get an insight on the different speech patterns (the news anchor does not speak the same way as the main character does in the sci-fi movie...). Audiovisual media does take up more energy to process so i usually save it for the evening, when I know i can use up the remainder of my brain power and go to sleep right after.

Learning-specific content. And by that I mean textbooks I bought, free online courses, websites and YouTube teachers, for the most part. I take notes on another notebook. I try and make my notes as simple as possible. I rephrase everything and try and make it as palatable as possible. I keep in mind that my notes should make at least a tiny bit of sense to someone who has never tried to learn my target language. I tweak the phrases around to make them really easy to understand, as i am not the best with grammar.

I stick vocabulary post-it's on my belongings. My bed has 2 post-it's. One has 침대 on it and the other has 床 [chuáng].

I'm not comfortable with the whole "keep a journal in your target language" spiel yet so i usually stick to parroting sounds i like, even if i don't understand what i'm saying. A while ago i learned how to say "my cat is small" in mandarin and i've been saying it out loud a lot since.

I must also be transparent with you guys : I am very bad at consistency and long term effort, so my progress is slow and i'm nowhere near fluent. I actually have no idea how good of a learning method this is.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to realize right after posting it i forgot about something very important but it's okay. I'll just edit the post.

Hope this helps !

See ya ★

[pineapplefulfillseveryneed]

Trying to find the latest about this film because I keep thinking about it. (A sci-fi/horror/comedy film with Russell narrating? I am so game!) A couple of articles from February 2024 suggest it will reach Europe somewhere this year, which would be very exciting if true! I'm adding some info about the film and a snippet from an interview about how Russell became part of the project below.

Penned by Clark in March 2021, the film reverberates with the pulse of American politics of that time —drawing from COVID, Qanon, and constant states of anxiety— while exploring themes of confusion, isolation, and the deep need for human connection through the story of two body-snatching alien lovers. Dropped to Earth and escaping their dying planet, the two extraterrestrials (played by a sequence of actors) seek each other out —jumping from body to body— on our planet while becoming increasingly drawn into the madness of modern-day America. “The beauty of The Becomers is its uniqueness; the film successfully touches so many different genres and wraps them all up with a backdrop of US politics — which can be a horror or comedy movie in itself,” said Dark Star president Michael Repsch. “We could not be more thrilled to be working with Zach and bringing his zany brainchild to audiences in 2024.” “I made The Becomers to capture the way 2020 felt for me,” said Clark, “and it’s been both moving and unnerving to see that feeling continue to resonate with audiences. I’m so excited to be working with Dark Star to get this thing out into the weird, wild world.” Source: https://www.horrorsociety.com

From an interview with Zach Clark:

KC: (...) How did you get Russell Mael from the band Sparks? When I heard his voice I was like, Oh my gosh that’s Russell! ZC: They’ve been one of my favorite bands since high school, and during COVID, a friend of mine was hosting these sort of like secret movie clubs, Zoom screenings, where he would send people a file and we would all download it. We’d all log into zoom, we all hit play on the same movie at the same time, and then chat about it on Zoom and talk about it afterwards. They went really well and he started getting guests to Zoom in for Q and A’s after the movies. Just like for 50 or so people are watching on Zoom and he got Sparks and Ron and Russell to zoom in afterwards. He knew I was a big fan, and he sent them a link to Little Sister. They watched it and really liked it, and so I connected on Zoom with them. Summer of 2020 was very surreal to be zooming with your favorite band. It was just really as simple as I was trying to think of someone who would be a good narrator for the movie. As you often do in independent film, you think of who you have access to or who you’re one or two degrees away from. You know, I was able to get Russell’s contact info and I reached out to him and said hey, remember when we zoomed in the summer of 2020 and you watched my last movie? I’m making a new one, would you be interested in narrating it, and there was a cut of the movie where I did all the temp narration while we were editing it into my phone just to see what works and what didn’t work. I sent him that and he basically said yes. They’re a very important band for me, and I think Russell’s voice brings a lot. KC: His voice reminds me of something alien-like or something from out of this world, so I get the picture of that. Source: https://film-fest-report.com

[thecurioustale]

A CO₂ World: Honest Background Research in Worldbuilding

One of the most enduring—and fascinating—challenges of writing hard sci-fi is the fact that positing even very simple ideas often requires a great deal of background research, as I am not an expert in any of these fields. And not just any cover-your-ass research: honest research that attempts to portray physical truth.

Suppose a planet with an almost entirely carbon dioxide atmosphere. We actually have those in the Solar System: Venus and Mars. And suppose your spunky, left-handed, silver-haired starship captain is on the surface of such a planet (whose atmosphere is thankfully thicker than Mars' but not as thick as Venus'). Immediately, this raises numerous questions about the environmental description.

If she's not wearing protective gear, how does she breathe? This was the easiest to answer; I knew it would be a distributed nanite-scale system inside her body that liberated O₂ from the CO₂. All I had to do was study the most suitable means of achieving this, which ended up being nanite-scale electrolysis. A miniaturized of the same basic technology used on the Perseverance rover on Mars in its MOXIE instrument, actually. The high heats required are indeed alarming, but with the proper architecture it's not really a big problem to have tiny little nanovessels inside of you that are 1500 degrees. As for where the carbon goes, let's just say it is mostly exhaled and the rest causes blacker poos. (Which I say casually, but both of those claims also required research.) Problem solved, easy peasy lemon squeezy!

The color of the sky was an obvious question, though I didn't think of it till I was writing this, as I've done a lot of sky color research in the past and had kind of bypassed it this time due to starting with the blue color rather than starting with an atmospheric composition. I wanted blue, like Earth, for story reasons, but I was prepared to go where the facts led me if necessary. You're probably aware that the Martian and Venusian skies are not blue, but they also have their own other things going on. The Martian sky for instance is red mainly because of airborne rust dust. What about those blue Martian sunsets, though? That comes from the large size of the dust particles, and the associated light-scattering. So if our hypothetical planet has Earth-normal sizes of dusts in the air, it's not a problem—and since its atmosphere is similar in density to Earth's, this is a reasonable supposition. In any case, a purely carbon dioxide atmosphere doesn't necessarily impose any sky-color requirements. Or, rather, it does, but that requirement actually is blue, unless other things are going in the atmosphere.

There is very much an "unknown unknowns" danger when it comes to amateur research, and I am thankful for my lifetime of generalist curiosity, because it occurred to me yesterday to ask what carbon dioxide gas weighs. This would potentially affect the pitch of Cherry's voice. And, sure enough, pure CO₂ is moderately but noticeably heavier than Earth air, meaning a noticeably deeper voice but hardly that deep. I was quite pleased with myself, and relieved, to have thought of that.

But of course if one feather is plucked for the hat another might end up jabbing you in the butt. As I was going to bed last night, lights out, lying in bed, actively dozing off, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't thought about radiation! I knew that this hypothetical planet has a higher level of surface radiation from its parent star than we do and a reduced magnetosphere relative to Earth's. But how would this interact with a nearly-all-CO₂ atmosphere? Would Cherry actually be at risk to get a sunburn? I hadn't considered that until I practically dreamt it.

I remembered the question this morning and set about looking it up. Chemical absorptions of light are an endless minefield because I do not possess the scientific groundwork principles to deduce the answers to these questions. I always have to look them up. And usually I have to look them up with the end-use application in mind, rather than the question itself, due to the difficulty of getting good answers out of Google these days. But even helping Google along in this way is tricky, because unrelated conversations of a more popular nature (say, the effects of carbon dioxide on global warming) tend to dominate search results. This even happens at the human level: I found a Quora page where somebody asked the exact question I had, and several of the answers mistook it for a question about global warming.

Complicating the context of the question is that gases in the low atmosphere don't have the same function in this regard as gases in the high atmosphere. This was offset somewhat by the fact that I only needed to know what was happening on the surface—sunburn or no sunburn—and so it didn't actually matter which level of the atmosphere was blocking what. But finding an answer I could be confident about involved going through some of this. It is not a simple subject.

I answered to my satisfaction that there would still indeed be an ultraviolet radiation danger at the surface from a nearly-all-CO₂ atmosphere, especially in the UVA range. But then it occurred to me to ask about X-rays. On Earth we take it for granted that the electromagnetic spectrum below UV more or less doesn't exist in the ambient environment, but obviously that isn't a Universal given.

As time goes on, I am sure I will think of more questions. I always do. It really sets a contrast with the sort of sci-fi that just treats all this stuff as arbitrary and presumes to stave off factual questions with technobabble.

I do not mean this in a gatekeepy sort of way, but over the past years of working on Galaxy Federal I have come to see honest research as an inextricable part of the identity of science fiction storytelling. I think that by eschewing this one gives up some of their claim to the mantle of science fiction. It becomes more akin to fantasy at that point. Honest research is a necessary burden, sort of like hiking in the summer obligates one to sweat. But, unlike sweating, for me honest research is also quite a gratifying reward. I never feel as in-touch with the Universe, nor have so many run-ins with my old high school math and science education, as I do when I am researching my fiction. (The Curious Tale too, but that's just me being me and is an asterisk for another day. I guess in this sense you can think of The Curious Tale as being more sci-fi than fantasy; I have long conceived of it to myself that way.)

One of the most frustrating aspects of the challenge of honest background research is that either the Internet has become steadily less and less useful as an information-lookup service for these kinds of queries (from some combination of informative websites going offline and the degradation of search engine utility), or the means of information-lookup have changed such that they have become steadily less accessful to me. Whatever the causes, in my experience good information is getting harder and harder to come by. I find it distressing that my general queries are overwhelmingly funneled through Quora, StackExchange, and Reddit before delivering me with specific terminologies, numbers, and concepts that I can then google directly.

I was speaking not terribly long ago with someone who works at Google, and they were telling me about Google Search's changing philosophy over the years. I summed it up rather bitterly as: "They've destroyed the Second Great Library of Alexandria and replaced it with Ask Jeeves." And the Google employee more or less agreed.

That's sad, and it's also sad that more readers don't see sci-fi as an opportunity to learn about science. The decline of "hard" sci-fi in books and the near-total absence of it in TV and film productions speaks to the nature of (and subsequently reinforces) audience preferences. But not everyone lives in that demographic, and not everyone who does live there has to stay there. if I have an opportunity to introduce readers to (or remind them of) some of the scientific ideas that fascinate me, then, commensurate with my reward for doing the honest research of preparing them for the story, I hope there will be reflected the reward of reader enjoyment of these little amuse-bouches.

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

What the Hell is Comms AU?!

Well first of all, Comms AU is a Hermitcraft fic I am writing. If you want to go into it blind, then the link is here!

[also, hey, if you like it, perhaps consider reblogging this post ;) ]

But if you'd like to know a little more before diving into it, I've decided to compile a fun little resource introducing the fic, its format, some of the most basic pieces of lore (so very mild spoilers, but it is stuff you would pick up on by chapter 3 or 4, honestly!) and a few tidbits about the characters. BELOW!

What the hell is Comms AU (For real this time)

I started Comms AU (full name INCOMING MESSAGE - COMM RECORDS) back in the middle of 2023, after reading some really great fics like the From The Archives series. It is a multiverse drama first and foremost, with elements of horror, betrayal, personal agency, and some religious themes [though the latter is mostly aesthetic]. There are also some comedic moments, and some sad moments. There's a lot of moments.

Comms AU follows five versions (universes) of Hermitcraft as they are all just kind of subjected to The Horrors. It is formatted as a series of transcripts recorded from different characters' communicator devices (or comms) which I imagine as sort of like sci-fi wrist watches with touchscreens and buttons. Though each universe could have slightly different models!

Formatting

As I mentioned, the fic is set out like a series of audio transcripts (though I kind of bend the rules to be honest, it can be read as if it is being played back as a recording), so the writing style is more like a script or screenplay than a standard prose piece. Your average chapter may look like this:

GRIAN: I'm saying a line now. SCAR: I'm also saying a line. [square brackets and italics to indicate a non-dialogue sound] GRIAN: Dang what was that?!

I also play around with writing out the communicator's 'screen' prompts such as its logging out message, 'call incoming' functions, etc. These I try to keep consistent between chapters, but I'm pretty sure I lost that consistency in a couple of places. Oops.

You may be wondering how you know which universe a certain scene is taking place in. It's quite simple, really! Each scene starts with a line of text like this:

[COMM RECORD: P#003]

The letter indicates the character whose comm we are listening/reading through (i.e., the perspective) while the number indicates what universe we are in [or what universe that character comes from, anyway...]. So the above example would be Pearl from universe three!

Lore?!

Okay this isn't really 'lore' as that would be total spoilers, but I want to talk about what kind of themes and things come up a lot in the fic - especially in terms of who is 'what'. For example, I've written Xisuma as a voidwalker, a type of end-hybrid which breathes better in thinner oxygen environments.

Scar and Cub are generally vexes, though there are differences between universes that become important later. Grian (at least, the times we see him) is a Watcher, and EvoSMP is canon [to some universes] but I try to explain everything within the fic itself so there shouldn't be too much confusion if you don't know much about all that.

Themes-wise, the fic revolves a lot around conversations and relationships between the characters, obviously. Words are very important, while actions must be left mostly implied through the audio medium. Characters aren't always reliable, and neither is sound. The fic takes a bit of digging and theorising to truly enjoy, but I am slowly revealing more and more as I write, so things will mostly get cleared up!

Also this fic mostly takes place in season 9, and there are references to season 9. There's some reference to season 8 too!

Characters

This is the important bit! I can't write all the hermits, obviously, as that would be too much to manage, so instead lets focus on the names that come up the most often:

Grian, Scar, Cub, Pearl, Xisuma, and Mumbo are probably the most 'recurring' characters, though Etho, Bdubs, and Cleo show up quite a bit especially towards the start.

[I am a Grian girlie and this is obvious from... everything about this fic, but I wouldn't say it is entirely about him! He does show up in most chapters though haha]

Relationships get a little complicated, due to the multiverse stuff, but I will say that there is mumscarian endgame because I love them. The actual 'romantic' side of things aren't that important, though, and most of the other relationships can be read kind of ambiguously. Just check the tags for more info!

It's still gay as hell but the multiverse horrors are more important, to be honest.

Or are they... ?!

YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO READ TO FIND OUT!

[psst, I also did some art, you can find it in my #comms au tag on my blog]

[psst psst, if you ever wanna message me, send an ask, or even make art (!!!!!!) to support this fic PLEASE feel free to do so. I love every comment, every ask, and all the bits of creative work people have made. REBLOG, COMMENT, GO CRAZY, ILY!!!!!]

[confluencechimera]

Top 5 list of your own OCs. (｀∀ ´)Ψ

OUGH this is a GOOD QUESTION. I really had to narrow it down because I have so many babies but I think I got something solid

1 - Malech H'owl, an OC I made for St*r W*rs. she was based off an old chimera fursona of mine that I turned into a unique alien species and aaa I love drawing her SO MUCH. she's my go-to doodle char. she has a whole entire society and backstory where she was a ruler and a gladiator fighter and a tactician and a mercenary. because I got really into her. she is so self indulgent but that's probably why she's my favorite. I'm so attached to her I've thought abt making her a totally original universe recently divorced from the source media just for meeeee ✨

2 - Ace, who I've been trying to get a ref sheet done for for the past year and a half or so. He looks like a basic old furry on the surface but he's apart of a much larger sci-fi story where his species are trying to preserve history for future generations by inserting memory-recording ships into different members of their kind and then beaming all that into a supercomputer hidden somewhere in the galaxy. Ace comes from a middle generation (the first gen were adults who had the procedure done, the middle generation were fairly young, the newest generation are cubs), so his chip doesn't work entirely as well as the newest gen, and he gets weird deja vu moments of seeing other people's memories. He's also a mercenary. He has a cool spaceship and lives on his own on a barren icy planet. This is the best photo I have of him atm

3 - Howlite, another OC I made for a media (this one being TF!). I'm trying to redesign her atm so I don't have as many pics to show off. but he turns into a plane and later a big old SUV. she's got an insanely long backstory as well: loses everything in a big war, goes on a revenge quest, realizes she wants to live for something more, gets almost killed (twice) and then wakes up on Earth where she finds her old partner and learns to start a new life there. he's a Certified Strange Girlboy Bi Thing. here's a real edgy picture of her after killing a bunch of ppl.

4 - Glitch and Error, two REALLY old OCs of mine who I recently revived from my old dA days. They're personified computer viruses apart of a giant hivemind sort of setup, where the larger viruses "kill" and "consume" smaller ones to become bigger and stronger. The strongest virus rules over the entire hivemind and uses the smaller drones to go out and find electricity to feed on. Not a lot of super solid universe/hard-set rules for this story, it was just something I made for fun, but these guys have endured in my brain for over 10 years so they deserve a shout out.

5 - Comet, a very new character for me (and one I haven't entirely fleshed out yet), but a simple little black wolf furry. Her aes/story is a mixture of Stray Gods, a dash of Hi-Fi Rush, lots of Norse mythology and hard rock (Breaking Benjamin in particular) music. She's the lead singer of a band called Fenrir's Chains, and one day on her drive home from a local show she gets swept up in a Wild Hunt that actually gets her to meet Fenrir. The whole story is meant to be a sort of analogy for dealing with mortality but I'm still working the themes and kinks out. So, I only have a few sketches, plus the plushie she's based on in real life. (She's next to a plushie I plan to turn into Ace one day too!)