The Haven

Plan everything out in advance for foreshadowing purposes ITS WORTH IT

what do your characters’ names mean? How can you use that to your advantage?

COLOR

don’t forget diversity it’s very important. When I was a kid it was like 90% white kids or dogs. Don’t be like me in 2nd grade

commit!!! Planning it out will help you on this but try not to start side projects and stay focused on the main one

You don’t have to take yourself seriously. My book about loss? “I don’t like forensics.” I think it’s a funny as hell line

design the characters but still keep it vague. People connect more with characters. They can see themselves in, so if you keep a description vague, they can put themselves in the character’s shoes

Try and add things from all sorts of different lives

DID I MENTION FORESHADOWING??? genuinely one of the best parts about a book is how often it can be reread – where someone can go back, find something that didn’t catch the first time, I’d be happy about it. Think about Steven universe – cookie Katt is kind of just his plot line, And nobody caught that on their first watch. You need to add a little Easter eggs that people will see on their second go around.

reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!

i finished the audiobook in 4 days, saw the movie the day after, and have dragged everyone else i know into the Project Hail Mary pit by their ankles. so, y'know, i feel TOTALLY NORMAL ABOUT THEM!!!!

my drawings are a fusion of the book and movie aesthetically, but I decide to keep Rocky's little shirt + the horrible burn scarring of the "lets shove Rocky in the airlock to save him" scene.

i also designed this sticker, and if anyone wants to buy one, lmk:

This moment is so dear to me I want to cry. First of, Grace is so gentle with him? Something something kindness literally saves the world (two worlds, in this case). Also, you just KNOW that Grace is that teacher in whose classroom the kids go to cry when they feel like the whole world has turned against them.

But secondly, "I'm a science human"! Because yeah. None of them is the other's weird alien dog. None of them is the "smart one" (or rather, they both are). They can't do this without each other. They complement each other. They need each other to succeed, there's no other way. That's the whole point! Cooperation! Connection! Working together!

Hope core at its finest.

IT'S TODAY...

Vote Arthur Cervero for @sexy-people-contests-2026 and get your own special badge!

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

I’ve been meaning to make this for everyone asking for weeks and I finally found the time to do it. Thank you everyone who loved this cover, it is truly overwhelming the positive response this has gotten. For all of you that wanted a printable book cover this is for you!

Top = dimensions for a hard cover.

Bottom = dimensions for a soft cover.

And, because I am worried about Tumblr messing with the quality I’ve officially set up a Google drive to share these as PDFs along with the high quality tiffs for anyone that wants to do a custom hardcover (Please see this amazing bookbinding job by @autumn--stars!!!)

Additional thanks to @dathen who let me quote this post for the back panel of this cover~