#whitemarbleblock

It matters not because paganism is morally taboo or anything stupid, but because that is the nature of the story it is telling. The motifs of cycles of death and rebirth going on forever, harmony and balance vs disruption and corruption, a gallery of god-like symbols that are basically jumped up humans, all go together in these theme.

Remember what I wrote about Voltron, and how it contrasts with Neongenesis.

Or compare the sacrifice to end the Sith/Jedi divide by Vader at the end of Return of Jedi (Original Edition), versus the cyclic story told by the Prequels and The Force Awakens.

One might even say this is the fundamental Marvel vs DCU divide. 

If you like all these motifs, then Homestuck provides extremely involving examples of them. But if you find yourself irked, or unsatisfied, by how the problem never seems solved and the success they arrive at is always almost immediately compromised, then that means the artistic feeling you get from the work is related to the ethical injunction produced by it.

Pagan and Christian are not the only two worldviews possible, they are just the ones under question. And paganism of this sort, with it’s tendency towards endless contextual information and stickiness, is perfectly comfortable for the insatiable hunger for “more stuff” and “more permutations to talk about” that capitalism loves to sell us.

Worldbuilding can be hard, especially when it comes to aliens. All too often, fictional aliens feel like they’re really just humans in costumes, and even when they are weird enough to feel truly nonhuman, they’re usually still suffering from a serious case of monoculture-itis. 

Species Shock is a series that aims to supply you with samples of truly alien extraterrestrials, covering everything from their planet to biology, culture, and interactions with humans. It will be published with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, so that you can share, remix, transform, and build upon its contents however you’d like, even commercially, with very few restrictions. 

However, because I’m essentially releasing this for free, I can’t count on making enough money from Species Shock to offset the costs. This poses a problem for a financially-strapped college student such as myself: I can take care of almost everything on my own, but the one thing that I can’t do is draw art for the book. The funds from this campaign will be used to commission illustrations. 

Here’s some of the concept art that’s already been drawn: 

I’m hoping to get at least a couple of full-color paintings, plus some field sketch-type drawings of native fauna. In the second image, heads #3 and #4 belong to close relatives of the “agloanikoi,” the species that are being described in Volume 1. 

I don’t want to make this post too long, so check out the main project page, where you’ll find a great big list of interesting things that’ll be talked about in Volume 1, along with a pair of updates that give you sneak peaks with even more information.

We could also form bonds of love strategically: How would world politics, or even national politics, change if all of the politicians on the relevant level loved each other? Could the Cold War have ever happened if the leaders on each side had been lovers? Would there be deadlocks in the US Congress if its members loved rather than hated each other? People are more patient with and willing to work on the flaws of people they love; how would this affect the partisanship that we see today? [2/2]