How do I blog?

This is @puddinguin art, request from her to do my Icon for Tumbl and AO3 and man I adore my tinny Russingon... please noticed the engagement ring!

"We are the Interstellar Library. Do you want to swap? We have thousands of stories."

There were many replies.

The library was silent for a whole day, then:

Around the time I was in college, as a human being who couldn't walk, who was also friends with humans who couldn't see, and friends who couldn't hear, I was getting sick and tired of all the pop science shows on TV that kept linking our evolution into human beings to our ability to walk upright, our ability to distinguish ripe fruit from unripe fruit using our color vision, and our ability to speak and learn language by hearing it.

So I decided to look around and watch all the animals I saw around campus -- humans included -- and just watch what they did. Granted, most of the nonhuman animals large enough for me to watch casually around campus were birds. But I also thought back to all the other animals I'd seen doing things.

And I realized that humans were the only animal I could think of, and remember ever having observed. who engaged in one very strange (truly bizarre, if you think about it) behavior:

We're the only animal to gather in large groups, Fall Into a Trance-like State, and Focus All of Our Conscious Mental Energy on One or A Few Community Members, Who Do All of the Talking.

Sometimes, this trance-like state is so deep, we lose awareness of our immediate surroundings. Sometimes, for hours at a time.

In other words, humans are the only animal* that engages in The Storytelling Ritual.

And moreover, the roles of Storyteller and Story Audience are not fixed to any caste or life stage (like the different roles in an ant colony or beehive), but can, and do, frequently switch.

Human children, even before their old enough to form complex sentences, start telling simple stories. And the grownups worth their salt encourage them.

I think of it as the audience surrendering their consciousness to the storyteller for safekeeping, for a set period of time (which is why we feel so betrayed when the story cheats its ending *cough*Game of Thrones*cough*). It's like handing your wallet over to someone for safekeeping. If the storyteller's good, you'll find extra bills inside, when they hand it back to you. :-)

Bees, and prairie dogs, chickens, and certain monkeys, all use language to share information. Humans use language to share imagination -- not only what is, but what could be (either as an aspiration or a warning). And what makes each language unique and beautiful (and so much more complex, as far as we can tell, from other animals' languages) -- its idioms, rhymes, rhythms, and metaphors -- are all tools the storyteller uses to hold the audience's attention, and make a story more memorable and sharable.

No individual human can survive without a community. Stories, both fact and fiction, are the strongest glue for keeping that community together.

The medieval peasant I went back in time to give a bag of Doritos to, concerned: what terrible and powerful sorcerers they must have in your age, to be able to veil the vault of heaven itself from view, as you say

Me, sniffling: I didn’t realize, I can’t, it’s so much, I, I… are the chips good, at least?

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

European Geosciences Union Blog — Beyond Tectonics: Building fictional worlds to better understand our own

Reshaping Reality's Worldbuilding Tips

Worldbuilding pasta's series, An Apple Pie from Scratch also check their resources page!

R/worldbuilding's Reading List. Also check out their collected resources link. This basic geology guide from 11 years ago is still nice.

Creating an Earth-Like Planet, and The Climate Cookbook (aka Geoff's Climate Cookbook) technically the climate cookbook is a part of Creating an Earth like Planet I think.

Related: Worldbuilding Workshop's "Working Out Climates Using Geoff’s Climate Cookbook." Which goes through using the resource in order to map make. Also just the Worldbuilding Workshop in General.

Madeline James Writes's Worldbuilding Guide

Worldbuilding 101 (this links to the Biomes section but there's like...everything.)

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments ...

Landscapes are worlds of cultural product ... Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. ...

Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts ...

Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning ...

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

This course syllabus for a Landscape Archaeology class is freely accessible. It includes an online resources page.

Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009

• hydrate it by drinking lots of water

• eat dark chocolate and blueberries and walnuts and salmon and other foods high in antioxidants!!

• play little brain games on your phone; I like wordconenct! anything that makes you think!

• read books. It’s simple but necessary. Even better - join a book club, or read with a friend, so you can have discussions after. This will improve your reading comprehension.

• do puzzles - it doesnt have to be sudoku, I love playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Rift because it makes my brain have to match colorful patterns to physical movements very quickly!

• learn a new dance - even a tik tok trendy dance. Learning new dance moves are proven to strengthen synapses!!

• go bird watching, or foraging, or anything outdoors that requires you to explore pattern recognition and visual searching

• watch a movie with the intent of analysis - this is best done with a cinephile friend!! talk about tropes and symbolism and character growth

• cross stitch, or sew, or do anything that requires matching nimble hand movements to patterns

• play or learn an instrument!

• develop a consistent sleep schedule (or as close to consistent as you can get!)

• when eating, try to identify the ingredients and flavors you’re perceiving!

I literally draw it's in speedrun. So... Happy New Year? I hope in next year will be more illustrations, more free time for hobbies and less procrastination.

Thank you all for support, reblogs and cute comments💗 it's means a lots for me and give motivation to continue creating art in this amazing fandom

Little bonus to the main picture:

Are you a digital creator? Would you like to see the Artemis II crew off on their trip around the Moon? Now’s your chance!

We are seeking social storytellers to attend the NASA Social for the first crewed launch in the Artemis program. Attendees will:

Tour NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

Spend time with members of NASA’s social media team

Watch Artemis II lift off

And more!