#good thing I have a huge catalog of photos to post to the repository

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Things that are not aesthetic: my camera shutter just straight up broke at the zoo today. Right in the middle of some amazing painted dog social interactions!!

[alonstory-blog]

A Lon Chat

So we did the first chat for patrons tonight, on Discord. This is an edited transcript. This is an example of the kinds of chat we’ll be doing at the $5 and $10 reward levels. 

We covered some of the upcoming story, world-building, color palettes and web design.

Transcript behind the cut

Jenrose-Today at 5:06 PM

So I've been working on Lon Ago and Far Away this week, along with completely revamping  both websites and my Tumblr.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:07 PM

Excite!

Jenrose-Today at 5:08 PM

I'm pretty pleased with the way the slideshow came out on lonstory.com

So anything specific you want to ask questions about or talk about tonight about the story?

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:10 PM

I have a question about A Lon Story

Specifically A Lon Beginning

Specifically

Where did Kel learn to introduce themself?

Who is Kel introducing themself to often enough to do it smoothly?(edited)

Jenrose-Today at 5:11 PM

Mama talks a lot to the critters and probes. Mama has to talk a lot to teach Kel language and knows this

When Kel explores a new section of the forest, they introduce themselves to the trees.

One of the interesting changes about having the neural interface active is that over time the trees may start answering back.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:13 PM

Gotcha. Explains the chattering to the bugbot, too

Jenrose-Today at 5:14 PM

Mama knows there are other people on Lon and has been working at teaching Kel conversational skills with the knowledge that at some point in the future they're going to have to leave their little corner of the planet and go out into the world.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:14 PM

Speaking of which

If Kel were to climb up the outside of that mountain and look out at the view?

What would Kel see?

Jenrose-Today at 5:17 PM

There's a lot of rock and forest and a valley. It's not a huge valley, but winds away along a river. There was a lot of erosion before Ama started terraforming, so the topology is kind of post-erosion planted. But this is a relatively young area of mountains. Basically the mountains are jagged but the valley is not.

There was a glacier here, before.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:18 PM

Ama-made or natural or...?

The glacier I mean

Jenrose-Today at 5:19 PM

Oh, the planet was pretty cold before Ama got there. One of the first things she did, terraforming, was to shift the albedo to warm things up. This was a pretty rapid process at first, but she has a pretty good handle on albedo control since one of the major projects she was designed around was stopping global warming.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:20 PM

Quick layperson's definition of albedo? Wikipedia isn't helping

Jenrose-Today at 5:20 PM

The equator was temperate enough, but Mama and Kel are pretty far south.

Albedo is "brightness"

That is, how much of the sun's radiation is reflected back into space

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:20 PM

Ohhh

Jenrose-Today at 5:20 PM

A bright white planet will reflect a lot and tend to be colder

A pitch black planet will absorb most of the radiation and be much hotter

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:21 PM

So she made the planet darker

Jenrose-Today at 5:21 PM

Part of the problem with global warming on earth is that the snowcaps have a very high albedo and when they melt, heating is accelerated

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:21 PM

Ohhh

Jenrose-Today at 5:21 PM

So she made the planet darker  and that warmed it up, early on, while there was nothing alive on the planet

The early years on Avalon involved a ton of "mousetrap bots" spreading across the planet to accomplish this albedo shift and to start growing the power network.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:23 PM

Got it.

So there were glaciers before she got there

Probably a lot

Jenrose-Today at 5:23 PM

Yeppers. And glaciers create plains and smooth valleys, but wear less on the mountaintops.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:24 PM

Because water goes downhill.

Jenrose-Today at 5:24 PM

So they live in a glacial valley, but the glaciers are greatly reduced.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:24 PM

(I took two terms of science classes dedicated to water going downhill)

Jenrose-Today at 5:26 PM

There are a couple of continents on Lon, but they actually are on the "mainland" they're just not in an otherwise settled part of it.  It's one of the higher mountains behind them, and not particularly easy to get to, but well placed for a communications station.

Because it has a good line of sight to Ama's asteroid and is high up and low interference from the power networks on the ground.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:28 PM

Carefully chosen by Mama I take it?

Jenrose-Today at 5:28 PM

Carefully chosen by Ama, actually. Mama didn't mean to end up in the current situation.

That was something of an accident.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:29 PM

Are we going to learn more about that in story

?

Jenrose-Today at 5:29 PM

Absolutely!

I mean, Mama is consistently putting off Kel's questions about where she was when she was "resting"

The next part of the story is about the years following A Lon Beginning, and follows Kel as they learn about where Ama came from and why. The answer to "Where was Mama?" requires a lot of careful pre-teaching

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:31 PM

Which answers my next question

Which was, "What do we have to look forward to in Lon Ago and Far Away?"

Jenrose-Today at 5:32 PM

Kel gets to meet a new person, and gets to help make snakes.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:32 PM

Snakes are a good starter animal

They're so easy

roll roll roll

Jenrose-Today at 5:33 PM

Well, they operate strongly on instinct, and don't have fiddly little limbs

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:33 PM

I'm still picturing play-dough

Jenrose-Today at 5:33 PM

hahahaha think more "genetic resequencing and ova generation"

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:33 PM

But see I have no visual metaphor for that

Speaking also of which

Jenrose-Today at 5:34 PM

They're going to 3d print a snake egg

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:34 PM

Oh okay

If good fortune falls from the sky and a Patreon decides to sign on at the sponsor an artist level

What's your first priority for Things Someone Else Illustrates

Jenrose-Today at 5:35 PM

#1 The house as seen from outside. It's basically a hobbit house with a buckydome on top (only instead of a buckydome, it's much, much more... granular) in a forest clearing.

#2 Kel with Mama

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:36 PM

Neat!

Jenrose-Today at 5:36 PM

#3 The house interior

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:36 PM

^^^^^^^^

I want to see that!

Jenrose-Today at 5:36 PM

#4 The whole communication room

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:37 PM

I want a floorplan of the whole setup tbh

Jenrose-Today at 5:37 PM

Oh, a floorplan I can probably do, but I'd have to shift gears away from writing for a bit.

Because I'd have to re-learn the 3d home software

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:38 PM

I can't imagine making 3d home software spit out solarpunk is gonna be easy

Jenrose-Today at 5:38 PM

They're just shapes. I might be able to do it in sketchup make

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:38 PM

I can't even make it spit out regular ol' rooms that are the way I really picture them

Jenrose-Today at 5:39 PM

Anyway, the way my brain works, I can get into "graphic design mode" and do art, or "web design mode" and do web design and web graphics, or "writing"... so I tend to do writing for a while and then shift gears to illustrate. It's part of why it would be so much faster for me to have someone else handling the art and web--I wouldn't have to keep shifting gears away from writing.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:40 PM

nod

Jenrose-Today at 5:40 PM

It was a huge hurdle for me to get into the mode of art design for this, honestly.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:40 PM

Well you did pretty well all things considered

Jenrose-Today at 5:40 PM

Thank you!

It actually took finding Craig, getting his permission to use the glowing flower pictures, and discovering Pixabay to get off the ground with it.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:41 PM

That's where you got the photos of like the girl and the salsify and stuff?

Jenrose-Today at 5:42 PM

Once I discovered pixabay and pexels (two copyright-free, no attribution required photo repositories that act as advertising freebies for the big stock photo catalogs) I was off and running

I have a lot of skill with photo manipulation and very little actual drawing skill

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:42 PM

So there has to be something to start with

Jenrose-Today at 5:42 PM

There really does.

I cannot even start to explain how many hours I've spent looking for the base pictures

Like, the "La Petite Android" picture? Has something like 20 different photos in it, composited. Anything planetary is from Nasa.

But Ama herself is composited out of like, 7 people plus an asteroid and some spiderwebs and broken glass

Which is, you know, appropriate for an android with 50 personalities who builds herself out of data and the available materials.

I posted at the $10 level a new picture called "Bubbles of Memory" which is a fun mashup of actual bubbles and glass sphere photographs

That picture shouldn't be done yet, but I forgot where I was in the story, made that, and then realized I hadn't talked about those things yet in chapter 6.  They're more "chapter 9" (chapter 2 of Lon Ago...)

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:46 PM

Hee!

Jenrose-Today at 5:46 PM

oops?

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:46 PM

Some of those reflections look really familiar...

Jenrose-Today at 5:46 PM

They're actually not! Apparently everywhere looks like Oregon

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:47 PM

I knowwww. How???

When I actually travel to places they look nothing like Oregon

But the photographs do!

Jenrose-Today at 5:47 PM

It's like strip malls. They're all identical everywhere.

Trees is trees and we've got a lot of trees.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:48 PM

That's depressing

Jenrose-Today at 5:48 PM

I'm really fascinated by your user icon, the compass rose is delightful.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:48 PM

Thanks it's a stained glass piece I stole borrowed for this purpose

Jenrose-Today at 5:49 PM

Also I've been in "color picking" mode so there's that. Someone needs to ask me about how I chose the colors for the website because a LOT of thought went into it.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:49 PM

ahem

How did you choose the colors for the website, Jen?

Jenrose-Today at 5:49 PM

Anyway, your icon is high contrast but engaging, so I approve, lol

Alright, so first priority for me, since I always do the web at night, was to avoid glaring whites and blacks

Also, I see a lot of chromostereopsis, so a red-black is going to look farther away to me than a blue black.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:50 PM

I thought I noticed some of that at play

Jenrose-Today at 5:50 PM

So I messed around and found #140000, which is this sort of inky burgundy black, and the fact that it's a little red means everything on the page is going to have a little more dimension for me and anyone who sees the way I do.

Second priority is a "white" but I wanted something easy on the eyes. So that gives us the "pale", an ecru-ish color.

It helps that they look good together.

So then we need accents. A little darker for the ecru, and a little lighter for the red-black.

I've got a google doc with this all laid out, I know you're shocked.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:52 PM

A google doc? What a departure.

Jenrose-Today at 5:52 PM

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wzMc-a0WZwSaxb7MLbK5a1Sk4ob7K59AriRY8thPBUo/edit#

Google Docs

Lon Colors

Lonstory.com color scheme Light: #f6f4f5 ___________ Accent:#d5c8c0 ________ Dark: #140000 __________ Accent #724e4e ______ Blue: #2589cb ________ Accent:#a1cbe5 ___________ Light text: #d5e5ef_________ Dark blue: #1c699d ___________ Purple #9027ab ________ Accent ##b030cf__________...

In the doc, any underlined section is actually a color swatch sample.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:53 PM

How you do that

I need that

I have a css stylesheet that needs HELP

Jenrose-Today at 5:54 PM

Just use underscores, highlight the underscores, and pick the background colors

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:54 PM

How do you pick the background color based on a hex code

Jenrose-Today at 5:54 PM

Every color picker I've found has an option to enter a hex code. I use photoshop to find the hex code, but any color picker, you pick the color, it pops up a hex code.

Since css uses hex codes, having a list of hex codes is hecking useful.

https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

Adobe Kuler

Color wheel | Color schemes

Create color schemes with the color wheel or browse thousands of color combinations from the Kuler community.

Try that. If you scroll down, there's all sorts of color tools handy.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:57 PM

What I meant is when you're using google docs it usually asks for the rgb and not the hex I think

Or at least it does on mine

But this one gives both so.

Jenrose-Today at 5:57 PM

Pick "custom"

Then paste in the hex code

Give me a minute and I can make a screen grab.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:57 PM

Nice

(Come for the Word of God, stay for the web design tips!)

Jenrose-Today at 5:59 PM

rofl

I gotta upload this pic somewhere, hold on.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:59 PM

No you don't

You can upload it straight into the chat

Jenrose-Today at 6:00 PM

dude okay

http://jenrose.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screenshot-47.png

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:00 PM

Should be a little plus sign next to where you type

Ohhhhhhh

Okay!

Jenrose-Today at 6:01 PM

Anyway, there's the hex code entry spot

Also I have too many tabs open

So if you look through a typical wordpress theme, for example, you will see dozens of colors, and they're all different and a lot of them are REALLY SIMILAR.

This bugs the hell out of me

This is what happens when people eyeball every damn color

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:02 PM

<.<

>.>

Jenrose-Today at 6:02 PM

If you enter hex codes, instead, then all your blacks are your "correct" black

all your pales are "the correct pale"

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:03 PM

I may or may not have done a lot of eyeballing and guesswork to tweak my forum

Jenrose-Today at 6:03 PM

And your accent colors can be carefully controlled to coordinate/contrast as desired

This is a learning process

My primary objection is when people make a "professional" theme that's supposed to be for businesses and there are 16 shades of black

Anyway, you'll notice i have like 8-12 colors in each site

And they group in families... a couple light creamy colors that would be on the same paint chip, a couple of dark colors, ditto, some blues, some accent colors. I pulled the blues and accent colors directly from my artwork.

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:05 PM

So 50 shades of grey is about bad web design?

Jenrose-Today at 6:05 PM

hahahaha yes

really really bad

(And with that, we ended the chat-- @teasugarsalt is my actual sibling, who has been extremely involved in keeping me going on this story.)