#the different species and cultures and planets is so fascinating to me

[xxxcertifiednerdxxx]

Ok i love Star Wars but i feel like a problem it has is we just can’t comprehend the mass of a galactic civilization.

The empire is kind of an analogy for attempted world domination I guess, but the republic and the confederacy/separatists kind of seem like two conuntries, even tho it’s meant to be like two political parties that multiple planets/countries are part of (maybe like the allies and the axis in wwii?) I also don’t know really anything about Star Wars pre phantom menace in the timeline sooooo idk how the galaxy was organized before.

And then there’s the fact that Star Wars treats entire planets like they are just countries. That’s what I mean when I say we cannot comprehend the existing in such a large society. People go to a planet and hang out in like one city in Star Wars and call it a day.

we never really explore different climates on different parts of a planet. We rarely see different cultures on one planet. (You’re telling me the entire planet of Naboo is only inhabited by the Gungans and the Naboo??? Yeah right) we don’t explore much differentiation in dialects or anything like that either.

And since aliens are a thing, i think we should have planets where so many different species and races coexist. Bringing back Naboo, how cool is it that humans and Gungans naturally exist on the same planet? (I think they do anyways, please don’t kill me if actually one of those people migrated to the planet at some point.) There should be more planets with tons of specie diversity!

idk maybe people don’t care as much as i do, and I should give Star Wars creators some slack since galaxy building is a lot more challenging than just world building, but I feel like we don’t get to see the rich depth of a whole galaxy.

[x-candy-guts-x]

Yautja x human ft worm on a string

I had some more thoughts :)

•It’s really interesting to me how humans are at their core a prey species. You can argue that forwards facing eyes are a trait of predators however it’s seen in basically all monkeys and apes and they are primarily vegetarians. They eat small prey like insects or small mammals but aren’t on the scale of say k-9’s, felines, and other obligatory carnivores. I believe it’s primarily a trait derived from our deeply social species. Our eyes are a huge part of our kinds communication wether we are looking at something or someone. We follow the direction of peoples eyes when talking. It’s been a great tool in our development.

•that being said I feel like predatory species like the yautja would find it fascinating to watch a human go from prey species to brutal predator in a matter of moments due to any given circumstances. Our instincts to danger are typically the five F’s. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn and faint. (For those of you who don’t know freeze is when you become unresponsive much like a deer in the headlight. Fawn is when you try to essentially suck up to the threat and get them to calm down and no longer be a threat. This is usually seen in abusive relationships where people will try to appease their abusor by avoiding conflict or doing whatever they can to get the abusor in a good mood again even at their own detriment. And faint is well.. faint lol.)

•Humans developed carrion stomachs due to our tendency to go after the largest strongest prey possible. We had so much meat we couldn’t eat it all and it would spoil. Our stomachs developed strong acids to kill bacteria in meat that has been sitting.

•humans are one of the only species on the planet to actively hunt the largest and strongest of any animal in a given herd/group. Which I think is something the yautja relate too.

•for humans this was out of necessity. The biggest animal provided the most food for our large social groups. We needed to provide the most food for our people. And our ability to kill from a distance and out do our prey in endurance allowed us to not have to worry about energy expenditure like big cats who hunt alone and need to conserve as much as possible thus hunting whatever is the easiest.

•we did this for so long that we developed predatory instincts. However at our core we still have prey instincts. Your yautja finds that cute. :)

•he is much larger, stronger and deadlier than you without armor and weapons. Sharp teeth and claws with a scaled hide and muscle structure that could knock over a bus is nothing to sneeze at. He absolutely adores the difference between the two of you. Your much smaller form with soft skin and tiny blunt teeth and nails is endearing. But this also makes him extra worried for you when you go hunting. He has to remember that humans are fine predators but only when they have someone else to rely on.

•humans are NOT meant to be alone. In virtually anything. Todays society will have you believe in toxic ideals like pulling yourself up by your boot straps and not needing to rely on anyone. But humans at their very core are meant to be in large deeply socially bonded groups. It takes a village to raise 1 human properly. And our society has forgotten that. Your yautja finds it deeply unsettling when he finds out that your culture is not as social as it seems from the outside looking in. With everyone living so close together and there being so many people in such small areas you’d think everyone would know everybody. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. Single parents and fear stricken neighbors run rampant in most of the cities. So when he sees you pack bonding with a roomba he takes it upon himself to be your best friend.

•that’s another thing. Humans are so social we pack bond with virtually anything. We crave intimacy so badly (not like that you pervs) that we will pack bond with ANYTHING. You name it. A dog? So common. A car? Strange to him but not uncommon for one to become at least a little attached to something important like that. A fuzzy noodle with googly eyes attached? It’s a worm on a string? Ok we’re getting you some help.

•your getting dragged to an oomanologist and he prescribes you a pet.

•your pet ate the worm on a string

•there were tears

•he’s secretly happy about it

•he actually tried to get rid of it several times. Garbage shoot? You walked in on him mid act. Burn it? The bastard wouldn’t even reach the fire because the string kept getting tangled to twigs and branches that hovered above it. A tall shelf? Well he found you sitting on top of the fridge like a gargoyle once so that was out of the question.

•your yautja regularly has to remember that he’s a lot bigger than you and you are so smol. His voice alone can startle you if your not expecting it! There goes the prey instincts again. Loud noises are not your friend that’s for sure.

•did you know that in alien vs predator they used tiger roar sound effects for the yautja roars? They actually do this in a lot of movies and it pisses me off especially when they attach it to things like mountain lions who literally can’t roar but that’s besides the point- anyway tiger roars are actually capable of STUNNING their prey. There’s something about the volume and frequency that actually temporarily stubs other creatures. If the yautja canonically roar similar to tigers and he accidentally stuns you OmG.

•so much purring

•he’s on his knees hugging you trying to make himself small.

•this dude cannot navigate your human home.

•he broke a dining room chair sitting in it

• he’s too big for the hallways without ducking and turning sideways partially sometimes.

•hand holding is so cute. Ur hands are just so tiny compared to his

•he does research on monkeys and sees how grooming is a very important social que and he connects this to humans. Unfortunately he didn’t think that humans were so prudish around nudity so when he just picked you up and threw you into a big tub he was NOT ready for those hands.

•predator instincts activate 🔫

•he almost drowned

•mildly scared of you

•your so small how are you that strong

•when y’all do get comfortable enough though he loves bath time :)

•scratches your little head with his claws (lightly) a lot

•plays with your hair a lot especially in the tub

•your self care routine becomes his care for human routine

•honestly? He fucking prides himself on how well taken care of you are. He flaunts you like you have a pedigree

• “my ooman is better than yours”

•que fight

•you become friends with the other human and while they’re fighting, you guys are sitting in the dirt playing games.

•they come back like ?? Hello? Did you not see us? WERE U EVEN WATCHING?

•you get mad at him? He went and got you new worms

•all the colors

•he has a worm for his ships dash. He chills. Sometimes you catch him playing with it

•I had more ideas but I forgot

[unidentifiedprimate]

I am BEGGING sci-fi and star trek fans to read James White's Sector General series.

It's about a hospital space station dedicated to treating any and all species in the universe.

The hospital has 384 levels. Each level devoted to medicine has a different environment for the patients - one level would be for oxygen breathers, another for water breathing aquatic species, another for chlorine breathers, and so on.

Doctors travel to all levels regardless of species. Chlorine-breathers use special protective equipment so they don't die in oxygen-rich areas, and vice versa.

Learning so much varying medical science about different species is hard, so when the need help, doctors can download "tapes" of a species' most prominent doctor. The tapes have all the doctor's knowledge, but they also come with all their memories and their personality. When a doctor has a tape onboard, they might feel the urge to eat things they can't, or move limbs they don't have. It can also affect their.... romantic activities.

Some of the plots include:

A chef trying to improve species-specific meals at the hospital. One aquatic species gets as much enjoyment from chasing and catching their food as they do from eating it. He has to deal with a species that is literally DYING because they refuse to eat vegetables. There is an incident with too much nutmeg. It's great.

A doctor makes a mistake that ends up nearly wiping out the entire species he was trying to save. How do you come back from that? How can he trust his judgement ever again?

An ambulance ship runs into a spacecraft that is spinning out of control. When they try to stabilize it, all the lifesigns on the ship go crazy. It turns out that the species NEEDS to spin in order to survive. The ship was their first attempt to travel through space.

There's a planet that's alive. But it's sick and dying. The doctors have to figure out how to save it, but the non-sentient creatures on the planet that work as its immune system keep attacking them. How do you communicate with a planet?

I'm not doing the plots justice with my descriptions. But the books are amazing! All the various species are so interesting. The medical mysteries are fascinating. The cultural clashes are alternately hilarious and tragic.

Please read the Sector General books! (and then talk to me about them!)

look at that beautifully ugly space hospital ❤️

[conscious-naivete]

okay i’m kissing the worldbuilding of roguemaker on the mouth i don’t think ive ever seen a space scifi setting where there’s just two species. or, there’s three, but the one was ancient and disappeared before the other two reached space. it’s really fascinating and a change of pace, like, instead of having all these intergalactic species going on, it’s just the humans and the gnonw. ep 1 starts us out with a convo btwn lowkey and woh, a human and gnonw, and they casually exposit for us that gnonw have double-chambered larynxes (can harmonize with their self) and live in a tidally-locked planet (static light&dark sides)(“night and day are places for me and times for you”) and as SOON as woh said that i was like Oh Okay pull up a chair i’m here for this. the two cultures are v different and they know Enough about each other but not everything and it’s so cool. i love sci-fi

[hana-bobo-finch]

IT IS TIME FOR ANOTHER WONDERFUL ROUND OF RANDOM PIKMIN HEADCANONS OKEY DOKEY

• Hocotate and Koppai are in the same solar system. Koppai is much further away from the sun than Hocotate so it has a colder climate than Hocotate. Creatures on Koppai have thick fur to compensate (and Koppaites have thicker body hair) (this is an excuse for me to draw fluffy things heehee)

• relating to that, one of the reasons Koppaites struggle with agriculture is because of the cold temperatures

• ^ and because the government sucks! I had a long drawn out conversation about this topic before and I will not just regurgitate all my points but the Koppaite government is corrupt!!! Yay!!! The food + poverty crises are used as a way to take advantage of people (not saying the government STARTED them purposely but they sure as hell didn’t try very hard to stop it)

• Most planets have their own native languages but over time and with advances in space travel they got less common. It used to be that only frequent travelers would learn the universal language, but as travel became more accessible more people started learning it and teaching it to their children by default.

• ^ even then a lotta people still have VERY thick accents.

• Koppaites have much worse hearing than most because of their rounded ears. While others have more of a cone shape to their ears, Koppaite’s ears are more flat and don’t pick up sound as well (and they can’t pinpoint where exactly sound comes from. You ever see how a cat twitches their ears aroun when they hear the slightest sound, that’s how most species are. Meanwhile Koppaites have the Bad Inferior Round Ear Gene)

• Ohrians have very specific pheromones they give off. YES this is because of the stupid comic I made where yonny “smells gay” it’s not MY fault everyone loves it for goodness sake even my friend who knows nothing about pikmin and who I didn’t think would find that sort of thing funny thought it was the funniest thing ever I’m so confused help

• Giya’s culture focuses heavily on dogs. Like how in Tokyo there’s these big ass billboards with hyper realistic 3d models of cats

• ^ dingo was so SO not prepared for that when he moved to giya to join the rescue corps. Save him. He is a pathetic creature. He didn’t do enough research before moving there he just wanted to become a ranger already. It was a horrific realization. The soggy-cat-of-a-man had a panic attack and almost made the impulsive decision to Get The Heck Outta There and move back to ohri. Bless his cold, dead heart

• Speaking of which! Dingo joined the corps about a year before yonny did. It was absolute torture for them both to have to have a long distance relationship ermmm friendship

• yonny only joined as the doctor because the old doctor FUCKING DIED!!! i don’t know how they died I just think it’s funny for there to be such a dramatic reason. maybe they got mauled by ravenous space bunnies. Sure let’s go with that.

• Hocotate freight is very very stuck in the past. Even for our standards. The president is a huge boomer who thinks old is gold. What he does not understand is that the fact that their equipment is falling apart is why they can’t stay afloat

• puddle wants so. SO BADLY. to do fashion experiments on the Koppaites. He thinks their different anatomy is so incredibly fascinating and he NEEDS to take full advantage of it (the only outward difference is their round ears but HE DOES NOT CARE.) He has on numerous occasions tried to manipulate the three into letting him pierce their ears. Guys come on. It would be so awesome. Please. Your ears are so cool let me look at them PLEASE

• ^ all three never let him. It makes puddle insane. He is normally such a nice and chill guy but it makes him so feral. Keep him away from them do not let him go near alph’s emo brother he WILL chase him with a piercing gun

• Hocotate Whiz (what, you don’t know what that is? It’s the company that spams your mail in pikmin 2 offering to help Hocotatians change jobs, I can’t believe you didn’t know that (I did not know this until a few minutes ago)) is ran solely by the families of Hocotate Freight workers. They spam the emails of the ships to try to convince the workers to change jobs because they KNOW that it is a hellhole and they NEED TO GET OUT. SAVE THEM. SAVE THE WORKERS OF HOCOTATE FREIGHT

• Bernard is Santi’s sleep paralysis demon

• Yonny has rusty and bloody medical equipment strewn across his lab for the sole purpose of freaking people out. He’s actually incredibly sanitary to the point of being borderline germaphobic

• as if Collin didn’t have enough work to do already he kinda fills the role of the team’s unofficial therapist. He doesn’t actually mind all too much bc he’s Way Too Nice but. Save him.

• the paint shepherd has under her eyes? It’s to reduce sun glare? WRONG. It’s because it looks AWESOME and she would totally paint her face with incredibly detailed designs but apparently looking like a walking painting is “unprofessional” and “disturbs the people we’re rescuing” and “stop spending our budget on face paint”

umm there’s probably more in my noggin but I am getting a headache so that is all 🧍

[dracolunae]

Cybertronian society seems so fascinating to me and it’s a shame it doesn’t tend to get explored much in Transformers shows! (Or at least, not the ones I have watched so far)

Afaik the comics go more in-depth into it which I am so excited to get to but the only show I’ve seen that actually has a decent chunk of it set on Cybertron is Cyberverse and even then, that was post-war.

But just. The concept of a society of transforming robots on a planet made almost entirely of metal and their creator deity’s body, with such insane size differences between characters is so interesting! Like, you can’t really standardise anything when one guy is 4 meters tall and another is closer to 40! And this is a species that does not reproduce by itself but rather seems to recycle souls (sparks) into new bodies made of what is essentially primordial ooze (living metal).

Also very importantly that element of fluidity of identity and body. When you can change what you look like on a whim to such a stark degree, what really is identity? It’s somewhat implied that a lot of cybertronians take on new names depending on their environment, or translate them at the very least to fit in. Like, I haven’t gotten to really see cybertronian culture not filtered through a more human lens and I’m so excited to see that! It’s especially interesting for me in regards to Beast Wars, where we have all these protoforms that join the cast, and sometimes it feels like they know who they were before (especially Protoform X/Rampage) but for others it feels like they either have no memory of or no desire to go by whoever they used to be.

Plus, the insane timescale that a lot of cybertronians seem to live on, where they exist for millions of years. How do they experience time? Are days, weeks, months, years, decades nothing to them?

When you live for millions of years in a universe made of metal, how foreign must those small fragile organic creatures, whose species hasn’t even existed as long as you yourself have fought in a single war, seem?

Are they like mayflies, fleeting? Or are they like miracles, able to change and grow in such a short time while Cybertron stays stuck in its ways for a comparative eternity.

[kittymaine]

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

I'm gonna try and use my tumblr as a book journal. Wish me luck buckaroos.

I finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers yesterday. It was my second time checking it out from the library. I had checked it out before, but had to give it back before I finished it.

I'm not a stranger to Becky Chambers. I read the Monk & Robot series and absolutely loved it and then read her novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate a few months ago. She's steadily becoming one of my favorite authors, so I'm definitely biased when it comes to her books, so I guess keep that in mind.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a story that will feel familiar if you enjoyed Firefly. A group of misfits, only some of whom are human, travel aboard a cobbled together spaceship from one side of the galaxy to another. We go along with them on family dinner dates and tense hostage negotiations alike. It's a story about found family, and surviving and thriving in otherwise unlivable conditions, and about adventure, of course.

I'll start with my likes, which were many. This is both a setting and character heavy book. It's hard to chose which I liked more or which were more important. It's unusual to find a book that balances them so evenly. The characters are all really varied, but also nuanced. And, not just in their species or physical appearance or races or genders or sexual orientations, although they are varied in that way for sure. But, they also feel like real, nuanced people with strong personalities and differences and biases and beliefs. But the setting is just as rich and well crafted. As our crew travels across the galaxy we meet a wide variety of alien species, all with their own way of communication, their own unique cultures and beliefs, and fascinating and unique physiologies. This is definitely an alien heavy setting and the aliens really FEEL alien, which I loved. There are politics and infighting and resource issues, but it feels real because our crew isn't being asked to solve any of their problems. They're just normal people trying to navigate dangerous waters.

I'm definitely a character reader first, but man this setting really made me question whether that was true.

The downsides are that if you're a plot reader, this book may disappoint you. I've heard people say it feels like it just meanders around, which I can understand. There is a driving plot, but it's basically just a frame. The ship and crew must get from point A to point B and most of the actual content happens in the in between. Also, the book sort of just ends. Something really heavy happens at the end and our crew is left shaken but resilient. I'd love to see how they recover from the ending of this book, but it's my understanding that the second book doesn't follow them but another smaller character that shows up right at the end.

All that being said, I really really REALLY loved this book and I am 100% down to read the rest of them. I highly recommend it to scifi fans who are okay with a character heavy story.

[hms-no-fun]

Was the weird, monstrous troll Mary and Lenore saw based off any specific troll design or did you just come up with it yourself?

well i should say first of all that the Mary/Lenore scene in B1 Verse 2 was written by Zoe (she just wrote up a thing about her work here) and touched up by me. so the big monstrous troll was her idea. i asked her for a response and this is what she gave me:

"I just sorta rolled with like, we already know that old highbloods can get pretty gnarly looking so it's gotta be a step beyond that, enough that it would stand out to Mary as remarkable, and I liked the idea of trolls that are more like fantasy trolls, just these hulking monsters that live underground.

the idea of the evil moon hurling rocks at the planet's surface was influenced by some other worldbuilding we've done, the solar Judgments of Fallen London, and maybe most prominently the insane sapient Psychedelic Sun from The Star Beast (Doctor Who). Actually in retrospect the idea of them living under the surface was probably partly ganked from Axile in Fallen London, which was scorched by the system's sun because it found the inhabitants repugnant. so it's sorta pulling from a bunch of sources in this sort of psychedelic science-fantasy mode."

my only addition would be that over the years there've been a lot of cool troll designs. insect versions, furry versions, softer versions, sharper versions, etc. i've always really liked the interpretive versatility given to audiences by Homestuck's abstracted and constantly changing artstyle. in a darker age there were many heated debates on the subject of troll biology, particularly among those desperate for a singularly Canon truth. no such truth can or should exist, but since when has that stopped fandom?

one of the big reasons i wanted Mary on the crew with Dare and Dave is to get an Alternian troll in the same room with a Repitonian troll and just, y'know, see what happens. there are a lot of canonical differences in their biology and cultures that i find fascinating, but in a larger sense i think they do a lot to build on some of the core ideas of Double Album. as often as possible, i want to avoid a reductionist reconciliation of differences in favor of an expansionist one. instead of having these two trolls come into conflict over, like, which troll species is "the real trolls" or whatever, i think it's much more interesting to instead say "actually there are infinity troll species and they're *all* real." and i think Zoe and i both wanted to fold fanon troll designs into that, to explicitly say that they're not all necessarily bipedal humanoids but that they can in fact be weird and monstrous. so of course, Zoe's fucked up subterranean hulk troll fit the bill perfectly.

[readingaway]

Danielle Babbles About Books - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

What made you want to read it? - Seeing that so many people in my booklr community loved it.

This doesn't always make me want to read something, of course. It depends on who the rec is coming from and if I think the blurb and title and cover and genre, etc. are interesting.

What parts or elements stood out to you most? - Of course it's the worldbuilding. It's detailed and fascinating. The advantage of far-in-the-future sci fi is tht it's a lot easier to build or speculate the changes in human culture. And these are pretty believable changes, with a lot of different alien species and cultures in there. I liked the addition/ point of xenophobic religious fanatics, though there probably could've been some other religious groups in there as well, but then there are other groups talked about by the characters.

Of course, there's also the found family trope in there and all the other stuff, but that's the first thing that I think about in association with this book and the rest of the Wayfarers series.

What writing things did you pick up? - Make it weirder.

[sizzleissues]

alien life

I’ve been baking this in my insta-oven brain that the depictions of alien life fascinate me. Particularly sentient life. We have three different variants of alien and I’ve yet to see another.

They’re better than us. They live in utopia’s in comparison to our world and consider our world barbaric in our treatment of each other. This idea is subdivided further into anti-human ‘please will our alien superiors ever come spare us’ type rhetoric and ‘well at least we have heart - something you’ll never have’ derived from our human belief there is something so special about us that would always set us apart. (And blends of both and neither)

They’re the same as us. They have just as many faults as us, and a nature similar to our own. Used to either prove that humanity is doomed to be as we are because ‘look aliens are just as cruel and kind sometimes’ or that maybe we’re all capable of best and worst. We’re about equal judging by human morals but different in biology and culture.

They’re worse than us. They live in a dystopia compared to us and we consider them barbaric or dumb or too strict/firm. These have the options of being ‘look us human liberators have come with our tech and kindness to be your saviours’ or ‘well maybe the moral of the story is even societies where their people are treated like scum can become space faring’ (And both and neither and a whole lot more)

Each have more variants than I mentioned but you can categorise each version under one of these headings. We either think they’re better, we’re the same (though different) or they’re worse. Each version comes loaded with human politics, morality and norms, each used by the author of the speculation to in some way make a comment about us. Because we may be on the brink of finding life out there somewhere, we’re still a bit away from finding sentient life and another whole bit away from being able to meet them. Speculation at this moment in time can only view the ‘what ifs’ through the narrow lens of our human experience.

It’s the same way we’ll never understand what it’s like to be any other animal or plant etc. on this Earth. Each day we take a step back, reevaluate our human centrism and realise the creatures around us are capable of a whole lot more. Heck, only a few decades ago we didn’t believe babies felt pain until a year old! (Even if we’d already proved it) Us as a species can forget to step outside our own heads, to consider the experience of even another of our kind until faced with damning evidence. We built our culture (and I’m speaking general Western values) around the priority of self and the belief we are special. Learning empathy is not a requirement — but I think it should be our law.

I am infinitely fascinated by the experience of this planet I will never feel. How it is to first take flight, to out grow my shell, to bark and yap and run with glee to my person. I will never be a worm in the soil nor an amoeba in the sea. I will never know what it’s like to be any other thing but human and any other person but me.

I won’t live to see us touch down on alien soil. I won’t see what humanity will be when we great the first life form other than our own. I won’t know if we extend a hand to shake and realise that this species way of greeting is a slap to the face nor will I know if we won’t be greeted by them first. I won’t be there.

I’m here right now.

[nebulouscoffee]

Favorite alien species and favorite villain!

Thank you friend!

Bajorans and Cardassians are undoubtedly the two species I've spent the most amount of time thinking about, so I'm going to have to put them in for a tie- I just can't look at one without the other! DS9 is very much a show I enjoy for its postcolonial themes, and their histories and societies and foremost issues are deeply intermingled. There are so many fascinating contrasts between them, in the starkly different yet occasionally similar ways in which they approach concepts like freedom, love, devotion, truth/reality, memory, community, family, and sacrifice- I could chew on it forever. There are so many terrific characters like Kira, Garak, Kai Winn, Dukat, Bariel, Ziyal, and more- plus, the static setting of DS9 allows for so much cool worldbuilding, and I feel like there's a ton of nonwestern influence in both (yes, both) cultures that borrows quite heavily from real-world ones (including their issues) which allows me to write a lot of self projectey fanfiction haha. (Honourable mention to Trills though! I have soooo many headcanons about them I could talk about Trills for hours :D)

As for my fav villain, I'm leaning towards Kai Winn here! I think she's absolutely tragic and fascinating. She loves her people and her planet, but then there's this love of power and control that runs at odds to it. She comes so close to redemption, so many times- yet, she just can't seem to let go of her desire to be The One (that saves Bajor) long enough. She has these deeply heartbreaking moments of humility, and then this painfully performative mask of politeness she slips on to get away with awful things. She's too mistrustful to accept the help of multiple people actively offering it, but spends her whole life begging for acknowledgement from gods who were always going to ignore her.. and the saddest part is, there's plenty of good reasons why she is the way she is. (I'm very grateful for the recent wave of Winn appreciation on this site, but I honestly still disagree with some of the positive meta I see about her too- I don't think calling her purely a victim with only Bajor's best interests at heart is an accurate read of her either; her politics and creative interpretations of Bajoran prophecies in ways that serve her (plus her willingness to throw fellow Bajorans like Neela under the bus) very much mirror real life corrupt and dictatorial politicians across the third world who use their trauma (specifically colonial trauma) as a deflection and shield all in one, to cover up what their true priorities are (her actions in 'Shakaar', for example.)) Winn's crises of faith and deep personal insecurities (and Louise Fletcher's complex and layered performance) make her a deeply sympathetic villain to me, and I don't think her orthodox beliefs, corruption, or refusal to share the spotlight even at the cost of her people should be ignored either- they're what make her so fascinating!! Though I do understand the urge in an environment that's historically been so needlessly hateful towards her lol. Anyway- Winn Adami my beloved!!!

[anyataylorjoys]

Okay I know you said not to get you started but I would like to hear about the aliens theory

Oh boy... Well watch Ancient Aliens on history channel if you live in the US but I'm sure it's streaming somewhere or look up videos on youtube. Read Chariots of the Gods. There is so much compiled evidence to draw solid conclusions to what our ancient ancestors saw such as analyzation of glyphs carved into walls depicting modern day technology, what they referred to as "The Gods", and what we know of stories pertaining to Greek mythology. It all makes so much more sense than the things we were taught growing up of these elaborate method theories on how humans could've built the pyramids by hand with absolute mathematical precision (which is impossible) and constructed architecture that humans today with modern technology still couldn't build. The reason as to why these structures were built is still unclear, although they were thought to be used as a power device combined with their technology source. It is believed that there are multiple species of Aliens, including what we call "the greys" who people claim to be abducted by alongside the Reptilians. Over many millennia they been here and at some point the different species clashed and battled over their agendas with the human race. Our planet is unique (this we already know) and likely has resources they need. Our species is unique and I believe they are intrigued by us. I think there are species who have an insidious agenda, or are using us to further their agenda in some way, or a species who are monitoring the human race out of fascination. and others who only care to protect this planet because it is their home too which is why every time we fuck with nukes, ufos show up to the site and deactivate them, this is not classified! People always say they're from space, but I believe some of them could be inter-dimensional and maybe have crossed over to ours by accident.

I think we haven't found "the missing link" because that link belongs to a species of Ancient Alien deities called the Anunnaki and they are long gone but I believe they spliced their DNA with the ape-like creatures that were here on this planet thousands of years ago- stories told that sound similar to the creation of humans in the Bible. There's evidence that suggests Homo sapiens (modern humans) lived alongside Neanderthals (the first human/apelike creatures). Had we evolved from them, this would not have been possible. It also doesn't make sense for us to have evolved from apes because why have they all remained so unchanged? Also if you've ever heard of "Nephilim" they're known as the offspring of "The Gods" and humans. These were the creatures in mythology who are referred to as the giants which lived before the flood but I'm not gonna get into that.

These are my beliefs based on a lot of evidence and readings from vast cultural references but also from watching Ancient Aliens they go into great detail about all this stuff. This is kinda like a religion for me except there is no worship involved, I just strongly believe in it. TL;DR: The "Gods" were not Gods at all, they were aliens with technology too advanced for people to understand or explain and we are the product of ape-like beings and a species of Alien that existed here thousands of years ago. There are people who have dedicated their lives to studying Ancient Alien theory across the globe who will tell these stories. A lot of people don't wanna buy into any of this kinda stuff cause it interferes with their belief system. Even if you think it's insane, it's worth looking into because it's quite fascinating and fact has proven historically to be stranger than fiction.

[sleepysaurus4]

Sci-fi worldbuilding idea: Humanity repeating the British - Aboriginal scenario on a much larger scale.

Excuse me if I'm wrong, please correct me if I am but do you know how many elements of Australian Aboriginal cultures have remained unchanged for literal tens of thousands of years?

From what I've heard, their way of life, beliefs and even artstyles were often continued uninterrupted from when their ancestors first settled Australia, some 60 thousand years ago. It's beyond fascinating and beautiful.

And then they were violently contacted by the British, a culture which was a polar opposite of that. Constantly changing, lacking clear continuity, endlessly morphing into something new. It's history was marked by sudden and complete shifts in people's lifestyle, and belief that endless progress and expansion are beneficial. Some few tens of thousands years ago, ancestors of the British were probably quite similar to the Aboriginals. But they have changed so radically, that now those ancient people share more in common with population from other side of the world, than with their own descendants.

Now imagine the same scenario repeating itself, but on an interstellar scale.

Let's say there's a population of humans settling a habitable planet and being isolated from other branches of humanity from that point onwards. At the time of them colonizing this world, most of our species is a bit more advanced than humanity today, having technology just advanced enough for short, interstellar leaps, but nothing crazy. And for this particular population, this level of advancement and culture become a status quo for hundreds of generations. Tens of thousands of years or even longer. All this time they remain in isolation, without regressing but also without progressing much past that point. They keep pretty much the same technology, beliefs, even fashion as their distant ancestors who first got off the ancient colony ships.

Let's say that for 40 thousand years, every morning their people put on the same kind of simplistic robes. Get served breakfast by the same type of semi-autonomous robots. Take the same kind of train to a temple of the same religion.

Untill this continuity gets broken, as they are attacked by an alien invandor. Aggressive civilization with completely different and much more advanced technology. Maybe this civilization is heavily based on biotechnology, artificial life and organic machines and weapons, with the line between producing and breeding completely blurred. Invaded humans might put up resistance for decades, fighting living weapons without even meeting their enemies in person and knowing how they look like. Until one day, they manage to capture a rare ship with a pilot inside. As this weird vehicle-organism gets opened, they find the most unexpected sight - the pilot is human... Or at least descended from a human.

The invandors are another human population, which took a completely different trajectory over the millenia. While our civilization stayed in this comfortable statis, cultivating their ancient way of life, those humans were fully focused on technological progress. Endlessly changing and expanding, until they became something completely alien.

Think what the invaded might feel, knowing that mere 40 thousand years ago their ancestors and ancestors of the aliens were pretty much the same. They lived in the same way, had similar culture. Some of them probably even met and talked. But now the ancestors of the aliens are more similar to the invaded than the invandors.

Maybe the progress focused humans have some traits that make them completely alien. Maybe their way of thinking and how they perceive the world are no longer the same as in homo sapiens. Maybe their priority is no longer maximazing happiness, both personal and general, but something completely different and abstract. Maybe they aren't even physically capable of experiencing happiness anymore. Maybe they can't be reasoned with... Maybe, just how many invading populations in our current history, they no longer view invaded as people?... Right now, humans commit this heinous act without even being isolated from one another. Think how the invaders might think after millenia of living around different stars, and becoming two different species. Speaking of, on this scale the differences would also be biological. Maybe invaders are fused with their machines on the biological level. Maybe they no longer have mouths, feeding though artificial apparatus leading directly to their digestive tract. They have become truly alien.

... Idk what's this rambling is about, it's just interesting to think about.

[libertineangel]

Stellaris: A Basic Tutorial, Section One (game version 3.8)

This isn't going to tell you how to succeed in the game, just explain how to start and what various game concepts are so that hopefully you can find your own way - I think this is a game best experienced and figured out for yourself, so I might give some general tips but I mostly want to be fairly broad with it; if anyone has specific questions or things they feel are missed out here they are of course still welcome to ask. Also, my install has all the DLC, so if I mention something you don't seem to have, don't worry about it.

This will be long, so strap yourselves in.

Part 1 - Starting The Game

When you boot up and hit New Game, you'll be greeted with a menu of different pre-made star nations you can play as. You could pick one of these, or you could create your own custom one (or let the game randomly generate one for you, but don't). To me, creating new society ideas is one of the main reasons I love the game, so let's go through that menu now:

First, pick what your species looks like. This is purely cosmetic with no impact on gameplay, so choose whatever you like.

Up next is the species name, an optional backstory textbox, and gender variance (default is a 50/50 split, and you can choose to make them all-male, all-female or without gender or sexual dimorphism); this is all purely cosmetic too.

Then you choose which list the game uses to generate names for individual ships, the Fleets your warships will form, Leaders (I'll explain those later), and your colonised Planets; you can also specify the prefix acronym for your ships (like HMS or USS); again, all cosmetic.

Now we have species traits, which actually matter. These are biological advantages and innate predispositions - things like long natural lifespans, communal living, or a tendency to social nonconformity. Each trait is worth a certain number of points, positive or negative to match its effects, and you start out with two points to spend and five slots. Each trait has a tooltip describing its function, I'm not gonna tell you what to pick but most of them I think are fairly self-explanatory, just have fun with it. (I'm also not gonna get into the clear problems with bioessentialism, cultural uniformity and racialisation of cultural traits that this system demonstrates, because this is a game tutorial and not an analysis of the racist underpinnings of sci-fi tropes)

Now for your species' homeworld, in which you name it and its star, and decide what biome your species evolved in; as habitable planets are evenly distributed throughout the galaxy this is largely cosmetic.

Then you choose what you want your cities to look like, and your Ruler's room décor. You may be shocked to hear that this, too, is cosmetic.

The next screen decides your society's Origin - perhaps there is an ancient interstellar Gateway on the edge of their home system, or perhaps they have a fascination with machines and developed Robots shortly after industrialisation. For your first game though I'd recommend you stick with the default.

Now we get to choose your Government Authority, Ethics and Civics. Here's the real meat of how your society operates - is it a democracy? Are they pacifists, is there a state religion? Authority and Ethics are fairly self-explanatory from the tooltips; they all do have gameplay impacts, but don't worry about those for now, just go with a design you like and you'll understand the mechanics they refer to as you play (and continue to read my posts, hopefully). Civics are the details of your society, and many of them are dependent on your Ethics; again, read through them and pick what sounds good to you, don't worry if the gameplay effect seems opaque. I still won't tell you what to do, though I will recommend you 1) don't play slavers, because managing your workforce will be a lot more hassle, 2) don't be too aggressive because your first game will be a lot harder if all your neighbours hate & fear you, and 3) don't play Gestalt Consciousness, because Hive Minds work differently to normal societies and they're not meant for a beginner. Also, avoid any Civic that says it can't be changed after game start, because those have significant gameplay effects and you want a fairly normal first run.

Advisor Voice just decides what voice the in-game tutorial will speak to you in, Empire Name is self-explanatory, as is your society's Flag (which also determines the colour of your borders on the galactic map) and Ship Appearance. All of these are cosmetic.

Your first Ruler's name and appearance, and the office's title, are cosmetic too.

And your society is ready! Hit the Done button at the bottom (Save first if you want to look back at this society in future games) and you'll be confronted with a very dense menu of settings for the galaxy it'll spawn you in. Ignore this completely, hit Play and we're finally done with setup!

Part 2 - Your First Steps Into A Larger World

Right, here we are. Your fledgling society is finally ready to look outward into the galaxy, starting with the rest of your home system. It will contain at least one star, a Starbase in the middle, and various Planets, one of which will be your homeworld. It will also contain a Science Ship, a Construction Ship, a Fleet consisting of three Corvettes, and a couple of Stations orbiting some of the bodies in the system. Click on any of these to have the in-game tutorial explain them in varyingly helpful terms, and for now just do what the tutorial says about exploring with your Science Ship because that is what the early game is all about.

You'll also find three icons at the top of the screen indicating that you have no Research set - click on them and you'll reach the corresponding panel (also available from the sidebar) from which you can set which Technologies to research in each of the three areas of study. This game has no singular tech tree - there are tiers of tech, and higher ones always have the same prerequisites, but you are always given a minimum of three options to choose from at any time, and those options are randomised. As ever, read your options and choose which you'd like to focus on first, I obviously don't know exactly which ones they'll be and I'm still not gonna tell you what to do.

The game starts paused by default so have a look around, read the tutorial pop-ups and tooltips, take your time and see what's what, and if anything seems particularly obscure or confusing don't worry about it, when starting complex games like this I always assume that if I need to know something its importance will become apparent and if it doesn't then I can ignore it until I'm comfortable enough to figure it out.

Part 3 - Resources

Next, we'll look through the resources at the top of the screen, where you get them and what they're used for.

Energy Credits - the yellow lightning bolt number, this is both power supply and currency. You'll get these from Generator Districts in your Colonies, as well as Mining Stations around bodies with Energy deposits (you might already have some in your home System - if you see that symbol by a number it means the body has some, if the number's green it means it's already being harvested and if it's white you can send a Construction Ship to build a Mining Station to acquire it), and they're spent on upkeep for everything, as well as certain other stuff I'll let you discover.

Minerals - the red jewel, those are acquired by Mining Districts and Mining Stations, and are spent on building Stations and constructions in your Colonies, recruiting Armies, and consumed in the production of Consumer Goods and Alloys.

Food - the green apple, produced by Agricultural Districts and consumed by Organic Pops. I feel like this one's fairly simple to grasp.

Consumer Goods - the browny orange thing. This is produced in Industrial Districts, consuming Minerals to do so, and it's an intermediate resource, it doesn't get directly used for anything but other production consumes it.

Alloys - the purple brick, also produced in Industrial Districts and used to build Ships, Outposts and Starbases.

Unity - the sort of cyan swirly symbol. This is produced by Administrative Office buildings (or Temples if you're Spiritualist) which consume Consumer Goods; it's spent on Traditions, powerful unlocks that shape your society as it grows across the stars, and Leaders, skilled and influential figures in your society who'll be explained in the next post.

Research - produced in Research Lab buildings, which also consume Consumer Goods; the more you produce, the faster your Research will be. Full of surprises, this one.

Influence - the purple circle icon. This ticks up passively with no buildings able to produce it directly, though your Power Projection - the size of your Fleets relative to your borders - adds to the monthly gain; it's spent building Outposts, making Claims on neighbours' systems, and in the midgame onward proposing Resolutions in the Galactic Community (essentially a Space UN, where the galaxy's nations gather to very slowly pass vaguely inconsequential laws that mostly just funnel more political power to the dominant states).

This post is long enough, so I'll leave you to it for now, most likely in a couple of days I'll write the next part, in which we'll cover Planet management and Leaders.

Again, any questions or feedback are welcome!

[bayofwolves]

some general erdas headcanons

to get me warmed up for my reread! i’m sick so what else can i do.

there are tens of millions of people in all of erdas -- and that’s it. most are concentrated into cities like shar liwao and concorba. jano rion is home to the largest concentration of people in the world.

“continent” is the only accepted term for the four major land masses; “country” is not a word there. ie: you would say “the continent of eura”, not “the country of eura”. eura, nilo, zhong and amaya are also called the great lands or the four great lands. parallels to the four fallen, everybody.

following the second devourer war, stetriol was regarded as a continent. the phrase “the four great lands” is still in use, tho, maybe because of stigma or simply because stetriol is so small.

southern amaya is really desolate; almost no people live there.

zhong has the MOST people!

stetriol is home to a chilling array of giant insects and arachnids, including 20-foot-long venomous centipedes and deadly spiders growing to 10 feet tall. drina’s spirit animal, iskos, is one of these. such creatures are not found anywhere else on the planet.

racism is really not as much of a problem as it is here, there’s no colonization or slavery or anything in erdas’s history, but prejudice can arise due to the fact that people of different continents simply don’t often interact (and can be stingy when they do come into contact). people mainly keep to their own lands. euran settlers don’t exist, and immigrants are... not uncommon, but not extremely common either. as such: people of nilo are almost all black, people of zhong are almost all the equivalent of asian, people of amaya are almost all the equivalent of native/indigenous peoples in the americas, and people of eura and stetriol are almost all white. i feel like this is an overarching theme in the books, that erdas was sorta divided before the four fallen summoners, all from different backgrounds, came together and united it. like they are literally a symbol of global unity.

but anyway. i wanted to say “racism doesn’t exist!” cuz yay that’d be great right? but then i remembered that line in broken ground when abeke meets james; “[his] eyes dart[ed] over her cloak and face and skin”. there’s clearly a divide. this is further exemplified by the fact that mixed people aren’t common and are regarded with surprise and fascination when encountered.

onto the cool stuff.

erdas is a round planet like earth, but much smaller. it has two moons.

in more ancient times, moon worship was common. then the great beasts came and yada yada. people switched to worshipping them. but some cultures around the world still hold the moons sacred -- one prominent example is nilo, where moon worship originated. people in nilo believe that the moons are goddesses, and pray to them for blessings. the moons have names, but i’ll figure those out later. each continent has different names for them (ie, nilo gave them niloan names, zhong gave them zhongese names). interestingly, the sun has a name too! the sun’s name is globally accepted, because it’s not as sacred as the moons and so people cared less about what to call it.

the sky is usually a bluish-purple, but can shift to any shade of either colour. it really depends on the time of day and the activity of the sun & moons.

astrologers have identified fifteen main constellations, likening them to the great beasts. the wolf, falcon, polar bear, ram, boar, eagle and elk can be seen in the northern sky, while the leopard, panda, lion, ape, elephant, octopus, serpent and swan can be seen in the south. i think it’d be fun if people chose different star shapes for the ape and the serpent after the first devourer war, choosing to draw them as upside-down shapes instead.

fun fact! penguins don’t exist on erdas, as there is no antarctic. 

on the flip side, there are many animal species on erdas that don’t exist on earth, water dragons among them. in ancient times, dragons walked erdas -- their bones have been discovered and some entire skeletons have been reconstructed. some had wings, some did not. some had scales, some had feathers, some had skin or fur. there was a great variety. they were beautiful and fearsome -- a shattered skull was discovered, so massive that people estimated its full size would have been larger than tellun. JUST THE SKULL! (if you couldn’t figure it out, dragons are to them what dinosaurs are to us. dinos themselves have never existed on erdas.)

speaking of tellun, i’d love to talk about the size of the great beasts because it’s my favourite thing in the world. the great beasts are, in a word, huge. their heads would be comparable to the skull of balerion the dread. no more “he was as large as a carriage” shit. they. are. behemoths.

people in erdas do have terms like year and month, but their months and days are not named. when they need to be specific, erdasi people will say “the first month of summer” or “the last month of autumn” and so on. in the prologue of the burning tide, kovo uses the word “moontides” to describe what i assume is months, so that’s cool. i think people started off using moontide, then switched to month. still, some people prefer to say moontide (abeke, anda and niri are some i can think of who would do this).

speaking of kovo, he named the evertree. his description of it as “ever standing” stuck out to me. he definitely named that thing.

the wyrm hitting the evertree triggered a mass extinction, responsible for wiping out the last of the dragons. though the giants and the winged were already gone, smaller, flightless dragons were still around at the time, on land and in water. the wyrm’s impact obliterated the land dragons. the water dragons’ numbers were severely depleted, but some survived. these got progressively smaller as they mated with sea snakes and crocodiles (because that can happen!). eventually, the water dragons were gone, but their large lizard-like descendants remained. and that’s where modern water dragons like seaspray come from.

erdas is on a permanent tilt. with the south closer to the sun and the north farther away, it’s pretty much always dead of summer in nilo and stetriol. eura is stuck in a permanent spring, in arctica it’s always winter, and in amaya it varies because the landmass is so big.

empress song’s death brought about the end of imperial zhong. the continent instated a republic and would never again see an emperor or empress. they were the first great land in erdas to have a leader chosen by the people! (meilin probably carried this entire process on her back. i’m sure they wanted to elect her as their new leader, but she declined.)

at the time of the first book, it had been five hundred years since feliandor and the first devourer war.

conor is descended from katalin, abeke from tembo and meilin from yu. this makes meilin a distant descendant of tang as well! (none of them know this, except maybe meilin. she grew up hearing a lot about jhi’s distant connection to her family but didn’t give two fucks until she summoned her. meilin was heavily inspired by tales of yin. maybe one day she even retrieves the sword of tang and wields it as her own weapon, who knows!) (i think that’d be badass)

shane is also descended from feliandor, but indirectly. his family stems from one of fel’s cousins, who took the throne after him.

shane and abeke’s relationship just got a little more complicated considering their ancestors were the first leaders of the conquerors and greencloaks, respectively. and tembo literally put a spear through fel.

the reborn great beasts are still growing and will one day return to their former size! they are growing with their human partners and are set to stop when they do (at around age 25). at some point they will regain the ability to speak. by the end of the transformation, they will be great beasts once again!

yeah maybe i’ll add more when i think of more. i had so many headcanons back in the day, but it’s been like six years since i touched the books.

[sophia-sol]

A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys

This is a fascinating novel about first contact with aliens in the relatively near future, that's doing great things around ideas of what we owe to the Earth in terms of mitigating the environmental harm we've caused through climate change and other destructive actions. Not everything about the book worked for me, but I think it is still overall very worth reading.

The basic set-up: in the near-ish future, much of the earth is now organized not around countries and nationalism, but around "dandelion networks" where you belong to the network of whatever river you live in the drainage basin for. Within that network everyone has a voice – all humans, but also their communication technology is set up to provide voices for the natural environment as well, so that any decisions properly take into account the needs of the ecosystems around them. The dandelion networks are closely entwined with their local environment and feel a great deal of pride for the way they're managing to turn things around and make human life on earth sustainable long-term. However, not everyone is part of a dandelion network; there's still some nation-states hanging on to existence, though with much less control, and also corporations have been stripped of their power but are not gone and have become basically their own little nation-states as well.

In this context, an alien ship arrives, landing in the Chesapeake network, who want to save all humans from what they see as an urgently dying planet! Who gets to decide who is communicating with the aliens on behalf of all humans? What will the various groups do to make sure their voice is heard? What values should direct everyone's actions in this fraught first contact? Judy, our viewpoint character, happens to be first on the scene when the aliens land, and ends up being the main liaison from the dandelion networks to the aliens as a result, but Judy and her priorities don't get to stand alone for long.

I love this set-up, and I love the themes the book is exploring. All the nature imagery, and the conscious hard work going into keeping the earth thriving as much as possible, and the history of activism that underlies all the dandelion networks' current work.

And the way that creating relationships is depicted as something requiring work and attention to grow them into something full of trust and understanding. Judy's relationship with her wife, Carol, is shown to be already strong and deep and loving and supportive, but Judy and Carol's relationship with their co-parents, Dinar and Athëo, is still new and fragile. But there's also the humans' relationships with their planet, and the dandelion networks' relationships with their local governments, and with the corporations, and with the aliens – and the aliens relationships within themselves as well. I love all of this! And the smaller-scale and larger-scale relationships are like, thematically resonant with each other in a very effective way.

But I think to talk about this book in further detail I'm going to need to go behind a spoiler cut!

Ok so first…the aliens. So there are two different species of aliens who come to earth together! These two species met each other and formed a relationship with each other a very long time ago, and have carefully worked out how to have a mutually beneficial relationship with each other. I thought this was so interesting and well done and I loved learning more about their history and culture and ways of relating to each other and variance of opinions within each group.

But also, I am eternally torn between wanting to read about truly alien aliens, and wanting aliens who can successfully communicate and form relationships with humans on a first-contact time scale. And these ones honestly just felt like humans in funny hats. The corporate humans seemed just as alien to our main characters as the actual outer-space aliens did. And like, that might have been thematically the point or something? Which is valid. But then why even bother having aliens? It felt to me too far in the direction of the way that literary fiction treats speculative fiction ideas, where the only facet of value is the metaphorical point, instead of making the speculative elements make concrete sense contextually as well.

Because I just couldn't believe in them as being aliens from another world. And you can go so much more alien than this without taking them into the realm of unrelatable, so I really wish this book had!

And like, the aliens are similar enough that Judy and Carol start dating one of the aliens. Within, if I'm remembering the timelines correctly, weeks of knowing him? And they're SO chill about it, as if it's no different than deciding to date another human. Which sure, maybe they're that kind of people, but even that isn't marked as a thing. It's as if the narrative is of the opinion that it's normal to be chill about dating cross-species. It just felt off to me.

Second…the humans! Okay so we spend most of our time with the Chesapeake watershed, and especially with Judy's family, and there's a lot that's great about this. I really enjoyed seeing this household still in the early days of learning to be family with each other, and the ways in which things are easy and the ways in which things are hard, and the ways their families of origin affect what they bring to their current relationships.

We also see some of what it's like to live in a watershed organized into a dandelion networks, and overall it's pretty good! I think a lot of the way the author constructed the dandelion networks is about trying to create what might be an imperfect but believably-better future, which is one of the things scifi is for! Allowing us to imagine what might be!

BUT. The way they are all constantly connected to and interacting with what's basically their watershed's local reddit / neighbourhood email listserv, via their brains, feels to me like it would be enormously overwhelming overload. Judy feels incomplete when she doesn't have access to the network, and it's the fundamental way dandelion networks function. How do people who can't handle that fit in?

When Judy travels to meet the corporate people in their home environment and she finds that overwhelming, she asks how people who can't handle it manage to fit in and live, and she gets an answer to that, but being part of a dandelion network is never shown to be something that someone who is raised within such a network could ever be uncomfortable with.

As well: gender. Gender functions differently amongst all the different groups in the book, both human groups and alien groups, and they all kind of feel weird about each other's genders because it's so different from their own norms. But within each group, too, we see people who are uncomfortable with their own culture's way of doing gender, and have a role or an identity that doesn't fit the expected framework. Which is all so much fun, because of course even with wildly different gender expectations there will always be the occasional weirdo who doesn't fit in!

That is to say, within each group except in the dandelion networks. I don't recall ever seeing a character who's part of a dandelion network who has any issue with the trinary gender system (he, she, and they) that you have the option of choosing between within their framework. Were there any??

These facets and some other stuff about the general tone of the book kind of make me feel like, even with the ways that the dandelion networks are shown to be imperfect, there is still an underlying attitude that of COURSE the ideals of the dandelion networks are the best ones to strive for. And like……I do agree with so much of what the dandelion networks are doing! But as soon as you try to tell me what the only "right" thing to think is, I get all curmudgeonly about it, you know?

I'm not sure whether I'm being fair to the book on this point tbh. Is the tone I feel like I'm picking up on something that's only in my head? I don't know! But this made it really hard for me to love the dandelion networks, even as I intellectually admired so much of what they were doing.

Anyway it turns out that the culture I am most fascinated by of all the cultures in this book is the corporate culture! They're still in many ways corporations, but the way they've developed internal understandings of gender and social interaction in unique ways are so interesting. Even the dandelion network folks think that within a few generations they'll just be another human culture with a bloody history rather than still being actively the corporations that nearly destroyed the earth.

We only see glimpses of corporate culture, and nearly all from the viewpoint of people who are antagonistic towards them, but I want to know more! Plus I find a number of the corporate characters fascinating. Intern Adrien who loves to play the game and is willing to put aside any morals for the sake of advancement. Brend, Adrien's sibling, who loves Adrien but struggles with normal socialization within the corporate environment, and with some of the values that the corporations maintain. Tiffany, whose relationship with Brend is the most important thing, to be ranked above all else when making decisions, and does not care about ethics for the sake of ethics even a little. They're all so fascinating!

(and like, oh hmm yeah of course two of my favourite characters are Brend and Tiffany, the weirdos who don't fit in anywhere, that does check out doesn't it)

And okay yes this was a whole enormous pile of words analysing my not entirely positive feelings towards this book, but overall I think what I want to say about it is that it's interesting and thoughtful enough to be WORTH arguing with! I enjoyed thinking about it, I enjoyed spending time with these characters, there were some moments I found genuinely touching and emotional, and I argue because me and the book are both united in caring about things. So I do recommend it! And please come argue with me about this book!