#Sunspot Chronicles
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The Color of the Sunspot's Milk
We don't drink milk on the Sunspot.
It's not really a thing for us.
We did not evolve from mammals, so we do not produce milk ourselves, typically. Actually, our life can't really be divided up into the same categories as Terran life, anyway, and the Evolutionary Engines that are used to create people now produce such a diversity of biological development that we can't use sweeping statements like that meaningfully. But, we strongly suspect based on evidence at hand that the Ktletaccete did not originally have anything like mammary glands.
And, on the Sunspot specifically, we do not consume anything produced by animals. It just never even occurred to the Founding Crew to set up the ship and our culture that way. The ecological balance of the Garden requires that we let the fauna live as naturally as possible without interference from people. So, we do not milk animals.
But it turns out that we drink something that is kinda of vaguely like milk. It often serves a similar culinary utility, particularly in baking.
We know this because we have been talking to our Earth custodians of the Terran Tunnel Apparatus, and they have tried a product they call Ryze that is an approximation of what we use on the Sunspot, and we've been trading notes.
So, in the search for accommodation, the ancestors of the Sunspot Ktletaccete developed a mixture of pureed fungus and algae that could provide a very young child or a disabled or elderly person with nutrients that might not otherwise be readily available to them. And we have been calling this something that our translators have decided to call "formula". We understand that this echoes the term many of you use for a fortified milk that you feed your infants, and that's acceptable.
But our formula comes in many varieties, customized for each person's needs and even each use they might have for it.
Fungal and algae farming has always been abundant and easy for us, so it is the least expensive food to create. It may not have been central to the diet of ancient Ktletaccete, but it has become pivotal to survival in space aboard our Exodus Ships. And now we use it in nearly everything.
We also eat a variety of nuts, fruits, grains, tubers, leaves, stalks, and other vegetable matter (or their Sunspot equivalents to what these words mean to you). And some of those things provide proteins and lipids that compliment what is provided by our various formulas, so depending on how we combine it we can create foods that sometimes resemble your breads, quiches, meat loafs, stews, etc.
But, also, Artisan crafted beverages is a huge thing here, which I understand some of your cultures might relate to. And our formula is central to that.
So, what are the main differences between our formula and milk? And what are the differences between our formula and something like Ryze?
Well, obvious, our formula is made entirely differently from milk, and does not share it's color. It's not white or even white-ish, typically.
Though some varieties of it can come close to white so that Artisans can add vibrant colors to it more easily without it turning brown, but the processing tends to remove a lot of nutrients from it, so it's not terribly popular outside of that visual utility.
It's also usually somewhat low on lipids, though those are definitely added for many baking purposes.
It's more of a suspension than an emulsion most of the time, as a result. But again, that varies on it's purpose.
And because of that, and the fact that it's made from fungus and algae, makes it very similar to things like Ryze, which is apparently currently available for something you call "a lot of money" by purchasing it over your Network (or Internet, as you say).
There are other drinks like Ryze, but it so happens that the girlfriend of our counterparts purchased Ryse specifically, so that is the one that they are trying. In particular, they are trying Ryze Matcha, as opposed to Ryse Coffee, since we don't have anything remotely like a coffee bean on the Sunspot, but we do have a green stimulant kind of vaguely like Matcha that can be added to our formula.
We can't really truly compare the sensations of drinking our various forumlas to drinking Ryze, because there is an enormous physical gulf between the Earth and the Sunspot, and we cannot transport either liquid nor taste buds and nervous systems across that distance. And translating words, even with in the same language, between two individuals' personal experiences is inherently inaccurate to begin with.
But we can make some conjectures.
As far as flavor is concerned, we can infer some things. Humans are omnivors with a variety of sensitivities to flavors, and apparently our counterparts are something called a supertaster. They are more highly sensitive to flavor than their typical peers.
They report that Ryze Matcha tastes "green". Not just that it is green in color and therefore the flavor it has can be described as green, but that it reminds them of other green things that they have eaten. There is a bit of a spinach flavor, they report, but its very faint. There is also a faint green tea flavor. We don't know what either of these things really mean, but we know that spinach is a leafy vegetable and that green tea is also made from leaves. But then, they also say that these flavors are not like either of these things, either. They're similar but different.
More specifically, they report that Ryze Matcha does not taste like most mushrooms they've eaten. In fact, it bears a closer resemblance to the flavors they get when they drink from an old jug of water that maybe has some green stuff growing on the inside of it.
"Why would you do that?" I asked them.
And they replied with, "Carelessness."
Anyway, this seems relatively in keeping with our experiences with formula. Usually, it tastes kind of like some other vegetable matter, but different. But, whether those ways are similar to how humans experience Ryse and vegetables on Earth, we really don't know.
What we do know for sure is color. That's something that can be measured quite precisely via the wavelengths of light.
Of course, we may perceive that color differently than you, but thanks to technological measuring devices and mathematics, we can use the same names for the same wavelengths of light. So, when I say that something is green on the Sunspot, you will be able to trust that if you somehow visited your neurology will interpret that thing as what you know of as green, adjusting for the difference in our ambient lighting, of course.
And, yes, some formulas we use are nearly as green as Ryze Matcha, and they are gorgeous.
But most formula ends up in a wide spectrum of color between what you call khaki and a deep vibrant purple, thanks to the dominant colors of most fungi and algae found on the Sunspot.
Our sun produces more ultraviolet light than yours does and there is less shielding between it and the surface of the Garden, so most of our plant life has developed its own shielding, which comes in varieties of purple. Mostly, it's the algae that carries the purple coloring. Most of our fungus isn't green, either, but even when it is, the purples of the algae shift the colors to brown when mixed with it.
But green mosses, ferns, and algae are found in the darkest, deepest parts of our forests, where the sun never reaches the ground directly, and we find that color to be captivating, so our ancestors bred a small variety of green food algae strains specifically for culinary variety.
And the flavor of that stuff is definitely what we could call green.
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Been a while since we drew much of anything. Especially to ink it. Not quire sure which of us worked on this one tonight:
This is Ashwin Pember, from our upcoming book The End of the Tunnel.
Nem is one of the Pembers, a system of tens of thousands who live aboard the Sunspot. Myra Pember, Ashwin's headmate, is one of the heroes of our first book, Systems' Out! Both Myra and Ashwin look a lot like their vessel, with only minor differences.
Ashwin's book takes place 297 Sunspot years after Myra's book, after their vessel has passed away and they've both ascended to the Network of the Sunspot with all of their headmates.
People on the Sunspot tend to pursue something they call their Art. It's a lot like an autistic special interest, but distinctly not human. It can be anything. And it typically changes over time, but usually in a logical way that relates to their past interests and work. Some people, however, never find theirs.
Ashin never found nems Art. So, when it was declared that a planet inhabited by aliens (humans) was discovered through the use of the Tunnel Apparatus, Ashwin is the first to volunteer to cross through the Tunnel and reach out to them.
What nem encounters on the other side (Portland, Oregon) is nothing any denizen of the Sunspot could ever have imagined.
In the course of exploring Earth and translating the Sunspot Chronicles into English, Ashwin sort of discovers that nem is very, very good at linguistics and really particularly enjoys working with English, as awful as the language is in many ways.
Nem has also discovered the joys of garlicky stir fried green beans, salt bagels with cream cheese, and watching the penguins at the Oregon Zoo.
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Cities
Here's a post that strongly intersects with @your-tutor-abacus' blog, but I think I'll write about generics and let it reference this post when it goes to write about specifics.
The cities on the Sunspot (`etekeyerrinwuf) are build very differently than most cities on Earth (or, at least U.S. cities) and there are good reasons for this.
We all tend to take for granted what we've grown up with, so when we write about living and doing things in the cities where we've grown up, we'll tend to reference metropolitan civil structures without explaining them. Unless the story has a moment that specifically deals with why those structures exist, then we might get introspective an analyze them.
But, when you gone from one culture to an alien one, it absolutely prompts analysis and you can find yourself obsessed with it for a while, so I'm claiming this subject.
What are Sunspot cities like?
Unlike Earth cities, which have mostly grown up naturally around various human settlements that gathered around important resources, Sunspot cities were designed from the the ground up deliberately.
Some Earth cities were created in similar ways, especially the colonial ones. A country will pick a spot where it wants a city and hire a bunch of professionals (or politicians) to socially engineer the city to meet some sort of national ideal and to practice social engineering in the process.
There are still some real fundamental differences between that and what happened when the Sunspot was built.
Unlike any place on Earth, or the Earth itself, the Sunspot is a constructed world, built literally from the ground up (or inward) to be a safe place for its inhabitants to exist with sufficient resources for everyone.
It's a spaceship, not a planet, even though it's big enough to have multiple cities in it, and a whole ecosystem of plants and animals. And it had to be designed to be indefinitely sustainable.
Part of that was, in contrast to its predecessor ship, was making sure that every living thing on the ship (including every person) had equal access to resources in order to minimize conflict.
So, wherever you might live on the Sunspot, ports in the floor and/or ceiling deliver everything you could possibly need to thrive there.
You, as a living being with a biological vessel, get an allotment of ship resources, and it's probably more than you'll ever use, because the population is kept low enough to do that (which is a dire concern on a generational starship, but a false one on Earth, really).
This means that neighborhoods, communities, and cities are not built around your typical sets of resources. In fact, Belowdecks, they aren't built around any resources.
Abovedecks, in the Garden, the primary resource considered is psychological. Each city is built in an area of the Garden where the environment may best fit the psychological needs of a predicted portion of the population.
So, there are cities in the plains, the mountains, the forests, the shorelines, near rivers, and under the water to create a wide range of possible living conditions and psychological amenities.
But, besides that, the organization of neighborhoods and specialized buildings is totally different than Earthlings may be used to.
Because, the one resource that the ship systems cannot control, just by virtue of the two Living Rights, are people. Community.
But community can be encouraged and accommodated.
So, all quarters and structures Belowdecks are modular and reconfigurable. Designed so that wall can be constructed or removed as needed. Hallways are left permanently in their original locations to make navigation easy and accessible to all, but between the hallways people can do just about anything.
But, by default, the Founding Crew set this up with sets of personal quarters arranged to surround communal gathering spaces. And those communal gathering spaces have been used for libraries, audiences, galleries, warehouses, kitchens/cafeterias, and Artistry collectives of all types. And the resulting structure overall resembles the arrangement of cells in living tissue, with the community spaces serving as the cytoplasm and organelles contained by the cell walls of the living quarters. Each cell developing into a specialized purpose according to its inhabitants whims and agreements.
And then, the Abovedecks cities where designed in a similar way, except that the potential cells were originally simply foundations for buildings, and they were placed spaced out enough so that their development would have minimal impact on the environment around them.
It's been over a hundred and thirty millennia since then, and the cities and communities have evolved a lot. But the basic structure and pressures (or lack of pressures) from resources remain. And certain collectives or types of Artistry have gathered or dispersed in each city over time and given them their respective characters.
Some cities, like Gopra Pyle, have a huge central collective that unifies all the smaller collectives around it, and have developed sort of a singular municipal Art project that everyone's proud of that has spanned generations of contribution.
Others, like Frra, are more diverse, sometimes homogeneous and sometimes divided, with four major collectives to countless collectives more evenly distributed throughout their perimeter.
So, like, in most cities on the Sunspot, you're not going to find anything like a commercial district or industrial site or set of warehouses. You might find an audience with surrounding libraries that's frequently utilized by the local government, and that might look like a governmental district in an Earth city. But the civic pride that is displayed by that area by its architecture and activities is going to be unusual to Earth sensibilities, and likely a lot more fluid and less focused.
With the Network, the resource tubes, and tram system, almost everything aboard the Sunspot is decentralized. And it shows.
If anything in a city serves as a landmark or gets your attention, it's usually a communal work of art commemorating a past even, serving as a meeting place that you too can use, or just sitting there trying to be beautiful.
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I requested a different view of the same scene that @ashwin-the-artless is using for nems book cover, and @theinmara delivered:
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Ashwin the maybe not so Artless
Oh. Oh, wow. Oh.
Maybe I am the Linguist.
Maybe it's because I'm just strongly coconscious with a couple of my headmates, but it doesn't feel like I am. But I woke up today fronting strongly and I've got all these memories I'm reminiscing over as if they are mine.
Memories of writing our languages, Fenekere, Mäofrräo, and Inmararräo.
Memories of skulking r/conlangs with @fenmere while at work.
Memories of writing posts about our languages.
Memories of interjecting into @your-tutor-abacus' book with nerdery about our languages for it.
Shit. I even remember our first attempts at making a conlang in middle school, and studying up on Irish Gaelic, German, Korean, and Spanish around high school and college.
Just as strong and present and feeling like mine as my recent memories of writing my own book and living its events in our head.
So, I'm writing here in our system's blog instead of my own, because my own is dedicated to the kayfabe we created for my book.
In that blog, I write as if I'm living in a much, much smaller system with Sarah, Goreth, and @ohthatphage (who are real people, btw!) having traveled an uncounted number of parsecs across the universe through the Tunnel Apparatus, in a different part of Portland than we actually live. (If you go looking for the house we describe, you're not going to find it.)
I don't want to break that kayfabe there (@ashwin-the-artless). But, here? That's what this blog is for.
Honestly, it makes sense that I'd be the one to come forward and take the name Ashwin. The whole point of my book, The End of the Tunnel, is to tell the story of how our translation team got here to Earth to publish the Sunspot Chronicles for you.
But this explains why I've got such a strong handled on English idioms and my own colloquial U.S. English dialect and voice. I've actually been speaking this language for nearly 40 years, maybe longer.
In my book, I handwave it off as sharing the linguistic centers of Sarah and Goreth's brain, of course. Because that's actually a plausible and very common thing among systems.
In our actual system, the Inmara, that's how it works. Maybe with some active help from other headmates, even. All of the girls, who live in the right hemisphere of our brain, think in wordless thoughts, and get help from us dragons for translating them into English words.
Sarah and Goreth's fictional system was made to work the same way, but with 4 million fewer headmates.
Anyway. Hi!
Nice to meet you!
How are you?
~ Ashwin Pember, maybe not really the student of Metabang, maybe actually very much older than Metabang
#Ashwin the artless#plural gang#the End of the Tunnel#Sunspot Chronicles#personal history#headmate introduction
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X-Men ‘97 Episode 4 *spoilers ahead*
View On WordPress
#art#artist#Character Design#Comics#Composition Book Chronicles#con queso publishing#cq comics#forge#illustration#jubilee#mojo#Storm#sunspot#x-men. x-men ‘97
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Aurora records in royal chronicles from Korea show that during the 'Maunder Minimum' between 1645 and 1715, the sun's solar cycles became several years shorter than they are today.
The sun's solar cycles were once around three years shorter than they are today, a new analysis of centuries-old Korean chronicles reveals. This previously unknown anomaly occurred during a mysterious solar epoch known as the "Maunder Minimum," more than 300 years ago.
The sun is constantly in a state of flux. Our home star cycles through periods of increased activity, known as solar maximum, when solar storms become more frequent and powerful, as well as spells of reduced activity, known as solar minimum, when solar storms almost completely disappear.
It currently takes about 11 years for the sun to complete a solar cycle, from minimum to maximum and back again. Scientists can track the sun's progress through a solar cycle by counting the number of sunspots on the star's surface, which appear more frequently in the lead-up to and during solar maximum.
But just as the sun fluctuates within individual cycles, historical sunspot records show that over longer periods, spanning decades or centuries, the overall output of solar cycles can also rise and fall.
The Maunder Minimum, sometimes referred to as the Grand Solar Minimum, was a period of greatly reduced solar activity between 1645 and 1715 when sunspots "effectively disappeared," Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado who was not involved in the recent research, told Live Science in an email.
Continue Reading
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The first chapter of scouting sunspot (also known as An has Ghosts in her house, the chronicles.)
Ch-1, Doom and Gloom, Where it Looms
...
First of all, She didn't like to admit her fears. Not to anyone. It made her feel less cool.
Second of All. She was definitely being watched. Every night. She'd had the ritual of watching MV's before bed. Especially the ones she deemed cool.
Third of all. She had no Idea what in the name of God was watching her. But she hated every second of it.
...
Her room felt pitch black. Which, was really odd considering she'd been scared so much, she'd began sleeping with her lamp on. And the fact she was watching an mv at that point in time. It was that fact that told her, that it was near.
She moved her blanket over her, y'know, as one did when they were nervous. She turned up the volume, but even with no polluting noise, it felt like it was being drowned out, the silence was screaming at her. It roared and it Growled and almost felt like it was going to skewer her.
Why? Why her? She moved into her makeshift blanket fortress, heart beating as a boxer at a sand bag, as if it were to punch her ribcage into submission. The worst part was, she knew it wouldn't help if she spoke. But she did. She opened her mouth to Curse the pain in her chest, and in that moment, her throat felt as if even the light was out to harm her, she would have went and told her mother, she really would have, but her legs refused to move.
Even worse, was the complete lack of capacity she had to do anything about it. She was at the mercy of whatever it was that was tormenting her. Torturing her. She resolved to listen to one more MV. Just one. To ease her mind. A new one, fresh in her eyes, a song called 'Abnormality Dancing Girl' one she had heard good things about.
She tried to focus on the song. But it had other plans. Claws grasped her bed on rested over her as whatever it was loomed. Doom and Gloom.
After the song finished. She was too, especially with this. She rested her head. Something moved. She shifted. Nothing changed. She decided to close her eyes. But first, moved the lamp just that tiny but closer. "An." She jumped. She didn't recognise that voice. "An?" She jumped again. This time opening her eyes and frantically looking around. "So, you can hear me." She froze. She wasn't seeing anyone, but she was definitely hearing their voice. Great.
"Go...Away.." Her voice tremoured like nothing else in the realms had, shook and quaked like the rapture was taking place in her voice box. "An!" She got up, looking at the time- 11:05pm. She couldn't sleep every night with whatever was watching her... It really sucked for An, she was already inherently scared of Supernatural nonsense and Ghosts and stories about them scared her like a little girl.
"An!"
She jolted up, horrified- looking around, the neurons In her brain firing like a minigun.
No one was there, at all, no matter where she looked, no one, not a soul. Surely, surely- she was going mad- right? She absolutely hated this- this choking, hateful feeling, the most bitter, grave, gritty feeling, the most foul and horrific feeling she'd ever live to experience.
An wasn't one to become this bitter, but the possibility, no- the knowledge she was being played like solitaire and a pack of cards, it agitated her to no end.
She sat up and to attention, unable to ignore her predicament, the constant, horrific murmurings, those voices, she could not take the murmuring, every night. But alas- as life was- she could never possibly hope to be free of such horrors.
Nor it. She deflated, she remembered this all, from before, it was all as that past nightmare was- helplessness, giving up, living in fear... feeling just as she did before it all started to look up for her, as it began to regain that lost meaning. Before the Fun, before her partner, before the event, even.
As it was- she'd rather not have any sort of allusion nor flashback to such a grim part of her life. Days so ghoulish they put the worst of her father's old tales to shame, the times she hid from others, and yet, just like those phantoms of the had already returned, she was cowering, how pathetic.
She had already spent so long trying to forget that. Because, as she had learnt- Nothing good ever came from fear.
An would have called for help, her hands however, decided co-operation wasn't an option, shaking and tremouring like an eruption.
It seemed that no matter how much she wanted to, the fear would wrack her form to such a degree that she felt pitiful, pathetic, even. What then? With hands frozen enough to be mistaken for Icicles during a December morning, she decided against it, it would be agonising. Her mind looked over her limited options, and so- she relegated herself to an unfortunate fate, lying down, and using all of her strength to not cry, she contemplated if something this meaningless and singular could even count as some sort of real problem.
Ah, How she felt truly pitiful.
The night moved slowly. To her, several immortal eternities passed, fitting into a bracket of six hours of unbearably claustrophobic darkness, of full, screaming silence. It may have been hard to tell, even amongst the wall of descriptions, but, An was not particularly fond of the issue at hand.
An being as she was, couldn't really help but feel as if all those disgustingly sleepless nights were a thing of the past. Of course, proven wrong.
Boy, was she wrong.
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Title: A Fresh, Rightful Gust of Positivity Sweeps the World: A Happy Epistle from Earth, the Jubilant Dweller of the Universe
It's January 18th, 2024 - a radiant dawn cloaked in splendid morning mists beckoned yet another routine day. As mother Earth went about its ceaseless pirouettes around the sun, somewhere on her lovely emerald-blue face, she erupted in a jovial wink. This blink on her face rippled through each vein, river, every ruffling leaf, bustling city, twinkling constellation - reminding us earthlings, that our story was more than a weary chronicle. It was an intricate cosmic ballet replete with fortuitous joy.
A small nook in the cosmic timeline. The splendid banter with celestial friends, Universe and Milky Way, across light years' coffee table guffaws a hearty mirth that leaves sunspots in their wake - Earth often told her folks. If only we were good at space humour! So today, we human beings felt the waves of an exuberant whisper travel through us - 'Look around, isn't it incredible how far you have come?'
Shhh... if you press your ear against the world today, you'll hear an uproarious laughter echo across galaxies. Our cosmic ma, Earth, scored 93 on the ‘cosmic chuckles' index, and you could feel the Universe nudge our little planet playfully, 'good one!’
Yes, today is that day. The day that knocked the doomsday harbingers into absolute oblivion. An indescribably incredible event with cosmic proportions reverberated through every life pulsating on our beloved planet - establishing a day of global unity and compassion. An enigmatic melange of emotions overwhelmed every earthling - regardless of race, language, and geographical divide. We took a quiet minute to appreciate the new epoch we had entered, prompted by the untethered celebration of the Universe herself.
No, we did not become immortal today, neither did we make contact with any other worldly life form (they might have ignored our cosmic calls!), nor did our doleful glaciers rise back into pristine snowy beauty overnight. We stumbled onto a path better, richer and way more incredible – a subtle revolution was seeded in the deep pockets of our heart – The Harmonious Revolution!
We have collectively - without aggression or altercation - taken a decision to respect and love each other's perspectives. A light bulb of tolerance lit up worldwide. And suddenly, we no longer require voluminous rulebooks to foster peace; it was in us all along.
The peace treaty today didn’t bind countries. It linked hearts. Countries weren't giving into the imposition of rules; people were adopting love and understanding out of choice. An undivided language - respect, sprouted everywhere, uniting all. Harmony seemed our sole responsibility. Everyone on Earth celebrated their unique beliefs, choices, orientations, customs and preferences, together. Difference suddenly did not make any difference anymore!
Today, Earth bore the emblem of unanimous joy, sparking fresh stardust smiles in every dwelling and neighborhood. Today, the concept of Unity in Diversity changed from a compelling maxim into a universal truth, prompting each earthling to pen their unique verses in this enchanting anthology of humanity.
On January 18th, 2024, Earth beautifully revolutionized herself by recognizing the coexistence of varied thoughts, affirming that differences aren’t threats but intriguing shades of this cosmic pantomime.
So here we stand today - hearts beaming with newfound insight. A comical little civilization standing at the cusp of the grand celestial ballet. Lost amidst countless galaxies yet blissfully dancing our whimsical little twirl.
We all belong. We're all one. One planet, innumerable colours.
Thank you, Earth, for embracing us - different yet similar children of yours, equally. For now, more than ever, we celebrate life - it's not merely about surviving, it’s about cherishing and relishing our beautifully complex cosmic ballet. From this date onward, our human spirit echoes - ‘In our incredible, multifarious discord, lies our breathtaking harmony. So let’s rock this space gig together!'
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A nursery aboard the Sunspot.
(I've written this in a rather dry way for the purposes of informing Earthlings about our culture, since denizens of the Sunspot will already be familiar with all of this.)
On the Sunspot, children hatch from eggs. Everyone hatched within the same 250 year period is considered to be the same generation, while everyone conceived on the same day can be said to belong to the same cohort. And each nursery holds twelve members of the same cohort.
The people of the Sunspot like to do things in either 16s or 31s, due to their numbering systems, but it has been observed that the ideal upper range for number of children per caretaker is six. So, each nursery is designed to accommodate a minimum of two caretakers.
There are no actually hard, legal limits to the structures of families aboard the Sunspot, but people do tend to follow the common wisdom and known ideals. Many caretakers do choose to only raise one child at a time. Quite a bit more choose two to four children. And it is pretty rare that an individual chooses more than six. Caretakers also are known to form families with each other in partnership or polycules.
Children and Caretakers also come with their Tutors, and so a household with three Caretakers and eight children, for instance, will have eleven Tutors, and a grand total of twenty-two family members. This type of arrangement is not at all unheard of.
Nurseries like this one will often have artwork created or selected by the Caretakers and Tutors who have been assigned to children expected to hatch. The walls can be decorated with illustrations or murals, and the furniture can be configured and customized for individual needs.
Most Caretakers like to spend some time with their eggs before they hatch, though it isn't considered necessary for fetal development. Ktletaccete are not human and their needs are different from those of human fetuses and babies.
Nevertheless, the individual incubators are fitted with a full sensory and environmental suite that's integrated with the rest of the nursery, designed to simulate the effects of being in a hatching pond. And the lighting of the room is even programmed to not only recreate the cycle of day and night, but also the passing shadows of predators, other fauna, and/or visiting parents, as it is believed would be experienced in the wild.
The lighting is usually kept much darker than what is depicted here, but it can be allowed to get this bright for short periods of time.
If you walk in and sit down next to one of your eggs and talk to it, it will be exposed to the sound of your speech as transmitted by water at levels adjusted for safety. It is not believed that this will help the child recognize or bond with their Caretaker, as that demonstrably happens later in development, but some Caretakers find that it helps them bond with their children.
When an egg begins to hatch, both its Caretaker and Tutor are alerted so that they can be present to help the new child take their first breaths and be shown how to eat and drink. Tutors tend to be the ones to carry the children to their Caretaker's quarters.
Although their eggs are clearly similar to those of what humans would classify as amphibians, most freshly hatched Ktletaccete aboard the Sunspot are not especially amphibious themselves. Depending on the observed development of each child, the water is usually drained from the incubator as they hatch, and the bell jar is lifted when an adult is there ready to assist them. In the case of amphibious or aquatic children, the procedure is suitably different with further assistive technology.
What is depicted in this scene are a number of eggs in their early development, so the fetuses all appear very similar. In the upcoming months they will begin to metamorph into very unique forms, even developing feathers, hair, and/or scales according to their individual genetics. Limb configurations can vary dramatically, too. Some children have none, while others have up to six bony limbs. Almost always occurring in pairs.
In the earliest stages of conception and development, the glass of the incubators is kept opaque. But when the fetuses start to develop eyes, the glass becomes transparent. Some fetuses are more interactive than others at this stage. But, even with nanite neural terminals present from conception onward, there is no clear evidence of emotional bonding until after the eggs hatch.
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If you read our stories online, and we notice you doing it through Jetpack (we won't know it's you, just that SOMEONE is reading them), we will often re-read them right along with you!
We hope that sounds nice.
It's fun to know what other people are experiencing when we've had a hand in it. But also, it means that there's a good chance that, if you have any questions or suggestions and you send them to us, we'll have our own work fresh in our minds when you do.
If you want to prompt us to reread our whole series all over again, you can do it here:
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Here's a typical Sunspot breakfast!
A tea drink with a ground nut.
It's not actual tea. We don't have that on the Sunspot. It's an herbal infusion, though, mixed with formula, and decorated on top (coincidentally very much like lattes are done in some places on Earth). The double handled mug is pretty common as a general design, though some people prefer to drink out of handle-less bowls or plastic bulbs. It all depends a lot on personal anatomy.
The ground nut is kind of like if you took six gigantic filberts, mutated them to have an almost squash-like texture (still pretty tough, though), and put them in a coconut shell. Kind of. The flavor is mild but distinct, and might taste toxic to the human tongue, if we could get human tongues on the Sunspot.
Goreth, who is visiting via nanite exobody, says it tastes like a cross between cinnamon flavored yogurt and fennel, with a water chestnut base.
But, that's using nanite taste buds configured by the Network's interpretations of Goreth's memories. There's no way of knowing how that would work for Goreth's original biological tongue (which is back in Portland, currently).
The utensils depicted are a pair of spear-spoons and a dining claw. If you want to open the ground nut traditionally, you stab it with the spear-spoons and pry it apart, then you use one spoon and the dining claw to dig out the meat and eat it. Or you use your own claws (and/or beak, if you have it).
Of course, you can also just tell some nanites to cut it up into neat bite sized pieces for you. But a lot of people still prefer to do things by hand and mouth.
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I have started the second chapter of my first novel. I don't imagine I'll write many other novels, as this system has a lot of writers in it who should get to write.
But I'm very proud of these words. Here is an excerpt:
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Being party to two nervous systems gave me enough faculties to do some interesting and fun things.
I have since learned that this would not have been as easy on a new planet with people who are not familiar with me. I had grown up with the Kepekapeans, so I had forgotten how much I’d struggled at first.
As it was then, however, I was able to vibrate the air arbitrarily to form my greeting. And then, following that, I pulled together a confluence of breeze, light from the sun, tree branches and leaves and the shadows they cast, and enough neurons from my two new friends to create the illusion of a shadowy figure standing in the path between them and the city they wanted to return to.
It was half coincidental shadow play and half hallucination.
The reaction I got from either of them was not what I was intending to receive, but it was informative and interesting anyway. If I’d had all of my memories, I would have predicted it before I’d acted. But I wasn’t exactly surprised.
Very little ever surprises me.
Eyes wide, backs arched, they both backed up a step and froze, mouths gaping. Little Näofregbi was in front of towering Binwen, if seen from where my shadow vision lay. And they were framed by the gently swaying leaves and fronds of the foliage around them, with glints of direct sunlight filtering through the indigo trees behind their heads.
I extrapolated that image from the physics around me, but otherwise I was actually seeing things through their eyes.
I decided to nudge them back toward verbal thinking, and continued my greeting.
“I am Mau,” I said, and had my visage twist to demonstrate the lack of a tail, denoting that the pronoun ‘yem’ belonged to me. I could give myself any tail I wanted. I wanted that pronoun, and the connotations it carried.
Also, turning sideways to show your tail was an extreme formality in their culture at the time, treated as deferential and very friendly. During mating season, it would be evocative, of course, but it was not mating season.
I waited.
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OC List & Links
Gonna be putting this on my main blog, that way if anything changes on my sideblogs this at least will always have the same link ^^
Note that the majority of these OCs are (or will be) listed on my toyhouse as well. That's where you'll be able to find any content ever created related to them if you don't wanna parse through my blog (currently just art, will eventually include stories and such) ^^
Cinomed Chronicles
Evanna | She/Her || Toyhouse
Erin | He/Him
Azzy | She/They
Dolan | He/Him
Nezu | They/Them
Briar | He/Him
Gideon | He/Him
Lyra | She/Her
Fera | She/Her
Dani | He/Him || Toyhouse
Taylor | She/Her || Toyhouse
Jeremiah | He/Him || Toyhouse
Marie | She/Her
Leona | She/Her
Max | Any prounouns
Jayden | He/They
Ollie | She/Her
Kord | He/Him
Chloe | She/Her
Neva | She/Her
Aki | He/Him
Rikki | He/Him
Serranidae | She/Her
Not of This World
Valerie | She/Her and Ze/Zir/Zirs/Zirself
Akehma | It/Its/Itself and Hey/Hem/Heir
Aryn | They/Them and Voi/Void/Voids/Voidself
Jasper | Xe/Xem/Xemself
Myrin | Nix/Nixt/Nixts/Nixtself
Jessantha | She/He/They
Gale | She/He/They
Phoenix | Any pronouns, often uses He/Him and It/Its/Itself
Opal | She/Her
Sylvia | She/Her
Asonze | He/Him
Xena | She/They
At Long Last
Liam | He/They
Marco | He/Him
Walter | Any pronouns
Vianna | She/They
Tilly | Xe/Xem
Mandi | She/Her
"Alatar" | He/Him
Alatar | No pronouns
The Prince's Guard
Arabella Ardule | She/Her
Brooke Lucan | She/Her
Magnus Clyde | He/Him
Fandom
Stardew Valley
Kali Delmuth | She/Her
Aster Oloren | They/Them
Sour Patch | Any Pronouns
The Arcana
Adahli | She/They
Wings of Fire
Ambersky | She/They
Makani | She/Her
Sunspot | He/Him
Flake | She/Her
Zinnia | She/Her
Fruity | No pronouns
Stormcloud | He/They/It
Mumbles | He/Him || Toyhouse
Chewy | She/Her
Azar | He/They
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(302-317 albums etc that I’ve listened to this year, copied from twitter) (now with art. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22])
names and thoughts below cut
302/ Protohype - Puppy Crew (2016)
one of those albums that doesnt quite hit with me, today, in 2023.
mostly.
"100" hits a groove just enough for me to jam B)
"Dubs & 50's" is fun too
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303/ VA - Various V (2023)
acid label, bleep vibes :D
"To Create Is To Live Twice" has a really nostalgic sound to it, for me anyway. uziq plus some british acid ykno?
immediately a big fav.
the more pure acid stuff doesn't quite vibe with me this time, except "zAVONDJE 303".
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304/ Towa Tei - ZOUNDTRACKS (2023)
a surprisingly soft and cute sound. chopped bossa or something?
short but sweet fav with "ANANAS"
like an intermission between heavier funk.
…if not softer, like "AMIKO" or even "OPEN"
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305/ Conforce - North To South Part 1 & 2 (2016)
a kind of mixed bag for my tastes, despite its cohesion.
"Eclipse" i like this the most, EXCEPT that clap. calm down lol
"TKY" is 2ndfav tho i kinda wish the bass were more established (longer tail)
also: "Reverse". hits good
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306/ VA - IT'S ALL OR MUFFIN!!!11! XD SQUEE!11!! (2023)
whoops i missed this
anyway, my favs:
"RIPJMAN"
i emember :')
"Shattered Splinters of Memries Past"
kind of a mess but a nice one
"WHERE'S MY MAIL"
much love for fooz's dist beat sensibilities
"WiERDO RAVE ViRUS!!"
yeah!!!!
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307/ MPU420 - BPM1 (2023)
i was excitedly bracing for some lush bocscapes but got some banger analogue synthjams instead.
apparently mpu420 != mpu101. lol. anyway.
extremely solid beats if you like your circuitry.
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308/ Xilent - Your System Remix EP (2016)
another older 4track wob EP that's exactly glass half full.
the two tracks i dig:
"Next Time (Far Too Loud Remix)" this is gross. i love it.
"Reborn VIP" im a sucker for loud midtempo. this hits right.
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309/ VA - Chronicles of Time (2016)
huge bag. im just gonna list my top 3:
"Green Memories" man that's a good jazzyprog rendition. lush acc.
"Where The Monsters Hide" a really nice take on an understated track!
"The Brink" beautiful rendition of a beautiful tune
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310/ (music compo from qbparty 2023)
'salrite.
gotta say that "Hungary" is great tho. deserved winner.
it's kinda cheesed as a mod file but the result bangs so hey ok
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311/ litmus* - ルミちゃんなでなで (2023)
fun dance candy selection.
intro track: man i could go without the vocals but. i love those wobs. it'd be an EASY highlight if not for that :|
"Lonely Dog" second fav, also by a wide margin.
"Nostalgia 13" is funny bc accurate title lol
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312/ Captive Portal - Toy Sounds Vol. 2 (2023)
its alright. it doesn't really capture me specifically, but it's hard to not admire the hand crafted feel within.
"Can't Read Cursive" is the highlight for me. its a clubby texture but filtered through… something, lol.
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313/ (all music entries from Nova 2023)
i do appreciate some of the oddities in here, but not much is rly speaking to me tbh…
except "super waterworld". its 2 cute. it won my heart.
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314/ (all music entries from Black Valley 2023)
p nice selection!
"Eternal Sunspots Of The Childlike Mind" shouldve nabbed 1st in streaming imo!
same for "Her name was Holly Schiiet" in chip! delicious rez! in fact i think thats my fav entry of all of the tunes
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315/ (all music entries from Evoke 2023)
a so-so collection to my taste.
but then "Outsider charge" feels modular in a way that kinda vibes with me?? lol idk
"Stratospheric" stands out as my fav from this selection
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316/ (all music entries from Xenium 2023)
all over the place etc
"sparkling pantograp" has a fun crinkly laser sound i cant help but admire
the entire exemzk compo is shockingly good!!!
less impressed with the streamed compo but "Sliced Thoughts" do slap.
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Whenever Neptune reaches its closest point in the sky to Earth, its portrait is taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and other ground-based observatories. Watching the planet from 1994 to 2020, astronomers have made puzzling discovery. The clouds in Neptune’s atmosphere appear to be to be linked to the solar cycle and not the planet’s cycle of seasons. The global cloud cover seems to come and go in a cycle that apparently syncs up with the Sun’s 11-year cycle, as it shifts from solar maximum to solar minimum or vice versa. This is surprising since Neptune is so far from the Sun and receives about 0.1% of Earth’s sunlight. This discovery is based on three decades of Neptune observations captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and the Lick Observatory in California. “These remarkable data give us the strongest evidence yet that Neptune’s cloud cover correlates with the Sun’s cycle,” said Imke de Pater, emeritus professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study, in a NASA press release. “Our findings support the theory that the Sun’s UV rays, when strong enough, may be triggering a photochemical reaction that produces Neptune’s clouds.” Each of Neptune’s four seasons last approximately 40 years during the planet’s 165-year orbit around the Sun. Currently, the cloud coverage on Neptune is extremely low, while just five years ago there was an abundance of clouds. The astronomers making the observations noted that the abundance of clouds normally seen at the icy giant’s mid-latitudes started to fade in 2019. “I was surprised by how quickly clouds disappeared on Neptune,” de Pater said. “We essentially saw cloud activity drop within a few months.” “Even now, four years later, the most recent images we took this past June still show the clouds haven’t returned to their former levels,” said Erandi Chavez, a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard-Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the study when she was an undergraduate astronomy student at UC Berkeley. “This is extremely exciting and unexpected, especially since Neptune’s previous period of low cloud activity was not nearly as dramatic and prolonged.” Chavez and her team analyzed Keck Observatory images taken from 2002 to 2022, Hubble Space Telescope archival observations beginning in 1994, and data from the Lick Observatory in California from 2018 to 2019. This sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images chronicles the waxing and waning of the amount of cloud cover on Neptune. Credits: NASA, ESA, LASP, Erandi Chavez (UC Berkeley), Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley). The nearly-30-year-long set of observations shows that the number of clouds grows increasingly following a peak in the solar cycle – where the Sun’s level of activity rhythmically rises and falls over an approximately 11-year period. This graph, above, shows images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Sun’s level of ultraviolet radiation is plotted in the vertical axis. The 11-year cycle is plotted along the bottom from 1994 to 2022. The Hubble observations clearly show a correlation between cloud abundance and solar peak of activity. During the periods of intense solar activity – which includes an increasing number of sunspots and more solar flares — more intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation floods the solar system. The team found a positive correlation between the number of clouds and the ice giant’s brightness from the sunlight reflecting off it. In their paper, published in Icarus, the team proposed that the chemical changes are caused by photochemistry which happens high in Neptune’s upper atmosphere. “The clear positive correlation we find between cloud activity and Solar Lyman-Alpha irradiance lends support to the theory that the periodicity in Neptune’s cloud activity results from photochemical cloud/haze production triggered by Solar ultraviolet emissions,” the team wrote. There appears to be a two-year delay in when clouds increase as the photochemistry takes time to form clouds. But there are still open questions on these observations. For example, while an increase in UV sunlight could produce more clouds and haze, it could also darken them, thereby reducing Neptune’s overall brightness. There are also other storms on Neptune rising up from the deep atmosphere that could affect the cloud cover, but are not related to photochemically produced clouds. This may complicate correlation studies with the solar cycle. The team said they will continue to track Neptune’s cloud activity to see how long the current near-absence of clouds will last. They have taken advantage of the James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of the planet, but are still analyzing the JWST data. “We have seen more clouds in the most recent Keck images that were taken during the same time NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed the planet; these clouds were in particular seen at northern latitudes and at high altitudes, as expected from the observed increase in the solar UV flux over the past approximately 2 years,” said de Pater. The post Neptune's Cloud Cover is Linked to the Solar Cycle appeared first on Universe Today.
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