Science-Fiction and Imaginary "Real" Things

A project that I've been slowly and casually working on over the last decade almost a science-fiction setting for a tabletop role-playing game - like Dungeons & Dragons or Shadowrun.  I wasn't really aware of the distinction between Science-Fiction and Science-Fantasy, or perhaps more accurately I wasn't familiar with the term Science-Fantasy.  I bring this up because it has been a big part of trying to create the setting of the Visceroth Cluster, a group of star systems that are near each other, at least in astronomical terms.

My main concern for FTL(faster-than-light) travel at first was simply a name that sounds... like it might do that?  I don't believe I had seen Cowboy Bebop by the time I had started to imagine them, but upon seeing its solution to interstellar travel with hubs/gates - wait no I'm pretty sure I'd played Mass Effect by the time I started this and they are also akin to the Relays, at least to say they are large structures which are necessary to travel great distances - because science and it seems like it would take a LOT of energy to do.  So I came up with Warpshot Hubs, and the most basic mechanic of them as a gate to pass through into a special travel state - a ring to fly into that is all warpy in the middle.

I've recently been revisiting the project, and besides work on a story for some players I've also recently been thinking about some of the brief impulses that led to my choice in the name Warpshot, one of which was ideas about "propulsion" through warping space-time more than something like super-powered engines.  I know it isn't a new concept again, and space-time on a theoretical and mathematical level is crazy and I'm not gona say I know a ton about.  Oof, all in all I just keep slowing this down to make clear I'm gonna do some fake science for this, and here let me give it a try then-

Instead of moving the object, the idea is to move the space-time that it occupies, perhaps a small buffer around it I would assume and maybe hope.  So my stretch takes us from gravity is the warping of space-time, gravitational waves are a thing(that I know little about), waves - sound has waves and pressure, and things that use lift are "moved" by differences in pressure and the reactions caused by that.  So, the large structure is used to generate not only a very specific gravitational wave, but whatever process essentially encapsulates the ship in its own space-time. 

Observations of a recent neutron star collision also came with gravitational waves, and if the gravitational waves were indeed from the same event, it suggests to me that the effect of the waves transfers at the speed of light, since they seemed to be observed together.  I suppose it still isn't perfect and I don't think I should expect it to be, but I will keep developing it.  But there you go - a hopefully science-fiction lore for my interstellar travel in a game setting.

Sorry for reading through that mess, but if you did, thanks!  You're super, and maybe you're interested in sci-fi and rpg's, if so look forward to eventually see more of the Visceroth Cluster, as it gets another pass of polish and development.

-Alturiigo

Below is something I did to create a list of part names of what might break, and maybe how, why, and what the effects might be - but mostly just so I had something engine-soundy to tell them has broken and they now need to repair.  This is unrelated to warpshot stuff, but I had it accessible and I like how it came out for how simply I approached the concept.

Personal Icons and Celebrities

There's likely a few figures who have been highly influential or important to you throughout your life, I can certainly say that there has been for me.  It's something I find interesting to think about, and lately I've been thinking about not only some of the people I'd love to meet, but thoughts on why and how it came to be those people.

Growing up I watched a lot of Bill Nye the Science Guy and several shows with the Kratt Brothers, who had educational shows about wildlife, so I started watching informational and educational entertainment from a young age.  Bill Nye has been someone that for most of my life I've described as someone I would love the opportunity to meet.  Broadcast television wasn't a strong source of entertainment for me, and in 2006, a major change started with YouTube.

I mostly ignored the phenomenon of YouTube for quite some time, mostly reducing it to stupid videos of little importance - which was more of a short-sighted comment on its use, rather than the tool itself.  Some six or seven years later, I found myself visiting YouTube more frequently, as I had discovered a myriad of content that was not only informative, but educational as well.  This EduTube, the "educational" side of YouTube, contains most of the other people I find a personal desire to meet.

Why is that though?  Like, why do I want to meet them?  I think there's a lot of things at work, one of which I think ties to the idea that they are of personal influence to me, possibly being a desire to have a direct personal experience/interaction with said influence.  Shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy helped my love of learning as a youth grow, and shows like It's Okay to Be Smart and SciShow help me stay curious when my daily life has shifted away from schooling and education.  I've thanked my parents and friends for the work they did in helping me become the person I am, and I'd love the opportunity to personally thank some of the other people who helped shape that journey.

I believe another reason I'd like to meet these people is that I imagine they would be fascinating to talk to, and while I can't say there's any reason to think they'd enjoy meeting me, I'd like to imagine that the conversations would be amazing.  I don't think I'm alone in a desire to meet personal icons or celebrities, and each person's list ends up being not only different, but an interesting look into who they are and what's important to them.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

My List of People I'd Like to Meet:
John Green
Bill Nye
Mike Rugnetta
Joe Hanson
The VSauce Squad(Micheal Stevens, Kevin Lieber, and Jake Roper)
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Lindsey Doe

Have your own list? Leave it in the comments!

On Friendship and Responsibility

I'll start by trying to frame what I mean by friendship and responsibility - the responsibility one may or may not feel towards keeping or maintaining a standing relationship.  I've been thinking about this a fair bit since the 2016 US Presidential Campaign, in relation to posts about whether politics is something to lose a friendship over.  A note here, I'm not interested in swaying you either way on this subject, as all things in life, you feel how you feel and it is simply up to you to understand your own feelings and your relationship to said feelings.

I've met a lot of people that I feel as though I like, or at least want to like as people, and often enough I will encounter something that's rather important to me which they have a conflicting opinion upon.  It happens enough that sometimes I feel conflicted about how I should "see" them.  I may generally get along with someone and eventually find myself in a conversation wherein defending my beliefs starts to encroach attacking their beliefs.  I think this is an important point for me to look at, because it appears a bit like a threshold or clashing point between the importance/responsibility of friendship, against the importance/responsibility of my own beliefs.

I am also thus admittedly highly privileged, because I am much more able to pick and choose what battles I fight - generally nothing about who I am challenges the status quo as a straight white male.  I'd like to have a separate more complex discussion of privilege and expectation, but I felt it was important and pertinent to mention it here.

Back to the subject at hand, I will take the time now to say that I believe you do not inherently have a responsibility to any friendship or relationship, because you need to evaluate said relationship.  You have a responsibility to your own life, and the relationships you keep - or don't - fall into that responsibility.  If you find yourself at a point with a friend where you don't want to think of them as a friend - listen to that, find out why, and decide if you truly want that relationship to be a part of your life.  Ultimately, you are responsible for your own actions and choices, and the relationships you keep are one aspect of that responsibility.

Always know though, being able to pick your battles is a privilege, one of the greatest privileges to have.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Being Wrong

I've been wrong a lot in my life, and I've certainly made more than my fair share of mistakes(that's an interesting concept, a fair share of mistakes).  I was always credited with being smart, and I know that for a lot of growing up I liked to know the right answer, and show that I knew it.  One of the effects of this was an eagerness to let others know when they were wrong, and another effect was a reluctance to accept when I was wrong.

I always seemed to let myself feel attacked by the idea of not being right, whether it was right about some data/information/knowledge, or when my understanding of something was challenged, even when I was honestly in the wrong.  I don't think it's hard to understand the urge to defend or excuse oneself, I have that same feeling.
I've hurt people unintentionally before, and because I wasn't trying to, my reflex is to excuse or defend myself.  While defending yourself when attacked is a natural instinct, that doesn't always make it "right" or "correct" - I put those in quotes because they are admittedly subjective - and that's what I'd like to actually talk about, not defending yourself or making excuses.

I know it sounds holier-than-thou, which is a poor way to convey almost anything meaningful in my opinion, but in the same way I feel like on principle it's more like the opposite.  I'm not saying that I always am right or that I do the right thing, far from it - but I've grown a lot more willing to try to understand the ways in which I am incorrect, or how I might be misunderstanding something.  I want to think of myself as someone who sees the world complexly, and that makes it hard to accept the idea that maybe, I'm as narrow-minded and as much of a bigot as anyone else.

Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, but I'm always trying to be better, and I know that slowly learning to accept when I wrong without simply excusing myself has helped me to learn a lot.  One of the biggest things that's helped though is a lot of friends whom I cared deeply about, taking the time to help me understand things from beyond my limited perspective and experiences.  Because I trusted them and their opinion, it helped me to accept it a little easier.

It's hard to accept when I'm not the person I'd like to think I am, but it is also the only way I can ever hope become that person.  The more that I've accepted I could be wrong, the closer I can bring myself to being right.  Well, that's the idea anyway.

Trot On Everypony
Alturiigo

What's The Point? Thoughts On Life

What is the meaning of life? - A question that often feels high-minded and silly to discuss, I've always found it an interesting question.  What IS the meaning of life?  Firstly, I think the question itself is flawed and vague - but I still like to explore it.  There are myriad of perspectives or scopes to think about, and since everyone has their own concept of what their life is and means, there is a different answer for every person.  That being said, here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

     I like to think about it in different ways, one of which is to think about it as a goal - what is the goal of life?  I suppose from there it goes into personal goals, or perhaps goal of existence - as in what are we meant to accomplish?  This one feels super tricky, probably because it's easy to see that there is no one clear-cut answer.  One issue with this is agency - does the ability to do something confer right or responsibility?                 Sometimes I think about how much humanity seems to shape its environment to fit its needs, rather than working harder to find a balance or shape itself differently in many cases.  I'm not sure I could argue that humans should be living as hunter-gatherers in small communities either though, and the things we have accomplished as a species/civilization is astounding- in both a positive and negative way. It seems pretty safe to argue that humanity has made a lot of progress in our time on Earth, but that can really depend on what you call progress.  I find this highlighted when thinking about genetic engineering, which is not too far in the future.  There are many things that can be improved or "fixed" by our standards, but should that necessarily be called progress?  When we discovered the ability to use atomic reactions to create incredible energy and then made a bomb with it, was that progress?  Due to the nature of "progress" as a concept, it really boils down to the person using it to describe something.  Maybe thinking about the goal of human life is a bad thought-cloud, so let's hop to the personal goals cloud.
     What is the goal of life?  Is it a goal like a target or finish line, or maybe more like a checklist?  Is it in the journey, or the destination?  What would you call success? Power? Wealth? Happiness?  Is life a means, or an end?  I think these are important questions to consider, and even these small questions are open to a lot of personal interpretation.  For me, I find myself most drawn to the feeling that it is more in the journey, that finding what makes you happy is one of the most important things, and being true to yourself.  I also think that the journey is one of self-discovery, and the being true to yourself involves a lot of trying to figure out how you really feel, and being honest with yourself.  I have all these thoughts about the person I am and want to be, I think it's best to sum up by saying - I hope that I can be the person I want to be, and that that person is a good human being, whatever that truly means.
     One last way I'd like to talk about the idea of life and existence having a meaning, and that's in thoughts about consciousness and self.  Something that's always been interesting to me is the idea of quantifying consciousness, a quest for something tangible and scientific which we can call our "self" as individuals.  When you think about anatomy and physiology, it kind of boils down into electrical signals and a big fleshy machine partially ran by bacteria and a big ol' mess of neurons, so what in, about or around that is us.  I mean, I know that I am me, at least, I'm pretty sure, and you probably feel rather confident that you are you.  Our ideas about self have grown past just your irl self I think, and I don't think that it's a trend new to humanity.
   In our quest to explain how we are different than animals, which we are by general definition, I think we start to see some of our ideas about consciousness and identity.  As a species, we are pretty good at identifying and recognizing things, looking for patterns and structure, and determining differences.  Our search to better understand what makes us different than "animals" is an expression of that trait in humans, at least in my opinion.  Our ability to recognize faces has only recently been able to be matched by computers, and mostly in specific conditions, and the ability to recognize that the image in a mirror is your own is actually something much more human.  We hear and see things and are able to recognize things, like the sound of a band or style of a painter.  These are patterns that we create though, but we do try to find patterns in life through science as well.  As far as a point, I'm not sure there is one - except the one that we create.  We've created the patterns that we see in the world in our quest to understand and explain life, and so the only point is to continue to create patterns and structures to understand it.

It's not a question with a singular answer, or really any "answer", because the question of "What is the meaning of life?" is flawed, both by being too vague and hinging upon a highly subjective concept.  The best that I can boil down my thoughts on that matter would be to say - The meaning of life is to be experienced, to feel, to try, to fail, to succeed - Life is to be lived, it is a means to its own end, a journey which is the destination, and endless stream of metaphors and comparisons....

I'll just let myself out, til next time-
Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Thoughts On Writing, Stories, and Echoes(My Story)

I was just sitting and thinking about Echoes, and I guess you could say writing the story a bit, but how is what I'd actually like to talk about.

I've had the story of Kelly and Gus bouncing in my head for a little over eight years, and it has slowly grown and evolved over time, with more of the story being created piece by piece.  I have this... vision perhaps, of the whole story in a way, ideas about the overall experience and events that make up Echoes.  That being said, it can be difficult to look in closer at individual parts in some ways, trying to imagine given moments and more precisely how they transpire.  I feel inclined to describe it as trying to experience the story, to be witness to the story as it floats in my imagination.

That's not to say I don't feel the direct and conscious writing of the characters, but it almost feels a little apart of myself, as though the characters and story exists without me.  I'm aware that it only exists in my imagination, but in that way, I feel like it exists through me.  I might have ideas about how the story goes and who the characters are, but trying to write and imagine each piece of the story feels a lot like more like discovery than creation.

This is also true in a lot of the other things I create, most so with the various worlds and settings I've dreamed up over the years.  I might have some ideas about the world- its name, some of the terrain, maybe a few rules or details that help shape the world as guidelines - but I have to explore the world more closely to find the details that make it whole.

I'm sure the experience of writing and imagination is different for everyone in their own way, I just wanted to share some thoughts on what it feels like to me.  Thanks for letting me share! :)

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Trying: Practice and Progress

One of the biggest privileges I've had is the fact that no one besides myself has really ever told me I couldn't do something.  That being said, I'm aware that there are many things which I will never be able to do.  There are even more things that I am capable of doing, which I simply tell myself that I can't.

Many things which I would like to do often fall into this category, much like telling the story of the Echoes saga, or in fact, a complex drawing even.  I've even been bold enough to attempt some, which have at least been lessons in ways I could do better.  I know my creations will never be "perfect", but I've also learned that what I'm capable of is not only more than I give myself credit for, but also, a more valid target than "perfect".

This is a picture I'm working on, and far exceeds what I thought I could do, or was even going to do.

Whether I can finish the picture and achieve my goal is yet to be seen, but even at this point I have already surpassed what I thought I could put together in a drawing.

Trot On Everypony, 

Alturiigo

On A New Year And Time

As we roll into the year 12017 of the Holocene Era(Age?), I thought a little about some of the humbug thoughts such as "time is just a construct", "units of time are arbitrary", and in certain arguments those may have their merits, though the biggest question I can't answer is how to pick a certain day.  Here are some of my thoughts, mostly about "re-validating" the concept of time.  I hope this makes sense.

While "units" of time could be arbitrary, so could any construct of communication.  The goal is common understanding.  That's cool and good about it, but something else we use for time(roughly now) is how our star system operates.  Before we were using atomic vibrations and a strongly defined "second", days were rotations of the Earth, not 24 hours, months are an expression of the concept of using moons to track the passage of time, and years were markers of the seasonal cycles.  So cool, but what is time anyways?

This is a great reference to think about time - a short series of videos about Time and Entropy from MinutePhysics on YouTube.

So time is something we experience, even if defining that can be a difficult task, which is not my ultimate goal here.  I'd rather try to argue that it's almost just as important that it is so hard to define.  I cannot imagine what time feels like to a dog, or to a house fly, nor can I currently(or possibly ever) travel "backwards" through time.  The future is a mystery, and even the notion of what I call the present is delayed by my ability to experience it.  Despite all of this, humanity all seems to feel time and its pull through varied expressions, and we are able to talk about something so integral to our idea of existence yet difficult to define.

The New Year is a widely shared concept, somewhere between a solar cycle and 365 days(24 hours,etc).  Due to the fore mentioned utility of common understanding, the idea that the Year is 2017 is almost a shared human concept.  We've done a lot and came a long ways, and our ideas of time and its keeping predate our "Year 0", and while I understand how and why that came to be, I also feel as though we sell ourselves short. As something that we use to help coordinate efforts and lives around the globes, the numerical value of our current Year is important, because it is almost "universally" recognized.  What if the number we used was a closer representation of the time humans have spent coordinating, cooperating?

We've been working together in some fashion as a species for around 12000 years, which also makes for an easy calendar change to 12017, as proposed by the YouTube Channel Kurzgesagt.  While "time" may be something that is hard to define, it is also something that we share as humans in a "shared perception" of it.  I suppose in some ways this may be an argument of faith- that the New Year is a celebration in our belief of time as a shared construct, driving us forward on a road it paves itself.

Holy hay it's getting rather late and I'm tired, but I hope you all have a bright solar cycle ahead of you in the 12017th year of Humanity.
Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Personal Investment

My last post talked about what I'd like to do, creating stuff, and as I sit here thinking about stuff I'd like to do and working things out in my head, I'm also thinking about the things I could and should be doing as well.  On some level I can force myself to work, but on another, I can't exactly force my creative intent to unfurl before and within me.  My muse can be elusive, or perhaps hard to communicate with at times.

Something I've been rather conscious of lately is spending time drawing/creating.  I try to spend at least a few hours every evening drawing(usually), or at least working on something or toward something.  Even if all I end up doing is a sketch, at least I'm working towards something, practicing, doing.  Sometimes I can be a little afraid to even start because I know that the final result will fall short of what I hoped it could be.  It's not that my goals themselves are entirely unrealistic, but I often lack certain tools and skills which make them realistically attainable.

Just because I can't make something that's perfect, doesn't mean I shouldn't try.

This is somewhat important for me to remind myself of, because it's only through all of my attempts and "failures" that I've come to understand how I can improve and practice doing so.  I'm not an amazing artist, despite the fact that I've had a lot of time to develop, but it's also been a slow and half-hearted development for the majority of that time, because I was A) afraid to even try, and B) couldn't believe that I could truly reach a point that I wasn't pathetic.  This second part makes both parts into a self-fulfilling belief, or however you want to think of that concept.

I suppose I can't feel too bad about not doing a ton of "work" on Christmas, and I also did draw stuff for the last week or so pretty consistently, perhaps I'm being somewhat hard on myself.  I've already learned that if I make too many excuses for myself then I won't accomplish what I hope to, but I've also learned that setting realistic goals and respecting yourself and your own needs are important things to keep in mind.

So as my holiday message and a thought as we close out a calendar year- I encourage you to respect yourself and your needs, discover the person you want to be, and make realistic goals which guide you to that person.

Happy Holidays Everypony,
Alturiigo

On My Personal "Dream Job"

From videos to blog posts, all derived from late nights and endless thought, I've shared about my thoughts on what I want to do, who I am, what I want to be.  I've thought about "where I see myself in x years", and asked myself, "What do I do when I just do what I want?", and that's helped me look at it in a several different ways.  I'd like to share a little now that I've had more time to shape the understandings about myself that I have gained.

Making a living is kind of important, and while arguably there are many ways to "live", participating in general society pretty much requires finances.  That's more or less the extent of my drive for personal wealth- I mean sure having plenty of money would be great, but I have no desire to collect or hoard it.  I care about trying to be a good person, and for me, caring about how I work and what it says about me is a part of that, more so than how much money I make.

I love to create, to draw, to produce, to share.  I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff, and through talking to others I've learned that I really enjoy helping others to reach for their own goals and see both the world and themselves a little more complexly.  Through creating, drawing, and sharing, I've found ways that I can try to encourage others while doing something that I love myself.  There's a living to be made for this, though it's not exactly easy and can require some luck for the circumstances to create a financial income.  This would be my dream though.

I would love to be able to spend my time producing content, so that I may not only share the things that I love and the things that I've learned, but to also create a greater means to be able to encourage others to be the best versions of themselves that they can.  I'd need to make a living through this to be able to give it all of my attention, but past the cost of living and career expense(art supplies, etc), I feel confident in saying that I would like to redirect gains towards helping others.  There are countless charities and programs that could use support all over the world, and even in my own small way, I would indeed like to help the idea of the world.

It's still hard to try to say this and take myself fully seriously, because while I respect artists, vloggers, bloggers, journalists- I also ended up feeling like those weren't "realistic jobs" when I was trying to originally think about my life goals.  Here we are now, many years later, and it's only that much harder to take myself seriously, despite all the hard work I've put towards this "dream job" - one that is not so far in the dream realm any more.  In some ways, this post is also about trying to take myself seriously by pronouncing it- by giving it shape and direction as well as breaking it from being limited to an internalized thought.

It's frightening to face the possibility of reaching for your dream, and I can only imagine it would be much much more so for people whose very identity and existence goes against "expectation" and acceptance.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

The Beautiful Imagining of Life

The beauty of life is in the horizon, where the journey becomes the destination, at the end of a rainbow, feeling without knowing, happy tears, dreams of tomorrow- the never-ending realization that the only thing we have is now, and it’s already gone; a reality we cannot touch, but only imagine.



Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Pledges and Resolutions

I was in 4-H for a little over 8 years, and I've recited the pledge quite a few times. I don't know that I would say that I didn't believe what I was saying, but recently it really kinda struck me.

I pledge my Head to clearer thinking,

My Heart to greater loyalty,

My Hands to larger service,

And my Health to greater living,

For my club, my community, my country, and my world.

As far as pledges go, I feel like this one keeps it simple and positive. I like that. I was making a pledge to think critically, be true to what I believe in, try to help others, and use my strengths and self to help those around me. Sure that's a re-wording, but that's also how I felt and feel about it, and those are ideas that are important to me.

I bring this up because the approach of the year's end is often a time to think about the next year, the future. Many people make resolutions for the new year, quite similar in concept to a pledge. It had actually been a few days prior to this thought on pledges that I was thinking about making some pledges for the upcoming year. Here's what I have on my white-board right now-

• Take Myself Seriously
• Deadlines, Responsibilities, Agency/Capabilities
• Spend My Attention Productively
• Focus On Things Important To Me
• Be Aware Of How I Spend My Time
• Actively Encourage Others
• Help Others See Themselves Positively
• Encourage Positive Perspectives
• Be The Version Of Myself I'd Like To Be
• Create, Post, Draw, Create, Create
• Share More, Share Better
• SPEAK UP!

I can at least try to be the best version of myself that I can be, for myself, and most of these things really do fall under that. Taking myself seriously has a lot to do with that, being able to believe that I can be the person I want to be. Actually that's really important I think.

Remember this: Take yourself seriously, believe that you can be the person you want to be.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

This and That

A variety of blog/vlog post titles, including many of my own, use This and That; I'd like to share some of my thoughts about that briefly.

Context is something that is unavoidable, and is also unique to every individual, at every given moment.  You are continually gaining more context for things, and also shaping your existing context.  Without being able to assume a universal context for something, it can be difficult to talk accurately about it.  This is where having a comparison or lens to approach the subject becomes a little more useful.

Using another something to compare or contrast with your original subject provides a few parameters to "frame" your subject, and hopefully give direction and "effective limitations" to the context of the argument or discussion.  The world is complex, and I feel as though providing a boundary for the conversation helps enforce the idea that there is much more that can be discussed and considered valid- in other words, by saying "let's look at it this way", it arguably supports a notion that you could "look at it that way".
Note: This touches on an invalid argument that "good begets evil, right demands wrong", which does not accurately convey the complexity of human experience, our reality.

I think I have to cut that train short, because it becomes a difficult argument about open-discussion/free-speech against "empowerment by acknowledgement" and "agency by validity", which are difficult concepts but not wholly wrong by any means.  The world is complex, and any discussion can be difficult to navigate, and I think that brings me back nicely to the topic of the post, the usefulness of parameters for discussion.

Having a lens or frame for a discussion allows you to discuss something complex in a simpler way, but by nature presents itself as a limited view of the subject(s).  This is also useful because it takes a large, complex machine of context and gives you a potential sight into how that machine might work.  We do this all the time as we learn about the world around us - we use what we know to figure out what we don't, we compare, contrast, we observe and we create.

Just remember, you can never see the whole of something through any one lens.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Humanity and Public Welfare

Note- I use quotes around words and phrases to distance them, I don't seek to be as literal as possible, but rather evoke the sense of the word.

First off, this is not necessarily a thorough examination of broad "political" concepts, but intended to be a thought-share about the relationship these have through intent, aside from additional effects and ideas they carry.  This may be broad at times(as intended) and is obviously based on my understanding and experience, so with that in mind, let's go forth.

Among all the other things, I believe there is a common intent that helped shape the concepts of Socialism and Communism, and that's what I'd like to explore.  Here's the thought - the intent to encourage a society in which the good of the whole is an acknowledged and supported concept.  One of the biggest aspects of both of these systems that is a symptom of this, is the attempts to redistribute wealth.  While Communism and Socialism are in many ways very different, they both include mechanics which effectively redistribute wealth in more... "authoritarian" ways, perhaps.

Here's where my thoughts continue; when discussing things that pertain to public welfare and social programs as aspects of "government", this tends to cause subjects of the conversation to become "Communist" or "Socialist".  When discussing the idea of the government taking a larger role in public healthcare, the conversation has a difficult time avoiding the label of Socialism, and this is not just limited to healthcare, but rather is limited to the aspect of "government".

I believe the idea of government came about to help enforce and shape societal tendencies and "rules", in some occasions with the hopes of the broadest sense of good.  Socialism and Communism approach their intent by using government as a means to shape and enforce, through laws and/or taxes, a society which focuses on the "good of the whole" - which I won't get into but has a ton of ugly arguments as a concept, so it's not a blanket "good" argument.  Again, there are many many differences here between Socialism and Communism, but that is it's own discussion as well.  There are many ideas of what is "good" and "right", and while government is arguably a symptom of "cooperative intelligence", I feel it fails to address range effectively by focusing more heavily on average, and thereby fails to accurately address the needs and will of the governed.

What gets lost is the intent, the wish, the hopefulness - where it came from, a positive place, even if it's "naive".  If our culture as humans was to think about humans and humanity as a whole, and to invest in our species as a whole, these ideas would seem arguably unnecessary.  We are becoming more and more of a global entity as humans, and our image of humanity and identity as a species is becoming more important now than ever.  Our success as humans may very well rest on our ability to work together as a species and overcome our greatest obstacle - ourselves.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Crowd-Sourcing Public Welfare

I have plenty of ideas, and some of them I like to think aren't so terrible.  One such idea was the concept of an entity which helps to transparently partner businesses with charities and community prgrams.  This thought occurred to me while thinking about a business called BoxLunch, which contributes based on sales, with "Every $10 you spend BoxLunch will help provide a meal to a person in need" according to the website.

I thought this was pretty cool, because while other companies offer opportunities to donate extra money with your sale or with specific purchases, this integrates the charitable idea into the business model.  This is something that is admirable to me, I like to think of it like crowd-sourcing public welfare.  And I don't mean that so much in the sense of actually funding a welfare program,but rather that as a people, we are looking out for people.

It's good and well for companies to do this, but something that can be difficult is determining whether or not the entity is actually contributing, as well as whether the charity is legitimate or not.  While I would love to see the majority of businesses trying to participate in community programs(as many do), it's something that can be easy to claim and harder to prove false.

With Kickstarter and Patreon, I think about the fact that increased accessibility and presence has helped entities with smaller presences find their smaller audiences.  This is a big part of our world today, the ability for the Internet to give a larger potential presence and allow greater outreach and connection.  Google One was an app that partnered with charities, checked said charities, and helped users give small amounts and encourage other users to give.  I mention these things, Kickstarter, Patreon, and Google One, because to me they are a demonstration of the ability of crowds, not entities, to achieve large goals.  One of the ways I believe they help do that is by the ease of being able to contribute, compared to without these systems.

This idea then, would be like crowd-sourcing charity, but from businesses.  It could possibly be as simple as the business signing up to participate and selecting a rate of participation, which would in turn earn them the status as a particpant in valid charity.  The transparency is the biggest concern I have, but I think there's a potential here.  It looks good for a business to give back to the community, and something like a simple logo or symbol can help them easily show that(imagine like a little blue + or heart they could put by their logo or something).  The task would be to help partner charities and businesses together, but to also help support that as a common practice.  How would we do that?

Our attention is one of the most valuable commodities as a crowd, and how we spend our time and money is incredibly important.  There's a (hopefully) growing movement to be more aware as consumers, and doing this is actually productive - corporations need your attention to thrive.  If an environment could be encouraged to exist in which consumers sought exclusively "giving" businesses, we could create a culture in which large sources of monetary flow helped to contribute to the well-being of the community which supports it.

I'm not going to say this is an easy thing to do, or that it would "solve" problems - rather I would like to propose the idea for conversation and direction, because I would like to understand how we can help create a culture in which the sum of money was for people, humanity.  I understand how corporations come to exist, and how competition works, but it's hard not to feel like the distribution of wealth has gotten a bit fucked.

I'd rather not argue about whose fault it is, but instead try to talk about ways we could maybe be better as people and work toward a world that's a little better, a little bit at a time.

Trot On Everypony,

Alturiigo

Edit:  Came across these tweets from a little over a year prior to posting this

Bec's Design Progression

So for this post, I'm gonna go over how Bec came to be the character she is now, and some of the choices for her character design.

One of my earlier drawings of Bec

I wanted to eventually introduce a secondary "main character" to the Echoes Saga, and after watching Samurai Champloo I took to liking a fiery spirit to counter Kelly's watery, fluid nature.  While she had originally started from a lot of ideas, the Bec she is now came after exploring my ideas about the character and how she fit into the story.

I wanted Bec to be a lot like Kelly as far as being an Archon goes, but was struggling with how I was going to express that.  While Kelly's expression is through art, I wasn't sure that I could make it work to have her "cast" through dance or song, which are two important things to Bec personally.  She doesn't express herself in her own music, but dance is something more expressive for her.  One of the first times Kelly and Bec really connect, it's after Kelly interrupts Bec, who had been thoughtlessly dancing while dealing with her emotions.

Bec tends to be withdrawn
and standoff-ish

Bec enters the story upon transferring to the same school as Kelly after the death of her own parents, being moved to stay with her aunt and uncle.  Bec's father produced music and she got her love of it from him, and while I hadn't thought about the professional career of her mother, that is where she inherited her love of dance.  They were financially sound, and Bec went to a private school when they were alive.  She resented the uniform, and often wore her favorite sweater over it.

Music, dance, and her old uniform are some of the things that Bec clings on to emotionally while trying to cope and continue after losing her parents.  She never had to think about how to dress for school before, she didn't wonder about if people would like her(she never cared, but still), she had a routine, a life.  While she wasn't a ball of sunshine before, she always did appreciate the life she had, and loved her parents very much.  That was all gone now.

Bec tends to be a little more toward the shy or distant side, but she is also a very passionate and excitable person.  The way she wears her hair was a

Bec channeling that fiery spirit

design choice I made early on to try to help convey her withdrawn nature.  While she may be shy in some ways, that is not to say that she's terribly concerned about what others think.  If she doesn't like you, she probably won't bother with you.  If you do something she doesn't like, she's likely to let you know, for better or worse.

As far as Bec's expression of spiritual power, I settled on the notion that she had a powerful fire spirit that had been bound within her(possibly a lineage trait), and she could channel it in varying degrees.  Bec hasn't been doing this since she was a child, and doesn't learn it about herself until after knowing Kelly for some time.  After an event where Bec is abducted by a bloodmancer, she is awakened to her own powers, and the spirit within her.  She sometimes struggles to control the spirit if she channels too much at once, and its fiery and consuming nature becomes harder for her to stop.

Because at some point, this is bound to happen in the story

And that's Bec for you.
Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Revisiting Old Pictures

I've been trying to do a lot more drawing lately, and have been successful.  I've also been looking at old stuff, and have gone back to them with a pen and a little more direction/intent.  Some I tried to rework the original, one I just redrew.  The first is a comparison of one of my first drawings to a more recent one.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Language and Communication

Something I found myself wondering the other night, was about how communication might have began.  The word language and the very idea of it tend to lead us to thoughts about words, grammar, various languages and word origins.  The idea of communication isn't limited to language, and language isn't even limited to the concept of spoken or written communication; think of body language as a concept.

We can easily lead ourselves into thinking about hieroglyphics as a written language, giving a "word value" to an image, especially because it makes it easier to approach the task.  This can be a limiting way of thinking about it though, because structures of written and spoken language are not inherently structures of picto-graphic writing.  As we use spoken and "written" language to convey ideas and concepts complexly, hieroglyphs are their own way of conveying ideas and concepts through structured imagery of sorts.   Our words, characters, glyphs, sounds- all are tools we use to let someone else know what we know, or what we think.  Language is a means to an end, the end being communicating.  This helped me be able to better explain and understand my... let's call it interest, in how the Internet has affected language.

There was a while were I was one of those that "resented to decay of language and social interaction" that the Internet seemed to encourage, with posts of terrible spelling and grammar, memes, posts about what you're doing(except that what you're doing is posting), it goes on.  I didn't stay off the Internet though, and found things that I appreciate about it, like being able to wish a friend across the world a happy birthday, whom you haven't seen in years or have phone access to.  Another thing I've come to appreciate is memes.

Yep. Memes.  Oh and gifs.  As humans have had more time to develop this new "social landscape", as I have previously called it, we've created a lot of new and different ways to communicate not only to each other, but to communicate ideas in whole new ways.  I sometimes get lost watching a gif cycle endlessly, and many can strongly convey a thought or feeling.  Sometimes there are words, and as most should know(this blog is on the Internet), memes are still gifs with words.  That's right, I called a picture a "still gif".  That's legit, right?

Memes and gifs go a long way in communication, which is interesting to me because I resented them at first.  "Oh look, yet another meme about an arrow to the knee."  It got old, then I got used to it, and now memes are kind of a thing that just is, an Internet thing.

For better or worse, the Internet has a global ramifications on human kind(and I'm aware most of the world doesn't have computers), and I feel it would be silly not to complexly think about the role the Internet is playing and will play in human social progression.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

p.s. here are some memes and I Tumblr shot I had lying around

Drawing Progression

So I've been realizing that I am starting to become capable of drawing larger, fuller pictures.  One of the reasons I usually just do a partial character drawing is because I struggle with a variety of drawing tasks, and have(in my opinion) always messed them up.  I took a couple pages of sketches that a friend asked me to work on for him, and I was actually rather impressed with my result, at least compared to what I had done so far.

Just recently I found a picture I had wanted to draw for him still in a rough-ish pencil state.  I went back at it and finished the picture as best I could, and am quite happy with it(the Sylveon gave me a hard time though)-

This made me want to keep going forward, and I decided I should attempt another large picture, to challenge myself to do what I used to think I couldn't.  I chose Suirlas for a character, and here's the picture in progress - 

I enjoy drawing, largely because I am always dreaming up stories and characters, and making worlds for them.  I'm getting much closer to being able to share my Imagi-verse, the multitude of ideas in my head.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Drawing Style... ?

As I take a brief break from a picture I'm working on, I'd like to share a little about how Drawing and I have gotten to know each other.

I never really thought of myself as a "creative type", though I guess I couldn't give a good answer as to why; I suppose I thought I was a nerd and could be nothing more?  Through middle-school(K - 8th grade) Art class wasn't really optional, and after that I took more science and computer classes for my electives.

I ended up playing Dungeons & Dragons(3.5), and began to draw my characters, try to at least.  Before that were some stick figures and eventually "block" figures of both little and great importance I suppose.  As I tried to draw my characters, I had to think about what they would wear, and started to draw a lot of clothing, taking an interest into fashion design.  I lost my pile of drawings over the years :(

I kept drawing, and somehow, things were looking more and more like actual things, even the things I wanted them to look like.  As I started putting pencil to paper more and more, my creative projects began to become real to me. Echoes was really early into this journey, and something that made me explore how I draw.  I picked up a book and worked on some stuff, like the image to the right of Bec.

I suppose in part I feel like I could never draw that well on a mass scale, nor for every aspect.  There's a little more to it though, because I had started to notice that no matter what I drew, it never looked right... well, it didn't look the exact same.  I still liked a lot of my simpler drawings, and I began to open up to myself about how I would draw.  There are three general styles I work with, one of which is pretty much one of my first styles, developed off the "block" characters I would draw.  Another is closer to a chibi style, with a large head and small body by proportions.  The last is one I've used for later Echoes stories, and am still working out.  Here are examples of the three - 

 Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo