annoyingbasementphantom

[annoyingbasementphantom]

Sketches 🕊️ °˖➴

[annoyingbasementphantom]

You will make mistakes, you will act irrationally. You will commit some wrongs that cannot be fully righted. People will dislike you and misunderstand you for all sorts of reasons. None of these things make you a bad person. All you can do is try your best to be kind, to learn and grow.

[annoyingbasementphantom]

[annoyingbasementphantom]

This is my favorite line from breaker whiskey

[annoyingbasementphantom]

april in northern california, 2024

[annoyingbasementphantom]

she looks very butch

[annoyingbasementphantom]

I guess Cesar doesn’t like geology…

[annoyingbasementphantom]

I set the picture of the "going on my stupid daily walk for my stupid mental health" cat as my phone lock screen to remind me to go on my stupid daily walks for my stupid mental health

#let's hope it works

[annoyingbasementphantom]

[annoyingbasementphantom]

link to pdf 

[annoyingbasementphantom]

when you're 32 you will meet someone who will change your life forever

Easy prediction, everyone I meet changes my life every day

[annoyingbasementphantom]

🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓

Spring is gonna be here soon! Perfect time to adopt one of my plushie sons.

Get the plush here!

Check out Crow Time here!

(Sadly, he doesn't come with the lil cape...someone gave me that for him. I do want to make little crow capes for the store one day tho!)

[annoyingbasementphantom]

Arboreal Salamander (Aneides lugubris) bite a finger!!!, family Plethodontidae, found in California and Baja California

Arboreal, these salamanders have prehensile tails, and will use their limbs to glide or "parachute" from trees, if they need to.

They can deliver a nasty bite.

photographs by Val Johnson

[annoyingbasementphantom]

[annoyingbasementphantom]

[annoyingbasementphantom]

"How to step out of the picture" a new Secret Knots comic! I hope you like it. As usual, this webcomic is made possible by the support of kind Patreon followers. Check out the different tiers (there's even a free one!) for extra content, sketches and more.

[annoyingbasementphantom]

on worldbuilding, and what people think is going on

there is one facet of fantasy worldbuilding that is, to me, the most interesting and essential but i don't see it come up in worldbuilding guides or writing prompts or anything, and that is the question of:

what do the inhabitants of your world believe about how the world works, and how are they wrong? a lot of fantasy media will set up their cosmology, gods, magic systems, planar systems, concepts of the afterlife, &c., and proceed as though the inhabitants of the world know and understand them.

from someone whose entire academic career is focused on studying human culture in various regions and time periods, with a focus on belief systems (religion, occultism, mythology, folklore): that sort of worldbuilding is unrealistic and missing out on so much fun.

people are always seeking new understanding about how the world works, and they are mostly wrong. how many models of the solar system were proposed before we reached our current one? look at the long, turbulent history of medicine and our various bizarre models for understanding the human body and how to fix it. so many religions and occult/magical traditions arise from people disagreeing with or adapting various models of the world based on new ideas, methods, technologies. many of them are wrong, but all of them are interesting and reflect a lot about the culture, beliefs, values, and fears of the people creating/practising them.

there is so much more to the story of what people believe about the world than just what is true.

to be clear: i think it's fine and important for the author to have a coherent explanation for where magic comes from or who the gods are, so they can maintain consistency in their story. but they should also be asking what people in the world (especially different people, in different regions/nations and different times) think is happening when they do magic, or say a prayer, or practise medicine, or grieve their dead. it is a rich vein for conflict between individuals and nations alike when two models of the world disagree. it is fascinating how different magic systems might develop according to different underlying beliefs.

personally, i think it is the most fun to spawn many diverse models of the world, but give none of them the 'right' answer.

(bonus points if you also have a thriving academic system in the world with its own theory, research, and discourse between factions! as an academic, it is very fun to imagine fictional academic debate over the topics i'm worldbuilding. sometimes i will be working out details for some underlying mechanic of the world and start imagining the papers being written by scholars researching it)

#yeah good point