spyglassrealms

Spyglass Realms

1984 posts

I Think The Thing That Bugs Me Most About The "earth Is A Deathworld" Genre As A Whole, From A Narrative

i think the thing that bugs me most about the "earth is a deathworld" genre as a whole, from a narrative structure sense, is that they almost always combine it with human exceptionalism. like humans are the dominant species on earth yes but that's because being a tool user is like going at evolution with console commands enabled.

even if all the aliens are super physically frail for whatever contrived reason, that's basically irrelevant to "your materials science must be this good to build spacecraft", and materials science trumps physicality for tool users.

aliens encountering earth for the first time wouldn't be like "whoa a planet of ubermenschen to save us from insert-evil-imperialist-species-here i'm glad someone found a way to make the noble savage narrative about white people" it would be "why are so many of their signals celebrating the eradication of another species shouldn't that be a traged-holy fuck I'm glad this variola thing is dead. what do you mean they sequenced its entire genome"

More Posts from Spyglassrealms

spyglassrealms

7 months ago

I got a physical trophy for this btw!!!

ALONE TOGETHER WON BEST ARTICLE AT THE WORLDBUILDING AWARDS!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED!!! I can now officially call myself an award-winning worldbuilder!!!

worldanvil.com

Alone Together

A short treatise on the bittersweet nature of first contact.

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win for me!!!

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spyglassrealms

8 months ago

The third Galilean moon Ganymede, seen as almost a full sunlit sphere from slightly below the equator of the moon. Ganymede is a slightly reddish brown moon, with lots of white pockmarks all over from craters. Most of this shot of Ganymede showcase large dark regions dominating the moon, which are older and less geologically active. Connecting the regions and dividing the darker regions in half are much lighter colored areas, which have more recently experienced geological activity. To the south near the pole is a large crater, whose white ejecta rays cover a significant portion of the southern hemisphere. To the north, the dominating dark region has several lighter colored lines going through it, most likely due to a large impactor sending shockwaves through the region. This region also has a large white section to the right edge of it, with two very large craters taking up a decent portion of it. Ganymede is covered with a lot of white craters and fault lines, which are visible when the image is enhanced.
To the right of Ganymede is Io, which is very small and hard to see the surface of. It is mostly yellow, with a few splotches of orange and red in it. A few active volcanoes can be seen when zoomed in, launching material into space. It is at a half crescent. To the right of Io is Jupiter, which is also in a half crescent. It has dark brown bands at the very top and bottom, which then slowly morph into whites, oranges, and light yellow cloud bands of varying complexity.
The rest of the image is black, except for a few bright stars that can be seen.

The Third Lover

I had forgotten Father's Day was coming up, and I had only just learned that my father likes Ganymede and Io, so I decided to quickly paint this piece for him!

I really enjoyed working on this; I'm still definitely lacking experience, but I've seen a noticeable increase in the quality of my art since I started painting in values.

I've got a long way to go, but I'm happy to finally be making art I can finally almost be proud of. :)

As always, image ID will be in the reblogs and in the alt text!

P.S. Here's a timelapse of all my artwork this year so far! Please be careful though, as it is fairly flashy, and may trigger those who are photosensitive.

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this is so fuckin pretty art reblog rad art space art

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spyglassrealms

7 months ago

My "Make 100 Sci-Fi Stock Illustrations" Kickstarter launched today!

I'll be drawing 100 science fiction-themed creatures, characters, props, and locations to be released as personal and commercial stock art, and this campaign is an opportunity for game designers to get everything at a deep discount before it eventually gets uploaded to DriveThruRPG! There's also ways to request art you'd like to see in the pack.

Come check it out!

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the style of the illustrations is very reminiscent of the original 1e monster manual and I love it

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spyglassrealms

7 months ago

wait i’m experiencing white people culture shock on tiktok again

please rb i can’t believe this is real

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okay I just saw this and LOL'd because I am ACTIVELY PREPARING TO SCRUB THE SHOWER anyways I have my washcloth and scouring brush here what the fuck do you mean bare hands 1. that's not gonna get the soap scum off 2. please do not touch mold with your bare hands oh my fucking god EDIT: HEY WAIT I'M A FUCKING ILLITERATE IDIOT I THOUGHT YOU MEANT SCRUBBING THE TILES AND SHIT NOT CLEANING *YOURSELF* in that case yeah bare hands usually but I try to get a good loofah exfoliation in once a week poll

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spyglassrealms

7 months ago

Pokémon: Aches and Pokémon: Pains

Do I want this? Yes. Do I need this? Also yes.

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spy is funny shitpost rb pokemon

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