Trying to get the word out there about this contest!!

https://www.manga-audition.com/swa1-1st-chapter/

If you want to share feedback I made a thread too.

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1530115

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1le5hk9pvaQpCGt4n-XtXCAnAdedk85_opQHKHiWbm_I/edit?usp=sharing

dood ufo

It's been sitting for like 5 minutes, i live near an airport so it might be that but they aren't usually so high up I can't even see them move and it's not the stars too much light pollution

10 minute mark

No movement but I've seen it be affected by clouds so it's definitely behind the clouds

1 day mark

I fell asleep but I woke up while it was still dark and it wasn't there anymore probably just a high flying plane, but i did see it last night too? Maybe it is more...

I did some research and it might be Cih which is apart of Cassiopeia which makes up the Perseus constellation

I found out recently that it was actually Jupiter and I even got to see it through a telescope which was cool, I also saw Saturn and got to see the gap in the rings

I've been thinking about where I want to go with my art and such so I did some practice editing these Mario and Luigi animations

There were pretty fun to do and kind of taught me what direction to sort of head in, I don't know what I want to say this is more for me to look back at than anything. But my goal is like Castlevania 4 mixed with Munchy and Golden Sun with like the animation styles of Super Star Saga and Andyland with some Mike Mignola and the Do the Evolution music video in there some where and Metroid Fusion toosion, I don't know that's pretty far from me right now but it's still something to reach for.

I don't like the idea of space tourism, but these posters are pretty cool.

Close ups

"Language is the foundation of civilization, it is the glue that holds people together..." -Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner); The Arrival (2016)

This comes to a common conscience in the film regarding vocal communication in intelligent life,

intelligence being the ability to convey conscience through human channels and all, it treats this simple trait as the only way for an intelligent species to communicate when it is entirely possible for a species to be successful, potential even near or beyond human technology level without it. First to understand why vocal communication is not a necessity we would need to know why we use vocal communication. It is a very low energy use of an ever present property of Earth, no where on Earth is there an entirely natural occurrence of a complete vacuum, an area without any form of medium water/air. We don't have to use constant and intense resources to produce sound the same way a creature with bioluminescence may need to, we can convey strong context using short burst of energy thus making it a very attractive ability that many species of Earth have adopted, but let's say we remove the idea of there being the need or the opportunity to use vocal communication it would be highly likely that a species would more than likely not gain the ability to speak but could still communicate using other means. One good example of this could be a extraterrestrial species, being a species not bound to a planet, which would have no real use for the production of sound to convey meaning so they would most likely utilize a form communication similar to bioluminescence, like what many deep sea fish do, or have bodies that could reflect sunlight and manipulate it to convey meaning, think light signals or flags also technically chameleons do this.

But now that we understand why we have vocal communication, we must fully grasp how a species could communicate without vocalizations, though vocal elements could still play a role like how humans have pheromones and such but don't use them nearly as much in social situations as other animals. These theoretical aliens could use light based communication as established but that could be prone to error and would more or less make at least one creature confused as they have to be looking directly at the creature and would need no outside interference light, so they'd probably coast around dead solar systems or in the spaces between systems, similar to Junior from Star Trek. Other forms of communication depend solely on the planets these creatures inhabit, maybe a planet of very turbulent winds or very thick or light atmosphere making it impossible to communicate vocally properly which could encourage sonar communication, think bats/dolphins, or potentially ESP communication. Regardless there are other forms of communication other than vocal that can exist and there are many examples on Earth to this day, insects utilize bioluminescence, pheromones, and occasionally sounds to communicate.

The most important thing to consider though is there a way to communicate with a species that lacks any form of vocal communication and somehow come to a common conscience, YES!! We could use a variety of diagrams and scientific principles that could help illustrate what we’re trying to communicate, the Voyager plates have an example of this but on the plate there is a flaw which we will get to. Also if they lack neither vocal nor visual perception than we may be in trouble but there are examples on Earth of this being the case and we have actually gotten far in experimentation with them, Dolphins have limited visual perception relying mostly on sonar to sense things so using too much visual was a no go so we monitored and understood dolphins learning their barebones of their language and soon we may be able to convey certain ideas to them but this will be reinterpretation not true understanding similar to the "talking" monkey experiments, we may never be able to properly communicate with a creature with fundamentally different properties and understanding of intelligence it is all relative to what that creature was designed to do. Using laws like the composition of an atom is our best shoot at reaching common ground, but it isn’t assured they will understand just looking at how the idea of what an atom looks like has evolved over the time we've known about it maybe they stopped at figgy pudding or have evolved such sophisticated systems as to illustrate the true form of an atom without any need for abstraction, but the thought is there and maybe the aliens will be able to interrupt that two shapes surrounding each other in an orbital path is in fact a hydrogen atom but it could very well just be from their perspective how we perceive the solar system maybe the alien’s could think we live in a single planet solar system and we’re trying to demonstrate the map shows distance by the revolutions of our planet, which is unreliable at best as they don’t know the specifics of our planet, not the sun’s shape, stage, nor planets size or where to start measuring and so on. But now on to a problem the movie as well as the Voyager plate fell into, the concept of the arrow, it is so simple so primal that I doubt you even thought that potentially a species could develop with no understanding of what an arrow could mean or represents, the movie shows this with the lead actress pointing to herself to indicate that she is who she is referring to but an alien species especially the ones that are depicted in the movie; who would be wanting to utilize their limbs for multiples tasks at once and would thus not really have a free arm to potentially be able to indicate themselves even in rest would have no understand of what that gesture means. This is only compounded when we look at other Terranen animals such as dogs. Do you know instinctively when your dog is referring to itself in communication? We can understand when monkeys do as they have similar way of showing it as us but not dogs they physical can’t point to themselves so how do they I don’t know and it’s not what this is about it’s only here to indicate that the fact that if we don’t know how creatures we live with everyday point to themselves than how can we expect an alien we’ve known for months does.

In conclusion The Arrival is a good movie go watch it

Further reading

https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/communications_with_extraterrestrial.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDwnEk0vilM

(this song less so but I think it's cool hearing where Good Day got it's instrumental from) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyq9zlYMw9g

I recently have gained an affinity for the cryptids of Louisiana, it all started when I stumbled upon an article about the Rougarou (pronounced ROW-gah-ROW) and intrigued by all the little details the stories had that I don't normally hear when I do cryptid research online. Things like if you put 13 cents outside your door the Rougarou will be forced to count it but since they don't know what the number 13, they just have to infinitely count it or avoid it so any object with 13 is your best bet to deter a Rougarou.

I think though the best part of Louisiana cryptids is the fact that their cryptids seem to be a little tongue in cheek, like you'll read the stories of lost loved ones and than you'll read the goofy side notes about the creature that did it. It just speaks to an attitude you don't see often in modern mythology, it's either full on "whats a cryptids" where they just bulldoze any stories like they are nothing but annoyances (Milwaukee :( ) or they go so hard in the paint that it's not fun anymore and gets kind of obsessive and really makes it hard to interact with the stories in an actual meaningful way (I feel this a lot with Point Pleasant's relationship with Mothman). Louisiana as a whole though seems to have straddle the line between popularity of a cryptid requiring it to stay similar and totally wiping out anything that makes Franco storytelling interesting. I just thought it was interesting how Louisiana could have popular cryptids but still maintain that pulpy folk feeling that makes me like cryptids, if you're interested in more Louisiana cryptids I would recommend looking at the Parlangua it even has a song.

The article that got me first interested in the subject

https://pelicanstateofmind.com/louisiana-love/history-rougarou-louisiana-werewolf/

The Wow! signal was an important clue for the potential of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, the justification being that the signal was in such a pattern that it seemed unlikely for it to have been done by natural causes. This was championed by many people who believed in the possibility of aliens as some of the most solid evidence, as it is like hearing a click on the other line of a phone. But recent studies as of 2017 have posited that these signals could be the result of celestial bodies and their interactions

"

In 2016, we proposed a hypothesis arguing that a comet and/or its hydrogen cloud was a

strong candidate for the source of the “Wow!” Signal. From 27 November 2016 to 24 February

2017, we conducted 200 observations in the radio spectrum to validate the hypothesis. This

investigation discovered that comets 266/P Christensen, P/2013 EW90 (Tenagra), P/2016 J1-A

(PANSTARRS), and 237P/LINEAR emitted radio waves at 1420 MHz. In addition, the data

collected during this investigation demonstrated there is a well-defined distinction between radio

signals emitted from known celestial sources and comets, including comet 266/P Christensen.

We speculate that the strength of the original signal in 1977 would have been accounted

for by the size of the Big Ear Radio Telescope (when compared with Site B) and/or the potential

loss of mass from comet 266/P Christensen, which would have been considerably larger 40 years

ago. In addition, while neutral hydrogen clouds have been observed around other comets (mostly

from Lyman alpha spectra), determining the physical extent and density of the clouds around

comets 266/P Christensen, P/2013 EW90 (Tenagra), P/2016 J1-A (PANSTARRS), and

237P/LINEAR were not the purposes of this investigation. To dismiss the source of the radio signal

as emission from comet 266/P Christensen, we repositioned the telescope away from the comet

and conducted clear sky observations when the comet was not near the coordinates of the “Wow!”

Signal. During these clear sky observations, we detected no significant radio signal at 1420 MHz.

This investigation, therefore, has concluded that cometary spectra are observable at 1420 MHz and that the 1977 “Wow!” Signal was a natural phenomenon from a Solar System body.

"

The conclusion to the paper Hydrogen Line Observations of Cometary Spectra at 1420 MHZ by Prof. Antonio Paris a Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at St. Petersburg College

Hearing this a couple of months back was saddening to say the least, it genuinely felt like the closest we've ever got to proof and with further research it still seems in debate but unfortunately it seems to have been grabbed by people who don't seem to have the best of intentions and are instead using it for influence which is a shame as I saw no real paper disproving the possiblitiy of the comet theory, so I don't know.

We have to keep searching for more evidence, better and more conclusive than this, even if there may not be any.

The paper mentioned: http://planetary-science.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Paris_WAS_103_02.pdf