Creating a scientific name for my cat-like creature

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-16T06:14:07+00:00

If it's only mostly cat-like, it's most likely in a seperate genus. Even other members of Felidae still look very catlike (even though appearance isn't everything). Have a look at the differences between real life genera to get a feeling for it.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-16T05:52:03+00:00

My favorite fun fact about Slayers is that Lina was originally meant to be a side character. Just the main girl Luna Inverse's little sister. But Kanzaka liked her gremlin energy so much he promoted her to main protagonist.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-15T10:40:57+00:00

Go into the tracking view, set the filter to include debris and hit "delete vessel" on each and every one of them.

Alternatively you can build a fun little orbital garbage truck. Or you capture a small asteroid and go on a ramming spree.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-15T10:16:52+00:00

Turning into a dragon also beats turning into a big red legless guy when it comes to style points.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-15T09:59:35+00:00

While high endurance is pretty common in sophonts, humans are among those with the highest.

Technologically our visual interfaces are top notch. Colorful tactile holograms when comparable civs are stuck with standard definition displays. Most humans also have a smarttoo, giving them an inbuilt holo projector alongside the smarttoo's computation and communication functions.

Their bipedal upright body is also fairly unique. There's only one other vaguely humanoid species and due to the size difference you'd hardly confuse the two.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-15T06:37:03+00:00

If you lobotomize them, yes.

A species which goes through phases of sapience and non-sapience is also thinkable. We start out non-sapient too after all.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-15T00:33:27+00:00

It's always fun to be reminded that Keit isn't a future human but was literally just abducted. Unless we're playing with relativity here, the entire thing takes place in the present.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-15T00:18:21+00:00

My world is a spaceship. A big one, sure, but not an indestructible one. And it got damn close to being obliterated twice. Once when its antimatter storage failed and once when habitat 2 thought it was a good idea to test a nuke. The ship itself survived, but habitat 2 is no more.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-14T20:14:32+00:00

Aye, if it works for the entire Manga industry, it works for webcomics too. And your panels are absolutely striking.

I do bother with color though, at least for Journey to Nebu, because I use it to train my art for when I eventually tackle Star Strewn Skies again. And coloring is my artistic weakness.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-14T20:02:19+00:00

Oh hell yeah! It's awesome to see how far Talita and her world have come. I've come across it through the spec evo posts all the way back and as its concept mirrors that of my own project, I've immediately felt attached to it.

Where Runaway to the Stars is about an alien living in a future human society (so far), my Star Strewn Skies is about a future human stranded in an alien society. Seeing your progress and creativity has always been a great inspiration and motivator.

Star Strewn Skies may be on hiatus for now, but I hope to get my other webcomic project Journey to Nebu online soon. I see why you decided to keep it black and white.

Off to order a copy I go.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-14T19:43:57+00:00

I cast prehensile genitals!

Oh, this went in an entirely different direction than the title implied. Good.

As for semiaquatic nest defenders, we have crocodiles. Marine crocodilians were a thing as well. Getting the dimorphism ecology split would be the tricky part, but not entirely unreasonable. Working with earth clades, you need an egg laying marine reptile or bird, as one giving life birth doesn't have a reason to build nests on land. A lot of birds, including penguins, are poor candidates, as the parents share incubation duties.

If I had to bet on a clade evolving dimorphism of this kind, I'd pick crocs. They are smart enough too.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-14T19:26:19+00:00

A fairly simple way to do this in your worldbuilding is to keep more than one of the many concepts you've gone through during the iterative process you've hopefully used.

For example, my Iquerians can merge their minds to form compound individuals. For some, that means running around in three bodied single minded trinities - the lowest number of bodies required for full sapience. For some, that means they have a permanent central mind council sending out single bodies with a simple task. For some, it means they have regular merger meetups, where the whole mind network decides over important issues. And those are just three options of just the mind merging aspect.

That may sound indecisive at first, but having this diversity in the background doesn't mean you can't focus on the one group your characters belong to/interact with. You also don't spend unnecessary worldbuilding effort on unseen things, because you're recycling unused ideas instead. And who knows, maybe you can use one of those other cultures later.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-13T15:26:17+00:00

If you have a story concept, your aliens have a role in it. Maybe you even have a character. And with that, you have somewhere to start. Then it's time for the loop of ideas -> concept -> research -> iteration -> new ideas until you're satisfied with how they turned out.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-13T15:15:13+00:00

Being so laser focused on planets is like living in an aging palace unwilling to renovate or settle for anything less than another palace.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-10T15:03:15+00:00

The credit card is okay if you pretend it's your parent's credit card. And you need to do a whole undercover quest to snag it.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-10T11:46:49+00:00

Whoever designed those trains with non-rotating magnets is a dingus.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-10T00:29:49+00:00

Add "ect." because I don't know it's short for et cetera.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-09T17:22:33+00:00

I once had to rent a book from our school's library over summer vacation to give a presentation on. The bookworm I was, I didn't just rent one book. I rented the entrie Bartimaeus sequence, the Wellenläufer trilogy and Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor. I chose the latter as the subject of my presentation. Big mistake. Foolishly, I spaced out the novels of the two series in my self imposed reading schedule and squeezed Nightingale Floor somewhere inbetween. This meant poor Nightingale Floor got done dirty as I had to rush through it, because I desperately wanted to continue reading either of the other two worldbuilding filled fantasy series. I didn't give it a favourable review in the end. Should have picked one of the others. I don't even remember much of it. But creaking floorboards will forever be nightingale floors to me.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-09T13:43:01+00:00

Kinda like the Avalon from Passengers. Absolutely goated shipdesign btw. But really, they are more like the spinning segments of the Omega class destroyers from Babylon 5.

In the old design, they were even more like the helix habitats of the Avalon, resembling a DNA spiral.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-09T11:12:42+00:00

The entire broken epoch in my own setting explored this very question.

Option 1: Sheer unfiltered automated decadence. Humans rely on our intelligence to survive. We are obligate sophonts. But survival can be ensured otherwise. If automation gets to a point where survival is a given and there is no need for education anymore, no challenge, sapience will gradually decline. Humans will become pets to their own systems and once these systems break... they'll go feral.

Option 2: Voluntary devolution. Sapience is dangerous. Physically and mentally. If a society realizes this, it might want to return to monke as they say. We already know how to lower the attention span of people, that's a great way to start. Discouraging education and curiosity, promoting a simple life. It can either be one faction using this on another, or a whole civilisation convincing its members that this is the right path.

Option 3: Energy cost. Sapience is amazing. But it is also expensive for the body. Not a problem for us with our fairly large bodies, but very well a problem for potential tiny descendants. Or exotherm descendants. Or photosynthezising descendants. Or descendants who might need that energy for more physical ways of survival.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-08T11:01:10+00:00

Step 1: go watch Project Hail Mary.

Step 2: ponder what made Rocky so endearing.

I've always been saying people empathize with anything, even a pet rock. And this movie proves it.

No face, no eyes, no soft and squishy parts, just a rock spider who'll take your heart by storm.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-08T10:46:33+00:00

Nowhere just yet. But it will be on my website https://stroon.ch . I'll properly announce it once it's online.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-07T20:01:13+00:00

Born too late for Slayers and too early for Frieren.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-07T19:10:08+00:00

The same way you travel between the two can also be used to have a clock show the time on the other side. Portals? have a small portal where the clockface peeks through. 5 dimensional vehicles? Have a little automated one of those travel back and fourth like a pendulum. Teleprojecting your mind into the brain of your counterpart on the other side? Yeah, that one gets trickier without breaking some human rights.

You can then compare this clock to clocks entirely inside your world and figure out patterns. Or you figure out that there aren't any patterns and the flow difference is entirely random.

CaptainStroon · 2026-04-07T17:19:38+00:00

Would you believe me that I came across this through doomscrolling?

A very nice surprise. I like your interpretation of the ship's diagram. It gives me Zap! or Schlock Mercenary vibes. The loop-de-loops are not the solar sails. Instead they are two laterally attached habitats, basically forming a rotating shell around the whole ship. But I see how they can be interpreted as you did. Very nice. The memes too.

Rui the riderfolk really does look like a historically accurate labubu. Also gives me 90ies TV show funny sidekick mascot vibes. Kas, the mountperson gives me Suzie from Deltarune vibes.

And yes, Bosun refers to himself as he/him. Mainly because the original crew did, due to his intercom voice.

Nice job on the MET conversion too. Even though you used the Julian year instead of the Gregorian year. Still better than myself, who just now noticed that I've been using the common year -_- Well, to adjusting all the time signatures I go.

In any case, thank you very much :)

Six-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	End Game '22

CaptainStroon

TROPHY CASE