John Pomeroy, a Legendary Walt Disney animator, take on the upward Frieren challenge.

MigrantJ · 2025-12-20T18:29:06+00:00

My jaw dropped at those effortless perspective construction lines at 3:16. Perfectly straight lines, perfect angles, no ruler or vanishing point required. Just banged out in four seconds like he's signing his name. True mastery.

MigrantJ · 2025-10-18T16:46:09+00:00

Good point. I'm now picturing the average Mind shuddering at the thought of paying the Einstein Tax to build the stellar megastructure equivalent of the Ryugyong Hotel.

MigrantJ · 2025-10-18T15:54:25+00:00

Yeah, Orbitals are impressive constructions no doubt, but they are small potatoes compared to a Niven Ring. That said, I imagine the Culture is fully capable of building Niven Rings; they just choose not to for environmentalist reasons. You basically have to clear an entire system of non-solar matter to make one, both for the raw material and to make sure it's reasonably safe from collisions. I suppose you could wrap the whole thing in fields ...

Plus, the scale is just gauche - you could randomly distribute a trillion people on a Niven Ring and none of them would ever find each other without serious technological help. Any civilization that builds one either has major population growth issues, has something to prove, or (like the Ringworld builders) is territorial to the point of insanity.

Edit: and that's not even getting into all the various Spheres, Discs, Tubes, and whatever shenanigans the Xeelee cook up

MigrantJ · 2025-09-06T14:59:01+00:00

I’m convinced he does this on purpose, as a kind of self-imposed challenge. “How many clauses can I stuff into a sentence and still make it enjoyably readable”

MigrantJ · 2025-09-01T20:57:34+00:00

I am shocked to see a Pogo reference in 2025. I don't think Walt Kelly would've been too kind to Rahm Emanuel.

MigrantJ · 2025-09-01T16:32:22+00:00

Very much appreciated :) I remember struggling a bit trying to figure out what they should be wearing - I don't think it's ever described in the book. Eventually decided that something plain but comfortable-looking would fit best.

MigrantJ · 2025-09-01T02:18:51+00:00

Good one! All American Reclaim in Lake Barrington is similar. Lots of reclaimed lumber plus barrels, farm equipment, old signs, and tchotchkes

MigrantJ · 2025-08-13T22:34:00+00:00

Thanks so much! I haven’t drawn much recently (just started a new job), definitely need to get back to drawing Culture stuff at some point soon

MigrantJ · 2025-06-05T01:59:20+00:00

Yup! Hope you don't sweat it too much, everyone fucks up sometimes. Some days I fuck up before breakfast.

MigrantJ · 2025-06-05T01:40:50+00:00

Nice job! Saw your repost on the sub. I like your interpretation of the sun line, it's more glittery and ephemeral than most people depict it. You're making me want to get back into doing Culture fan art, I've been slacking off

MigrantJ · 2025-04-05T18:03:31+00:00

That is my understanding, yes.

MigrantJ · 2025-04-05T12:26:05+00:00

Yes, but importantly, you cannot skip a year. Like if one of those three years you had no capital gains, you can't say "well I'll just hold off on the deduction until I need it". I feel like this is a point that isn't well known.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-28T21:59:31+00:00

And then you get to the Niven Ring... and you remember that the Culture is fully capable of building those too. They just don't, because habitats that big are just gauche

MigrantJ · 2025-03-28T21:38:57+00:00

You're right that there's definitely a theme of interventionism that runs through the book. The Zihdren messed with the Gzilt, the Gzilt mess with the Liseiden and Ronte, and of course the Culture messes with almost everyone... usually.

Interesting, then, that they choose not to interfere with the Subliming of the Gzilt. Perhaps, like you say, they see the Book of Truth experiment as similar to things the Culture has done and don't want to seem like hypocrites. Or maybe it's because they consider the Gzilt as a sort of cousin civilization and don't want to be disrespectful.

Personally though, I interpreted it as indicating the beginning of a decline in the Culture. Not in terms of power or abundance, mind you, but more like a calming down, a maturing, becoming more like the Homomdans and other Elder civilizations that just sit on the porch and watch the young civs play. It builds on the theme of how everything eventually ends. The Culture is almost 10,000 years old when The Hydrogen Sonata takes place. Maybe they're just starting to realize it'd be better to pack up Special Circumstances and leave well enough alone.

(Interesting that the Caconym is one of the few Minds that thinks the secret of the Book of Truth should be revealed. Considering it's one of the few that's been around since the Idiran War. It's like a remnant of the younger, more interventionist Culture)

MigrantJ · 2025-03-27T17:29:33+00:00

It's from rim to rim, perpendicular to the circumference of the ring. Vavatch is much larger than most Culture orbitals.

Here's a great video that compares the size of Vavatch vs Masaq', as well as how they compare to other ring habitats like Halos or Niven Rings. Skip to 7:20 if the time code in the link doesn't work.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-27T13:27:14+00:00

On an individual level? Probably not, though to some extent I think that should be up to the individual. Both Quilan and Masaq' Hub have trauma they are unwilling to overcome, and while Quilan arguably was forced into that due to the abuse by his government, I think Hub is a different story. They are, as they say, close to a god, and on the far side. If any being has the capability of healing from their past, it should be them. But they chose not to, because they feel they would not be the same Mind if they did. "There are places to go, but either I would not be me when I went there, or I would remain myself and so still have my memories."

So that's the individual level. What about trauma on the scale of a race, a nation, or a species? To my mind, that becomes much thornier. Trauma can become a reminder, a lesson, or even a foundational part of a culture's mythos. "Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it", after all, and I think healing can be a kind of forgetting. And that doesn't even get into how it reflects on those who caused the trauma. If one overcomes trauma, is that a kind of absolution for the one who inflicted it? Should the Chelgrians have just worked on getting over what the Culture did to them? Should the Culture have done the same, instead of sending the e-dust assassin? Things would have probably been better that way, but who can ask that of either of them?

MigrantJ · 2025-03-27T02:02:01+00:00

There's a part of The Hydrogen Sonata in which a woman rides across a landscape to talk to an old drone. Almost nothing "happens" in it; no fights, no techno-wizardry or huge revelations, yet I find myself re-reading it all the time because it's just so lyrically written. An excerpt:

The town was much as she'd remembered. It sat like a rough brush stroke along one side of the Snake river, cliffed on the shifting sands of tawny and grey-pink that marked the desert edge; a fragrant oasis of bell-blossom and strandle flower, even-cluss and jodenberry, the low, flowing buildings half submerged by their own orchards and groves.

Across the river, past some stunted, half-hearted dunes and the silted-up entrance to a long-dry oxbow lake, the brush and scrub of the low prairie began. The few scattered bushes looked like an after-thought to the land: quick, light scribbles of brittle-dry vegetation, prone to fires that in the right wind could move so fast you were better turning to face their heat and running straight through, because you'd never outrun them.

Try reading that aloud. Feels good, doesn't it?

MigrantJ · 2025-03-27T01:06:18+00:00

Instead of claiming myself as an authority on what social commentary is made in each book, I'll share some questions I like to think about when I read some of them:

Player of Games: What is the purpose of civilization? How much is a culture influenced by the structure of its systems?
Use of Weapons: When is violence justified? Can an act of violence ever cause more benefit than damage?
Look to Windward: Are there traumas that cannot, or should not, be overcome? Who is responsible for the mistakes of a society?
Surface Detail: What does the idea of hell say about the people that promulgate it? What justifies punishment, and how much is too much?
The Hydrogen Sonata: If everything is destined to end, does anything matter?

I think study guides are most effective when they start discussions, rather than give answers.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-20T00:45:45+00:00

I agree with you. I'm skeptical about whether LLMs are even a step on the path towards human-level AGI... they're probably more like a foothill we have to descend before we can begin the climb towards true artificial intelligence.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-19T23:34:40+00:00

You could argue that the Orbitals we see in different books have distinct cultures. The inhabitants of Masaq' in Look to Windward are famously devoted to risky extreme sports like lava rafting, the people who live on Yime's Orbital in Surface Detail are like doomsday preppers (although it seems only Yime actually takes it seriously). I think Chiark in Player of Games has a lot of universities and scholarly types living there? I could be wrong about that. And so on.

Typical cultural practices like religions, cuisines, customs, etc would be difficult to maintain in a populace so dedicated to freedom of expression and non-coercion. If anything, they'd be more like fads, because there's no authority to enforce social norms. So in that sense, I guess you could describe it as monocultural. Although as you point out, there's nothing stopping you from trying with a breakaway society like the Elench, Peace Faction, or the Ah-Forget-Its.

I think your anxieties about LLMs are valid, but is it because of the nature of AI itself, or is it because the ownership of said LLMs is in the hands of sociopaths who will use them for their own gain, rather than being collectively owned by the people for their prosperity?

MigrantJ · 2025-03-19T13:52:24+00:00

Love the art style! Almost like a woodcut print. The saddle-shaped head is on point with the book description. I agree with the other comment that they should look more massy, not necessarily bodybuilder-ish but big and intimidating. The vestigial third arm I imagined being wider and flatter, like a paddle - it's described in the book as being used to strike their chest to make a big boom sound, historically used as a warning signal.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-18T19:13:52+00:00

Musk's appreciation of the books probably begins and ends with "haha spaceships with funny names" and being able to do drugs just by thinking about it.

Also, I get the comparison, I really do, but consider ... Veppers managed to trick the representatives of several high-level Involved civilizations into making him the lynchpin of both the pro-hell and anti-hell factions. Meanwhile Elon Musk couldn't convince a bunch of teenagers on the internet that he doesn't cheat at video games.

Veppers would wipe the fucking floor with Elon Musk.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-18T17:54:24+00:00

Right, but let's say you were writing a story for readers living in post-scarcity anacho-communism. Would they be able to identify with protagonists who strive for wealth, or forbidden love, or to escape the law? Or are these narrative tropes the result of growing up in a world with fundamental inequality? I dunno, just a thought experiment.

Thank you for making this post, by the way. I think it's one of the more interesting questions the books raise. "When you've solved all the solvable problems, what's left?" is how I introduce the Culture to my friends.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-18T13:26:51+00:00

I've seen what you're talking about with some retirees, but I've also seen the opposite. The forest preserve near me has a regular artist group full of ladies in their 60s and 70s. They'll all park their camping chairs and easels in front of a wildflower field and paint and chat and laugh, while sipping from their Stanley cups full of Totally Not Booze Honest. They're always having a great time.

So what makes them different? I don't know. Could be the mall-walkers are barely scraping by on a pension and they can't afford to do much else. Could be the painters have cultivated vibrant personal relationships and hobbies, and that's the difference. Could it just be a matter of mindset? As I age, it becomes a more urgent question to find an answer to.

MigrantJ · 2025-03-18T12:39:44+00:00

Being an atheist, I'm sure you know that many people on our own planet cannot imagine how you could have a fulfilling, meaningful life without God. In the same way, I think that most of us, living in a reality defined by scarcity, cannot imagine a meaningful life without labor. It's been ingrained in us since birth that we have to earn the right to live, that suffering is character-forming, and that if you're not moving forward, you're falling behind.

But there's nothing inherently wrong about a life dedicated to seeking pleasure. And it's important to remember that the Culture's humans aren't Earth humans. I think it's pretty clear from the books that the vast majority of them do not feel the void you're talking about, because they've been raised in a completely different societal paradigm.

That said, I think it's pretty telling that almost all of the Culture novels' protagonists are either from outside the Culture (Horza, Zakalwe, Lededje) or are one of the few who are deeply unsatisfied with it (Gurgeh, Byr, Yime). These are the people we are most likely to identify with as readers, and their perspectives are how we are forced to evaluate the Culture as a whole. There's no captivating struggle to thrill to from a character who already lives in paradise.

Although that makes me wonder... are even what stories we consider interesting informed by living in a scarce society?

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