May your name be kindness, may your essence be human
@qoyash-punk
solarpunk sideblog of a folklore nerd. writing, random ideas, culture, hope.
she/her | legally adult | shy but enthusiastic
(header photo by Pavel Neznanov)
Hello, everyone! I'm Alisa or Ali, and I was encouraged to make a solarpunk blog! This is a sideblog that interacts from @alioks-blog.
š± I'm going to reblog solarpunk stuff here, obviously, but I mainly created this blog to share my ideas and perspective. I'm not from the US, english is not my native language, I live in a sort of steppe/mountaneous landscape and rather cold climate, and I'm part-bashqort (an indigenous turkic peoples in Russia), so I hope I can bring something unique to the solarpunk table :D :D
šæ I am also an aspiring writer and a folklore nerd, specifically slavic and bashqort folklore, so expect a lot of posts about solarpunk fantasy, ethnic fantasy and all of the solarpunk-ish things I found in local legends and epics (including care for nature, equality, visions of a perfect society and abolishing cruel regimes).
š² I hope you like what you see here and learn something new!
š Additional notes below:
I'm pretty shy, socially awkward and forgetful, so I might take time to reply, but I encourage you to send asks or interact with me in any way!
If it's not obvious, I'm anti-Putin and anti-war. However, I will refrain from talking about politics, since it's an anxiety-enducing topic for me, and I'm trying to create a more positive and hopeful environment here.
No bigotry will be tolerated here. This is solarpunk, where we build a better future, and a better future is for everyone except bigots.
"qoyƔsh" in my url means "sun" in the bashqort language!
Dividers by saradika-graphics! Check their blog out, they're awesome!
Around the world, 84% of 16- to 25-year-olds currently experience climate anxiety. Here is some real-world advice to help soothe that fear.
This is obviously a really complicated topic that can't just be addressed in a single list, but there are some really good tips here and they draw from some excellent leaders/activists in this area.
If this is something that you need today, I hope this list can direct you to some good resources to draw on in the future!
From the article:
For many of us, anxiety and depression stemming from the climate crisis have become nearly ubiquitous with the plight of modern life.Ā
We deliver quippy one-liners about the world being on fire, share memes about how ācookedā we are amid these perilous āend times,ā and perhaps most disturbingly, feel completely incapable of doing anything about it.
But while this prevailing theme is unsettling, it also echoes a silver lining: We arenāt alone in these feelings.
obsessed with how fixable society is, on a structural level.
obsessed with how all you need to do is throw money at public education and eliminate most standardized testing and you will start getting smarter, more engaged, kinder adults. obsessed with how giving people safe housing, reliable access to good food, and decent wages dramatically reduces drug overdoses and gun violence. obsessed with how much people actually want to get together and fix infrastructure, invent new ways of helping each other, and create global ways of living sustainably once you give them livable pay to do so. obsessed with how tracking diseases, developing medicines, and improving public health becomes so much easier when you just make healthcare free at point of use.
obsessed with how easy it all becomes, if we can just figure out how to wrench the wealth out of the hands of the hoarders.
i've lived in four different cities in my adult life and talked to literally tens of thousands of people about politics and the change they want to see in the world and the overwhelming majority of them wanted life to be better, happier, easier for everyone, and dreamed of that world. the only people who didn't think that way were A) really obviously in need of mental/medical care, or B) rich.
wanting universal free healthcare, well-funded public education, and social support for all people is the most unbelievably normie opinion that exists, even among people who have lots of bad or misguided opinions about other things. when you feel alone, know that the reason you feel that way is billions of dollars are being spent to obscure the fact that you are in the majority.
Hi! I canāt remember if you had said this already, but to you have any recommendations for any good RSS feeds aggregators for good and uplifting news?
Hi Stars!
RSS feeds aren't something I have ever used personally, but a bunch of the sources I listed in this post have their own feeds. The Optimist Daily, Reasons to Be Cheerful, Good Good Good, and Good News Network are the ones I pull from the most that have their own feeds.
Iāve been pondering how to balance choosing to live more sustainably and still enjoy activities that are important to me.Ā The problem of how to fix climate change, habitat loss, and pollution is way too big for one person to fix alone and at times seems like a futile effort.Ā While what each of us does as an individual to reduce our impact on the planet is important, itās also important to enjoy life and the people around you.Ā I do not implement all of the recommendations I bring to this blog, because what works for one person does not work for another, for a variety of reasons.Ā However, if you have a variety of options to pick from, you can choose to implement sustainability actions that work for you while keeping the activities that make life meaningful to you.Ā Ā Remember that small actions do add up and enjoy your life.Ā Here are a few additional thoughts.Ā
Humans are meant to live in community.Ā Building and maintaining community and friendships is important.
When evaluating which sustainability activities to implement, the first place to start is with activities that you do because āyouāve always done themā but are no longer meaningful to you.Ā If you no longer enjoy a hobby, pass the tools along to someone else and spend your time on things that bring you joy.
Look for sustainability actions that work for you.Ā Effective public transportation is generally not available in large areas of the US, so getting rid of your car is not feasible.Ā However, you can combine errands and keep your car in good condition to reduce the energy you use when you drive.Ā A vegan diet is not for everyone, but you can reduce your intake of beef, pork, and lamb and incorporate a few meatless dishes in your weekly menu.Ā Current medical guidance indicates that eating more plant-based meals can positively affect your health in addition to helping the planet, but each person has different requirements.Ā Ā
Look for ways to increase sustainability of the activities you keep in your life.Ā If you love to travel or travel a lot for work, keep that in your life, but look for ways to do it just a little more sustainably.Ā Or look for other things in your life you can change to partially offset the impact of the travel.Ā If you love to cook, experiment with new recipes that incorporate care for the planet.Ā Ask if you can help implement sustainability measures at your office or school.Ā
Iāve seen some truly draconian recommendations for how everyone should live to save the planet.Ā These kinds of restrictions are not feasible for most people and just lead to guilt.Ā If you pick the sustainability actions that work for you, you are more likely to actually implement them.Ā Ā My philosophy has always been that if large numbers of people reduce their impact by a little bit, it will add up and make a difference.Ā Give yourself credit for the things you do and then take one more tiny baby step.Ā
So Iām looking around at my list of Solarpunk book recs, and I decided to see how many of them can I buy on Bookshop.org. (Iām tempted to put them into little free libraries to share with people.) Sad to see I couldnāt find the Solarpunk dragon anthology. However, I did find out that itās on internet archive!
The future is vibrant, hopeful, and filled with dragons. In WINGS OF RENEWAL, nineteen authors explore the exciting new subgenre of solarpun
Go my friends! Read short stories about dragons for free!
Edit: ohhh Iāve found some more Solarpunk books on Internet Archive. Putting all those under the cut.
Solarpunk is a type of optimistic science fiction that imagines a future founded on renewable energies. The seventeen stories in this volume
This anthology envisions winters of the future, with stories of scientists working together to protect narwhals from an oil spill, to bring
Imagine a sustainable world, run on clean and renewable energies that are less aggressive to the environment. Now imagine humanity under the
Here Comes the Sun!Rising temperatures, melting glaciers, violent storms, and excessive heat. The future seems bleakā¦but there are signs of
It was surreal, in the end, to find myself making a book about life after theapocalypse during a period of extreme global upheaval. And not
Cities are alive, shared by humans and animals, insects and plants, landforms and machines. What might city ecosystems look like in the futu
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is the first anthology to broadly collect solarpunk short fiction, artwork, and poetry. A
the future isnāt looking so good right now. Thatās the storywe're increasingly telling ourselves anyway, and itās astory that the worldās sc
We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.
I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.
Millions of people are working on this. You can learn about it, perhaps even become one of them. Or be a pointless doomer in my ask box. Your choice.
if there are people who care, it's never a lost cause. at one point, kÄkÄpÅ, a nocturnal flightless parrot species from aotearoa, were thought to be entirely extinct for decades. until 1977, where booming calls from males were heard on the small island of whenua hou. now, thanks to people who care so much they dedicated their lives to caring, kÄkÄpÅ numbers are close to 300. despite the setbacks. despite the small gene pool causing infertility and health problems. people cared so fucking much that they survived. this is one of COUNTLESS, countless similar stories. I'm studying ecology so that I can go into conservation and all around me, every day, I see people who care enough to put years of their lives into learning about and solving environmental problems. I don't know man. hope isn't just some nebulous thing. it's tangible if you do something with it.
Tim Wong saw the decline of the pipeline swallowtail butterfly, and dedicated himself to providing habitat and raising babies, and it worked.
Spix's Macaws were extinct in the wild for 70 years, and now captive breeding and conservation groups have reintroduced a small population (with more on the way) and there are babies being successfully raised in the wild again.
And what else is there, but hope? We exist for the grace of hope. Those who have lost all hope don't stay here. If you are here to send an ask like this, it is not because you have given up, it's that you are hoping someone will show you that that hope is worth having.
It is!! It always is!!
There will be good things and if you cannot find them, make them! The time will pass anyway, you can choose what to do with it, and so many, many people are choosing to try to help.
The Lord Howe Island rodent eradication project never fails to make me cry, itās so beautiful.
The population of an entire island working together to eradicate every last rat and mouse to save the native bird populations. They had to trap a bunch of the birds and keep them in captivity so they wouldnāt be hurt by the rodenticides, and released them after the rodents were gone. Normal residents helped by phoning in tips whenever they saw rodents. And they did it. Lord Howe Island, last I read, remains rodent free, and the native bird populations are rebounding!
Acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer, both of which were terrifying specters of my childhood, have been largely dealt with. Ecosystems devastated by acid rain are also recovering.
In 1979, an audacious, expensive conservation project was begun to try and breed california condors in captivity toward being released into the wild again. This was considered useless and hopeless by many people, but many more people said we had to at least TRY.
In 1991, the first captive-raised condors were re-introduced to Big Sur, Pinnacles, and Bitter Creek.
In 2006, three months before I turned eighteen, the first wild pair of condors was seen nesting in Big Sur in over a hundred years. A hundred years.
We did that. We fixed it.
How about another example.
When my mom was small, in the 1960s, there were many, many days of the year she was not allowed outside. Days and days they had recess indoors, because the air was so poisonous to breathe. Here's an article about it, with some good pictures.
My mom was 13 in the picture on the left. She was 50 in the picture on the right.
In 1987, there were 27 California Condors in the world, all captive.
In 2024, there were 566.
369 of them fly free.
That happened within my lifetime, and I'm not even 40 yet.
When you lose hope, think of our stories we're telling you. Recount them to yourself like a prayer. That's what I do.
There are 369 California Condors flying free in the sky right now.
Black footed ferrets were considered completely extinct in 1979. Then we found a single den in Wyoming in 1981. In 1996 it was classified as extinct in the wild.
By 2013, there were approximately 1,200 living wild, across 18 dens. Their numbers increase regularly, and while the face challenges due to habitat loss, climate change, and their limited genetic diversity, they're in a much better place than they were.
Because people cared, and they worked, and they fought to make things better.
I think we should have braille, audiobooks, and e-books options for our Solarpunk stories. I think it would be really cool if for the anthologies they were read by their authors.
So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.
Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?
The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!
This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.
Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:
Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or
Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.
The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.
The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).
Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.
So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.
šæ Fabric isnāt just a fashion choiceāitās a climate one. In our latest blog post, we break down the truth about the materials we wear: whatā
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Heliosail is Finally Here
Words cannot possibly capture how IĀ am feeling today. IĀ am joyous, overwhelmed, proud, humbled, and terrified all at once. This game is, in many ways, a very personal reflection of my heart and soul. I could have released it years ago, when it was "playable"Ā for the first time, but I held back. IĀ knew that it had not yet bloomed into the rose that IĀ could see within it.Ā
This game has changed me in a profound way over the years I've devoted to it. When IĀ started this process, IĀ was in my mid twenties, severely depressed, being entirely supported by my father, and completelyĀ unable to see a future for myself. Since that time, I have moved halfway across the country, put my depression in full remission, come out as nonbinary, changed my name, written a novel, and now fully support myself. I am unrecognizable from my younger self.Ā IĀ used to be unable to make new friends, and now IĀ have a whole group of people I met and bonded with over TTRPGs.Ā I used to have screaming, crying meltdowns over my math homework well into high school. Now, IĀ understand mathematics, statistics and probabilities with ease, and know that IĀ am AuDHD.Ā I used to be constantly anxious that if IĀ ever did the wrong thing, no matter how slight, IĀ would be rejected by the people in my life. Now, I can sit down at a work meeting and accept discipline without crying (Sometimes.)Ā IĀ used to not have the energy to do more than two things in a week. Now, I am running out of days in my calendar for everything IĀ want to do.Ā
IĀ cannot credit all of this change to one project, of course, but this game really has been a guiding force through this chapter of my life. I've been in a sort of dance with it, where IĀ began to create answers to my anxieties, and in turn, Heliosail gave me resolve and hope.Ā I was worried about climate change, so IĀ imagined a future where we go back and fixĀ our mistakes. I felt like IĀ didn't fit in, so IĀ created a fantasy where IĀ could run away on a ship and be queer with all my friends. I was anxious about surviving in this capitalist world, so IĀ imagined a society that tries to take care of everyone in it.
IĀ fell into a comfortable pattern, where IĀ could experience the joy of puzzle-solving that is the design process, and literally build the world that I wanted for myself.
And so, the truth is that, while IĀ am excited and proud beyond words to finally let the world see my work, IĀ am kind of mourning too. There will be more Heliosail to work on; I am already planning more content for the game, and will continue to try to spread it to those who will enjoy it most. But that is not the same.Ā To achieve my dream for this work, I will need to develop a whole new set of skills.Ā IĀ feel rather like Sisyphus, having just reached the top of the hill only to realize that somehow I'm at the bottom once again. No matter how daunting I find the road ahead, though, IĀ believe that Heilosail is worth it. Maybe it makes me sound conceited and self-important,Ā but the truth is that I feel a drive and responsibility to make this project a success, as if it is for somethingĀ greater than myself. It's like I'm pushing this boulder, not up a hill forever, but towards someone who badly needs it. I don't know who they are, but IĀ am driven to reach them as if both our lives depend on it.Ā
More Content Coming Soon
More files will be coming in the near future, added to the download for Heliosail everywhere you can find it. I will be adding a "Home-Printer Friendly" version of the handbook very soon, which will be black and white with no images, and will be reformatted to use the fewest number of pages possible. I will also be releasing a free adventure to provide you all with some content for your games. Adventures I publish after this will be paid supplements, but I will continue to publish "Monster Mondays"Ā and other free content on Patreon.Ā
Araw Lane āļø
I whipped up this illustration to be used for the Games Con Canada build of our game, Keeps, but we ended up having to cut out this content because we were running out of time.
Still wanted to share this though. I was really proud of the colours I chose and the rendering overall!
Remember "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" ? I feel like there's been a distancing from the "reduce" and "reuse" part and a favoritism towards "recycle" by corporate American.
Capitalism can still thrive with recycling in the mix. You buy Plastic Thing 1, throw it away after one use, and they take that and recycle it into Plastic Thing 2 and sell it back to you. All while continuing to harm the environment.
Reusing puts a damper on things. They can't sell you Plastic Thing 2 when you're still using Plastic Thing 1. Plastic forks, for example- there is literally no reason why you can't reuse plastic forks more than once (aside from maybe microplastics, but it's too late for that)
Reducing is the one everyone wants to ignore. Just don't buy Plastic Thing 1. You don't need Plastic Thing 1. Pick up a set of metal forks and use those for years. Convenience is killing the planet
I don't have much to show for Solarpunk Aesthetic Week, at least I don't know how to share it. I'm a writer, see, and I used this week to really sit myself down and finally write. I managed to watch an education screenwriting live stream, which helped me develop my solarpunk-animated-series idea into something of a pitch presentation. But I doubt it's finished yet.
Another thing I've done (today in particular) is I continued worldbuilding for my other setting, which will probably become a short solarpunk novel. And, well...
I managed to fill out more sections than I had previously! Namely, I finished "physics/nature", "population" and "family". I started developing the characters more thoroughly, too.
I would be happy to share what I have so far, I'm just afraid that some worldbuilding wouldn't be that interesting to look at.
