Subnautica Below Zero - Blog Posts
Here's a more recent art! I did it this Wednesday. Tried some new fur brushes. It's a Snowstalker from Subnautica Below Zero.
Boop!
Pete the Peeper for JackdawHeart
Huh. That's a lot of games.
OhNoHe'sHot.png among other little Robin and Al-An doodles. They're just so fun......
girl help I'm yearning
Subanutica means a lot to me...I am simulteaonosuly enchanted and terrified by the idea of being the only human amongst loads of big fishs
al-an has the personality of sheldon cooper
hey gang is it is it cringe to link fanfics here
i fucking love bz
i just got the data entry for Hope and oh my god?????? i love Alan he's so so so so silly silly oh my god Maybe its the dynamic of one character is disgustingly human with their emotions and to the other human emotions and stuff like that are a foreign concept that just tickles me the right way i dunno but theyre just my favorite
the way that robin goes from kind of hating Alan for getting in her head to slowly as you discover more and more artifacts to thanking him for telling her about them and encouraging him that he can find the rest of his network is beautiful.
also the fact that he thinks hope must be a bird because of the way the Emily Dickinson poem describes it means he must have never known hope before. Robin literally taught him what hope is. She gave him hope for the first time in god knows how long and even in his analytical literal-mindedness he understands that hope is something he needs to take care of and keep safe
its just a beautiful dynamic because again Robin is driven by human emotion shes on 4546B to find out what happened to Sam, she does this reckless thing based solely on her feelings, and Alan is the exact opposite. He only knows logic and rules and emotion gets in the way
AND AND AND the parallels between Robin losing Sam and Alan losing his connection to his network is beautiful because that means they have something in common, a link that they can work through to explain to one another
its just beautiful writing and im probably reading into it way too much but thats my fucking job
the subnautica brainrot is getting me
I just want to say thank you to all the people who love this funky alien boy! Ya’ll have really boosted my follow count^^!
HIM TRYING TO WAVE
AND HE TURNS BLUE; BLUE MEANS HAPPINESS
AL-AN IS HAPPY
Boo. Happy Halloween. Subnautica filmatic mode is a fucking nightmare.
I have decided to start a comic for everyone’s fav boy AL-AN and Robin, I don’t know how long it will take to get the first part up but would you guys like to see a sneak peak?
HIM TRYING TO WAVE
AND HE TURNS BLUE; BLUE MEANS HAPPINESS
AL-AN IS HAPPY
a baby Birrin with some subnautica stuffed animals
The Birrin belong to @alexriesart. The quality of this drawing is super bad :(
Cooked ice worm fins :)
What would the ice worm taste like if eaten? Is it like crab?
Definitely crab
An unused aside dialogue between AL-AN and Robin. A conversation about gems and names.
Transcript below the cut
Robin: “Looks like this was an Alterra mining site. Gemstones everywhere.”
AL-AN: “Why do humans designate only some minerals as gems?”
R: “Because they're not just functional, we also find them beautiful—decorative.”
A: “Is that why Ruby is a human name according to the database in your PDA?”
R: “I think so.”
A: “Astatine is technically the rarest known element. Do humans name their children Astatine? I did not see it listed.”
R: “…No, I’ve never met a human named Astatine.”
Are Architects Smarter than Humans?
The way AL-AN talks mixed with the fact that Architects are more technologically progressed than humans in the Subnautica universe leads him to seeming ‘smarter’ than the average human. He has a wide range of knowledge and despite his lack of experience with human social cues he is able to articulate himself extremely well. He also has access to tons of information due to his prior position as a scientist, but also because of what comes with existing as an Architect in the first place.
I mean, if your brain had direct access to all information available currently, you'd of course seem smart, but is that just you retelling what things have already been discovered or is this you being ‘smart’?
In that case you are only as smart as Google allows you to be (and the proverbial Architect GoogleTM is damn good). If you took an Architect never connected to the network and a human with no access to the internet how would they compare with their baseline intellect?
Wait a minute—what does that even solve? You could also argue the fact that because Architects are (usually) always connected to the network that this hypothetical is entirely unfair because it strips Architects of something that defines how they function. Being connected to the network is their normal existence, which would indeed imply that they are smarter than humans, yes? As they normally should have access to this advantage.
The average Architect has all the available knowledge that their species has learned available to it at all times while the average human has to rely only on things they’ve learned and how well they can research a certain topic. Again, being connected to the network for Architects is like if your brain was connected to Google and also literally everyone that currently exists and those that existed in the past. Just because a singular Architect may not have learned something for themselves doesn’t mean they can’t implement and use that knowledge. Just like how humans don’t need to have been the one to discover something for them to learn about and understand said thing.
Except then we go back to the issue of are they smart or do they just reiterate things they have available information on without actually having had studied or learned about said things? Even that fails to acknowledge the fact that they’re a hivemind! Trying to measure just one Architect is pointless when the only Architect mind that exists singularly from the rest of the network is AL-AN—besides he was never supposed to exist individually in the first place… and we have gone back around in a circle.
How could you even begin to compare the two species at all when they are so inherently different? Architects have senses that humans cannot begin to comprehend as we have never experienced them and vice versa. Their perceptions are very different from ours. Differences that make them seem so otherworldly to the other that it’s difficult to ascertain where you begin to measure which is ‘better’ and which is ’worse’.
To complicate things even further you would have to consider what each species considers to be intelligent at all, and then both would have to agree on these requirements. Is a fish lesser than a human just because it experiences existence in a way unfamiliar to us? What even is ‘smart’ or ‘intelligence’ and who decides what that means? It’s always going to be biased when the beings who created the definition also makes the rules and the criteria that must be met to fit that definition. An IQ test would mean nothing to a species that evolved under entirely different circumstances and whose minds work in entirely opposite ways to our own. Just as whatever they use to measure intelligence might not apply to how our brains work…
…Oh my god, it’s a loop that never ends. I can’t even remember which side I was arguing for, or if I was ever even arguing for one at all. Quite honestly, there’s no answer to my original question. I’ll be frank with you I cannot come up with one anyhow. I tried, but the more I kept writing the more I realized that each point contradicted itself again and again until we end up here. Back at the beginning.
“Are Architects Smarter than Humans?”
I really would love to learn about the other species that made up parts of Architects vessels. As well as learning a bit more about the planets and ecosystems they came from and how the Architects ended up coming across them.
I like how small the phasegate makes AL-AN appear as you watch him assemble the ship.
Green…
Unused aside dialogue between AL-AN and Robin about quartz.
Transcript under the cut
AL-AN: Once in my travels I came across a planet that had trees with leaves of quartz.
Robin: Sounds beautiful!
A: It was refractive.
R: You have the soul of a poet.
A collection of AL-AN screenshots from the phasegate cutscene that I like
I love how smooth his mechanical arms move
POV you are AL-AN
A closer view of AL-AN integrating into the ship
The other half of my two subanutica OCs: Andrés. He has the misfortune of hosting AL-AY in his head.
The initial concept for this idea was ‘What if Alterra found an Architect instead?’ I went with it from there. Andrés doesn’t particularly care for the company, or the situation he has found himself in.
I have been peer pressured into making subnautica OCs. This is AL-AY, I will post its lore another time :)
I just really like this screenshot I took