I'd been wanting to make this graphic for a long time, and I finally was able to get around to it during a rare lull in scientists throwing ideas at me. :)

I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding the whole Pluto "demotion" thing, and I personally don't feel like the IAU's case was watertight*, but in the grand scheme of things, we should really stop and ask ourselves: is it a big deal? Dwarf planets are still amazingly incredible places no matter what humans decide to call them. So what if the IAU categorizes things into tidy little boxes with emotionally weighted labels? That doesn't prevent us from studying them, exploring them, and loving them.

So I made this graphic to encourage people to stop thinking of dwarf planets as somehow inferior to major planets. Dwarf planets are wonderful in their own special way. I think we'd all be better off spending less energy being angry about something inconsequential, and more energy finding ways to enjoy life.

My friend Chris Lintott is going to give a lecture on this very subject in a few weeks, so stop by (or watch the YouTube recording later) for what I'm sure will be a very elucidating take on the subject. Chris is a fantastic example of a well-grounded astronomer, which is a great oxymoron to be.

*Among other issues with the current definition of the term "planet", I'm not convinced by the argument that we need to keep the number of "real" planets in the solar system low so they're easy to memorize. Students are required to memorize much larger sets of data in most curricula--think about how many characters Chinese and Japanese students have to memorize just to be considered basically literate in their languages. US students have to memorize all 50 states and (theoretically) all the capitals. And who could ever forget those long hours spent with multiplication or periodic table flashcards?

Plus, just because a large set of something exists, doesn't necessarily mean you need to memorize all of the items in the set. When I was in school, part of the curriculum was learning the counties of California. California has 58 counties. We were definitely not required to fully memorize all of them. But we were expected to know at least 5. (I feel bad for students in Texas, which has 254 counties. Yeah.)

If I were designing an introductory astronomy curriculum, I'd require my students to memorize all the major solar system planets in order as well as their largest moons, and a handful of the more notable dwarf planets. Anything more than that would be unnecessary, but I would encourage them to keep learning about the solar system on their own time.

I'm not fond of taking actions that dumb down education. The human brain is capable of so much. Learning should be about stretching and enlarging your brain's capabilities, not checking off boxes.

 Seeing as Oak is also the one who does the introduction speech in Gen II, I had a lot of fun twisting his in-game dialogue to fit the character I established for him in these comics. 

Some of it may be slightly paraphrased. :)

 Seems like a very supportive relationship indeed.

 I actually reached 100 followers on Facebook, so I celebrated with a little thank-you doodle. I thought it would be fun to have the subject be a species that lived around 100 million years ago, and I picked Oryctodromeus because I have a lot of experience drawing it by now (and I thought the tunnel-number idea would be fun).

There's a little mammal popping in to say hello because smaller burrows have been found branching off from orycto burrows, and it's thought that mammals may have done their own tunneling inside the burrows.

I'm really grateful for everybody who enjoys my art (and maybe my writing)--I'll keep doing my best to create a bright spot on an Internet that can get really scary sometimes. Let's all be kind to each other--that's what really makes things better.

Return to Lynwood, Chapter 13

 Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13

It was a couple of hours after lunch on the third day that they found the ruins. The landscape had become more and more familiar to Isengrim these past few kilometres—this was land that he had not only traversed before, but had once roamed regularly. Even individual trees were familiar now. There was the thick old pine with the knots like a twisted face in its trunk. Here was the oak where he and his packmates found gold buried under the roots. The memories came flooding back to him. A look around at the other Werelupes’ faces told him they were experiencing the same thing.

Through the mist, Isengrim could see a number of immense fallen conifers, moss-covered and long stripped of their needles, stretching toward the approaching company like the spears of a hostile guard.

One of the Werelupes drew a sharp breath. “We’re close now,” she whispered. “Those are the trees that toppled when the keep fell on them.” Her packmates nodded.

“Let’s keep going,” Isengrim said. Now back on foot, he led them through the blockade, beneath rotting trunks that sat propped on the remnants of undergrowth where they landed nearly fifteen years before.

 

 And here we go again with the featureless void where a strange old man indoctrinates you into a world of monster fights.

 Unlike the Gen I games, Gold/Silver/Crystal have you start out in a black void where a disembodied voice is talking to you and asking you to set the time. Which is actually pretty terrifying if you stop to think about it too much like I have!