Firstly, thank you for the ridiculously long review. I was actually just feeling discouraged that my writing wasn't getting much traction, so reading this was extremely helpful for that.

I really appreciate that the effort I've been putting into the worldbuilding has been noticed. That academic article from 2021 also made the rounds on social media a while back in the form of some kind of "lmao scientists could make you breathe through your butt" meme, which was where I first encountered the idea (and subsequently deep dived on the topic). On the more technological side of things, one of my biggest inspirations has been The Expanse series of novels. They were always extremely careful to describe exactly how the ships were laid out, so I took some of that (all the floors stacked in line with the main thrust) and combined it with some more grounded aspects from the ISS (being able to pull once and travel almost the whole length, plus some of the design of airtight doors and stuff).

With xenobiology, a huge focus of mine was on realism. Making things that really could exist in the real world. There is a lot to the Ancients that I spent hours and hours on. I wanted them to feel almost overengineered, because that's basically what happened to them. They either evolved these traits or there was gene editing involved to produce them. Not everybody knew what they were doing as well as they could have, so some of these things are more overcomplicated or less efficient than they maybe could have been. But I wanted everything to have a reason and a feasible explanation. For instance, the deeper folds of their stomachs are to trap gastric juices into little "pockets" held together with surface tension, so they can more efficiently digest in zero G. When figuring out the O2 pill, I looked into how carbon dioxide was carried out of the body as carbonic acid, and then how the process of photosynthesis takes carbonic acid and breaks it down into oxygen. I had to cut a few paragraphs when talking about that part, because I was going a little too in-depth with it.

Even the telepathy has somewhat of a feasible explanation! Their skin is covered in microscopic spikes that are sensitive to bioelectricity. When you touch an Ancient, those spikes will identify where the nerve endings are in your skin and send a message back to the midbrain to let the Ancient know that they have a firm connection. Their cerebrum then uses the midbrain to translate conscious thought into electrical impulses that travel down the most efficient nerve pathways, hop over into your nervous system, and hit your brain in such a way that it can be translated on the other side. If you're not wired to do that subconsciously, they'll also transfer instructions on how to receive and respond into your brain at the same time. Like biological programming! That's why non-Ancients can't fully link for extended periods of time. Their brains just don't have the neuron pathways to do that. Extended exposure does help their brains develop those pathways though, the same as learning any other skill.

Outside of the Ancients, I think the thing I'm the most proud of is the Seirogi's Translatopede. In building an insectoid race, I looked into how insects (specifically hive insects) communicate with each other. And a lot of it is pheromone-based. So to speak to species that can't detect their pheromones, they purpose-grew a little critter that can turn pheromones into words!

The story is published elsewhere - but on other size/vore platforms. I've put it on Eka's Portal and SizeFiction so far. You're not the first to tell me I should try to take this story out of the size fetish spaces, so maybe you're on to something.

Now! For the process... I had it all written out in a message for a different thing so I'm just gonna take that and paraphrase it here.

I have aphantasia (no mind's eye), but for most of my senses. I have no sight, smell, touch, taste, or motion. I have spatial awareness and a little hearing, which translates to "I think in half-sentences." The rest? It's all conceptual. I refer to those concepts in my head as "vibes." Basically a pile of related conceptual... stuff that I am unable to translate into words. 

Everything has a vibe. Cygnus, the Ancients, the setting of the story, and the story itself are all separate vibes, as are all of the other characters and species and concepts, etc. It is only through writing the story that I figure out how to translate those thoughts so I can share them with other people. I only get a little bit at a time, and not always in a convenient order. There have been plenty of times where I'm really struggling to write a scene, and it's not until later that I go "oh. It was hard because that's not how Cygnus would act. Duh."

Those vibes do not feel right until I get the details right to a satisfactory degree. So, a lot of my "writing" time is spent doing research. And doing a lot of math. When figuring out how the ship should be tumbling through space, I learned that somebody built a spin calculator that estimates the comfortable level of spin gravity from a bunch of different numbers (and has cited sources for those numbers!). When figuring out how long Cygnus' slower route would delay them, I went through so much math on both the distance traveled at specific percentages of the speed of light, as well as the relativistic effects of not having the tachyon drive operational. Any time I do anything with J'kabi, I have to take 1/6th the average number and do plus or minus a few percentage points within a reasonable range so it feels more correct.

By far the most math though was the oxygen math in chapter three. I wanted to make sure they found enough oxygen to keep going. To make that believable, I researched the construction of space suits and how much air they took on spacewalks, standard sizes of oxygen bottles for medical and industrial use, the average oxygen burned by an individual both at rest and doing physical labor. I took that and calculated how much air J'kabi would need on average and how much her space suit could carry, plus the times when Cygnus would be using air, to find the average and maximum number of days they could survive both using the rescue pod and not using the rescue pod. And then I had to redo all of those numbers because I calculated them with a 24-hour day instead of an 18 hour day (which I based off submarines! They operate on an 18 hour day when they're underwater).

To summarize my process, it basically just winds up as "write until you have a question, then answer that question. Make sure you didn't already answer that question in previous chapters or the lore you've already written down." I also talk with friends and do a little bit of roleplay with characters in my settings, which also helps solidify some details. The bare bones of the Milky Way, as well as the Seirogi, Mulvidians, and Ancients started from a roleplay I did with a couple friends in 2021. Subsequent writings and talks with other friends about the setting have all built on each other, so it's been about 4 years to get it to this point. And I'm still exploring different areas of the setting and adding to the background lore. I am slowly plugging away at a massive lore document that goes over each and every species, their planet of origin, societal hierarchies, culture, language, and biology. And how those things influenced each other!

Again, thank you so much for your interest in my writing! It really means a lot to me. I've had a lot of real life work happening, so I'm not as active as I'd like to be, but I'm slowly getting back to it. If you want more of this Milky Way galaxy though, you should check out Searching for Skimmers! It's a lot more lighthearted and kink-focused, but still has a lot of worldbuilding (focused around the Mulvidians this time!)