HOME | DD
dcjc — This Highway System Doesn't Draw Itself
by
#caribbean #cartography #maps #wip #cc0 #geofiction #kopimi #rogatia #qgis #sneak_preview #elmshire #weymouthhc #rowlandhc
Published: 2023-10-02 13:21:36 +0000 UTC; Views: 1559; Favourites: 2; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
...and nor do those dozens of commune lines. Trust me, it's far more ambitious than it looks. Too ambitious, in fact--to the point where I had to give myself and this comeback attempt at Rogatia --the island nation where our forthcoming Sevton Saga (however soon we move on with it) is (partially?) set--a break after I did the road work on Windstream commune, where the Herbert Hancine Highway (3H/R1) and the Northern Shropshire Expressway (R15) meet. After this goes to press, work resumes in our current district, Wethersfield in St. Paul. (Which reminds me: Mount Wethersfield, after which it was named, was profiled in a now long-outdated Inkscape-based screencap that's graced my DA profile for virtually years . Come this upload, guess what's replacing it? And while we're at it, we'll be relegating some of our older stops-and-starts to the Scrap Heap.)
In case you're still around to keep track: Rogatia used to be nicknamed "A Drop in the Ocean " back when its highly prolonged R&D started in early 2008; now it's called "The Bulwark of the Atlantic" for a few good reasons I'll remind you of later in the commentary.
For once, we move back to the non-furry stuff--and this time, with tags. (To demand the old category system back, please send feedback to DA. The Topics pane is their current substitute--but it's not quite the same.)
Welcome, folks, to your first sneak preview of the new version of this geofictional North Atlantic/Caribbean utopia, North America's only diarchy in-universe. (With a lady President, a 57-year-old Prime Minister, a handful of advisors, and a procedure of publicly influenced consensus not too dissimilar to Wikipedia's regimen. [Yes, folks, I'm a veteran from early 2005 .])
This is a portion of Elmshire , the Rogatian province that concentrates on agriculture. (The other two are industrial/commercial Shropshire to its southeast, and tourism-focused Yorkshire south-southwestward.) More specifically, its southeastern coast, near which runs the province's segment of 3H (marked in magenta). To the west is the province seat of Weymouth , home to subtitling/animation outfit TJE Studios ; eastward lies the quaint realm of Rowland , close to the Sherbrooke Strait separating Shropshire and Elmshire. Major junctions from left to right: Ducarogue Boulevard (S82), Elmshire Promenade (R4), DeAngelis Avenue (S83), Joumel Road (R32), and Farlington Boulevard (R23). 3H here passes through the following communes:
- Victoria District, St. Philip:
- Paray-le-Monial (Suburb, Weymouth)
- Quicherat (Suburb, Weymouth)
- Igbinedion (Suburb, Grenville)
- Macklin (Suburb, Grenville)
- Sherbrookesea District, St. Anthony:
- Grindleford (Suburb, Rowland)
- Tinkersley (Suburb, Rowland)
- Augerio (Suburb, Rowland)
- Chelmorton (Suburb, Rowland)
- Boscawen (Village)
Keep in mind that this is only early days here for this large-scale revival, and not every thoroughfare is fully drawn yet--but we've at least managed to capture the gist.
By the way, Rogatian communes act similarly to their French counterparts ; the British government of long ago inherited them from the previous colonists. (As noted in the introduction to my old commune-list draft on Constant Noble.)
As for the highway system, grade separations and all: You'd be actually hard-pressed to find anything similar or more developed in Commonwealth CARICOM, although Jamaica (with its Highway 2000 program) is getting there. Instead, the role models in this regard are the Spanish-speaking Greater Antilles--Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
For the past how many days, I'd been planning to give this a go as my entry for a giveaway so-and-so has been holding at DeviantART's Projects forum since late August. After days of the usual delays (stemming from--you guessed it--personal commitments, babysitting, conlang work [I have been responsible almost singlehandedly for Tovasala/Relformaide since 2016--2009 if you count early paper-only development], and a week-long harangue/holdup over a faulty check I didn't really know was faulty until Capital One caught wind of it; supplemental reading via broad86new ), all it took to snap this on QGIS 2.18 (at 2:37 a.m., September 28) was an Internet outage on our provider Spectrum's end, which lasted from midnight till somewhere around eight a.m. when I began preparing this on the 28th. Earlier, I planned to make it twice as big, but rescinded at the last minute for lack of detail quantity at this time.
As to why it's called the "Bulwark of the Atlantic"...
- For starters, they have the Caribbean's most respected military (and one of the largest as well, some 11,000 members strong--registration is voluntary). They were even depicted in a locally produced, Colombia-shot 1992 action epic, Battlefield (complete with title song by Paul Carrack).
- Its populace has been environmentally conscious ever since French settlement in the early 19th century--meaning that oil rigs are out of the question.
- Even better: No slavery ever took place there.
- In recent years, they've been a closed shop to conservatives, bad digital bills (looking at you, KOSA and UK Online Safety), upload filters (looking at you, Article 13 ~ 17), and especially copyright maximalism. (The latter is where their unique copyright system has come in since 2019: Locally produced/focused works are automatically public domain unless otherwise noted; foreign works and Rogatian material based on/featuring such are subject to 40 years of protection.)
- Furthermore, they have a longstanding alliance with Taiwan, not mainland China; have made net neutrality a law and not the exception (U.S. Title II, I recently heard from Free Press, is back on the FCC's docket); have kept the island free of COVID-19 as possible since the 2020 onset...
- and most importantly, stand for people before profits. (Late-stage capitalism, to paraphrase Barry Nye and Barry Steinberg in Club Paradise, is never going to work in a country like this; tell that to everyone from Wix [DeviantART's owner] to Reddit's u/spez to Elon "X" Musk.)
As for that market's biggest-selling anime property--ever? I hear you guessing, but trust us: It's not Naruto, not One Piece, not Dragon Ball--not even Pokémon. That's right--I'm referring to Shimajiro/Kodomo Challenge, the belated Caribbean export of which took until 2020-22 to explode on the scene thanks to the pandemic lockdowns and the local licensee's marketing charisma/chutzpah. (Formerly Watashi, WildBrain Caribbean's anime division, after their Canadian parent picked up the children's/family library once handled by Skouras, now A24 Antilles; at this writing, WildBrain/Benesse's ad hoc joint venture Kotora.) Its rivalry with Bluey, Ludo's English-speaking Australian import masterpiece aimed at the same demographic, has now reached legendary proportions--to the point where TJE is currently planning a crossover between Uluru of Heroland (from the 2019 movie featurette) and the Heeler family! (But only in short-form videos on the locally established, DRM-free, worldwide-serving Troadal service. Think twice about an official YouTube upload, due to the Bulwark media industry's recent misgivings on Google/Alphabet's treatment of that social video platform and its community.)
In the meantime, giving Joshuat1306 a warm hello.
As always happens in these commentaries--this particular one may be the longest I've ever prepared for an art platform, with a character count of 9,933 according to PstB at submission time--I'm already getting ahead of myself. Only wrapping it up right here because I don't want to leave Umbra0Ghost hanging, and the deadline for automatic closure of his giveaway is close at hand. (Nor CatrosCreativeCorner , for the sake of my Unspooled draft's future; let's hook back up this week.) But rest assured: A brand-new Bulwark (at 1:1,000,000 scale) is on the way. (In the meantime, I've only gotten started on GitHub . Stay tuned, fellow Mercators...)
Coming soon in my geofiction queue, Caruvia (the combined revival of another two former projects of mine, Novissima and Vigesima); Tovasala (the place where said conlang is spoken); and Veritas (a gift map to my former G+ contacts, wherever they may be now). Elsewhere, stay tuned for another portrait of Lisa, Cheer Bun (if I do get around to a high-resolution copy).
Until then, take care...and happy exploring!
Submission #20 (19th successful one) with PstB.
- Created with: QGIS 2.18 (original fractal terrain/GDAL contours/hill shading/nomenclature/rivers/lakes and ponds/bodies of water/roads and numbers/symbols/map design) and Wilbur 1.88 (terrain adjustments/erosion/limnic craters)
- Scale: 1:100,000 (100 px = 1 km)
- SW/NE corners (UTM 22N): 200E/1290N, 230E/1210N (coords in kilometres)
- Contour Vertical Interval (V.I.): 1 m (0.5 m northwest of Hanover)
Generated with: QGIS' Print Composer
Date: September 28, 2023
Released in the public domain under: CC0 (Creative Commons)/Kopimi (Piratbyrån)
Software licenses: GPL (QGIS)/Copyrighted freeware (Wilbur)
The PD rights also apply to any comments received below unless otherwise noted.
As this site has no CC licence chooser whatsoever (there's a reason why Miraheze already has the advantage in that regard), please take the above rights declaration for granted.
