I don't mind the ramblings at all, in fact, it's nice to get some ideas from people with different perspectives on these things.

Antimatter is something I have considered as a power source as well, and depending on the technological prowess of the species or faction in question, probably a very practical solution! I imagine it's probably the basis for many of the common spacecraft engines and power generators in my universe, with relatively primitive nuclear reactors as back-ups. I'm not sure how well you can miniaturize a functional nuclear energy source, but the materials to power a fusion reactor are pretty plentiful in the universe--hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, it seems. While antimatter would make for devastating weapons, my personal take on the subject is that with its extreme value as an energy source, it would rarely be weaponized directly--antimatter bombs would be an extreme last resort weapon as the cost and volatility would probably deter most factions from producing them in any significant number vs more cost-effective weapons that can weaponize the energy produced by harnessing antimatter as a power source.

Being science fiction/science fantasy, though, we can also invoke as-yet-undiscovered types of matter and energy generation, and having a variety of different factions with different tech lets me play around with all sorts of ideas. Powering these blasters is one thing, figuring out just what the "energy pulse" is, is another matter altogether!
I gave the Starfarers the seemingly more rudimentary plasma-caster type of "blaster", that's as simple as generating and compressing something akin to a miniature solar flare I suppose, but that would also require two fuel sources--whatever material is energized to form the plasma burst, and the power cell to do the energizing. But the Jeroban, being a race of Space Jerboas living on a desert planet with dwindling resources, somehow came up with these things. The illuminated portion is the energy field projector, inside the rifles is a projector and arc much like what the pistol has--it's just a question of what they're firing through that arc to form a projectile now. Maybe some as-of-yet-undefined fifth state of matter, like some sort of "super plasma"? At some point I may retcon the operating principles, change the energy field projector from some sort of "containment field" that wraps around the energy pulse as it's discharged, into some sort of energizing field--but then again, maybe the energy field both contains and energizes the projectile somehow? If it's a somewhat focused pulse of energized matter, passing it through a field that both stabilizes it and imparts more energy seems like a great idea for an operating principle, and I can just say something about the interplay between the two elements being what holds the energy bolt together as either a projectile or a cutting blade.

If this is all too exotic, I still have factions using good ol' fashioned kinetic projectiles in the form of firearms, bows, railguns and coilguns, and photon-based weaponry, and ion weapons and even things resembling "phasers", among other things. Sonic weaponry is something I'd like to experiment with designing too, although I'm not sure how effective that would be at any significant range.

I actually have thoughts on shielding technology, too! Right now, the main mechanism I'm leaning towards is again, just simple magnetic fields. If they could pulse in a rapid yet orderly manner, the rapidly shifting magnetism could cause a lot of energy-based projectiles to disintegrate (for lack of a better word), drastically reducing or completely negating the damage they inflict to the (already armored) hull of a vehicle--and if slugthrowers are being used, most kinetic projectiles would be metallic in nature, meaning the shifting magnetic fields might be able to disrupt their trajectory somehow, or slow them down enough to reduce their impact somewhat, or cause them to break apart, or if there's a technological component like an explosive it could be caused to detonate prematurely or just fail to detonate at all.
Combine this sort of principle with the appropriate types of armor (probably focusing on heat resistance/energy dissipation across a larger area to reduce the damage caused by a concentrated impact), and space battles could get very interesting as warring factions need to not only figure out how to penetrate the adversary's shields, but also their armor, and if they want to actually capture or destroy the target vessel, do all of this before they jump to hyperspace and escape. Now we have an excuse to have boarding parties!
I've also been planning to use the deflector shield principle in a peaceful application--an "aerodynamics field" projected around a vehicle that drastically reduces its drag. I think I mentioned this concept in one of the descriptions of one of my spacecraft in the past, probably the Cygnian Federation V-Series transport as it's basically a space-capable UPS/FedEx step van, not very sleek...

I don't mind a bit of engineering license. Drunken uncle "scientific license" is what makes Star Trek's technobabble enable suspension of disbelief, after all!

Also, the weird stuff is still coming--I seem to frustrate a lot of people by randomly cycling between fat animal, animal in underwear, baby animal, adult animal in diaper, whatever random possibly fetish scenario seemed fun to draw some random evening, serious character art, and world-building art like vehicles and weapons--you should have seen how my watcher count on DeviantArt would fluctuate back in the day, all the watchers I'd pick up after posting something like this weapon sheet, and then 90% of them would leave 24 hours later because Skunk Boy is running around in a diaper or Buck is showing off his underwear.

That's some pretty good technobabble, all right! I'm not sure if this is entirely compatible with how I imagine the aerodynamics field working (in simple terms, it's a very low-powered deflector shield projected into a streamlined shape ahead and around the vehicle to basically deflect atmosphere), or if it would be cost-effective to do what you described even if it were advantageous... but that being said, if I understand what you're suggesting, it is an interesting concept and something that may have certain applications, or be the next step in the evolution of the technology, or even be in use to some degree already. As it stands, this could already be an operating principle for some of the vehicles I've drawn, which appear to have jet engines that somehow "switch over" for space flight. I honestly haven't given all the specifics this much thought yet, which is probably a good thing sometimes.

Very true, although I have mentioned in the past that I also worry that some of the weirder stuff I draw scares off some watchers that might otherwise like my art, or vice-versa, the vanilla art and random dumps of sci-fi art bore the fetish crowd. Oddly enough, I encounter the latter far more than the former, it seems like I'll periodically pick up a handful of bondage fetish people who find my one or two drawings of soldiers tied up from 2015, and leave within a week because I don't draw bondage very often at all. For the most part, my artist-watcher relationship is very good, they like what they like and disregard what they don't and wait for the next post, and that's how I feel about my own watcher relationship with artists I follow.
Anyways, I'm glad you like them, at least when I draw them! I find that the art style often matters just as much as the subject matter. For as much weird fetish stuff as I draw and post, I rarely if ever favorite or comment on any myself, I guess for me it needs to be in a more silly and cartoon style for me to really be interested.

Also, Weasyl has one thing I wish the bigger sites had, and something that makes me really wish this site were more active... tag blacklisting! You don't want to see any art of cartoon critters in diapers, for example, just blacklist "diaper" and problem (mostly) solved! It seems like this would be the ideal site for people who only like a portion of my art to be following me on, as they could just blacklist the tags they don't like.

(Sorry for the delays in my replies, by the way!)

It's really cool that you're so open-minded, I wish more people were like that--especially over on DeviantArt you get a LOT of people that take it upon themselves to leave nasty comments on art they don't like, and attack the artist personally for creating it at all, when they could have just kept scrolling. (Also on DA I got a few thinly veiled accusations of plagiarism because this generic energy sword looks like some other generic energy swords from other properties, lol.)
Myself, I'm all for the ability to tailor your own user experience and something like a tag blacklist is perfect for that even if I rarely use it myself, I just like that the option is available.

There's also a few upsides and practical applications to tag blacklisting that people don't always think about at first, the biggest one I can think of being to hide spoilers from TV shows, movies, games, etc. as you could just temporarily blacklist tags related to that media (an even better solution would be a community-wide effort to tag spoilers as -insert movie title here-spoiler, but getting people on the internet is like herding cats). Or, to hide "ads", artists repeatedly posting the same images as commission/adoptable/YCH reminders, to declutter my browsing a bit. Another one being, if there's something that's popular and getting a lot of related content posted all at once and it's just getting tiresome or overwhelming as you're not interested in it, blacklisting it temporarily until the fervor dies down could be a good solution. During the 2020 election cycle I wish I could have blocked political posts on every site I was on, regardless of what side was making the posts, because it was getting really tedious!
(That's the most I'll say on the subject--I'm on these art sites to entertain and be entertained, not to get into political debates.)
I guess to me, I see it as having a lot of useful applications beyond a sort of "personalized censorship", so I see it as a good option to have.

But, at the same time, you're right, echo chambers are not great for personal growth. Despite there being a lot of things I don't really care for (be that simple indifference, or actually having a personal distaste for), I haven't bothered to blacklist anything, as even within genres I am indifferent to I sometimes find some very interesting art I can appreciate outside of its appeal to a specific fandom.

I think what you are describing as "collaborative work" is a few different things--I got the feeling you're describing actual collaboration (I have done some minor collab work in the past when I was still fairly new to digital art, a friend of mine let me finish some of their rough sketches so I could practice my lining and coloring a bit), along with simple fan art (or gift art, I think the distinction is that "gift art" is directed at another individual artist while "fan art" is based on an officially published intellectual property?), and art trades, where two artists draw something for each other. I love that last one but I rarely find anybody to trade with that's a suitable trade partner. You could also be describing those "art memes" where people draw their characters in a certain style or outfit or something. This is a way more complicated subject than I initially thought, I was going in with the intention of "this is the word he's looking for" to be helpful, but then I realized just how many different things artists get up to!

Myself, when it comes to discovering art, I rarely use any sort of search or browse, I follow up on who faves my stuff, and see what else they have in their favorites fairly often. If someone likes what I'm doing, about half the time that means they have similar tastes to me. (The other half of the time it's because I drew their fetish.) I do occasionally just browse what's new here and on FA, though.

As for my delayed replies, I'm glad you're patient with me! People really seem to expect all interaction to be instantaneous nowadays, but I've learned over the years that it's better for me personally to stop and think a bit before commenting, or to just come back to a message later if I'm just not feeling all that interested. Nowadays I mostly let comments sit for a few days, and reply to them on my day off when I'm not either getting ready to go to work or burnt out from spending several hours on a drive-thru speaker trying to get Karen to tell me which of the 30 different "hamburgers" on the menu she wants. No, Karen, we don't just have "a regular hamburger", you need to at least describe what you want--I had a tooth pulled last week, and that experience was far less painful, traumatic and difficult than taking the average fast-food order!

Ah, yes... kinda forgot about this comment, oops!

Tag blacklisting really is just a client-side filter, and artists don't know if you use it or not, unless they're meticulously counting their views-to-watchers ratios and suddenly notice that one less view or something!

When I look at that mill, I'm not necessarily bothered by any of the things you point out, but then again I'm no engineer! I think I'm drawn more to the aesthetics of the thing than the practicality, if that makes sense. Once you brought up your points about the practicality, I started trying to justify it in my mind but a bit differently... what if said mill was in a region that's just mountainous in general? Some small community tucked away in the mountains, perhaps, where this setup is adequate, or the best they can do and they get by? Maybe a small, rural community making use of small wagons pulled by pack animals don't have as many issues with the narrow road? Or maybe those mountains direct the wind in such a way that said mill can be very efficient despite everything else mentioned?

Your example of "chubby underwear dog named Dom" is sort of changed by the fact we know each other--such a thing could be a sort of homage or reference, rather than direct plagiarism, unless as you said you were completely denying any connection. Even then, however, the name "Dominic" is a generic enough name, and chubby dogs are a generic enough art subject, and underwear is just fun to draw, so it could just as easily be a coincidence. My experience with "plagiarism" always seems to come from people who I could argue are plagiarizing my work--I'm not sure if you're familiar with any of my Possum County characters, but they started off as Five Nights At Freddy's fan characters of sorts, and have very generic names. Several times, I received very angry messages from fan-brats who were mad that I called my horse "Harry Horse" or that he was brown (because brown horses never existed before they drew one) or that my sheep was called "Sammy Sheep". And yet, my oldest art of my characters was always older than the oldest art of theirs, so I could spin it around and accuse them of copying me... but I generally just politely told them off by pointing out I drew mine first, their names and traits are very generic, and getting mad about this is pointless at best since when it comes down to it, we're both technically plagiarizing Five Nights At Freddy's, so chill.

Finding people to collaborate with is very tricky indeed. The artists need to have a similar enough art style and skill level that their finished collab is actually coherent (imagine somebody who specializes in super-detailed background/scenic art trying to put one of my simple character drawings into a scene, for example), not to mention they need to be able to work together and communicate effectively (again, the "my character in their scene" example would require my hypothetical collaborator to communicate things like the angle of lighting and important elements of their scene that my character may be interacting with or observing). Then, they need to synchronize their schedules well enough to actually complete the collaboration! I'm often busy with work, or in a bad mood and tired of talking to people so I'm not in the mood to communicate, or I can't focus and just want to draw random creature designs or invent a race of alien goats that become the Devil in some religions on backwater planets populated by nearly hairless primates or something.
I have a friend who seems to get frustrated whenever I just design something and don't have everything about it figured out the moment I show him. Sometimes I just wanna design a pudgy hamster/gerbil critter and I'll figure out what to do with it later.

Crocodile pit? Too cold around here for the lizards, and too complicated to operate. I'd go for the tried-and-true "trapdoor into murder contraption" approach, if the customer is rude at the window (sometimes it's just someone that sounds rude but turns out to be an old person with a hearing aid or something, so they sorta have an excuse I guess?), pulling the lever drops their car into the compactor and ejects the cubed car into the parking lot as an example for the others...
(I'm not entirely heartless, I'll try to give them enough time to get out of the car first, and hopefully the loss of the car will be lesson enough!)
Barring cartoon villain pitfall traps, we should at least be allowed to fire their greasy cheeseburgers at/into their car with a slingshot. Or be allowed to challenge the rude customer to a duel, and fight them in the parking lot in hand-to-hand combat. I'll fight dirty. Pocket Salt! And then I'll dump french fries on them and let the seagulls finish the fight for me as I go back to work since somebody's gotta actually do the work around there...