Blah Blog

Blog of Blah. I have an art blog under beaubartley which is currently overfilling with DA/Solas nonsense :)

[lady-of-the-spirit]

Character who doesn't get to die & character who doesn't get to live. Is that anything.

[velvetcloak]

The Soul Gown, Robert Wun

[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

[mindfulwrath]

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

[jeanjauthor]

I do think this could be useful for writers! ...Caveat, if you're going to use this for making a map for anything published (digital or paper, even if it's only in a fanfic archive or whatever), please, please credit the creator and their program as how you made that map! The more ways information like this gets out there, the more useful it'll be to other writers, roleplaying game DMs/GMs, creators, etc.

[oh-opossum]

One of my favourites for mapping plates, biomes, etc is Tectonics.js. If you're familiar with how tectonics shape a planet, you can guess where the features go by toggling plates, crust thickness, etc. Between Mapgen4 and Tectonics.js, we've got some pretty sweet tools at our disposal.

[brehaaorgana]

More stuff!:

European Geosciences Union Blog — Beyond Tectonics: Building fictional worlds to better understand our own

Reshaping Reality's Worldbuilding Tips

Worldbuilding pasta's series, An Apple Pie from Scratch also check their resources page!

R/worldbuilding's Reading List. Also check out their collected resources link. This basic geology guide from 11 years ago is still nice.

Creating an Earth-Like Planet, and The Climate Cookbook (aka Geoff's Climate Cookbook) technically the climate cookbook is a part of Creating an Earth like Planet I think.

Related: Worldbuilding Workshop's "Working Out Climates Using Geoff’s Climate Cookbook." Which goes through using the resource in order to map make. Also just the Worldbuilding Workshop in General.

Madeline James Writes's Worldbuilding Guide

Worldbuilding 101 (this links to the Biomes section but there's like...everything.)

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments ...

Landscapes are worlds of cultural product ... Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. ...

Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts ...

Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning ...

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

This course syllabus for a Landscape Archaeology class is freely accessible. It includes an online resources page.

Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009

(Landscape Biographies is open access, as is Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science: From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach. But I wouldn't try to read every essay.)

[dedicatedfollower467]

If you are like me and find it helpful to have video reference for a process/activity in addition to a written guide, Artifexian is a YouTube channel that does a LOT of world building stuff and specifically he's in the process of creating a world following a lot of Worldbuilding Pasta's methodology!

[rcrisu]

A collection of omens from the prairies 🤞🌾🌾

[beaubashley]

Chapter 4 is up! Featuring banter and rule making!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[beaubashley]

🌊Like the surf, chapter 4 is up 🌊

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[beaubashley]

Chapter 3 is up!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[beaubashley]

Chapter two of Far From Shore is up on Ao3:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[beaubashley]

There are two houses that sit on opposing ends of a sea. But the thing—the occurrence, really, that these two homes share besides the sea and the polar shores on which they sit, is that they are connected, and they are connected because they love each other.

So, it is an unfortunate situation, indeed, that Hermione Granger had no prior knowledge about this unique feature of her recently purchased property. But what she does know is that there is a man standing in her home. A man where no man is meant to be.

...

A dramione au. Updates every other week.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[beaubartley]

Happy dragon age day! I wrote some solavellan to celebrate:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[57sfinest]

theoretical entroponetics: the post

okay. LONG post incoming. i have summarized all available information on the pale, separated into confirmed objective truth & in-canon speculation that may or may not be true, and then appended my own very detailed theory on the pale! this post is meant as a resource; please feel free to add things of your own in replies/reblogs (please tag me if you do!) or point out any errors i may have made. you’re welcome to use any of my personal theory in your own work but please credit me if you do!! (and tag me in that/send it to me, i really want to see what you do with it!)

Keep reading

[sunsorbit]

Practical entroponetics: an addition

I have taken the liberty to collect all (take that with a grain of salt, I probably missed a bunch of it) information about the physical properties of the pale we know from the book Sacred and Terrible Air.

Major spoiler warning for the book, obviously. More under the cut :)

Keep reading

[peigslayers]

obsessed with stories where you can never go home

[peigslayers]

you can never go home because you fell asleep for a thousand years and when you woke up and returned there, your society had changed, your house had fallen and all of your friends were dead. you can never go home because you made a choice and were shattered into pieces and your home was destroyed in your wake. you can never go home because someone took you and changed you against your will and although your home is the same, the person who belonged there is dead. you can never go home because you committed a crime and your family expelled you and even as they extend a hand of reconciliation, you will never forgive them. you can never go home because your home was a person and someone murdered her and now you drift and grieve to the point of insanity. you can never go home because you never knew your sister but she gave you every opportunity you have and now she’s dead and your parents see nothing but her in your eyes.

[starpros-sunshine]

"I can fix him" this "I can make him worse" that Pathetic. I can love him so much that it changes the course of the entire narrative.

[antivancastle]

please i know that making “solas is a hobo” jokes is funny, but in his defence he’s dressing like that on purpose. he’s trying to seem boring and inconsequential, and it works!

[mrs-gauche]

You know what I love about this, is that we know for certain that he did purposefully change right before the start of DAI, because we literally saw him wearing something completely different for about 0.5 seconds, when he could be seen sitting in the back of a tavern in Haven right before the Breach happened in one of the first cinematic trailers for Inquisition. lol

I mean, you have to give it to him that he managed to act fairly quickly, to go from probably total shock at what happened at the conclave, to make his way up there and putting together the most non threatening, innocent, humble looking hermit outfit to appear this suspiciously unsuspicious and, you know, not get executed right upon arrival. lmao

*Solas after snatching a shabby vest from the local shepherd, some poor man's old backpack, a mug and a wooden stick he picked up on the way in a mere three minutes*:

"This should suffice."

[wovi]

james longenbach / wendy cope / jon kabat-zinn

[helenasurvives]

calling all authors!!

i have just stumbled upon the most beautiful public document i have ever laid eyes on. this also goes for anyone whose pastimes include any sort of character creation. may i present, the HOLY GRAIL:

https://www.fbiic.gov/public/2008/nov/Naming_practice_guide_UK_2006.pdf

this wonderful 88-page piece has step by step breakdowns of how names work in different cultures! i needed to know how to name a Muslim character it has already helped me SO MUCH and i’ve known about it for all of 15 minutes!! i am thoroughly amazed and i just needed to share with you guys 

[theredscreech]

Cultures include Yoruba, Sikh, Vietnamese, Polish, and dozens more!

[pointnclick]

hello male writer. before you is a typewriter. you have one day to write a novella with a woman as the protagonist without describing her breasts. the timer begins now

[yebisu]

Her ass was like a peach, and brother I’m in her pit.

[pointnclick]

well. that one’s on me