Velundr

Velundr writes, draws... and whatever else distracts me. I’m around, just lurking mostly.

[monamoni]

[cloudvelundr]

I got a pair of old coke glasses a while back for the sole purpose of putting milkshakes in them. Do I like coke? No, but the glassware is classic. Honestly the perfect size for a shake.

Lazy mildly boozy milkshake: 1 ice-cream pint of your shoice + 1 mudshake bottle = 2 of these. Gelato comes out the blender a bit runnier, could use frozen yogurt or sherbet probably.

[cloudvelundr]

Three years ago I took this snip because I'd never actually seen it on a forecast before

I remembe thinking, a, wtf, and b, yeah i guess fuck all other weather is happening

now I just... know what wildfire smoke looks like, and like many I'm nowhere near the sources. Gauging the colour of the sky vs how badly I need groceries

[quiet-doll]

recently saw ppl discuss whether they put their medicines in a kitchen cabinet or a bathroom cabinet and i was shocked by the fact that many ppl said kitchen cabinet. so now i need you to reblog this and say where you keep yours

[parkchanwoohoo]

[cloudvelundr]

We have more storms rolling through tonight. Best lightening I've caught so far :)

[delicatuscii-wasbella102]

Artist Mona Caron creates a gigantic flower mural on side of a building in Jersey City

[headspace-hotel]

Omg… a joe pye weed…

[catasters]

[cloudvelundr]

I had an odd dream last night, ostensibly starting in prehistoric Hyrule despite a general lack of The Ears or other peoples, but from the perspective of a denisovan man (??? Not sure why this was important or what a denisovan man was doing in hyrule but whatever, later he was not denisovan anymore. Dream needed to establisha timescale i guess?) who kept getting murdered/sacrificed then resurrecting and/or reincarnating (both? unclear) over ages. He didn't know why it was happening to him, only that it was.

After the first few lives I heard a name the ones killing him were calling was Demise, but in at least some lives he seemed to be the Hero, because I saw different Links in mirrors, and it wasnt clear if they were calling him Demise. Hylia had declared he should be killed whenever he appeared but he didn't seem to have ever actually done anything. He lived pretty solitary lives on account of all the murder. People would know when he was due back and hunt him down, and it was the same guy every time because he remembered, if not from the start then by the end.

In the last incarnation, in modern times, he walked into some kind of clinic as people gathered and told a receptionist to just get it over with - she was apparently Hylia. The crowd started to shift, she prepared to kill him, the people around them went to stop her, and I woke up.

I'm not sure what exactly I was feeling when I woke up but it was definitely some kinda way.

[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!

[aturinfortheworse]

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

[hjartasalt]

See him sweeties

[hjartasalt]

He's so sweeties!

[hjartasalt]

Now see him fabulous

[hjartasalt]

Now see him. In the dark.

[hjartasalt]

My pet comma/kidney bean/some sort of slug

[datsderbunnyblog]

3rd place in a 1v1 🥀

[cloudvelundr]

Last night literally as my hand touched my bedside lightswitch suddenly there came a hell of a rumbling

[Video: the last 90 second of rapid fire fireworks at night, mostly red white and gold, partly obscured by heavy smoke drifting to the right.]

The Canada day fireworks were canceled in ottawa on the first because we had a massive rainstorm (lots of local flooding, 4000+ basements with water in them, etc. 2nd most rain in 24hrs ever) and we were waiting to see if the show would be rescheduled (why we don't have a rain day planned idk)

... they set them off just before the city noise ordinance kicked in, on a condensed timer, with not only no warning but actively told the few people in the know not to tell. There are rumors that fire services might not have been told, or that even the technicians only found out like 30min beforehand, like, wtf?

So people are annoyed, pissed or just disappointed. And yeah there's some people saying hur dur the city fun forgot because others are complaining, completely missing that the complaining is because:

People wanted to go!

However, it was a work night and most people not at the festival were home or sleeping!

There are a lot of people this scared the shit out of (I was like 2ish Km from the launch site and it sounded like I was under them, the resonance from the high rate of explosions apparently made it louder than usual??)

Some people very much did not want to go!

Some people have ptsd or can't handle fireworks for other reasons and this was a shit thing to do to them! You can't brace it there's no warning!

Pets could not be medicated/contained beforehand if there wasn't any a warning!

People wanted to go!

Instead it was short and kind of tied (suddenly and secretly) to the start of bluesfest, a ticketed event unlike the free canada day event, relatively few got to enjoy them, and lots of people experienced it in a way they didn't enjoy.

I'm glad I got to see anything at all, I like fireworks, but I like many others would have liked to see the whole thing.

And all this because it seems the city had three options: set them off as a rescheduled event (potentially expensive), disarm and disemble (dangerous), or set off as secretly as fireworks can be set off, and they didn't want to arrange crowd management/traffic measures. So.

That's city management for you

[whosname]

[id. A twitter post by @/Bennieeexyz Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat. Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records. My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now. Called the county clerk. Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty. Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons? Me: Yes, but he's a cat. Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county? Me: He's a legal cat. Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption. Me: He can't file anything. He has paws. Clerk: You can file on his behalf. Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat." Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons." Me: What's the medical reason? Clerk: He's a cat. Me: That's not a medical condition. Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving. Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later. "Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement." Took the letter to my vet. Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty. Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty? Me: Excellent question. No good answer. Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten. Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve? Vet: On what grounds? Me: He's a cat. Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings." Me: Perfect. Sent it in. Got another rejection. "Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court." My roommate thought this was hilarious. Roommate: Felix is going to jail. Me: This is serious. Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens. Decided that was actually the only option left. Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters. Checked in at the courthouse. Clerk: Name? Me: Felix Martinez. Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix? Me: Yes. Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat. Me: I've been saying that for six weeks. Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption? Me: I filed three. All rejected. Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief. Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation? Me: Twice. Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this. Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me. Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote? Me: You tell me. Supervisor: This is a data error. Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out. They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience. Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry. Me: Appreciate it. Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted? Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats. Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card. For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was. Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud. Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent. Roommate: That's what they all say. Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now. Fitting end to his legal career. end id]

[ciricearts]

rendering practiceee :Þ

[recoil-operated-deactivated2021]

Only People Who Can See RED Really Well Can Read These Words

Will you be seeing red after taking this quiz?

I can only read “dogs” and only see anything in one other. I see nothing in any other.

[bunjywunjy]

8/10 but fuck, OW.

[stevolteon]

8/10 also!

[fishonthetree]

6/10

[cloudvelundr]

10/10 but shit some of those are mean?

[cloudvelundr]

We had a really big thunderstorm last night, biggest we've seen in a while, and record rainfall today (fireworks canceled, understandably but boo) but did manage to catch a little lightning on my phone

With the constant honestly spectacular lightning that last over an hour I was a little peeved I couldn't catch more but I am happy I got anything at all lol