Nerdfighters and Nerds

Welcome to a blog where there is sadly few original gifs, but no end to the things I reblog. Seriously, if I'm online, I apologize for taking over. Sorry if you're on desktop. This theme is unusable but I keep it as an homage to my younger self.

[mookybear12404]

I feel like the first class you played in DND tells a lot about you

Reblog and put in the tags what your first class was

[mammalianmammals]

Eastern Quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus), family Dasyuridae, order Dasyuromorphia, Canberra, Australia

photographs by Raelene Pitcher

[medusadyke]

tumblr discourse after 13 years on this fucking website

[novum-solem]

@teaboot's tags because Yes:

[teaboot]

Actually yeah that should be in the post. Hell yeah

[depsidase]

[datasoong47]

[linguisticparadox]

[r5h]

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2609/

[bralsra-deactivated20250108]

theres ALWAYS a relevant XKCD for everything huh

[craicisirish]

reminds me of how artists flip the canvas to make sure their art looks good

Just flip the genders real quick and check if you accidentally made a cult

[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!

[countesspetofi]

It doesn't generally bother me when things in/on another world aren't the same as they are here and now. Because it's literally another world.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

i just want you to love something the way i love the world cup.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

sure i had to wake up at 3 am here in norway to watch the u.s. men's national team, but i 4-1 have no regrets.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

God has punished me for the pun I made after the U.S. beat Paraguay.

[hopeymchope]

PlayStation Bad

In just the past two months, Sony has:

Said the PS6 will be more than $1000 at launch

Announced the end of all physical PS game releases

While simultaneously announcing the end of two of their console game stores — ensuring multiple games will die forever

Declared that they are wholly dedicated to (A) leveraging A.I. when making games and (B) creating live-service games above all other game types

Announced that if you bought any movies through their PlayStation Store, over 550 of them will soon be deleted from all users' libraries — with no restitution offered of any kind

Gamers, it is time — to paraphrase Robert Vann — to turn Sony's picture to the wall. Any one of these insults would be bad, and taken alone? Maybe it could be swallowed. But this is an ongoing campaign of disdain towards customers, with each declaration worse than the last.

PlayStation does not deserve your patronage any longer. The PS6 must fail. Leave them behind.

[ruthlesslistener]

Don't forget the fact that despite the fact that they claimed to be pushing for live service games, they cut service for Destiny 2 (aka a live service game that's been ongoing for years) while they were 80% of the way through development into a new expansion (at the start of a new storyline with a minimum of 5 years of planned new content btw), then did not tell the developers until right before they made the announcement public. This lead to pretty much the entire Destiny 2 team being laid off. Sony is a piece of shit.

[geopsych]

5th of July 2020, morning scenes

[catchymemes]

[michaelnordeman]

In the garden. Värmland, Sweden (4 July 2020).

[taylortut]

the “sexy lamp test” but for disabled folks: if you can replace your disabled character with a beloved pet dog that needs an expensive surgery to survive then you have to throw out your manuscript 

[taylortut]

reblogging one of my most underrated posts: the dying dog test

[the-last-teabender]

I’m gonna make my medical school advisees do this on their application essays too I think.

[almostanastronaut]

Steven Greenberg, “Wrestling with God and Men” - Author’s conversation with Rabbi Eliashiv in Jerusalem

[koshercosplay]

“Twice the power of love” is my new favorite description of bisexuality

[kaylapocalypse-deactivated20201]

Anyway I’m crying because that’s the best and most genuine description of how it feels to be bi that I’ve ever heard.

[butchfagminotaur]

i don’t know how to explain to you people that no matter what a country’s government is like i do not and will not support the US indiscriminately bombing that country’s civilians and i don’t know why that’s a controversial take tbh

[butchfagminotaur]

“oh iran is a dictatorship!” “oh palestine is homophobic!” i don’t care like literally i don’t care that’s not a problem to be solved by other countries blowing innocent people up

[babyanimalgifs]

Little fish eats his foods 

(Source)

[bunigojade]

[aflo]

this is so sad he doesn’t even know there’s a double barreled shotgun pointed at him

[identifying-fish-in-posts]

Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis)

[duke-of-fire]

[splickedylit]

His Foods :) 👍

[nature-hiking]

One last look at the snowy San Jacinto peak - Pacific national crest trail, CA, April 2023

photo by: nature-hiking

Instagram: nature__hiking