☽Imaginmatrix☾

I have Percabeth brainrot and write things sometimes and cosplay even less ⋆ header commissioned from @windbyfire

[imaginmatrix]

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[deathstars]

HELLO ! have you thought about Van Gogh’s First Steps today ?

[deathstars]

Here you go. This world is beautiful. Humans are beautiful. I love you

[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.

[roach-works]

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

[beatrice-otter]

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

[whetstonefires]

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

[beatrice-otter]

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

[maryellencarter]

I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:

Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?

I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.

Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.

(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)

[sunflowergardens-world]

Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.

[mysteryteacup]

This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.

[lotrheritageposts]

LOTR Heritage Post

[igorafvckassbowlcut]

there are days where NO ❌️ video games are played and there are days where video games are played for 10 or maybe 14 hours straight

[bobdylanyaoi]

“Subverting” Catholic art? Oh, okay. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You log onto the internet and you post about how “Wound of Christ” from Psalter and Prayer Book of Bonne de Luxembourg, attributed to Jean le Noir, c.1349, for instance, looks like a vulva because you're trying to tell the world that you enjoy Catholic art and imagery in an alternative, queer, risqué way that challenges Christian beliefs. But what you don't know is that that stigma isn’t just a vulva. It's not just a mandorla. It's not just yonic. It's actually intentionally erotic. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that around 1297, Saint Angela of Foligno experienced a vision of Christ himself, who called her to put her mouth to the wound in his side and lick the freshly flowing blood. And then I think it was Saint Catherine of Siena who drank blood and a clear liquid from the wound before receiving a ring made from Christ’s foreskin? And then graphically erotic encounters with the side wound of Christ quickly showed up in the writings of eight different mystics. And then the yonic interpretation of the stigmata filtered down through the illuminated manuscripts and then trickled on down into some pseudo-intellectual corner of the internet…where you, no doubt, fished it out of some Pinterest board. However, that interpretation represents hundreds of years and countless visions of religious ecstasy. And it's sort of comical how you think that you've come up with an idea that exempts you from Christian theology when, in fact…you're posting an image that was sexualized for you by the very Medieval saints you think you’re so different than…from “subverted” Catholic art.

[segamascott]

[segamascott]

[steadynursewizard]

This is the closest thing to a smile I've ever seen this man do for media

[wifegideonnav]

“bits to use in everyday conversations”

[perkabethnation]

Something something Gideon points at Harrow’s corset and says, “Ribbed for her pleasure,” something something

[vividciggy]

TLT as tumblr text posts (pt. 2)

[hollowboobtheory]

knowing when not to open the comments is a skill

[hollowboobtheory]

internet soft skills

not opening the comments

letting people be wrong

letting people be wrong about YOU

letting people have a bad impression of you (see above)

knowing when your input isn't needed

spotting bot comments

block button

[hollowboobtheory]

blocking tip: you don't have to wait to have a negative interaction with someone to block them. you can block them without ever interacting with them. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone being rude to someone else and preemptively blocked them

[bigbigbigtruck]

"why'd they block me? we've never talked" bro if i see you being nasty to the bartender i'm not gonna chat you up

[dragons-and-cake123]

I am having FEELINGS about one certain line from Frankenstein (2025), and I need to talk about them immediatley or else I will spotnaneously combust.

"I am obscene to you, but to myself, I simply am."

As a queer, neurodivergent, and non-cisgender person, this fucking resonates. Trans people, drag queens, and queer people are demonized by politics and the media, accused of being pedophiles, or straight up murdered. But we're not trying to "groom" children or "impose" our beleifs onto anyone. We're just trying to survive and live our lives.

We are obscene to them, but to ourselves, we simply are.

In summary: Frankenstein (2025) really said, "You thought you were just getting another reimagining/adaption of Frankenstein's monster? WRONG. We are going to bring up all of your internalized emotions about being someone different in a society that will never fully, truly, understand or accept you for who you are and drag them to the surface, along with some of the most gorgeous cinematography and incredible acting performances you've ever seen."

And I think that's beautiful.

[gyrovagi]

unethical nonmonogamy where god is the third

[hazbeenandeggs]

This is the plot of Harrow the Ninth

[imaginmatrix]

Ngl it does crack me up a bit when people make posts about fanfic pet peeves and “siblings calling each other ‘brother/sister’ instead of by their names/other nicknames” shows up, because on one hand I agree with them and it usually comes across as weird and forced and like the writer doesn’t have siblings, but on the other hand my siblings and I are constantly calling each other “brother/sister” (especially in text messages) so I guess I’m kind of a hypocrite for being critical of fics like that lolll

[enyafans4communism]

fuck, marry, kill: the wound that won’t heal, the past you can’t undo, the ghost that keeps returning

[statistical-distr-of-polls]

FMK - In order

The wound, the past, the ghost

The past, the ghost, the wound

The ghost, the wound, the past

The wound, the ghost, the past

The past, the wound, the ghost

The ghost, the past, the wound

Variation I forgor/bald/vanilla extract/results

Voting ended onMay 17

[astraltrickster]

[ieatratsyummy]

They could never make me hate you, complex female character whose reaction to trauma was not pretty and digestible like how people think it should be.

[elevenbenevolentmammoths]

I do love how in "Cohort Intelligence Files" Judith confidently misjudges the Tridentarii despite knowing them for most of her life at this point, and then proceeds to quite accurately read Babs to absolute filth. But that Babs reading is entirely courtesy of Marta. Iconic.

[wistfulrat]

begging on my knees for the tlt fanart community to use ferns rugby icon gee fizz aka gayle broughton as a gideon kiriona reference. justice for hot māori butches!!!