Howdy

Figuring out art Anything Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien, LoZ, or cute animals

[damazcuz]

Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

[maezanilla]

Gideon! Gideon! Gideon!

[ficauthor]

[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!

[anexperimentallife]

[dragonbleps]

[petr1kov]

watching twin peaks is hard because sometimes you think 'these characters could use some therapy'. and then you remember that some of them did seek out professional help but their only option was this

[seyph]

I can post images WITHOUT CROPPING THEM T-T

*cries of joy*

Here's a comic about Sky's legacy

(More of this series of drawings under the cut)

Four

Time

(Oops there is an image limit)

(More on another post tomorrow then)

First part | Second part >

[beemovieerotica]

These are the 1st images of humpbacks having sex, and they're both males | CBC Radio

Photographers Hawaii captured what scientists say is the first documentation of humpback whale sex.

let's hear it for gay whale sex

[passionpeachy]

[passionpeachy]

look at my posts on company time, boy

[sharkfiinn]

so that one yiga side quest huh

[ageofimprisonmentcountup]

647 Days since Tears of the Kingdom Released. In game, I spent several mins taking pictures in front of the cage and then went alright, time to spring the trap. Good-fucking-night fake Zelda.

[verflares]

belated valentines zelink ^_^ wanted to revisit these two in particular

[coralei]

i really needed this to exist so i imagine the transgender mcr community could use it as well. happy pride month

[honey002]

In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.

P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3

EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings

EDIT: I made an LGBTQIA+ version with a focus on trans and intersex folks, it's on my pinned if you prefer this version of the acronym.

[darlingofdots]

been stewing on an analytical approach to fiction which I call "is this book afraid of me?" and in order to answer this question you determine how hard the book is trying to make sure you don't come after the writer on twitter

[playwrongs]

Tags via @deadpanwalking, editor and ass-kicker extraordinaire

[gingisnap]

Please keep making art. Please make it for yourself. Please don’t let everything become even more of the same flat general appeal nonsense that doesn’t seem to have anything to say

[bigandretired-deactivated202501]

[humming-fly]

was thinking about that one blind professor post earlier today and how well it applied to the aptly named Team Dark

(really 'Team Dark' just sounds a lot cooler than 'Team Saves-On-Electricity')

[humming-fly]

bonus gag from late last night:

[claudiamatossilva]

Hilda by Duane Bryers

[badkidgorgug]

More Hilda!!

[themockingcrows]

in this family we love and support Hilda.

[i-am-the-narwhal]

Yes! Hilda!

[luidilovins]

What i love about this artist’s depictions of women is even the sexualized ones the woman is always genuinely happy and enjoying herself. Frolicking or making funny faces, she’s living her life and looking sexy while doing it, not sitting in a sexual pose for the audience’s view.

[squish-this]

I always forget about Hilda and am so pleased when she randomly shows up on my dash. Always makes my day

[snailfarts]

I love Hilda so much and I want her to be happy

[numinous-queer]

My favorite thing is how Hilda is always doing something and having a BLAST! She’s not posing coyly for anyone, she’s having her own adventures and it’s not about the viewer at all

[rosellacwrites]

Always reblog Hilda!

[sumi-sprite]

HILDA MY LOVE

[uristmcdorf]

Never miss a chance to share more Hilda!