Welcome To My Brain, I Think You're Gonna Like It

22. President of the Amalthus Defense Squad.

[linddzz]

gotta be a term that isn't the dunning Krueger effect but is a kind of similar idea where the more deep scientists get into their topic and the more exhausted they get, the more likely they are to find stupid ways to describe things

[linddzz]

this post brought to you by a bunch of coral specialists at the end of a workshop voting to define coral, a complex animal, as "a rock with problems"

[soulmeshart]

thoughts about the ring indent on the tenna figure

[bonemarshal]

im DONEEE go watch it NOW (FULL ANIMATION UNDER THE GIFS!!)

[kererek]

☀️

[goomyloid]

happy birthday chapter 3 (and 4)!!

[mmmmmmrmn]

[sokka-with-his-hair-down-2]

“the parallels between Zuko and Sokka-” hey HEY. I am grabbing you. The parallels between Katara and Azula. Both the younger, gifted bender. Each one being the inverse of the other: a living, breathing what if. Katara being horrified at what her bending can do when pushed to its limits vs Azula always trying to push hers further. Katara instinctively trusting everyone so easily, even though it burns her sometimes, and Azula saying trust is for fools, fear is the only reliable way but still losing everyone she cares about in the end. Katara yelling at her dad and being hugged in return vs Azula doing everything possible to please her father still being harshly reprimanded, so you know exactly why they both turned out the way that they did. Katara’s trauma being connected to losing a mother vs Azula’s being connected to having a mother. Katara ultimately being the one to take down Azula and standing over her, staring pitifully because that’s who she could have been, in another life. is this thing on

[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.

[sorio99]

Deltarune really is a story where every single ship is emotionally devastating, like

Krusie is like “I have barely known you for three days but I would happily die if it meant I could protect you. I regret every second we spent thinking we hated each other, because now that I see the real you, it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. You are the one person I can truly rely on, even if I have to keep the most devastating of secrets from you that will bury me in the end. I see you, and I love you.”

Kriselle is like “I haven’t had a conversation with you last more than five minutes in years and I can still remember every word we’ve said to each other. We were the closest two people could possibly be without literally sharing a body and now I don’t even know how to talk to you. I pretend like you don’t mean anything to me because admitting how much I still love you terrifies me to the core, and I feel insane guilt every day over the fact I broke us apart. I hope one day you can forgive me for being a terrible friend.”

Suselle is like “You are everything that I am not that I so desperately want to be. You hide your true self away under these layers of facade but I can see the sparkling gem underneath and it is such a beautiful sight, I don’t think I am worthy to behold it. I want to steal every moment I can with you and I will fight to do so even if fate itself attempts to tears us apart. I don’t know if I will ever deserve you but I will still reach out to you, and I will find a way to keep you.”

Susei/Ralsusie is like “We are polar opposites in every way I can imagine and it only brings us closer together. You complete me in ways I did not know I needed to be completed. When everything and everyone told me that I did not matter, you told me I am important not in spite of but because of who I am. I will take every blow and every injury if it means protecting your smile and keeping you safe. I will even destroy my own heart if it means giving you the happiness that I know for a fact you deserve.”

Kralsei is like “What if you met the person that was literally made for you, and that all the world was pushing you together, but there was something wrong? What if the person you were born to fall in love with was an unflattering, bitter depiction of who you are and who you used to be? What if your honest to God Soulmate was keeping secrets and undermining everything you have dedicated your life to do, not out of cruelty or malicious intent, but because it was genuinely what they needed to do, what they were always going to do? And what if, in spite of all of that, you fell in love with each other anyways?”

Kerdly is like “I don’t know if I can call you my friend or say I care about you, but you still define so much of who I am, intentionally or otherwise. I don’t have many people who would give a shit if I live or die, and I don’t know if you’re one of them, but I still need you to be in my life. I will fight you, I will hurt you, I will defy everything you want if I absolutely have to, but when the chips are down I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I don’t know if I love you, I don’t even know if I like you, but I still need you, whatever that even means.”

Dessriel…I mean, do I even have to explain that one? Whatever happened, however things went, you already know.

ANY adult Holiday/Dreemurr ship is like “We were once something special, closer than anyone could possibly imagine. My home was your home, and yours was mine. Even outside of what the world might accept, we were one family. Then everything went wrong, and now we’ve fallen apart. My life is crumbling down around me in ways I didn’t even think were possible, and yet I still care about you. I still love you, even as we rapidly approach the end, and the world crumbles down around me. I don’t know if we’re still a family, but you will always be my home.”

I mean, fuck, right?

[ciderjacks]

looking for my biggest fan

[fennidae]

Couples and their communication issues

Extra:

[rat-pipe]

Happy 48th Birthday Mailman!!

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This project was a fuckin undertaking jesus christ. If this flops im killing Spamton actually.

Edit: I FORGOT THE MENTION ALL OF THESE WERE DRAWN WITH THE SPAMTON BRUSH!!!

Also thank you everyone for the nice words, they make me feel joyous :)

[paragonrobits]

today's transformers hot take, I don't really like how Megatron has recently become heavily associatd with ANGER, specifically, as his driving motivation. It feels too close to the idea of him being primarily motivated by injustice, even when its clearly deeply selfish and he can be interpreted (as in Transformers One) as only being moviated by his OWN suffering and completely indifferent to systemic injustice until he is personally affected by it

it has me thinking about his big and dramatic 'I AM MEGATRON' moment and the rage in his expression feels like it is WAY too easy for viewers to interpret this as justified or sympathetic, and that's largely because by having him motivated by this anger even countless centuries or MILLIONS OF YEARS LATER

this puts us in a situation where the Decepticons are fairly explicitly a militaristic and colonizing empire whose entire gimmick is 'invade planet, kill every living thing, terraform it or loot all resources, find new planet, REPEAT', we've had issues where a lot of people ignored what he was actively doing or the xenophobia at the core of his philosophy of Cybertronian supremacism. A lot of people outright IGNORED most of the faction's characterization specifically be based entirely around this and built a whole mental image of the Decepticons as sci-fi leftists despite most of their actual dialogue of their philosophy being about them saying things like 'cleansing the galaxy of organic life too backwards to understand that this is a good thing to do'

and I think a BIG part of this has to do with their origin as largely being oppressed in various ways, and this origin became much more important to the fandom than their actual actions did, and defining Megatron by his anger and lashing out seems to make him come off as more sympathetic and makes this kind of audience reception more likely

I think it would a really good step in the right direction to lean back towards his depictions in G1 and Beast Wars as being solely and entirely defined by greed, an insatiable lust for power for its own sake. It could even be a good idea to have this shift REFLECT HIS GROWTH into an arch-villain; starts out angry and constantly lashing out in ways unrelated to actual systemic problems or caring much about fixing it, amassing power and followers as a result and slowly learning to relish the new power and influence for its own sake and

now he wants more. MORE MORE MORE. IT CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH, MORE.

[loveandmad]

one could argue that this is what attracts Unicron to him, that self-same hunger, adamantium teeth and a black hole stomach.

but Unicron will be mistaken.

Unicron’s hunger is passionless, an expression of his function as the Destroyer: out with the old and in with the new (no matter how much Primus begs him to only take the uninhabited planets, the stars that support no life)

there is no anger, there is no joy, there is only the task at hand.

Unicron has hunger, but he does not know what it is like to be hungry.

but D-16?

D-16 has spent his entire life

starving.

he didn’t know. how could he? he had never known anything else. never known a full belly, never known not having only the bare minimum to function.

but now Sentinel’s death has given him a taste, the taste of fullness, of satiation, and he finds he likes it. likes the feel of energon, of life sliding down his throat. likes the feel of armor cracking between his teeth (one for every star in the sky). likes the feel of a spark guttering and fading as it sits on his tongue.

he is owed this. this is only fair, after a lifetime of growling stomachs, of brittle struts and spark-deep cold.

his perspective stretches along with his body as he claims the might of Megatronus. he sees the planet and wants, he sees the solar system and wants, he sees the galaxy, the galactic cluster, the pan-galactic filaments and the whole of the universe and he wants.

wants to feel tectonic plates crunch under his molars, wants to feel the blood of a star dripping down his chin and its scream as his fangs puncture its heart, wants to feel the lives of whole civilizations being snuffed out as he closes his mouth and swallows.

the universe is a banquet laid out for him and him alone. mountains of bodies and oceans of blood, oh the taste, the unheralded taste—

his mouth is already watering.

(You destroy everything you touch, Megatron!

Because everything I touch is food for my hunger! My hunger for POWER!

No! I am going to end your hunger once and for all.)

[beesmygod]

i wrote 12k words about nightreign in order to try to answer the question "what is night in elden ring?"

with the release of elden ring: nightreign, the elden ring lore-junkie fanbase was faced with a somewhat vexing situation: how do we know if this game is “canon”? the greatest minds of reddit (lol) were forced to argue for and against the inclusion of the game’s contents into the known understanding of elden ring’s “lore” with the deadly serious gravitas of biblical scholarship. this may seem strange to outside observers who have better things to do than argue about the plot of a video game designed to drive you clinically insane. but for some people, arguing is a hobby. and so here i am.

many, including myself at first, were reluctant to take a rogue-like side game without direct oversight from fromsoft director hidetaka miyazaki seriously. the game drags in bosses from the dark souls catalog for variety’s sake, so on a gameplay mechanic level, the concern for canon was chucked out the window from the get-go in favor of making the game more fun (unquestionably the more important variable to focus on). i had assumed nightreign was going to be a nice little junk food snack compared to the massive mythology of elden ring and in many ways it is; there are little nods to the fan base hidden here and there, including one seemingly deliberately provocative lore drop for dark souls for no reason other than to kick a hornet’s nest1 (and its pretty funny in my opinion). but it also has something i wasn’t expecting at all: answers to questions no one was really asking but me.

i’ve been thinking about what nightreign has to offer when it comes to the story of elden ring. i am going to attempt to explore the idea of “the night” using the information present in nightreign and in elden ring, starting with a very quick overview of the events of nightreign and why it could, arguably, be “canon”.

(read a hell of a lot more here)

if you liked this, consider sending me sandwich money.

[bedrock-to-buildheight]

What you think is the second head spine connection on mewtwo is?

I think it’s a subject of much internal conflict to Mewtwo

[drtrinitysantos]

sdxfcgvzdxfcgvhzdxfcgvhbjnkmlcgvhbjnk science

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

#the reason that lab safety regulations are the way they are is because literally all chemists are like this #as in 100% of them #no exceptions (via @prokopetz)

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

My grade 7 science teacher told a dazzling tale of how his friend in university stole a chunk of one of those pyrophoric metals—potassium? Magnesium?—from the lab, wrapped it up in brown paper towels, and made out like a bandit.

And then went to gloat over his acquisition and opened up the towels. Which had absorbed enough of the oil the metal was stored in to prevent it from reacting with any spare oxygen in the air.

So it started to react and my teacher's friend freaked out and realized he was going to get caught and get in trouble. And in a panic, he ran to the bathroom and flushed it down a toilet. A brilliant strategy, is it not, for disposing of a chemical that reacts somewhat to air, but whose characteristic interaction with water is generally described as "violent"?

Anyway, if you don't want to get caught stealing lab supplies, go off-campus so you don't blow up one of your own university's toilets. Connecting the dots there is not an insurmountable challenge.

[optionalplane]

i can do what has to be done