I'm your Uncle Kevin

Hello! Long time fangirl from the Internet days, now I use this tumblr to enjoy things thoroughly. 32, bi, poly, married. Formerly: sahkmet, eelseelseelseels, thehitcher-, theycallmediamondback, truffularump, lokimyhomie and hiddlesbodiddly.

[aviantastic]

Tree Swallows by Linda H. Dulak - Audubon Photography Awards

[fluentisonus]

barn swallows depicted in the “spring fresco”, akrotiri, thera, greece. c. 16th century BC

[cryptidofthecove]

[never-kill-on-the-first-dat-blog]

Hey, what’s Winnie the pooh’s favorite color?

[taco-bout-a-shit-blog]

Yellow

[never-kill-on-the-first-dat-blog]

No it’s red because of his shirt

[taco-bout-a-shit-blog]

No, it’s yellow because he loves honey

[never-kill-on-the-first-dat-blog]

You have no idea what you’re talking about

[taco-bout-a-shit-blog]

DID I FUCKING STUTTER?

[voaga]

Things heating up at the Winnie the Pooh fandom

[sun-of-a-watcher]

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

[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.

[deheerkonijn]

little spoon!Leg for @loveandslander

I love the concept of elf-sleep and true-sleep. What if elves just fuckin………conk out for 18 hours and wake up forgetting what year it is when they true-sleep

hot take all elves ugly-sleep

[what-your-elf-eyes-see]

Because we know that Legolas went days without sleep feelin’ spry as ever, I see this and I raise you 48 hours when they true-sleep

[deheerkonijn]

@what-your-elf-eyes-see Not only am I into this, I’m obsessed with this. What if the reason why elves don’t really like to true-sleep is because they’re basically comatose and it makes them super vulnerable?

It takes him a minute to get started back up again, he’ll get there.

[mxtr3ssquickly]

Not my fandom, not my ship, but I am HERE for this and want to just bury my face in how wholesome and sweet it is and cry. Bless.

[deheerkonijn]

#i love this so much#i wonder how freaked out gimli was the first time he saw legolas true sleep#cause you know he doesn’t know much about elves 

@yeahletsdothat

There’s a sweet fic! :) Check out Small Comfort, by @roselightfairy

[uss-edsall]

every girl wants to get in a vehicle and flip 3-6 switches overhead in the process of turning it on

[cipheramnesia]

When I’m going to get frozen waffles and ramen from Walgreens.

[stirfriedweasel]

More things should be operated with big thumb switches and knobs and dials and shit.

[cipheramnesia]

Me, getting a drink of water at night.

[weary-hearted-art]

Henrik Olrik, The bride is embellished by her girl friend, 1859

[gumy-shark]

oh, no, you misunderstand me. those were my monkeys. yeah the circus and i have since parted ways. yeah it was the elephant thing, i dont really want to address that right now though

[celesse]

New vintage-style clear stickers are now available! 💐💕

🌼 Grab them here! 🌼

[lazarus-lazuli]

i have no comment this is just the funniest fucking thing i’ve seen all day

[buzzsawbravado]

[mercuryfountain-deactivated2024]

From "Who's Who at the Zoo," written by George Mazzei and illustrated by Gerard Donelan for The Advocate in 1979. Possibly the first recorded usage of the term bear to refer to a gay subculture.

[ramshacklefey]

Can anyone help me find the rest of this? The only references to it I can find online are to this page.

[saydams]

I found the date: "Who's Who at the Zoo?" July 26, 1979, The Advocate. A large library, or library in a queer area, probably has the advocate in their periodical collection. Possibly not digitized though.

Wait @cbpolt posted it on Twitter but it's been made private. Maybe they'll share with you if you ask? https://mobile.twitter.com/CBPolt/status/1535327694614933504

Edit no no here it is! https://www.out.com/today-gay-history/2016/7/26/today-gay-history-when-advocate-invented-bears?pg=full

[mim8icri]

[bedupolker]

It feels cool to be "in" on celebrity gossip before anyone else. I ran into Californian Condor V9 and looked her up on the condor lookup website. It says her current mate is dead and she has no kids but I saw her with a new man AND a juvenile.

[taciturn-nerd]

OP I hope you don't mind but I made a tabloid cover out of this

I used two more condor photos by Andrew Orr and Alam Clampitt from peregrinefund.org

Gotta use the skills I learned from making tabloids out of the Jane Austen novels somewhere right?

Great, now I feel like I'm bird shaming. Congrats V9 on your new family!

[sorrybutiforgotmyusername]

happy birthday to the only song

[p2ep]

i regret to inform everyone who's been reblogging this post that the nielciciregamusic youtube channel was not owned by neil at the time of this track being released, meaning this youtube video was a reupload. checking bandcamp, it says that two trucks's real birthday is on may 3rd!🎉

[xeansicemane]

Happy birthday to the national anthem

[seccorottario-deactivated201609]

my fav Junji Ito story is the one with the /fit/ neighbor guy who lifts gravestones for the ulimate gainz+attention combo and who gets kicked out by everyone because he won’t fucking stop lifting their ancestors graves every goddamn night in his underwear

[seccorottario-deactivated201609]

[thathomestar]

do the ghosts admire his sick-ass muscles

[touga-party-deactivated20161223]

hell yea they do

[pulmonary-poultry]

Spoilers but yeah that’s literally the final twist. The night after the dude is kicked out and everyone’s like “Thank god that creep is gone,” all the ghosts come out and go “Where the fuck is our himbo?”

[darkenedyeastextract]

Junji Ito is the funniest motherfucker alive

[milliekessler]

The Boy Friend (1971) • Dir. Ken Russell 

[the-evil-skull]

This is not meant to sound hostile or vague anyone but this is bothering me. "Inshallah" means "if God wills it". If your intention is to say you hope the hips don't lie but whether the hips lie or not is up to God, then you say "Inshallah the hips don't lie" but if you're trying to say "wow, the hips don't lie" or something similar, which I think is what the op was getting at, then you say "Mashallah the hips don't lie" which means "God has willed it, the hips don't lie"

[bigmickswingin]

[vladimirs-treasures-deactivated]

“Let’s look for dragon photos!”

THEYRE ALL FUCKING AI

“Okay… how about some dragon merch?”

ITS ALL FUCKING AI

“What about dragon-”

ITS GOING TO BE FUCKING AI

[dawnisadumbass]

I made a Google photos album of all the remastered Pathfinder Dragons if you want

The image source is Archives of Nethys which itself gets the images from Paizo directly, from the corresponding books (either Monster Core, Monster Core 2, or the Draconic Codex)

So uh

Yeah

Pathfinder Dragons · Jun 22, 2023 – Jan 27, 2026 📸

Shared album · Tap to view!

[fluffy-red-dragon]

I'm going to hold your claws when I say this

Some dragons are allowed to look ugly and that's okay.

Not everyone is going to look like a nightfury or the sleek modern DnD dragons, and you shouldn't be ashamed if you don't. Objectivly, some of us are going to look like the strange dragons from the Middle Ages with hog noses and stringy manes with bird wings on two legs.

You're allowed to be a little ugly. Embrace it.