Woodland Princess

100% Tolkien Blog. Huge fan of Greenwood’s royal family.

[anattmar]

Elwing's worst nightmare

[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

[papita474]

Some Nelyo scketches for the soul bc I was feeling bad <3.

Im so used to draw him all traumatized and sad that drawing him smiling felt strange for a bit 😭🫴🏼 I literally stopped to think "fuck..hows his smile supposed to look???" ALSO THE TINY GAP BTW HIS TEETH

[ilaneya]

írimë ✨

[thetiredprometheus]

Tolkien only has two kind of elves: Enderenwen the fair, who's eyes hold centuries of pain and yet his gaze is as kind as the first sun in spring, his mother was a nightingale and his father a seabreeze, flowers grow wherever he walks;

And Finwendulenfinfedë, who has killed half of his entire family and is here to fuck shit up

[balrogballs]

HIGH KING ARAFINWË

A commission I’ve been working on for some weeks now (as you can probably tell by the amount of detailing in this), featuring High King of the Noldor and the complete opposite of a busybody, Finarfin.

I was allowed entire creative direction here, which I of course took as an opportunity to shill my primary Finarfin headcanon, which is that he looks incredibly young. Like straight up twenty-year-old boy-king level young, even though he’s actually whatever thousand years old. To the point Celebrían, who has grown up and lived entirely around Beleriand veterans and survivors, is just like ‘???’ when she takes her first look at him after sailing. When asked why on earth her grandpa looks younger than her son and whether he blended up Silmaril-debris for his facemasks, Finarfin explains that it has nothing to do with Treelight and that the greatest skincare routine in Arda is known as ‘staying out of shit’.

I used this amazing pattern by the fantastic @peasant-player for his clothing today, overlayed over hand drawn gold embroidery because you can ignore ‘never wear gold with silver’ if you’re the High King — thank you very much and I am greatly appreciative, it worked exactly like I was hoping!

COMMISSION DETAILS AND GALLERY

[aeiou142857]

King's Crown by Season

[ministarfruit]

I did catlike legolas so here's his spoiled housecat of a father

[cartoonerd3971]

Drawings of Oropher and Thranduil

(and baby Legolas :3💖)

[griseldajane]

Thranduil, the Elvenking, it’s been a minute.

Don’t have much time lately, but here’s a rough sketch of one of my favorite Tolkien characters.

[ministarfruit]

THRANDUIL IS COMING BACK BABYYYYYY

[ministarfruit]

i love ur art style so much and i'm so addicted looking urs the hobbit/lord of the rings fanarts 😭💕 it inspires me to want to draw again lol

did you saw that lee pace is returning as thranduil in the hunt for gollum??! i'm so excited to see him portraying him again 🙏

THANK YOU SO MUCH yesss I'm so excited I haven't shut up since I heard the news!!! welcome back thranduil the elvenking!!!

[loucifersbitch]

if you need me, i’ll be sobbing on the floor. humans, man

[radiqueer]

Human relationships are not transactional but they are reciprocal, which I think many of you with your ‘i don’t owe anyone anything’ shtick are too happy to forget

[aromanticduck]

Transactional: everything has to be exactly 50/50 all the time, pay me back for the £5 sandwich or buy me something worth exactly £5, I refuse to make an effort for you if there’s nothing in it for me

Reciprocal: you were there for me when I needed help, and I’m going to do the same for you, it doesn’t matter if one of us needs more or is capable of less, because the point is not equivalent exchange but mutual care

[balrogballs]

ÉOWYN OF ROHAN

finally got to take a crack at Éowyn, pictured here in her starry mantle, commissioned by @lady-of-ithilien who was just fantastic to work with and had such an exciting vision of Éowyn that I was delighted to try my hand at!

went full horse-girl with the gold brooch, rosy cheeks and freckles from riding out all the time, and a relatively light/layered dress, and I especially enjoyed working with @lady-of-ithilien ‘s choices on a darker golden hair shade (tousled because *gestures at riding*) as well as darker brows ❤️😌

COMMISSION INFO: July slots available 🎱

[lady-of-ithilien]

PSA this is now my icon because it is so perfect and I am so obsessed with it. Thank you thank you thank you OP 🩵

[thisauthorisscreaming]

Does it count as 'sword in the stone' if it looks more like 'sword in the cairn'...?

[hope-for-the-planet]

Giant sequoia clones from 3,000-year-old trees are taking root in Detroit | The Optimist Daily

Clones from California's most ancient sequoias, including the famous Amos Alonzo Stagg tree, are being planted across Detroit neighborhoods

From the article:

In recent years, severe wildfires have burned through several of California’s historic sequoia groves. Thousands of mature trees are gone: trees that were centuries old, in populations that are struggling to recover. Conservation groups, including Save the Redwoods League, are working on new strategies. One is to plant genetically identical copies in different climates. If the original groves keep burning or drying out, clones elsewhere protect that genetic material from being lost entirely. [...] Archangel Ancient Tree Archive works from a straightforward premise: the genetics of old, resilient trees are worth preserving the same way seeds are. Propagating clones rather than planting from seed keeps the exact genetic profile intact, including traits that helped specific trees survive thousands of years of drought, fire, and disease. The saplings going into Detroit right now fit in the palm of a hand. Some won’t make it. The ones that do will still be growing long after everything around them is gone.