occasionally subtle
trying on a metaphor
Show & Tell
Kaledo Art
we're not kids anymore.
Kiana Khansmith
blake kathryn
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oozey mess
@theartofmadeline
hello vonnie
almost home
Janaina Medeiros
tumblr dot com
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Keni
Sweet Seals For You, Always
taylor price
Not today Justin
YOU ARE THE REASON
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@veldridge-blog
This is some truth laid down right here boy.
Millennials have essentially been forced into a perpetual teenagerhood by socioeconomic circumstance, we desperately want to grow up, and we’re worried that we’re running out of time to do so
all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is
okay so i know i said most of this in the replies but it might be easier to actually reblog and say stuff instead lmao
Cities - go near water! freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there. Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.
for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end. rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat
mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains! mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey). a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half. These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks
Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact. think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies
forests - depends on how warm the area might be. coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too
If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower). if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)
You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)
and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains
tl;dr i like to think of major climate events that might have also shaped the land on top of some basic rules
The Artifexian has an entire series on building your world from literally the stars down and then the ground up.
All my worldbuilding videos
Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:
With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:
Or
Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:
This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:
But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:
Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:
holy shit?
Gonna start a post with blank memes. Please add any you have on hand and reblog to spread them.
very good content
Ah, some gold!
Omfg, a goldmine
This is a blessing look at all of these templates
Here are some more, as well as a few good reaction images.
Is this how it feels to understand hieroglyphics
Credit: @pet_foolery
I think I already reblogged this but im gonna do it again because this is a good reminder on how toxic gatekeeping it.
OH NICE SHE HAD A TAIL XD I love this, and also the design for the minomer.
on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how well would you deal with losing your right hand
or, on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how well do you deal with latent sexual feelings for your sister
or, on a scale of luke skywalker to jamie lannister how well would you deal with your dad being an utter bastard with unresolved issues about the death of his wife
or, on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how well would you deal with the fact that your nephew is a complete and total douche
or, on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how do you feel when you see gwendoline christie in armor
on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how badly did your failed attempt to murder a kid screw everyone over
on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how disappointing was the end of your franchise
I wonder if Matt spent this entire time composing that.
Liam: Today’s episode is brought to you by the letter C!
Matt: Yea! Clearly you are a clever contriver of consonants, but I want you to conjure a cock and get FUCKED. That is some bullshit!
Just had my nth conversation with someone about mask-wearing today - yet another well-intentioned moron who was like
‘But the virus is gone now’ (it isn’t)
‘But the mask is uncomfortable’ (ventilators are worse)
‘But you’re young, you won’t die’ (having this thing could impact my health for decades to come + it’s my responsability to protect those who’re more vulnerable than I am because that’s how society works)
‘But are you going to live in fear for the rest of your life’ (taking concrete safety measures actually helps me feel more in control and less worried)
‘But are you going to give up everything and stay inside like a rat’ (no, but I’m definitely going to decide what’s worth risking my health for, and shopping for bread rolls is not very high on my list of literally-to-die-for activities)
‘But what if they never find a vaccine’ (then we’ll get used to the situation just like we got used to a thousand other things like seat belts, bike helmets, and increasingly weird true crime podcasts).
I know it’s tiring to have people call you paranoid all the time - but you’re right and they’re wrong. Check the news, keep a safe distance from others whenever possible and keep wearing your mask!
(Btw that thread is full of interesting stuff.)
Leaving this for myself if not others because someday I want to be able to grow my own food
idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com
this post went from 600 to 2400 notes in the time it took me to write 3 emails. i’m already terrified for what’s going to happen in there
k but also, as an addendum, the reason we study literary analysis is because everything an author writes has meaning, whether it was intentional or not, and their biases and agendas are often reflected in their choice of language and literary devices and so forth! and that ties directly into being able to identify, for example, the racist and antisemitic dogwhistles often employed by the right wing, or the subconscious word choices that can unintentionally illustrate someone’s bias or blind spot. LANGUAGE HAS WEIGHT AND MEANING! the way we communicate is a reflection of our inner selves, and that’s true regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel or a blog post or a tweet. instead of taking a piece of writing at face value and stopping there, assuming that there is no deeper meaning or thought behind the words on the page, ask yourself these two questions instead:
1. what is the author trying to say? 2. what does the author maybe not realize they’re saying?
because the most interesting reading of any piece of literature, imho, usually occupies the space in between those questions.
[Image description: A twitter thread by Alexandra Erin @AlexandraErin, dated 6 June 2018
So I just saw someone wondering how liberals can cut ties with conservative friends and family members over immigration policies when most Americans (including most conservatives) support immigration reform.
I’m going to talk about what I call the Shirley Exception.
The Shirley Exception is a bit of mental sleight of hand that allows people to support a policy they profess to disagree with. It’s called the Shirley Exception because… well, I mean, *surely* there must be exceptions, right?
Let’s imagine that in response to suspicions about overbroad use of service animal rules, a city somewhere decides to just swing the pendulum 100% in the other direction. Restaurants, public accommodations, etc., no longer have to recognize any service animals.
And in the aftermath of the change, existing rules about where animals may and may no go apply full force.
A lot of people would back the change because Obviously Some People Take Advantage. (Positing that someone, somewhere is taking advantage is a great way to get the masses on your side in our politics, sadly.)
Now if you point out the existence of a blind person or an epileptic person who has a service dog for everyday navigation of life or for live-saving purposes, the Good People who just don’t want anyone to take advantage will tell you:
“No one’s talking about legitimate cases.”
And if you point out that the rule that they’re backing would affect what they call “legitimate cases”, the response will be:
“But surely there will be an exception.”
If you back up an anti-abortion activist to the point where they actually have to grapple with a case where the parent would 100% die delivering a 100% non-viable fetus, you’ll get the same answers: “No one is talking about those cases.” and “But surely there will be exceptions.”
All of those studies of people in Trump Country USA who were shocked, shocked, that the kind man next door who is a good father and a great neighbor and a real part of the community was dragged away by ICE?
They all thought that surely he’d be an exception.
If you point out that the laws/policies they’re talking about *don’t* offer such exceptions and in some cases explicitly forbid them, if you say “So let’s put those exceptions in writing.”… well, then you’re back to Surely People Will Take Advantage.
See, the people who are sure that Surely There Will Be Exceptions are very comfortable with the idea of justice being decided on a case-by-case basis. They’ve always had teachers, bosses, bureaucrats, even traffic cops giving them some slack for reasons of compassion and logic.
I mean, if Officer Smalltown von Cul-De-Sac could give them a warning when they were caught with recreational amounts of pot as kids because it was harmless and they Had Futures, then Surely there must be similar exceptions for everyone?
That post about “I never thought the leopards would eat my face, sobbed woman who voted for Face-Eating Leopards Party” is very true, and it goes farther than personal immunity to a very generalized and broad Just World Fallacy.
Surely, they think, surely the leopards will know to only eat the *right* faces, the faces that need eating, and leave alone all the faces that don’t deserve that.
But if we try to lay out rules to protect faces from being eaten by leopards, people will take advantage. Best to keep is simple and count on decency and reason to rule the day.
So moderate conservatives, what we might call “everyday conservatives”, the ones who don’t wear MAGA hats or tea party costumes and think that Mr. Trump fella should maybe stay off of Twitter, they will vote for candidates and policies that they don’t actually agree with…
…because in their mind the exact law being prescribed is just a tool in the chest, an option on the table, which they expect to be wielded fairly and judiciously. Surely no one would do anything so unreasonable as actually enforcing it as written! Not when that would be bad!
And then they are confused, shocked, and even insulted when people hold them accountable for their support of the monstrous policy.
“I didn’t vote for leopards to eat *your* face! I just thought we needed some face-eating leopards generally. Surely you can’t blame me for that!”
The old “Defense of Marriage” laws are another textbook example of this.
Many of them included language that expressly forbade giving similar benefits (like hospital visitation) to same-sex relationships.
Yet the people who voted for them, in many cases, wanted it to be known that No One Is Talking About Stopping You From Visiting Your Loved One In The Hospital. And Surely There Will Be An Exception.
The Shirley Exception is how people who are only mundanely monstrous, moderately monstrous, wind up supporting policies that are completely monstrous.
And when they do, they always want credit for their good intentions towards those they see as deserving, not the outcomes.
I’m describing a phenomenon here and I don’t have a solution to its existence. While convincing people that laws that don’t specify exceptions functionally *don’t have them* might work sometimes on (ironically) a case-by-case basis, what is really needed is a broader shift.
People need to get used to thinking about the harm policies will do as a real part of the policy, not a hypothetical that Reasonable People of Good Will Can Surely Work Around.
Maybe the tack of saying, “If it was your life on the line, wouldn’t you want that to be in writing?” would work. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t have a solution here. This is just a thing that happens.
end ID]
