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

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

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!!!!!!!!

So what is a rain shadow?

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.

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

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.

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.

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.

More stuff!:

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:

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:

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!

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

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

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!!!!!!!!

So what is a rain shadow?

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.

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

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.

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.

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.

More stuff!:

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:

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:

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!

AU where Sauron literally pours all of his cruelty and malice and will to dominate all life into the One Ring...

And then just fucking stares at at it for five seconds before dropping it on the ground and leaving because without all that stuff he's Nice now.

Why does this sound like crackfic C.S. Lewis would write just to get back at Tolkien for disapproving of him putting a lamppost in Narnia

brb laughing my ass off

the fuck is a texas bender

lasso

In Texas, we bend propane and propane accessories.

Texas are the non-benders. Therefore Sokka is Texan.

Danny hears somebody refer to his intangibility as 'density shifting' and he just pauses for a moment and goes 'Wait. If that's what this is- Could I do it the other way? Get like, MORE dense instead of less dense??'

Then later somebody tries to shoot at him, only to have the bullet literally fucking bounce off, and he just. Grins at them. And says 'Stop that. It tickles.'

And immediately gains like +1000 aura.

ICE now tackling press.

Source.

in loving memory of my favorite shirt

turmeric kun update

Hmm hmm hmm. oxiclean loves her for who she is but turmeric cannot help but change her

*ugly cackling*

Ilya: this guy is cute, I should start a stationary bike race so he knows I want to get sweaty together

Ilya: that didn’t quite work. Maybe I should just give him the eye? While I tell him I hope he likes his new city?

Ilya: okay. But surely if I make him drink from my water bottle and brush his fingers when passing it over…?

Ilya: call him pretty. To his face. No way he can miss that

Ilya: desperate measures, I’ll have to tell him I orchestrated this whole ad campaign just so I could see him again

Ilya: WHAT IF I STARTED JERKING OFF IN THESE COMUNAL SHOWERS?

Shane, 7 years later: I have figured out that you like me.

shane: since our rookie season

ilya: i didn’t set up an ad campaign with the two of us together, call you pretty, tease you in the shower, and then almost get caught by your mom in the elevator for you to get our anniversary wrong. since summer before, shane

3 mirmirs

Why are we not having more fun with Will telling everyone he had a crush? You have no idea how obsessed I am with the concept of Mike being like “damn that sucks Lucas is so in love with Max he has no chance. Poor Will 💔” because why wouldn’t it be Lucas? He’s extremely good looking and kind, especially to Will lately. Mike’s also so not jealous in any way at all. Definetly not. Or the concept of Dustin being like “aw man sorry buddy I like girls 😔 I’ll always love you as a friend though” and Will is like “???” for a minute until he just bursts out laughing

This but everyone just slowly turns to look at Steve

X

star trek explores these strange seemingly inconsequential extremes because it wants you to consider the possibility that your concept of ethics doesnt and could never possibly account for every scenario. It wants you to consider the ethical ramifications of just wiping out the little nanites taking over your ships computer even though eventually this will kill you all becuase

-What if they’re alive?

-What if they’re sentient?

-What if they don’t realize they’re hurting us?

-What if what hurts us is what they need to live?

-What if we can communicate with them?

Star Trek takes the situation of, “these computer bugs are eating our ship and in an hour we’ll all be dead and we COULD just wipe them out utterly but…what if they’re like us?” because the ramifications effect what risks we ourselves are willing to take in the name of pacifism and understanding. it says that even the smallest most immenently dangerous creature deserves as much of a chance to live peacefully as we can possibly give it through understanding.

without examining ourselves this way, through these made up seemingly inane situations, we will never be able to understand ourselves and what we’re truly capable of, what levels of understanding can be achieved. without the ability to place ourselves in a difficult situation and reach beyond our first instinct of fight or flight and self-preservation, we will never be evolve as a global community

preserving creekfiend’s tags because GOLD

#star trek does this because its the space talmud actually

this is unequivocally true. the rabbi at my childhood temple made it a point to bring a Star Trek scenario into every single d'var, and there was always something relevant!

you know what’s really genuinely unsettling? the degree to which men fucking do not want to sympathize with/be interested in women.

male audiences will happily watch a dozen superhero shows, but then something like Agent Carter or Supergirl turn up and they’re panned from the first trailer and have to struggle for ratings. male audiences will watch countless installments of a franchise as long as it’s about men doing man things but the second a character like Rey or Furiosa or god forbid four entire female Ghostbusters steps up and takes a position of prominence it’s “pandering sjw bullshit”.

it’s not pandering. men just aggressively don’t want to have to be invested in a woman’s narrative and it’s really gross.

anyway re: everyone telling me to “Stop making this a gender thing” or some variation on that

this isn’t like… an opinion I’m pulling out of my ass here? this starts where earlier than tv shows and hollywood blockbusters, when all the kids in a class are reading Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or Eragon o Lord of the Rings or Maze Runner or whatever the hip book is right now. the books like that, the ones that become popular reading, are overwhelmingly about male leads, because male is still considered the default. 

there’s a split in YA literature, between books that are “for everyone” and “for girls”, and that’s honestly the entire issue in a tiny little box right there. stories about men are supposed to be accessible for everyone, but stories about girls are seen as 1.) inherently for women and 2.) something that only women will care about.

men grow up in a society that doesn’t make them go out of their way to get into the heads of women and empathize with then. historically it’s been very easy for men to not engage with female-led media if they don’t want to, whereas (like someone else commented on this post) girls and women have had very little choice in the past because everything was about men. we didn’t even question it.

and now the women are arriving in mainstream media in ways that say they’re important and they matter and

small (or sometimes not so small) but loud-enough-to-be-acknowledged groups of men lose. their. shit.

because they think there’s something inherently Not For Them about a woman’s story, and they never learned how to deal with it.

(also once again, because  LOT of ya’ll don’t seem to get this here: I’m trying to talk about knee-jerk reactions to female-centered works - often before they even come out. not whether or not you personally thought [x show or movie] was good. ya feel?)

i don’t think i’ve ever read a single post that i’ve agreed with so totally and so immediately and here’s why:

i love books, right? and from the ages of about 11-15 i was insanely invested in teenage/ya fantasy and sci-fi. harry potter, percy jackson, all of the books op listed above- and one of the things that made those books so great was that you could have a conversation about them with anyone! a lot of the guys in my class also loved this type of genre and i’d often talk about books with them (even my own brother has read all of the books listed above) we’d have long, interesting conversations about these books and it was great.

but then i’d mention something about the hunger games, or the divergent series, or uglies, the raven cycle, mara dyer, the mortal instruments, the selection, etc. and the response would always be the same: either ‘i haven’t read it’ or ‘i couldn’t get into it’ or ‘it doesn’t seem like my type of thing’

even outside of the ya genre, looking at something like contemporary fiction or whatever- do you know how many guys will talk endlessly about the great gatsby or catcher in the rye or any other male-centric novel? but when you bring up something as influential as pride and prejudice or jane eyre or practically /anything/ written by/focused around a woman- you get the same responses as before

society has made it so that women have no choice whether to engage with male-centric stories or not: from children, a big portion of the media we consume focuses on the male perspective and like,,, that’s not necessarily a bad thing /in itself/- the bad thing is that it doesn’t work both ways and it’s not an even split. whereas young girls are surrounded by and expected to empathise with films/books/media concerning men, it’s not the same for young boys: they have narratives that either focus entirely or largely around them. 

women have no trouble consuming media that focuses on a male narrative because it’s been labelled as the default, the ‘normal’- whereas men struggle to watch/read anything that doesn’t focus around them because they’ve never /had/ to.

This thread articulates the problem so well.

In past centuries, this centralization of the male narrative to the exclusion of female perspectives was a critical part of a feedback loop that caused prominent male thinkers and writers to speculate that women simply didn’t have an inner world or narrative, or even that women left alone without a man in the room had nothing to say to each other (I’ll pull out my sources if you guys need me to but you’ll have to give me time to sift through my old course work).

Even if logically these arguments are easily struck down today, the intuitive thinking that “people different from myself (most frequently white cis male) don’t have as rich an inner life as I do because I’ve never encountered it”. In practice, that knee-jerk, illogical, gut-response thinking informs our actions and worldview more than even easy logic unless we have the self-awareness to challenge it. That’s how our brains are built. And people who think this way frequently never will meaningfully learn from these narratives because the media that expresses those lived experiences is beneath their notice or “not for them”.

This is why so many of the books being removed from school curricula in the US are so damn vital. A more complete understanding of the human world and the people that surround us REQUIRES hearing all these voices, even when the stories are brutal or uncomfortable or go against our upbringing. My world is richer and truer for having read Beloved by Toni Morrison, and Howl by Alan Ginsburg, and Night by Eli Wiesel, books outside my comfort zone that I would likely have never picked up had it not been for a responsible high school and college.

This. This is the purpose of literature.

And the thing is, that male-centered (or white-centered, or cishet-centered) narrative default can actually mess with women’s (or other minoritized groups’) ability to read women-centered (or otherwise identity-centered) works. When you grow up having boys centralized in all the genres you like, it becomes the default in your head. When all the baby dolls at the store are white, a small child will come to prefer them. When heterosexual romance is the only plot on offer, you struggle more for not personally loving within that framework. As I approach my thirtieth year on this planet, I’m still trying to undo this early training.

PS- if anyone needs a source for any of the things I’ve referenced here just hmu. This post is brought to you by the fifteen minutes I had to finish my coffee, didn’t have time to cite sources too

they deactivated batmanisagatewaydrug holy shit