Good news! Elementary schoolers of the modern day still believe this is part of vanilla minecraft. I have borne firsthand witness to these discussions.

the folkloric gate to heaven requires journeying to hell to get its building material

yo what's the handle of the fancy calligraphy guy can we get them over here that's a line

@theshitpostcalligrapher

oh good i needed a warmup piece

#listen i dont mean to be that guy but#you can make glowstone by using glowstone dust#and witches drop glowstone dust#no hell needed

buddy not to be a ridiculous nerd about it but you realize that seeking out dark magic users to kill them and pry potion ingredients out of their dead, cold hands isn't exactly non-hellish behavior? maybe the journey to hell is internal idk your playstyle

THE advantage of memorizing poetry is that when somethings happening, maybe even you’re in a situation or a location, you can just go “ok. lady of shallott time” and boom. you reclaimed your mental space and attention for YOU for the next ten minutes

Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.

— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

i know this is humorous but! i learned from one of my college friends (who learned from a therapist) that reciting a poem you have memorized is a great grounding & focusing technique when you’re spiraling into anxiety or panic. i can personally attest that The Tyger has staved off several panic attacks.

so like if said “situation or location” is freaking you out really badly, “lady of shallott time” can help reclaim your mental health too

Ok everybody share what poems you can recite in case we’re trapped in an elevator.

I’ve got the first 42 lines of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, the first 10 lines of Beowulf in Old English, the first canto of Tolkien’s Lay of Beren and Luthien, and Sonnet XVI by Pablo Neruda (“I love the handful of the earth you are”). I used to have the Proem of the Kalevala but I’m a bit shaky on it it now and I think i’ve only got the first two sentences. Anda handful of others I half-remember which i could probably do if I were with someone else who half-remembered the same ones and we could prompt each other back and forth.

absolutely flabbergasting to see people who have so enthusiastically succumbed to despair. like okay denethor, but some of us are gonna actually face the armies of mordor in battle nonetheless.

The thing about Denethor is that he not only succumbed to despair, he wanted to ensure that Faramir succumbed with him. Similarly, a lot of people now are not only succumbing to despair, they're actively proselytizing despair, trying to convince others to join them in their hopelessness. Despair is apparently lonely and they want company in their self-immolation.

btw denethor succumbed to despair bc he was doomscrolling on the palantir. Sauron tweaked his algorithm so he only saw bad news, and he fell into the trap of thinking the world couldn't be saved.

Best description of what happened to Denethor that I've seen.

my dad (Maori) works on a ship with all Maori/Tongan/Samoan fisherman- and one Aussie guy called Jake.

And that wasn't done on purpose just sort of how it ended up, but Jake recently got an injury so they put him on a Different boat just for a little bit (a sit in the wheelhouse and scout type of boat, instead of the main fishing one) and he only got back to my dad's ship today and he was apparently like Shaking. He was Traumatised.

Dad said Jake kept pulling him aside and going "They were all yelling on there, but in a MEAN way" "They didn't clean... Like at ALL"

Jake experienced what a boat full of old school Aussie fisherman is like. That is the norm Jake. You just happened to be on the all Island boy boat on your first go out. "It was time for dinner and they had FROZEN nuggets" Jake that's what they have on ships that are out at sea for months at a time.

On my dad's boat they are eating fresh fish and coconut milk Ceviche. They're grilling steaks on an open bbq on the deck that probably is not regulation. All the guys have their own special knives to prepare sashimi every couple days. Everyone is happily doing their own work so they can clock out early and set up a movie on the deck. Jake did you genuinely believe that's what every boat was doing.

Local Australian man is fed fresh juices and smoked fish for first time- refuses to go back to beef jerky boat life

jake that first night when they served a freezer tray tv dinner and not an overflowing plate of fish that's probably going for conservatively like $40-$80 bucks a kilo but the guys decided Eh we'll catch more let's just fry it up:

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!

creatures and dragons and beasts, oh my!

I would be more concerned if they were growing noisily.

Young adult Pacifica! A working woman! I know she still looks small, but she's just a short queen. And she's got a fuller figure now (Greasy's has introduced her to the magic of Carbs ✨)

reblog to give your headache to elon musk instead

chat reminder to just write whatever the fuck you want. write that overused trope. write that obscure shit that no one will have heard of. just. do it. your writing is yours stop depriving it of that.

honestly in the era of AI slop it is more important than ever for you to write or draw that incredibly niche/strange/unpalatable thing you want to make. the world needs the unique weirdness of people more than ever

3 of 3

Sharing the summary for a non-existent Psych fic because I love the idea, but I'm too exhausted rn to write it (and I will die before I ever think about using AI).

Anyway. Two Cakes ok. Anyone who uses it, just tag me cuz i wanna read it, hero.

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Fic Bit (Psych) "I'm not Dead, You're Dead"

Shawn is dead.

He knows this because he's been haunting Gus for about a week now. All he needs to do is figure out a way to get a message to Gus and he can lead the SBPD to his killer.

That is... once he remembers who it was that murdered him...

@ad-astra-per-aspera-1389 YOU CATCH MY DRIFT

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You! Have been visited by the gnome of executive function! Reblog to send them along to make sure they visit the next person in need!

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i dont want 22 episode seasons back. i dont want 8 episode seasons. i dont actually want a prescriptive number of episodes per season

its the era of streaming. we dont need to fil x number of timeslots.

i want tv shows to be able to determine for themselves what their optimal number of episodes per season to tell the story they want at the pace they want. maybe thats a 3 episode season. maybe thats a 50 episode season. i dont care, i just want the decision to be made for practical and artistic reasons rather than corporate ones

just a thing