Hello darklings!
Every time I get a warning for sever thunderstorms, glee rises in me. I adore them. Even though they’re dangerous, even deadly, I still can’t help but admire the darkness broken up by lashes of light and powerful booms. Many dislike rain, but I adore it, even if I must put on the rain boots to squelch through the mud during dog walks. There is wet dog after and mucked towels, and still, I enjoy water falling from the sky.
Whoever did the world-build on Earth did a crazy cool job.
Speaking of world building, doing research before creating maps will establish you as a more professional world-builder.
Look, I am not a geographer, but I can still look at a map and tell if the person who created it knew enough about global physical properties to make their world believable. Even on an alien world, unless it’s in a wildly different universe where known physic laws don't exist, certain characteristics are always going to apply to the terrain.
So take some maps that show elevation, greenery, rainfall, and start asking why regions look like they do. Get curious. Learn the relationships between formations and water.
For instance, high mountain ranges will affect if rain can get to certain regions, usually causing plenty on one side and deficits on the other.
Water always flows to lower elevation and continually makes its way to the sea. It starts as being rich in oxygen but with poor nutrition and micro-life, and ends being lower oxygen but full of life. Rivers get larger as more streams join them before reaching the sea, and often carve out a large V-shape where a river meets a large body of water.
Erosion makes large canyons, valleys, deltas, cliffs, and plateaus. Be it from running water, ocean waves, glaciers, wind, lava, or a combination, something has carved the land. Vegetation does a great deal to hold onto soil, but something formed the land into a shape before greenery swallowed it and added its own features.
Be mindful of tectonic plates (and if none, how that affects the planet). Some mountain ranges continue to rise while some recede. This is especially important for volcanoes and shaping of continents.
Speaking of tectonic plates, this will effect island chains, too. Islands are rarely just single plots in the ocean—usually there is a chain of them, the top ridge of an under water mountain range or string of volcanoes. Land that slopes off a continent might create a shallow bar where it continues to line out islands until they become smaller and smaller and finally fade off into deeper water. Sometimes the seabed tapers slowly downward, and sometimes it drops into a deep ocean trench with little warning, and it will depend on what your plates are doing and where your mountain ranges run into the sea.
Be mindful of sunlight energy, water availability, nutrients, and climate. Study why nothing grows except evergreens or short shrubs in different biomes. Learn why the equator has thriving biodiversity where sunlight and water is rich.
If a planet has multiple moons, you may want to look into how that affects tides, and how it would affect things if the moons were in synch in their orbit or not. Yes, even the heavenly bodies have influence.
So study your maps, dear corvids. World-build like a pro.
Research History This Week: Quills, quill nubs, pen invention, head injuries, lasting concussions, royalty lineage, ancient surgery for cataracts, lung puncture care in Victorian age, and mountain formations.
Mistaken word: Accruement and accoutrement. I wanted to state a bunch of small tools being moved from one place to another. I first put in “accruments”, which of course is the wrong spelling. Upon looking it up in WordHippo, found that the word “accruements” means to increase and profit. I had to dig to find “accoutrements”, the word I wanted, which means articles of equipment and/or clothing.
Beastie Update: I have so many scratches on my legs from these kittens. They’re so stinking adorable, they get away with it. I really love kittens this age, but my epidermis is less than thrilled.
Working On: Been working on fanfic and short stories.
Watching and Reading: I’ve been so busy, I’ve not started anything! I really should remedy this.
Much love, corvids.
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