the rest is still... lost in chaos!!

[image description: a comic starring a rhino beetle anthro character. the rhino beetle knocks on the door, and a stag beetle anthro answers.

rhino beetle: sorry i'm late!

stag beetle: you're not late at all! i'm so happy you could make it! everyone else was delayed too, so you're the first person here.

rhino: seriously?

rhino, holding up a grocery bag: oh! brought something for the potluck!

stag, looking through the bag, pulls out what looks like a huge jello cup: oh thats really nice of- is this the limited stock gourmet beetle jelly i was eyeing last week that was sold out instantly?!

they hug each other. stag beetle says, excited: Ah, you shouldn't have! that's so thoughtful! it's more fitting for dessert but... should we crack it open now?

rhino: it's your party

stag: it is... let's do it! the others better get here soon if they want a bite!

they both move to the kitchen. stag beetle: can you grab me a cutting board?

rhino: got it! (thinking: so they're going to cut it so we all get a piece? how sweet of them)

stag: thank you!

stag holds the knife over the beetle jelly container, placed on the cutting board.

rhino, thinking: a knife's a little overkill for the lid, isn't it?

stag cleaves the beetle jelly in half with one slice.

rhino stands there shocked as stag hands them one half of the container.

stag, walking away while rhino remains shocked: oh, let me get you a spoon!

there's an extra shot of them eating the jelly. rhino thinks: it is easier to get the last bits of jelly out like this... End ID]

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.

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:

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.

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.)

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.

cupid blues