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Okay, here's my excuse to vent a personal pet peeves. :-) If you're going to publish a map of your imaginary land, map out the watersheds and make sure they ma
by wtracy 8y ago
Okay, here's my excuse to vent a personal pet peeves. :-)
If you're going to publish a map of your imaginary land, map out the watersheds and make sure they make sense. You don't have to include those details in the final map, but they should inform the final map.
Real rivers go somewhere. They don't just stop in the middle of nowhere.
- Svip 8y agoThen you'll enjoy this "guide" from /r/imaginarymaps: https://i.imgur.com/Vy0FS8F.png https://i.imgur.com/Vy0FS8F.png
- icebraining 8y agoThe "rivers never split" rule is BS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_bifurcation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_bifurcation
- dmos62 8y agoYeah, that's a weird thing to be wrong about. There's an abundance of cities built on where multiple rivers meet.
- AllegedAlec 8y agoThat's two rivers merging, not splitting.
- dmos62 8y agoNot in terms of the "guide" linked to. It looks at rivers as something creeping up from the ocean to higher lands. It's a perspective where a river travels upstream, even if it flows downstream, if that makes sense. The author is saying two streams travelling up never split, only merge. I'm saying they do split [0]. An upstream split is a downstream merge. [0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/45.7293/4.8128 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/45.7293/4.8128
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 8y agoPlenty cities are located where rivers meet, however I'm struggling to think of any where a major river splits?
- almostarockstar 8y agoStaten Island could be seen as between two ends of the Hudson.
- dmurray 8y agoAlexandria and Cairo are at the Nile delta.
- jcranmer 8y agoThe Mississippi River merges/splits with the Red River/Atchafalaya River at the Old River Control Structure. The Orinoco River and Rio Negro are connected via a distributary, although this is the upper reaches of both rivers. Deltas are commonly very large and involve several streams. The mouth of the Amazon River is more or less 100 miles distant. And the Brahamaputra and Ganges river delta involves 100s of channels that more or less crisscoss the entirety of Bangladesh.
- saagarjha 8y agoI'm pretty sure the image is satire that happens to provide a semi-workable description of how watersheds work.
- empath75 8y agoDid you actually read it? Everything in it is wrong.
- wtracy 8y agoThe only instances I know of rivers naturally splitting is in river deltas. These form from sediment accumulating at what was once a single river mouth. The islands in a delta have consistent properties: they are flat, consist of soil and silt rather than rock, and are usually marshy. Anything that deviates from these rules is usually wrong. Rivers don't split around two sides of a mountain, for example.
- icebraining 8y agoahem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_streams_of_Idaho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_streams_of_Idaho
- maaark 8y agounderground is somewhere...
- cimmanom 8y agoBut does it show up on a map?
- wtracy 8y agoNo, but they ultimately feed into a river that does. My opinion: Features like this have no business being in a fantasy map unless the author has an above-average grasp of geology. Or there's a magic portal somewhere. That's fine, just don't pretend it's natural.
- BerislavLopac 8y agoMy personal pet peeve (or is it peef? ;-) ) is that nearly all imaginary maps fit neatly into a rectangle, making the best use of available space. Sometimes it ends in perfectly straight mountain ranges, long coastlines with no islands etc. Just scroll a bit through https://twitter.com/mythicmaps https://twitter.com/mythicmaps to see what I mean.
- KineticLensman 8y agoAnd mountains. With right angles, like those in Middle Earth [0]. Although to be fair to Tolkien, Ilúvatar probably wasn't bothered about credible plate tectonics. Actually, ignoring the issue of whether Middle Earth was geologically feasible, Tolkien went to great lengths to make sure that the story was consistent with the geography, e.g. in terms of making sure character times and locations were synchronised across the many plot strands. The LOTR map was specifically created to help him keep track of it. [0] https://www.tor.com/2017/08/01/tolkiens-map-and-the-messed-up-mountains-of-middle-earth/ https://www.tor.com/2017/08/01/tolkiens-map-and-the-messed-u...
- TremendousJudge 8y agoThis essay[0] on the consistency of Middle Earth by the author of The Last Ringbearer[1] really explores the topic as well [0] https://ymarkov.livejournal.com/273409.html https://ymarkov.livejournal.com/273409.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
- empath75 8y agoPlate tectonics wasn't a generally accepted theory until well after Tolkien made those maps, anyway.
- mikepurvis 8y agoEven without the underlying theory, though, you can still look at lots of real-life mountain ranges and see that they generally align themselves to continental contours and not geometric shapes like boxes.
- KineticLensman 8y agoIndeed. Actually the cosmology of Middle Earth (which is the first part of 'The Silmarillion' and barely mentioned in TLOTR) does require, to put it charitably, a certain suspension of disbelief. I'm paraphrasing somewhat... (spoilers) The creator, Eru / Ilúvatar creates a great theme and the Ainur (spirits) are then invited to create a music from it. The evil Morgoth (Sauron's boss) sows discord by breaking Eru's harmony. Eru then stops the music and the various spirits manifest in the world (Arda) created from it. The world is initially illuminated by stars and then the light from two great trees. Which Morgoth destroys, although their light bearing fruit are used to create the Sun and the Moon. The Valar (the most powerful good Ainur) create the westerly island Valinor, which (after a lot of misery which forms the main subject of the Silmarillion) Ilúvatar eventually makes inaccessible by sending a great wave, changing the shape of all the lands of Middle-earth. Hence my comment that plate tectonics (or whatever geological processes were understood in the early 20th C) wasn't an overarching concern for Tolkien. But once he'd made this world, he made sure that the LOTR characters would see the same phase of the moon at their respective parts of the story.
- zipwitch 8y agoThe Okavango is Africa's 4th longest river. It flows into the Kalahari desert, becomes a swamp and dries out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okavango_River https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okavango_River
- wtracy 8y agoAgain, it doesn't just stop--it ends in a swamp. (An "endorheic basin", to borrow from Wikipedia.) I'm complaining about fantasy rivers that literally just stop.
- Hussell 8y ago> Real rivers go somewhere. They don't just stop in the middle of nowhere. Yeah? Have a look at the Morghab River in southern Turkmenistan. It flows from some mountains in Afghanistan out into a desert, where it splits up into a delta and just sort of... stops. The satellite view on Google Maps is striking. (There are several canals connecting to the delta now, but historically the river stopped in the middle of nowhere.) Rules of thumb like this aren't laws, just patterns which have exceptions. (That said, yes, imaginary maps are sometimes ridiculous.)