#and I don't know the americas so I was like “if near desert = warmer?? so more green??” lmao

[lavenoon]

Into a new day, together

@naffeclipse I cannot begin to tell you how emotional I am over the CS ending - their happiness and chance at healing mean so much to me ;v;

And a small, very rough bonus that I see happening between the first two panels - someone giving Nessie that last little push to accept the affection she feels too guilty to indulge in <3

[transmasc-wizard]

PLEASE say more about what you've learned about map design!! (if you want to)

ok ok there are various Things and my brain is scattered but uhhmmmmmmmmmmm

BIOMES!

so when designing a map/world (bc designing a map really is designing a world), scale is actually very important. Not just scale in the sense of what size things are in relation to each other & how close or far they are, but scale in the sense of knowing how big the area as a whole is!!

Think about it! If your map is covering an area the size of England, it is very likely going to all be the same biome. If it's the size of North America, you can have deserts, forests, wetlands, an artic, and tundras all on the same map.

Additionally, this is a Lot, but you want to think about where the area is in relation to latitude and longitude and how that is affected by the nearest star (sun).

I am forever infuriated by fantasy maps/fantasy worlds in general that have, like, 2 suns or some shit, and then regular European summer temperatures. No, bitch!!! two suns is going to fuck around with your temperature and biomes!! It's going to be dryer! hotter! probably longer days! brighter!

and while you're not going to show all that on your map, you are going to have to account for what that does to the terrain. Less forests, far more savannahs and deserts, perhaps some salt flats. And if your suns work the same as Earth's, you're going to have to think--is this closer to a pole or the equator? Because obviously, something closer to a pole will inherently be colder, as it's far away from the sun (or in our hypothetical situation, suns). But even near the poles are going to be warmer than your typical earth arctic.

And what about city placements? A world with two suns is naturally going to have less water, and civilizations almost always sit near or around a water source--it's needed for survival, and is also often good for travel and trade.

So on a map of a world with two suns, you're going to have a lot of close-knit clusters of cities, usually around mountains and coastlines. This is because there will be less rivers (as only very strong rivers make it across deserts) and many, many rivers come from mountains. (Coastlines are self-explanatory.) There will probably be very few roads/trade routes on your map that stray away from water, and therefore there will likely be large swaths of land with no roads or trade routes.

Another thing to look at for maps is borders. What borders just kind of exist because they're difficult to get across (e.g., there's a giant fuckin mountain range) and what borders exist for political reasons (like war or colonialization). If your border is there because of natural difficulty, it will probably be looser and more natural, while politically-made borders are usually made with what land is owned by who in mind.

In this two-sun world, your map is probably going to have political borders around those clusters--especially in areas with less water, you want to keep your land and stand your ground to get what you can--and more relaxed borders between the deserts and certain mountains, because less people go there, anyway. So that affects where the borders go and what the worlds look like.

This is not Everything, and it's not all necessary (especially if you don't have complex worldbuilding in the story the map is for or the map just isnt for a story), but they are some things I personally like to keep in mind!!

Also, I very much too the "two suns" thing and ran with it, but that's because it was a good example and I had fun. In general, Very Specific Worldbuilding Things(TM), whether they're natural or god-caused or from human intervention, should always be considered in what they're going to do to the world.