morganwriteblr

[morganwriteblr]

🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces

(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)

So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented: → Three types of ceremonial jewelry → A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed → A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn

Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.

And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.

Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.

─────── ✦ ───────

🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style

Ask yourself: → Who’s in charge, and why? → Who has land? Who doesn’t? → What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?

Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.

Start there. Not at the embroidery.

─────── ✦ ───────

2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict

Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?

→ What was destroyed and mythologized? → What do the survivors still whisper about? → What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?

No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.

─────── ✦ ───────

3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists

Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about: → Death? → Love? → Time? → The natural world? → Justice?

Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.

You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.

─────── ✦ ───────

4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)

Culture shows up in: → What people apologize for → What insults cut deepest → What people are embarrassed about → What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately

For instance: → A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?” → A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.

This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.

─────── ✦ ───────

5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals

Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about: → Breakfast routines? → How people greet each other on the street? → Who cooks, and who eats first? → What’s considered “clean” or “proper”? → How is parenting handled? Divorce?

Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.

─────── ✦ ───────

6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture

A culture isn’t a monolith.

Even in deeply traditional societies, people: → Rebel → Question → Break rules → Misinterpret laws → Mock sacred things → Act hypocritically → Weaponize or resist what’s expected

Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.

─────── ✦ ───────

7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap

Worldbuilding gets boring fast when: → The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure → The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric” → Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like

You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy. → Let ugly things be beloved. → Let beautiful things be corrupt. → Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.

─────── ✦ ───────

📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy): → Culture is not food and jewelry. → Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction. → Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter. → Let your world feel lived in, not curated.

The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list. It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.

Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)

—rin t. // writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range // thewriteadviceforwriters

Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

[morganwriteblr]

someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue

[morganwriteblr]

[morganwriteblr]

so something i think the rpc/writing community may have been sleeping on but i wanted to share…

“MEDIEVAL FANTASY CITY GENERATOR” 

by watabou

it’s a random generator for custom cities/towns that are perfect for things like roleplaying, writing, and d&d. it’s simple but just complex enough to allow for customization of the things you’d like to change

honestly i love this page because it’s so helpful for so many different things?? i can’t show all of the customization options here in the images but some are, but not limited to:

small, medium, or large maps

changing the map coloring

you can add a title and key

you can warp certain points for small adjustments

.png export

saving wips

and so much more!!

honestly the best way to learn all that the generator does is to play with it yourself. i adore using this and hope it helps anyone who also needs a similar resource!!

[morganwriteblr]

I claim to be a writer and yet I can think of absolutely no response to these things other than DON'T DO IT YOU MF'ING FASCISTS

(advice/templates appreciated)

So if you're in the UK you have probably heard about the proposed changes to disability benefits. If not, here is a BBC News article (link) about it, and the Big Issue (link) have been running basically non-stop articles about it since the announcement.

Crucially, the government is holding a consultation. Will as many of us as possible weighing in change the outcome? Possibly, though it's far from guaranteed. Will not filling it in help the situation in the slightest? No. So let's all have a go.

You can find the full Green Paper here: (link) and the options to respond are at the bottom of it, including the link to respond online, which is also here: (link)

It's also always worth contacting your MP to let them know what you think, if only to get a response on fancy Commons stationery. You can find your MP here: (link)

So, have at it, UK folks! (These proposals don't apply to Northern Ireland as benefits are transferred, but they are still taking NI comments and sharing them with the Department for Communities, so you may be able to influence whether this approach is taken up in NI in future, too)

And if nothing else, please reblog!

[morganwriteblr]

Im gonna be so real can yall actually talk about ways we can support trans women in the UK instead of giving all the attention to fucking JKR. I already know that Harry Poter sucks, I wanna know how to actually HELP people. Something something you have to love the oppressed more than you hate the oppressor

[morganwriteblr]

"We prefer left handers”.

I looked up from my palms, in surprise. I’d been sitting on this uncomfortable bench in the echoing marble lobby for half an hour so far, since the disinterested looking guard had gestured me over here to wait, and not one of the smartly suited or heavily armed people that had passed by had so much as looked at me. 

“The Inquisitor, when he came to your school, he looked at your hands, right?”

The woman addressing me was tall, lean and iron haired. Her grey eyes glinted disconcertingly out of a face that was weathered and lined beyond its years. Still, a smile curved one side of her mouth and, for all their intensity, her eyes weren’t cold.

I nodded, dumbly, and looked back at my hands. Her smile grew and she sat down on the bench beside me. The worn, dark green leathers that all Warders wore creaked as she sat, and she hitched her longsword to one side with ease of long practice. 

For a moment we just sat, looking out at the lobby. 

The Department for the Unearthly occupied a grand neo-classical building on Chambers Street, alongside the University of Edinburgh’s Old College and the Crown Offices. People hurried to and fro; clerks carrying piles of documents, magicians in black coats with their noses in the air, Warders with their longswords and ever-watchful eyes. Everywhere guards stood. Unobtrusive in their dark uniforms, but with stern faces and heavy blackthorn wands at their belts. 

“It can be a sign of your soul’s chirality”. She glanced my way, questioningly. “They told you this in school, right?”

I nodded again, but she kept looking at me. Sensing something more was required I tried to dredge up the relevant lesson. 

“Uh… yeah. Some people, witches, have a… a.. sort of an extra part of them? Another version of them that’s out in the Wilds and that lets them…” I gestured vaguely in an imitation of warding “... and sense things that other people can’t”.

The woman tipped her head side to side, thoughtfully. 

“Sort of. A witch will have an aspect of them that can only be woken by going out into the Wilds. In some people this manifests as a familiar…”

“And they become magicians!” I broke in, pleased to have remembered something. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. I got the feeling she wasn’t used to people interrupting her.

“Yes, they tend to go on to study at the University and become magicians. In others, exposure to the Wild wakes their cunning; the extra senses and ability to cast that we require in our Warders”.

She rose to her feet, favouring her right side and with the faintest noise of discomfort. 

“And that brings us to why you are here today”. She offered me one gloved hand and hauled me to my feet with more strength than I would have expected from her slim frame. 

The dread that had sat in my stomach since the Inquisitor’s visit, weeks ago, returned with a vengeance. Seeing it in my face, she briefly placed a comforting hand on my arm. 

Where her hand had touched I experienced a rush of warmth, even through her gloves and my disreputable waterproofs. She must have felt it too, because she snatched her hand away and looked at me oddly for a moment, before continuing.

“Don’t worry, you’re just here for further tests today. We’re not going to send you out into the Wilds just yet”. 

I tried to smile at this, but it came out as twisted as my stomach. We had been standing in a little bubble of calm, amidst the busyness of the lobby. For the first time I noticed people hovering discretely about us, clearly waiting to talk to this woman. I realised I hadn’t asked her name, or who she was here. 

“Sorry, I didn’t… when you sat down, I should have… your name…” I blurted out. 

She sighed deeply, looking around at waiting functionaries. 

“Ah, yes. Name, rank and serial number and all that”. She drew herself up, placed her hand on the hilt of her sword and gave me a stiff backed bow. 

“My name is Mòrag Urquhart, Warder Royal and First Warder of the Edinburgh Branch”.  

For a while I couldn’t make any sounds at all and just stood with my mouth open. This was her. 

The one that would have power of life and death over me, if I tested through, the one whose signature had snatched me out of my school and my life, the one who had taken all of my choices away. The one I’d been hating in the privacy of my own head, ever since I’d seen her name on that letter. 

This Mòrag was very hard to hate, with her one-sided smile and concern for a girl sat alone in a busy Government building. My shoulder still tingled from the warmth of her touch.

It had been a long-time since she had told me her name.

“Niamh”, I blurted out, into the pause, “Niamh Blackwood”.

She gave me the one-sided smile again.

“Yes, I know who you are, Niamh. I asked you here, after all”.

Gesturing me to follow she set off across the marble floor to the great iron doors that guarded the way deeper into the building. The hovering functionaries descended on her like flies, but she waved them away irritably. 

“Come along then, we have a lot to do today”.

I hurried to catch up, clumsily clutching my bag and coat. Now that I was looking, I could see the spray of silver Ash leaves on her left shoulder that marked her out as head warder, with the royal crown above. 

From this angle I could also see the signs of the creep on her neck; the blue green ivy that sometimes grew beneath the skin of Warders that spent too long out in the Wild. The same pattern that might one day spread beneath my skin, if I was called to serve. 

I ran along in Mòrag’s wake, carried along in the slip-stream with a crowd of other people clamouring to get a moment of her time. The Warder Royal. And she had taken the time to come and greet me. 

The dread settled heavy in my stomach once more.

[morganwriteblr]

Before writing that Black queer &/or trans character, ask yourself:

Another set of resources that I've typed up for my upcoming lesson. I'm sure that even more questions could be asked; I hope that Black folk feel free to include their own additions in the tags! But these ought to be enough to at least get anyone to start self-reflecting during their creation/watching process!

[morganwriteblr]

Alchohol in fantasy worlds

As a slav, I’m obligated to point out the utter lack of diversity in fantastical beverages in most mediums.

Sure, you get the occasional magic-berry wine but where’s the mead made from giant crystal-termites (yes I know termites don’t make honey, it’s a fantasy world!)

You have beer and ale but what about all the unique alcohols made from fermented tropical fruits? There are countless unique alcohols on earth - imagine what a fun world could come up with?

Maybe you could ferment tree sap? 

Maybe a gross drink made with the eggs of some creature that doesn’t just rot but produce alcohol when aged?

What do rock giants drink? What substance do they consider intoxicating? Copper in the water? 

You could have passing adventurers comment on the pitiful smell of copper filling the pond where a crestfallen giant sits slumped forward and unconscious.

And what about distillation? If your people haven’t discovered proper distillation maybe they can use wide leaves to condense drops of alcohol and have them drip into another bowl?

Are some alcohols filtered through dragon ash? Crystals? Do they have to be home to a spirit to gain their otherworldly glow?

You can use bottles to signify how developed a region is, your local booze only comes in kegs while the elves export their fancy-schmancy magical spirits in clear-glass bottles decorated with gold leaves.

The industrial dwarves sell their alcohol in thin metal flasks which gain a metallic taste when forced to travel long distances, a taste only a dwarf could overlook.

Is your drink supposed to be watered down? Cooled? 

Maybe come up with something weird like - it has to be left out for a few seconds to let whatever highly-poisonous substance created as a side-effect of letting it age for a hundred years disperse into the air?

In conclusion: be more creative when coming up with fantasy alcohols! 

[morganwriteblr]

Well fucks? Get to it!

[morganwriteblr]

Just a quick note from your friendly neighborhood bookworm/indie author

if you use kindle for the majority of your library, they will be shutting down the function that allows you to download your files and transfer them via USB on the 26th of February. Which doesn't sound like a huge deal, but this also means that if a book is taken off Amazon for any reason—like it being banned—they can scrape it off your kindle as well. So maybe backup your library?

[morganwriteblr]

Just in time for Valentine’s Day... 💔 

Ready to break up with Google?

So are we!

We’ve rounded up a bunch of privacy-centric alternatives for everything Google.

Check out the full list over on the blog!

- The Ellipsus Team xo

[morganwriteblr]

pokèmonize yourself!!!!

spin this wheel to see your pokemon type

spin this one to see how you'll look like

[morganwriteblr]

[morganwriteblr]

Calling all Brits on this hellsite.

We all saw Elon Musk do the nazi salute at the Trump inauguration. We know that he is influencing and fanning the flames of right wing political parties.

And that very well may include ours.

Because Elon Musk has pledged to donate $100 million to the Reform party. He has since mentioned that it might be hard to give such a large sum now.

But I don’t think we should take our chances. And I think we can agree that letting billionaires influence our countries politics is a terrible idea.

If you also agree here’s a link to a Parliament petition.

It calls for the government to remove loopholes that allow wealthy foreign individuals to make donations into UK political parties (e.g. by funnelling through UK registered companies).

As it is a parliament petition the government are required to debate it in parliament. But for that to happen it needs to reach 100,000 signatures.

Non British folk I’m afraid you guys can’t sign but I encourage you guys to reblog so that more people can see this.

[morganwriteblr]

and if yes pls respond/put in the tags with what you’re reading and whether or not you like it i need new books for the new year <3

[morganwriteblr]

UK peeps: help oppose gov changing copyright law in favour of AI scrapers, see the guide for help in contacting your MP, the consultation group, your rep (if you have one for works you make), and how to complete the consultation form