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genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

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🍖 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.

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🔗 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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📍 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:

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This is a random message, but recently I've been reading a lot of manga and stories with religious themes. However, I'm gay and have religious trauma so I don't see myself returning to it. But I'm also afraid I'm making a mistake in doing so. Do you think you can point me in tue right direction book wise or christian witch creators? I'm completely new to this and don't want to learn incorrect or conspiracy theory information. Thank you 🩵😊

The best way to avoid internalizing conspiracy theories is to improve your critical thinking and research skills, and to research them from a critical or academic perspective and to learn real history and science. Avoiding "bad" fiction is neither a good nor realistic plan, given that tropes associated with conspiracy theories are found in probably the majority of science fiction and fantasy, and frequently pop up in other forms of fiction as well.

(Avoiding "bad" fiction is the puritan/reactionary's answer to social problems, and it has never fixed a single thing because it's about giving in to a gut reaction telling you to avoid confronting the problem instead of carefully analyzing it to find the actual best solution.)

Here are some resources:

Information Literacy Basics

Critical Thinking Skills: Definitions, Examples, and How to Improve Them

11 Characteristics of Pseudoscience

Six Ways To Debunk Any Conspiracy Theory

Miniminuteman

ESOTERICA

Angela's Symposium

BS-Free Witchcraft

Digital Hammurabi

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman podcast

It's Probably (not!) Aliens (this is the YouTube page for the podcast, but if you search for it you can find it on other platforms)

Behind The Bastards

Tales of Times Forgotten (you can search the blog for topical words like Atlantis, aliens, antisemitism, conspiracy theory, witch, or whatever)

Jason Colavito's blog (again, you can search for topics)

Conspirituality Podcast

Gutsick Gibbon (debunks young earth creationist claims, do not overlook this one!)

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commute!!

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Quotes from Authors on Writing

“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” — Stephen King

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’Amour

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very.’ Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” — Mark Twain

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” — Anton Chekhov

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” — Richard Bach

“You fail only if you stop writing.” — Ray Bradbury

“I hate writing, I love having written.” — Dorothy Parker

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” — Robert Frost

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” — Albert Camus

“Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” — Ernest Hemingway

“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” — Kurt Vonnegut

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” — Gustave Flaubert

“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” — James Michener

“Write what you know. Write what you want to know more about. Write what makes you feel. Write because you have to. Write because you want to. Just write.” — Cecelia Ahern

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” — Annie Proulx

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even a worm will turn.

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I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

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So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

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dean should’ve gone to cassie in season six. light and love to lisa, but cassie’s the one dean saw a future with - to the point where he tells her their big family secret

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Someone needs to inform the (rightly) pro-piracy tumblr users that it is no longer 2014 and some of the services they are recommending will turn ur computer in a broken microwave that serves bitcoins to shitheads.

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Man I love vine and I’m gonna miss it! I’m totally jumping on the bandwagon but hey why not? Here is some of my favs!

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Top 5 soviet movies/series you would make mandatory watching for anyone who doesn't know shit about soviet movies/series?

lets get this out of the way, THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DR WATSON because its placement in the soviet series pantheon is just so fucking weird. i myself simply Forget it's there because well there's a whole blog right there for a decade now about it, it just became a part of my life and i kinda consider it a given, and everybody i know from tungle is connected to me by this show n all. it's like the starting point for us, especially for anybody joinin the soviet movie/series clubs. everybody else getting acquainted with soviet cinema in the meanwhile puts it to last for some reason, people be willing to watch some fuckin alexander nevsky 1938 before they consider holmes and i can only wonder why. you wont watch a warmer, more inviting, kinder show that soviet sh. the whole fun and the love of it all. how in the goddamn.

musketeers babeyyyyyyy i think besides drawing attention to soviet sh, this series should be the actual number one because truly the grip it has on the soviet world. i cant even describe its iconic status and maybe you can see why? so fun, the songs slap, we've got friendship and l o n g cardinal and it's just so bright! yes the book is fucking ruined but i personally cant imagine myself sitting through a song-less adaptation of the plot now.

seventeen moments of spring is still my favorite show ever but it is truly Rather Specific. it is UTTERLY ICONIC and by watching it you get dipped into the heart of soviet lore, on jokes and references and everything. the acting, the plot, the suspense, it's so smart and any actor would've killed to have taken ANY role in it it's so interesting. it is also all dialogue no action so you either find it intense or help to sleep asmr, so it is a gamble but boy if it pays off!

war and peace oh my gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood. holy sshit. i keep saying it is a truly religious experience and like,,,,, maybe it's not a starter series kinda thing but you simply wont see better cinematography anywhere else ever and it just changes lives. mine surely. also DO watch the hollywood version somewhere in between the soviet episodes to get the full experiences it's hilarious

fine. the meeting place cannot be changed. rated higher than 17 moments, utterly lost on me. vysotsky sure, the quotes n all, i watched it aged 17 maybe, gave it 10/10??? came back to it years later and literally couldnt see why. you do have to acquaint yoursleves with vystosky tho and with what the show has to offer, especially in the last episode with that 20mins long interrogation scene, but maybe watch it before 17 moments idk.

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If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?

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OMG YESSSSS! I was thinking the same thing! As per animanga tradition, I was JUST WAITING for them to infantilize Yor in some way, by having her needing to be rescued by Twilight at some point, or have Twilight beat her in a fight or something. Animanga ALWAYS DOES THIS and it makes me SO MAD. Because women are allowed to be strong .. as long as “““the man”““ is stronger.

But Spy X Family was like, fuck that! Yor is strang! She will mess you up!

AND THE BEST PART is that it makes sense within the context of the manga. Twilight is a master spy. He can fight, sure, but his main skills are spy-ing and intelligence gathering. Meanwhile, Yor is the infamous assassin. Her number 1 main skill is killing people -- which is to say, fighting. So, if Twilight can beat her in a fight, then it kind of destroys one of the underlying messages of the anime, which is that the family is a team that’s stronger together (tho they haven’t realized this yet). But no, the anime isn’t shy to have a woman be stronger than a man, and have those same people fall in love. Twilight is not upset nor is his masculinity challenged because his (fake) wife can beat him up. In fact, he likes it! He thinks she’s really cool! And that it makes her a better mom!!!

It sounds like something that shouldn’t be a big deal, but it really is. I love it so much.

Things I appreciate about Spy x Family:

Episode one: establishes Twilight as most badass man alive.

Episode five: establishes that Yor can kick his fucking ass without trying and kill him even while so drunk she can't speak.

Like. It's perfect.

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i would actually cry tears of joy if you write a coda or something for your front row seats series 🥺🤲 it's definitely one of my favorites 💗

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Hi!💜 Okay I don't think this is what you had in mind, because it is Steve and Tony from Front Row Seats, set some time after the end of that series, but it's kind of sillier than what that 'verse usually is.

Established Steve/Tony, pre-Sam/Bucky maybe

----

“This is unexpected,” Wong says.

Strange sighs. “We only asked for you, Stark.”

Steve opens his mouth to argue, but Tony beats him to it by saying, “Steve and I are a package deal, Teller. You’re Teller, he’s Penn. Wait, do they also exist in this universe?”

“Yes,” Peter says quietly.

Tony eyes Peter. “You want a hug, kid?”

Peter winces. “Would that be weird? I mean, it’s cool if it’s weird, it’s not like you know me, I mean you know another me, but not me me, and it’s—”

“Yeah, you need one, c’mere,” Tony says, stepping towards him.

While Tony handles a teary-eyed college-aged superhero, Steve takes stock of the rest of the group currently spread out in what appears to be this universe’s Sanctum. Wong, Strange and Peter are familiar, and not too different from the versions in their home universe. America and Kate, newly introduced, are not; Steve’s curious about the star on America’s jacket, just as he’s curious if Kate’s outfit means that Clint is also dead in this universe, but he’s not going to ask.

Because if he asks, then chances they’re going to start talking about how their Tony Stark is dead, and that is Steve’s least favorite topic of conversation in the multiverse.

“Okay, I thought you’d be taller,” Kate says.

“You lose a couple of inches fighting Thanos,” Steve says.

Kate grins. “That’s fair.”

Rounding off the group are Sam and Bucky. Sam looks pretty much the way he does where Steve and Tony are from, though his white, blue and red suit is different in places. Bucky, however, is almost an entirely different person – startlingly young to begin with, and with more of a soldier’s build than Steve’s Bucky ever had.

“So you got the arm, huh,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve says, lifting his prosthetic in a hello. It’s easier to not have to explain that their Bucky wasn’t held by Hydra that long. “Too bad we can’t trade for a bit.”

“This mean I’m not Captain America where you are?” Sam asks.

“Oh, our Sam is,” Steve says. “I mostly do other work now, while he takes the Avenging. Not with our Bucky, though.”

“Lucky bastard,” Sam says.

“Don’t be mean,” Bucky says, nudging his elbow.

“I’m just saying,” Sam says, “it sounds like that Sam has more of a team at his back than the one sidekick.”

“That’s because I’m worth a whole team,” Bucky says.

Steve frowns. “Are you two together?”

“What, no!” Sam says. “Nothing like that, no.”

“No,” Bucky says, in a slightly slower voice that makes Steve narrow his eyes.

“We’re just, you know, partners,” Sam says. “Like you and Tony.”

Steve’s scowl deepens, and he reaches over to grab Tony’s sleeve and yank the cuff up to his wrists, revealing Tony’s wedding band. “We’re married.”

“Oh shit,” Sam gasps, while Bucky barks a laugh that turns into a cough.

“Mazel tov,” Wong says. “Did other me attend your wedding?”

“How is that important?” Strange says, exasperated.

“It’s called relationship building,” Wong says.

“Yes, Wong, other you was indeed at our wedding,” Tony says, “but the most important thing is that this means that if you get me killed, you’ll have to deal with this angry bastard getting on your ass, and believe me you don’t want that. An agreeable widow he will not make.”

“Indeed,” Steve says.

“So,” Tony says, clapping his hands together. “What’s so important that you had to punch a hole into another universe to find a spare Tony Stark?”

“Save the universe, or maybe a couple of universes in one go,” America says. “You know. All the fun stuff.”

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EMAIL BOOK CLUBS MASTERLIST !!!

alright, there are a lot of email book clubs now, so here's ALL of them, in one convenient list

NOTE: IF YOU FIND MORE PLEASE SEND !!! put them in the notes, my ask box, dm them to me, just notify me in SOME way and i will edit this base post so they all remain in one place

without further ado:

Dracula Daily - dracula

Whale Weekly - moby dick

Frankenstein Weekly - frankenstein

Letters from Watson - sherlock holmes

What Manner of Man - just click the link its gay vampires

Edgar Allen Poe Daily - the works of edgar allen poe

The Penny Dreadful - penny dreadful

Ovid Daily - the works of p. ovidius naso (note: these are in latin)

Werther Rewritten - the sorrows of young werther, modern-ish

The Sorrows Of Young Werther - the original of the above

Carmilla Quarterly - carmilla, just click the link its lesbian vampires

Literary Letters - lesser known public domain works

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So look. I agree there should be more queer folks involved in the creation of media, particularly mainstream media. (Other groups too but I’m speaking on queer folks right now.) Queer people are underrepresented and shoved to the side and poorly portrayed and that sucks, and there should be more of us involved, particularly when it comes to telling our stories.

HOWEVER

Nothing good comes of the idea that ONLY queer folks should tell queer stories or portray queer characters, or that it’s okay to critique and harass straight folks purely for telling queer stories.

Why?

1. Segregation is not going to work in our favor. We know how “well make your own, then” plays out when the other group has the resources and institutional power. Especially if there’s no one even making them pay lip service to “separate but equal.” It’s not going to be any better if the segregation is self-imposed.

2. Saying straight folks can’t make queer media gives them a convenient excuse to simply not include any queer characters at all in the majority of stories, and I thought we hated that? I thought that was explicitly a bad thing? We WANT straight creators to be doing their best to write us well so we’ll be represented in a full range of mainstream media. Saying they can’t do it right and shouldn’t try lets them off the hook.

3. It puts closeted queer creators in a bind. Either they stay closeted and be harassed by angry queer folks, they come out and expose themselves to harassment from bigots, or they simply never tell queer stories, their own stories. The world gets worse for some subset of queer folks and fewer authentic queer stories get told. Net loss.

4. It makes the small pool of out queer creators the arbiters of queer narratives, which sucks for people who don’t see themselves well represented. There is no single definitive queer narrative and the smaller the pool of Approved Creators the more we risk instating a false one.

5. It opens the door to further divisions within the community. If a straight person can’t possibly understand a trans person well enough to write about or act them, can a cis gay person? So should a cis gay man ONLY write characters who are cis gay men? Ridiculous. No, all queer people are not alike and do not have the same experiences. So either we need to overcome that to learn about and empathize with other people and stand in solidarity, or we’re all going to splinter off into our own little bubbles which, again, is explicitly bad for both our real-life community and our fiction.

We want people to write about others who aren’t like them. We want people to write about others who aren’t like them. We also want people like us to have the opportunity to tell our stories but making it an exclusive privilege can only backfire.