i swear to god if people don't start understanding that responding to doylist critique of a piece of media with watsonian exonerations is not an actual rebuttal
somebody saying "hey i don't like that the only gay man in this story is a weird pervert and it portrays gay sexual promiscuity as a moral failing and character flaw" cannot be rebuked by arguing about how the character's backstory or personality traits explain their behaviour. the choices made by a writer are all fundamentally mutable; somebody saying an author's choices should have been different is not going to be persuaded by an argument that takes those choices as immovable fact
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the thing about media literacy is that understanding why the author chose to specify that the curtains are blue is the same skill set as understanding that the way the author characterizes all black characters as angry or all chinese characters as meek and silent is racist. it is the same skill set as being able to identify when a news source is biased or when someone is feeding you propaganda. the ability to ask "why did this person choose to present this premise in this specific way?" is a critical skill in a world full of misinformation. why are the curtains blue? maybe it's a characterization detail. maybe it's extraneous worldbuilding. why is this character written as being right all the time? maybe you're intended to disagree with them. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe you should still ask why.
How to survive the phase of shitty writting? I know i can't skip it in order to grow, but realistically, how to not give up? I already tried to quite completly, but i still feel that call,nbut when i try to write it feels so pointless. How to keep going knowing everything i create is worthless for now and i don't even feel i'll ever progress? I’m trying to come back after quite long time of not writing, i was writing for years before but never got any good, so obviosly i wont come back to write a masterpiece right away, i never aimed for a mastepiece in fact, i just want to make it any readable and i know i need to practice but i’m worried it can never get better.
I get asks like this every now and then, and they always contain the same problem.
Your writing is not shitty. It is not worthless.
Bloggers using these terms to describe early writing are often being either glib or depressing. Ignore their advice if it is making you feel bad.
Do you write for pleasure or for praise/accomplishment? If the latter, then you are simply in the practice stage. Practice is inherently worthwhile and no effort in this regard is a waste.
If you write for pleasure, then everything you create fulfills its purpose by being entertaining to create. A small child does not drop the crayon when it realizes its drawing will never be in the MoMA, does it? No, they don't care they just like drawing stuff. Adopt that mindset. Just write to get words on the page and ideas developed because you want to.
My advice for the insecure writer:
Stop re-reading your own work; you're a very biased critic right now and that in itself is holding you back.
All improvements are for later drafts. Trust me, you'll have whole new ideas by draft three so put off the nitpicking and focus.
Avoid outside opinions, writing advice, and blogs like mine for a while; we tend to inadvertently make you feel like you've done everything wrong and need to start over.
Stop starting over. Stop deleting your early drafts. Save all of it (this was the best advice I ever received).
Read and watch books and movies for motivation, and to analyze their strengths and weaknesses.
Do. Not. Compare. Yourself. To Other. Writers—your art is about you and what concerns you, other creators have nothing to do with it.
Remind yourself dumber people are doing it wrong confidently. Copy their confidence.
When you feel self-doubt creeping in again, tell it to take a hike, you've got a story to write.
Whatever you write, no matter the quality, take pride in being a writer at all. Lazy suckers just use AI.
There's nothing wrong with making a mess. How are you supposed to learn from constant perfection? Scratch out dumb sentences, leave afterthoughts in the margins, and side tangents in brackets. If the writing isn't going well, write ROUGH DRAFT in big letters at the top to remind yourself it's just a sketch of what you had in mind, not the finished product.
"...i’m worried it can never get better" I have great news for you! This fear will only be realized if you quit. Since you feel the pull to write there's clearly no point in quitting, your brain already knows writing is the answer. Ideas don't like to wait, and life will keep trying to interrupt you with bigger things, so there's really no time like the present. Go write!
—
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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.
─────── ✦ ───────
🔗 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
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The difference between treating characters like characters instead of treating characters like real people is the difference between accusing someone of being an abuser because they find a well written antagonist facinating instead of thinking of said character as "a terrible person"
They are creative mediums and you need to be able to learn to analyze them as such or else youll end up attatched to a character you feel the need to defend rather than explain.
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Sex scene as character study is so good. What is your relationship to your body? What is your relationship to your partner? What lessons have you absorbed from the culture about yourself as a sexual being? How much do you have to trust someone before being comfortable with intimacy? What fears and insecurities come to the fore for you when you take your clothes off? It's so good.
How do they communicate? How do they expect others to communicate? How well do they understand their body and their own capacity for pleasure? What do they tend to do to make their partner feel comfortable? How comfortable are they showing emotion in front of others? How much insight do they have into what their own emotions mean and are connected to? What are they focused on during the encounter? How conscious are they of exchanges of power and vulnerability? very very very good
What do they assume from context and what do they know from experience? What roles are they socially expected to play vs what roles do they think they are expected to play, vs what roles do they want to play vs what roles do they actually play?
If they at any point during the encounter have the thought or emotional impulse of "how would my partner describe this to one of their friends later?", what happens? What would it mean to them to be caught in the act by a stranger? A friend? An enemy? How would they relate to catching someone else in the act?
if you're writing and find yourself thinking 'this is too weird/gross/offputting/esoteric/ambitious/catered to my specific interests + sure to push away a broader audience' that is the devil speaking and it is a lie. you are already firmly on the right path and you need to double down
hey why do u automatically draw butches dark skinned and femmes light skinned. just wondering why your femmes are always pale, especially always being put next to darker skinned butches. just wondering why dark skin is masculine and pale skin is feminine to you. just wondering why you always draw butches as predatory masculine darker skinned people grabbing on swooning pale skinned people. just wondering. just wondering!!
Related question but why do you always headcanon the darker one as butch. Why do you always take a pairing where one of them has lighter skin than the other one and headcanon the light skinned one as femme and the dark skinned one as butch. Why do you swerve away from any canon depictions of the darker skinned character liking makeup or dresses or being soft. Why do you draw the lighter skinned one as delicate and skinny and put her in a dress, even when that’s not her canon characterization or her canon body type. Why is the dark skinned one the pursuer and the light skinned one the pursued in all of the romantic scenarios you’re envisioning. Why is that. Why is that.
I can’t believe that in order to tell a story I need to withhold certain information from the reader at first. I’m excited about it and I want them to know.
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Hey guys, you know about the Same Energy website right? has someone made a post about that? Cuz otherwise im gonna sing its praises to high heaven for its artistic references
Okay so I'm just gonna talk about it even if someone's already made a post, someone's gotta spread the word of this incredible website
So you go to the main page, and you like the vibes of one of these pictures
Lets click skull face lady.
It then gives you BUNCHES of images with similar vibes. Want to tweak it a little and narrow it down further? What if you like the vibe of thatt purple one more? Well u click that one and TADA
And you can just keep narrowing down from there, and if you make an account you can even save images you like :D
I know it sounds like i'm advertising for them but honestly i would GLADLY take money to advertise for these guys, their website is still only in beta mode but already I use this (or try to) for my art warmups because I get to try to do something a little different each time. (I would give money to support them but I am broke AF so that's why I'm just spreading the word instead ;A; )
And on the front page there's even an option to search with your own images I think! (Though, I tried to do that but I kept getting an Error, so I don't know if that's a Me With Bad Internet issue or a Website issue. Again, website is in beta, so if it is a problem on their end it will hopefully be fixed soon).
and i just love this website cuz its GREAT for collecting asthetics and vibes (i mean, hence the name "same energy")
It's like Pinterest on crack :0
So yeah :D Definitely go check out Same Energy, it is a GREAT resource for artists and those trying to collect specific vibes.
Sharing here bc helpful resource, but also to add on a few notes.
This is a search engine! Long pressing images on mobile will bring up where the engine found the image (not sure how to pull this up on desktop). It is no different from the images section of Google or Duck Duck Go or w/e else you use in this regard.
I specify this bc pintrest is a hellscape of stolen works :,) it's entire foundation is based on ppl finding aesthetic photos and art and uploading them to the site with no credit or permission. This isn't like that. It is a search engine.
Sometimes what it finds may be reuploads, which sucks, but it's not based in trying to do that. So if you like a photo you see, check out the source. If it seems ligit, consider helping the artist by leaving a tip or doing whatever pleases that site's algorithm.
