a problem that is not a Real Problem but I'm making a magic system for a story that I've got going, right, and talking about [REDACTED] magic system was so helpful and cool for that but the thing is now I've created a magic system and I'm making my little spells and part of me is like: Hey! That sounds like it should Actually Work if I just think about it hard enough. Which the vast majority of myself knows is not true and it's just kind of like, well, I'm glad I'm making a believable system but now I have to remember it doesn't Actually Exist because otherwise I think that's how you start pseudo-religions
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love when an absolute nightmare of a character is introduced and all you can think is "jesus christ buddy what the hell is your problem" and the narrative gives you a hot minute to stew before explaining Exactly what is Their Problem. and you just sorta sit back in your metaphorical rocking chair and think "huh. yeah okay fair. that would do this to a person, yes."
*takes the hand of a period drama writer gently* A queen consort is not a queen regnant. A dowager queen is not a queen regnant either.
There is very little intrinsic institutional power in queenship. The power a consort, dowager, or queen mother has depends mostly on how much the reigning sovereign (usually a man) is willing to grant her. Needing a queen to serve as regent is exceptionally rare, and the regent is more often a male relative.
Queen regnant: woman who rules in her own right, not on behalf of someone else.
Regent: Someone who temporarily assumes the powers of the monarch on account of the monarch being too young or too incapacitated to govern.
Queen consort: Woman who is married to the monarch.
Dowager queen: Woman who was married to the monarch. The monarch is dead, and she is owed support as his widow.
Queen mother: Woman who is the mother of the monarch. Usually the dowager queen, though there are exceptions if there isn't a straight line of succession.
had a fucked up dream i had a book that turned out could never be read again the same as the first time because each reread the characters became incrementally more aware that the events of the book had happened before and they were “reliving” it and i reread enough times that they became self aware, figured out they were in a book, acknowledged me as the reader, and some lost their minds or had existential crises, became violent to other characters or themselves, some begged me to never stop reading or they ceased to exist and others begged me to end it all stop reading and keeping them trapped in the endless loop of torment, and the literal only way to get the book back to its first run was to hand it off to someone else to read for the first time and for some reason i physically couldn’t tell anyone about it so i’d have to just hope whoever i gave it to would only read it once and i could never open the book again to check if they were okay and back to normal because i was terrified of fucking them all up again :(
i'm glad people are finding this fun as a concept and making references to stuff that this reminds them of but i really gotta express how bad of a nightmare this was for me. i had fallen in love with the original story and characters (though on waking i couldn't tell you the details), unintentionally warped their story beyond recognition, and found myself an unwitting god that could not provide mercy for some without doling torment to others. one of the characters started offing themselves every time i started another reread. stress dream doesn't even begin to cover it
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So, when I unpacked my summer clothes this year, I realized that my favorite summer nightgown is wearing out in several places. This is extremely sad as it is nearly impossible to find a nightgown that is a) affordable, b) made of pleasant material, c) below the knee, and d) doesn't look like something a particularly stuffy grandmother would wear. So, since my shopping options were limited, I decided to make my own.
Looking around for free patterns found me this which, yes, is instructions for making an Elizabethan chemise. The cool thing about sewing your own clothes is that you can think, "Yes, I would like to make an extremely old-fashioned undergarment and wear it all the time" and no one can stop you.
Mine is made of seafoam green handkerchief linen. I just finished sewing it about 20 minutes ago. It is extremely comfortable. And now, if I ever need to flee a haunted mansion in the middle of the night clutching a candelabra, I have the perfect thing to wear.
Describe a setting through the emotional state of the viewpoint character. The room should feel different before and after the scene’s central conflict.
🍖 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:
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🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:
A gothic prompt pack for writers who love cursed universities, secret societies, and scholarly rot.✎ Write the Darkness ✎A 75-prompt horror
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don't be afraid to get experimental with your fic. write a choose your own adventure. write in the second person. write through letters and emails. write whatever you want, it's your space
i don't remember them playing mahjong but they do other old man things like going to the wet market together and drinking soup and taking walks. anyway go watch suk suk / twilight's kiss
“And like. You mentioned a lot of your things, and we did those, and I didn’t have anything, so we did that too, I guess, but Mira mentioned that she liked cuddle-” and Rumi dropped her voice low at this, “-fucking, and we never got around to doing it.”
"im lazy" i truly sympathize with executive dysfunction, but this is one of those quality-of-life things you need to prioritize. 3 minutes of research/installation will save you a thousandfold in time and energy. it can even help with brain fog (most people don't realize how much mental energy ads actually steal)
"i like ads" my jaw is on the fucking floor. you chose to live in a sewer, yet you will never be a ninja nor a turtle. you do not have a warrior's heart.
*inhaling deeply and reminding myself that Shaking The Baby only endangers the baby, and does not assist it to learn or grow* in spite of everything there are beautiful and important truths within this world that you must learn, and i must help you to learn
⬆️⬆️⬆️ Can confirm, I use this method (alongside others) on android. for iOS the steps are different (and it may be easier to install the AdGuard DNS app instead)
the above will decrease the amount of ads you see system-wide. however: hands down the BEST ANDROID ADBLOCKING feature is the ability to install Firefox with uBlock Origin enabled.
this only blocks browser ads, but HOLY SHIT does that matter if you try browsing websites over apps when possible. which you should bc it's awesome and gives you SO much more control. E.g. blocks youtube.com ads and you can play videos in the background. I have never consensually opened the youtube app in my life
Pro tip: toggle on 'Desktop site' to avoid mobile sites that are purposely designed with fewer features (to bully you into using the app).
Note: for iOS users this isn't possible bc Apple hates your guts, but there are other browser options with built-in adblocking.
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writing tip they don’t tell you is that in addition to reading good books you should occasionally read one really bad one so that it inspires you to write something better out of pure rage
I truly enjoy how much Animorphs is like “here are our young heroes, each with a distinctive trope to fill in the group!” And then it makes you watch how the pressure of each person’s role grinds them to dust. And also they have homework.
#IM SORRY THEY DO HOME FUCKING WORK IN ANIMORPHS??????
Yeah they're students. If they don't keep their grades up or if they miss too many classes (or miss classes at suspicious times) then they risk drawing the attention of the faculty and/or their parents, some of whom are the enemy and some of whom can just make future espionage a whole lot harder. There are multiple missions where they're like "okay, this is incredibly time sensitive but it'll take a full day or longer so it has to wait for the weekend and we'll have to all lie to our parents about sleeping over at each others' houses. It's gonna have to be done at the last minute because we've gotta go to class. Also, remember to get that English paper finished, we can NOT afford to have you grounded right now."
These have been out of print for an age, and the authors have given their blessings to share the PDFs. Here's everything, including companion/side books and the non-canon Alternamorphs books, in reading order:
All of the Animorphs books by K. A. Applegate, as well as the other books set in that universe. I got them here. I am not the one who collec
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