HB writes

For all my European darlings who are suffering through this horrible heat wave, my American friends who don't always have access to air conditioning, and anyone else who needs it....

Here are some tips on how to survive the heat of summer at home when you have next to no money and only household basics to work with.

(I'd love it if readers would reblog this and add their own ideas - people need all the help they can get right now!)

Stay hydrated. This is the most important thing. You're going to sweat a LOT and your body needs that replenished as often as possible. Drink WATER as much as possible and cold is best. Soda won't cut the mustard and sports drinks may replenish your electrolytes, but they are not meant for subsistence. If you need to flavor your water to make it more palatable, do it. And I know cold tea is anathema to some, but a glass of sweet or citrusy iced tea might be just the thing to get you through.

Wear loose, breezy clothing. I know the instinct is to wear your smallest, briefest summer garments, but sometimes wearing something larger, looser, and flowy helps to cool you down. The movement of the fabric creates a little bit of a breeze to draw heat away from your skin and helps all that sweating actually cool you down.

Draw the shades. If you have curtains or blinds or window shades, cover the windows, especially on the sunny side of your home. Shading the place will help keep the heat out, at least a little.

Use fans and appliances judiciously. Keep the air moving. I know sometimes it's just blowing hot air around, but it's better than stagnating. Also if you have an exhaust fan above your stove, USE IT. Draw off some of that heat from your cooking and for the love of all things holy, try not to use the oven. (Also, if you're not using your desktop computer or gaming system, unplug it for a while - those things generate a lot of heat!)

Eat cool and light. Try to avoid making meals that are going to heat up the house. If you can, make cold meals or use the microwave instead of the stovetop or oven. If you have an outdoor grill, use that for the evening meal instead of the stove. Also, if you have a blender handy, smoothies are a great way to cool down and also get in a few servings of fruit or vegetables.

Swamp coolers are your friend. If you've got a towel, a drink cooler, a bag of ice, and a box fan, you can make a homemade swamp cooler as well. Put the towel on the floor and the drink cooler on top. Fill the cooler with ice and position the fan so that it's blowing over and around the open cooler from less than two feet away. Elevate it on a box or chair if necessary. This isn't going to cool your entire home, but it can cool a small space and provides a little relief. Just be aware that there will be some sweating from the cooler and you'll need to replace the ice after a while. (The meltwater may be good for watering the garden or doing the washing up though.)

Cold showers take the edge off of many things. At the end of the day, take a shower that's a few degrees cooler than body temperature. Even if you don't do a full scrub or wash your hair, get in and sluice down, or use a pitcher of room-temperature water to give yourself a rinse. This helps your whole body cool down, cleans off the sweat of the day so you don't get breakouts, and helps you sleep cooler and less sticky. (Also, try sleeping under the duvet cover without the duvet inside to stay cooler at bedtime. And definitely have a fan in the bedroom.)

Make some homemade cold spray. This is something I used to make for camping trips. In a spray bottle, combine tap water and aloe gel in about equal measure. Then, if you have it, add 2-3 drops of peppermint essential oil. Shake to combine. You can store the bottle in the fridge when you're at home or tuck it into your bag if you're out and about. A few spritzes on the chest or the back of the neck helps immensely. (Don't spray it on your face or near your eyes. If you have any allergy or sensitivity to peppermint, leave the essential oil out.)

Keep reusable ice packs in the freezer. These can be a lifesaver. They're a quick way to cool down during the day, by cuddling or leaning against while sitting. If you can't find ice packs, fill a freezer bag 3/4 full of ice water with half a cup of rubbing alcohol, squeeze out the air before closing, and reinforce the seams and edges with duct tape. In an emergency when nothing else is working, or if someone starts to overheat, take an ice pack and put it under the arm. There's a whole host of major circulatory vessels in that area and it's a fast way to bring down body temp if someone's in trouble or while you're waiting for emergency services.

cr: evolverozanov

Backstage before the hockey romance panel at BookCon 2026, and Rachel tells me she loves Check, Please! and is Kickstarter backer.

I have one actor that will most likely end up playing Nine (though I want them as Ten more, but the way the people I have works out they’re the only nonbinary actor I’ve got atm) and two others in mind for Ten and JUICE but I need to ask them if they want to lol

I’ve started a list of potential actors for the ensemble, but I need to make a tracking sheet of characters to make a track sheet for actors to see how many I’ll need

I also need to get permission from the planetarium (it’s literally just emailing my boss, and yet) to solidify dates, but it’ll likely be in November!

Planetarium didn’t work out (alas we’re very busy this semester) but that’s okay! I can still do the show in other places :)

I also have all my actors!! I have 8, which is the bare minimum number you need for the show

It’s gonna end up being a staged reading and not a full production, which is a little bit of a shame but also is probably for the better tbh because right now our department doesn’t have our usual building and we’re in a bunch of in between spaces across at least three buildings, so having this be smaller makes things easier :)

I also will be recording the show!! If all of the actors are okay with it, then I’ll post it, likely on YouTube or something!

dont buy them what they want. people want garbage. you want garbage,. and then when you get it you dont like it. dont ask them what they want either, they dont know. you want to get them something they will not buy for themselves

think about what they would actually use. this can be a replacement for something they used to use that broke, but not an 'upgrade' unless they have specifically expressed wanting a new one. do not buy anything that could be construed as you criticising their way of doing something. if tthey are currently doing something the wrong way and are aware there is a right way but dont do it, there's a reason

think about what they have room in their space to store. when you give someone a gift it becomes an obligation to them regardless of how much they like the gift. they have to store it, look at it, and interact with it, they have to thank you for it too. keep this in mind. small or flat and non-fragile items are best. for example if someone expresses a desire for a houseplant, i will often give them a clone of one of my impossible to kill grandmother plants and then tell them go ahead and kill it, there's plenty more where that one came from and the mother plant doesnt care. never give someone an obligation or strings attached to a gift unless you hate them. do not ask them if they like it or if they're using it afterwards, either. they'll tell you if they do. if not it's better to let it slide

think about situations where they coudl easily and pleasantly use this gift but which they have not thought of themselves. for example your straight male roommate probably doesnt have a fucking bathrobe

think about things they already choose to spend time on and enjoy. for example, my mom said she was starting to think about her novel but didnt know where to start. i bought her a pack of really nice index cards and told her about Nabokov's method of writing sentences and then freely arranging them. index cards are good for everything, not just novel writing. theyre cheap, flat, dont expire, and are visually neutral, and cheap. plus she likes stationery a lot anyway. GREAT gift.

keep it cheap (again this is for someone who doesnt want/need anything). expensive gifts are too much of an obligation for everyone involved and usually more stressful than helpful unless someone needs something specific (like a computer or phone)

do not buy them anything decorative. decorations are way too personal. the expectation is that they have to display it in their house forever or you might get your feelings hurt. bad gift

"i really liked this item/product/tool so i got one for you too because you have the same use case that i do" is a really good gift if you know this is the situation. for example maybe you and your sister have the same skin tone and you found a blush that looks great on your skin. maybe you and your friend both like fountain pens and you found an ink you really like. maybe you and your mom both get migraines and you found an icepack you really like. etc.

So at the very beginning of the play there was a scene where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are at a funeral as the primary mourners. A stretcher is carried on with a covered body. The body was notably very small. They laid flowers on it and Macbeth immediately left for battle.

Now *I* studied Shakespeare in college so I immediately knew there is one single line that implies that the Macbeths lost a child at some point. Most of the time this isn't utilized in productions; it's just a throwaway line, intended to paint just how determined Lady M is for this regicide thing to work and how furious she is that her husband has cold feet. In this production she delivers "I have given suck, and know how tender tis to love the babe that milks me" nearly in tears. She takes a moment to steel herself before saying, "I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains pit, had I so sworn" and she very nearly SCREAMED this in Macbeth's face.

Also noted was how the Macbeths looked at Macduff's children. Lady M was clutching her heart, nearly breaking watching them embrace their parents. Macbeth could not even look at them.

At the end of Lady Macbeth's plot, when she is sleepwalking and sleeptalking, she is typically portrayed as speaking to no one or to her husband. However, at a certain point of her monologue she got on her knees, raised her voice to a comforting octave, and began miming tear wiping, hand holding, hair and face stroking, around a child-sized figure. "Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave." Then she stands and appears to take the child's hand. "Go to bed, go to bed. I can hear knocking at the gate-" then she looks down and realizes that no one is there, followed be the most heartbreaking shriek I've ever heard followed by a full minute of her just weeping while curled up on the floor before she stood up, finished her monologue and left the stage.

Most of the time when the loss of a child is utilized in a performance or adaptation, it is assumed that the child was an infant and lost some time ago. To imply that the child died IMMEDIATELY prior to the events of the play and had been cared for and loved by their parents for a few years adds such a fascinating layer to the desperation to ascend to the throne, Lady M's madness, and Macbeth's initial hesitation into "in for a penny, in for a pound" attitude, Macbeth's fury that Banquo's, not his, children will take the throne, and even Macbeth's eventual demise following a frenzied final battle.

How far will grief push you to fill a hole? How far will grief push you to desperation? And what happens when none of your new pursuits are filling the void left by the one you lost? And what happens when you realize you have nothing left to lose?

Call me whatever names you wish, but I think this is a much better (and healthier) attitude than “anyone under 18 should never be allowed to see any sexual imagery ever”

(For reference: this was at the Tom of Finland exhibition, containing actual, queer, kinky af pornography. There were definitely some young people there, perhaps in their late teens. There was even a parent with their baby who was probably too young to understand anything at all. And guess what, all those people are probably going to be fine.)

- Do not assume they understand your instructions the first time. They will ask you the same question three times. Answer it the same way, patiently. They will get it eventually.

- Children will ask strings of “why” questions. They’re not trying to be annoying; they don’t have a lot of the context older people have. Answer until you can’t, then admit you don’t know and ask them a question back. They’ll get distracted for the moment, and trust that you take their questions seriously.

- If you need a kid to do something, give a reason, but don’t give up at “I don’t want to”. If they don’t listen, it’s okay to say “I explained why, and I still need you to do it.” Be calm, and firm. Usually, kids will listen the second or third time.

- If a kid doesn’t listen to an instruction repeatedly, there’s probably something in the way. Ask them why they’re not *without accusing them*, and they’ll tell you what’s going on most of the time. Common reasons: I’m scared, I don’t know how, I miss my parent/sibling, I’m tired, I’m angry/frustrated/sad, I need help. Address the roadblock and help find a compromise that works for the both of you.

- Threats are only as good as you can enforce them. If you threaten them with a countdown, you need a consequence to back it up that is appropriate to the request. For example: “I need you to stay in your chair. I’m going to count to five. If I get to five, and you’re not sitting in your seat with your feet on the floor, I am writing down that you were not listening during snack time on your behavior report.” Keep in mind that these threats only work if the consequence is at the right level; too harsh, and they’ll get overwhelmed and shut down, but too light, and they won’t see it as a consequence. A kid who doesn’t care what their behavior report says won’t worry about a bad report as a consequence.

- Never scream at a child. Never hit them. Never continuously escalate consequences until they do what you say. These behaviors cause a child to panic, and their fear response will prevent them from doing what you want them to, as well as make them more distrusting of you in the future. It’s not just cruel, it is actively counterintuitive to correcting their behavior.

- Make a point to notice and compliment/reward good behavior, especially with kids you are biased to view as “rude” or “badly behaved”. Kids take the views of adults seriously, and if they feel as though they can’t redeem themselves in your eyes, they won’t waste energy trying. Complimenting good behavior when you see it will encourage them to repeat good behaviors to earn your praise. In addition, if there’s other children nearby, they will also mimic the complimented behavior to earn the same praise. Give it.

- Kids want to feel heard. If they want to show or tell you “something cool”, and you have a few moments, watch/listen and compliment them *regardless of if you get it or not*. If you don’t have time, say “That sounds really cool! Can you tell me after we do [insert thing]?” This tells them that you care while still making sure they do what they need to.

- Kids can be downright frustrating sometimes, especially when they need to do something and they just *won’t*. Recognize when you’re getting angry, and learn to stop talking before you direct that anger at them. Take some deep breaths, remind yourself that this too shall pass, and try a different approach.

- Always understand why you’re asking a child to do something. Not only does this help you tell them why they need to, it helps you find replacement behaviors if they can’t/won’t do it. For example: “I need you to lay down and try to sleep, because your friends are sleeping and what you’re doing right now is waking them up. If you can’t sleep after trying for a while, we can work together to find you a quiet activity that you can do at your cot.”

- Don’t expect from a child what you wouldn’t expect from yourself. Could you stand laying still and staring at the ceiling for an hour when you’re not tired? No? Don’t ask a kid to do it. Could you stand staying out in the cold for an hour without a jacket? No? Don’t ask a kid to do it. Could you stand someone yelling at you without feeling angry? No? Don’t ask a kid to do it. Even if you think you could do it, consider if you could do it with the same limitations this child has. Could you do it without the emotional regulation and impulse control you’ve developed as an adult? Could you do it without the inference skills you’ve learned after years of social interactions? Could you do it when you felt angry, tired, overwhelmed, hungry, thirsty, desperately needing to pee with no bathroom nearby? If not, don’t ask a child to do it.

- Don’t react to potty words, insults, or offensive language. Don’t laugh, and don’t act upset. Use the same tone you would if someone said something innocuous, and correct them in that tone. “We don’t say that; that’s a hurtful thing to say to someone.” Or “That’s not funny. Let’s talk about something else.”

- Kids don’t (and should not) have a sense of sexual innuendo or puberty. A four year old doesn’t understand that reaching up to hug you and touching your breasts in the process is gross. A five year old doesn’t understand that “why aren’t you a mommy?” or “why does your face have red dots on it” are weird questions to ask random people. Enforce boundaries without delving into details. “Don’t touch me there; that makes me uncomfortable” and “That’s just how it works sometimes” can be used to great effect. Importantly, don’t act angry or use a tone that indicates they did something wrong; this will seem to them like you’re arbitrarily angry.

- Kids at this age don’t have a strong sense of cognitive empathy or predicting the future. The idea that actions have consequences beyond the immediate result is a very, very new concept to them. Be prepared to explain the obvious of “why can’t I bite her when she makes me mad?”, “why can’t I steal his toy when he stole mine?”, and “why do I have to do what you tell me when I don’t want to?”

- When talking to a child, try to get down to their eye level when possible. It helps make them feel seen and you don’t look like some scary adult towering over them.

- Remember that the younger the child, the less they are able to clearly articulate their emotions to you. Tantrums are perfectly normal for young children in certain situations. They’re little bodies dealing with big emotions that they’re having trouble expressing. Calmly ask them questions to try and figure out why they’re upset. Help them out with things like “I can see that you’re upset. Can you tell me why you’re upset?” Not only will that validate their feelings but the more words you give them to describe their emotions, the more they’ll be able to communicate those emotions to you themselves as they get older.

Naming emotions can help. Littles often don’t have the vocabulary to understand what they’re feeling, and definitely not the awareness to separate themselves from the emotion, both of which add to the overwhelm and ensuing meltdown. “I see you’re having big feelings. It looks like you’re feeling angry and sad because Timmy took the toy away.” When they agree (or correct you,) there’s an emotional breather where you can present options to resolve the conflict. Sometimes they just need to feel heard.

AND JUST—

There's even their own comments about it and it's so funny wait:

Comment - I can find gay love stories against the odds a bit triggering but this film has so many threads through time woven in Ukrainian, Russian, and Central European settings.

Full Text

Ryan Gilbey

Oleg Zagorodnii is sitting in the cafe he owns in Kyiv, beneath a brightly coloured painting of Aladdin smiling down from the wall behind. “It is just me now, no baristas,” says the Ukrainian actor via video call. “People come. I make them coffee, give them dessert. They are happy to feel some kind of normal life. They sit in the cafe, we play music, we speak. Of course, all we talk about is war.”

Zagorodnii has twice attempted to enlist in the army, only to be told that there are currently more volunteers than equipment. The best he can do is make appeals on social media for bulletproof vests, and use the cafe as a place to pass on food, supplies and military uniforms. “I try to do what I can in this terrible time,” he says.

It was only a year ago that the 34-year-old rented a small cinema in the city to screen the cold war love story Firebird for his family and friends. In this stirring British-Estonian production, Zagorodnii, who has the looks of a 1940s matinee idol, stars as Roman, a soon-to-be-married fighter pilot who falls for a young conscript, Sergey, played by Britain’s Tom Prior, after they meet at a military base in Soviet-occupied 1970s Estonia. Based on the autobiography of the late Sergey Fetisov, Firebird might resemble any tale of forbidden desire – except that Sergey and Roman face more than simply scandal should their relationship be discovered. The Soviet-era setting lends the film a distinctive thriller element: think of it as The Love Lives of Others.

When Zagorodnii landed the part, it was on the condition that he could master English in the three months before shooting began. “I knew only, ‘Hello, I am Oleg from Ukraine, my English very bad,’” recalls the actor. He also had to do five days of shooting practice. “So now, if someone gives me a gun, I know what to do with it.”

The war is never far from our conversation. “My agent found me the job on Firebird,” he continues. “But now I want to shame him because he supports this Russian aggression. He wrote to me, ‘Oleg, keep it easy, we will make you free from Zelenskiy and then we will live in a normal friendly country.’ He thinks America is doing all this! That is when we stop our discussion.”

Despite the initial language barrier between the two leads, the Estonian director Peeter Rebane knew Zagorodnii would be perfect as Roman. “It wasn’t just Oleg’s look but the way he held himself,” he says. “Tom is sensitive, artistic. Oleg has this matter-of-fact fighter-pilot quality. In hindsight, it helped that they were forced to communicate through looks and gestures at first, because that’s how it would have been between Sergey and Roman.”

Rebane first encountered Fetisov’s book a decade ago. “I was amazed,” says the 48-year-old film-maker. “Being gay was a criminal offence. After it was decriminalised with the fall of the Soviet Union, it was still seen as abnormal.” Rebane knew he was gay at the age of nine. “But even by the time I came out to my mother in my early 20s, her first reaction was still, ‘It’s OK, we can get help.’”

The knowledge that Sergey and Roman were falling in love in the very place where he grew up has given him, he says, a new perspective on LGBT people in his home country. “I could never have imagined that this kind of love story was happening there at that time. As small kids in occupied Estonia, my best friend and I would cycle near that same base. MiGs would fly overhead and we’d literally fall off our bikes.”

That memory calls to mind one of the film’s more irreverent moments: a cut from Sergey and Roman in the throes of passion to a pair of fighter jets whooshing overhead, which puts a knowing spin on the old, sexually suggestive image of a train thundering into a tunnel. “We had more discussions over that than anything,” laughs Rebane. “A German critic who saw an early version told us, ‘I love the film but this shot kills it.’ But I wanted Firebird to seem as though it was made in the 1970s rather than now.”

When he cast Prior, who played Stephen Hawking’s teenage son in The Theory of Everything, he got more than just a leading man. The actor suggested changes to the script, which led to him co-writing with Rebane a series of new drafts. These foregrounded the oppressive, paranoid conditions under which Sergey and Roman were forced to live. As they tried to raise funding to make the film, Prior also became co-producer and music supervisor, later having a hand in the editing. The pair subsequently established a distribution company to release Firebird in the UK. If the actor doesn’t show up at screenings to personally glad-hand each cinemagoer, it will be a shock.

For all his multitasking, Prior’s passion for Firebird ultimately comes back to the role of Sergey. “It resonated instantly with me,” says the 31-year-old. “He has this radical quality of following his heart at all costs. We chose very consciously not to show him full of self-doubt and shame, qualities often associated with this kind of story. That’s something I also embrace. I’m not very good at lying to myself.”

He and Rebane travelled to Moscow in 2016 to meet Fetisov, finding his company every bit as joyful as his prose. “Some of the people who were closest to him didn’t know his story,” says Prior. “He certainly wasn’t ashamed of who he was. He openly flirted with a male waiter when we were in a restaurant in Moscow. Any suffering he experienced was not in relation to his identity.”

Fetisov’s death in 2017 at the age of 64 only hardened their resolve to tell his story. “We had made a promise to him,” says Rebane. Fetisov’s only stipulation, recalls Prior, was that “the film should be about love, not politics. Of course, it’s going to be received in a more political way now. But we wanted to make a universal story about what it means to go after love at any cost.”

Remarkably for a film with such overtly gay content, several exterior scenes were filmed in Moscow. “An amazing local production company paid the right people and somehow made that happen,” says Prior. “We still don’t fully understand.” Even more surprising was the picture’s acceptance last year by the city’s film festival, though only the first of its scheduled screenings went ahead. “After that,” adds Prior, “there was a complaint about it being ‘homosexual propaganda’. We had 93 press articles written about it, all but one of which were negative. One headline translated as, ‘An Estonian, a Brit and a Ukrainian shame Moscow.’ Another called the film ‘a punch in the face of the Russian soldier’. It wasn’t technically banned but all tickets were cancelled. The film played to an empty auditorium.”

An unexpected consequence of the invasion of Ukraine is that some countries have expressed a reluctance to release Firebird now that the appetite for Russian stories is negligible. Prior is justifiably flabbergasted at this. “Russia silenced this film,” he says. “They don’t want it shown. So to not screen it is kind of doing what Putin wants.” Getting the message out is currently his priority, though he concedes it won’t be easy. “Someone online said, ‘Why would you go and watch a Russian movie right now?’” Throughout our conversation, Prior has been eloquent and articulate. Only now do words fail him. “It’s like… arrrgghh!”

For Zagorodnii, the invasion has made talking about Firebird bittersweet. “It is like it’s from another world, you know? Sergey and Roman are ready to die for their love. And in Ukraine, we are ready to die for our freedom, our land, our people. Before war, I built plans for my future. Now I understand my dreams have died because I must stay here and be with my people. I don’t know anything now about the future. I understand only that every day is more death, more destruction. Before this, we were independent. We didn’t need help. We needed only one thing: don’t touch us. I can’t understand why Russia did this.”

He rubs his face, suddenly exhausted. I mumble something hopelessly inadequate about the world supporting Ukraine. “We feel your support,” he says sadly. “But how can this happen?”

Violence makes the homo-eroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.”

(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:

"Published (number of works on ao3) written works spanning (lowest word count) to (highest word count) to a nonprofit international digital archive dedicated to preserving and maintaining society's reactions, impressions, and culture regarding various forms of fictional media."

You can also simplify it to "Creative Writer - Archive (dates) and then put "Wrote for a nonprofit digital archive as a volunteer."

Plus, if you have a lot of hits or kudos on your works, you can say, "I reached (number of hits) people and (number of kudos) of those people signified to the Archive that my work resonated with them."

Because, technically, we are all volunteering our time and donating our writing to AO3's cause of preserving the fandoms and the culture around them. And people do sometimes just call it "Archive". So nothing I just said was a lie.

Lately I’ve been deep reading Raven Cycle fanfics on Ao3, so as promised this a fic rec list. These are a few that I’ve read recently, and felt so intimately connected with to a level I can’t even begin to explain, and all of them have inspired my writing in one level or another. This is super talented people with beautiful minds. You should definitely give them a chance and keep the TRC fandom alive on ao3, pls. 

This list took forever to put together, and it’s just a short selection. If you like this, I can for sure make another one! 

Gator Country by anonymous Adam Parrish/Ronan Lynch | E | 9,8k |

This one is so unhinged and beautiful. It’s weird and wild and you get Pynch being little freaks, Florida, alligator tours and strange dreams.

come hold me 'neath the water's skin by cathedralight Adam Parrish/Ronan Lynch | T | 14,6k | 

So beautiful. So raw. So aesthetic. It really makes you want to get your head inside the water and become holy. It has religious imagery and references to Greek myths, so, what else do you need. 

kissed your scalp and caressed your brain by earthquaker  Adam Parrish/Ronan Lynch | E | 3,2k | 

Adam shaves Ronan head. The intimacy in this one almost made me cry. 

fetch-life by thesehands Adam Parrish/Ronan Lynch | E | 14,8k | 

Anything by this author, truly. They write as they know Adam and Ronan down to the bone. It gets lonely, and it gets beautiful, and a little feral. 

No Oracle by nonbeenarys Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish | E | 17k | 

This one is a stunning exploration of the Rodansey dynamic. Adam wants a lot in this one, and it’s tender and complicated. 

experiments in french kissing by sunflowersandscreams Richard Gansey III/Adam Parrish | T | 2,8k | 

A dive in the Adansey dynamic. It’s intimate, physical, and emotionally loaded in a way that’ll make your brain tingle. I think the title is pretty self-explanatory.

Putting a coat on the back of a chair by the door is fine, but if you prefer, use coat hooks and a large catch-all basket for dropping keys, hats, gloves.

Small bookcase end-table next to the couch to store craft projects, books, and other things being worked on for easy access.

Add a storage unit near the dining room table to transition between eating and working there.

Daily toiletry items should be stored in a basket that you can move easily

Extra toiletries and medicine cabinet items go in open shelf/basket storage so they can be seen and used easily. If items no longer fit, purge the excess. Don’t obscure the view!

If you disrobe in the bathroom, place a tall hamper in there.

Keep a set of cleaning supplies in each bathroom

Quick update. ✨

Hi, hello. 👋

So. I've been working on something a tiny bit different—a m/m novel. (Yes, novel. Not a comic. I know.) It's a completely separate story from Check, Please!, but it's got the same humor, pining, and feel-good vibes that make #omgcp what it is.

It’s about John Rich, a 28-year-old cover artist for The New York Review, who’s tasked with drawing the gorgeous but seemingly vapid action star, Tyler Hughes. Problem is, John can’t seem to draw this dude. Then of course, shenanigans.

I've posted the first five chapters on AO3, and I've been updating monthlyish? (Remember how I never had an update schedule for Check, Please! ya...) If you're into funny, feel-good, lighthearted gay romance, do give it a read. Absolutely, no pressure. Just wanted to share what I'm working on that wasn't superheroes or semi-autobio YA.

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

Who: Main character(s)

Why: Character goal or desire (stated)

Why: Character need (implied)

When: Inciting Incident

What: Means (that achieves the goal/need)

Where: Place A >> Place B

How: The Plan

Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge

For example:

Who: Bilbo Baggins, a respectable hobbit of Hobbiton

Why: Treasure, wealth (stated)

Why: Adventure, self-respect (implied)

When: After supper

What: Quest

Where: Hobbiton >> The Lonely Mountain

How: A company of dwarves, a wizard, and an ancient map and key

Main antagonist(s): a dragon

Thus, in less than 100 words:

Bilbo Baggins is a respectable hobbit in Hobbiton, never making any trouble or having any adventures. But when a wizard and a company of dwarves invite themselves to dinner, Bilbo finds himself joining their quest from the shires of Hobbiton to the legendary Lonely Mountain, the home of a long lost treasure, and quite, possibly, a dragon.  

~~~~

Themes: does your story have a specific theme or vibe to it? Pick a word or phrase that captures that (can be literal, i.e. “Bringing Swords to a Gun Fight” or “New Beginnings” or figurative i.e. “The Grey Light of Dawn” or “Old Wounds”)

References: this is where you hear the standard “use a song lyric”, but you know what else you can use? Titles or quotes from movies/TV shows, common sayings including modified versions of (I.e. “Punching a Gift Horse in the Mouth” or “The Last Straw Hits the Fan”), fairy tales/folk tales, anything from pop culture or common knowledge that suits.

References Pt. 2: Quoting Yourself: is there something a character often says? A random bit of slang in your setting that comes up often? A particularly good bit of dialogue or description that fits the story as a whole? Use it! It can be as simple as one word or as complicated as a whole sentence, just whatever suits.

Being Evocative: exclamations, adjectives, nouns. anything that stirs the emotions and captures the core feelings of the story. “Gotcha!” “Oops…” “Sugar”, etc. etc.

5 Questions: Like with a summary, Who/What/Where/When/Why. These are your titles like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Lord of the Rings, House of the Dragon, etc. You’re just telling people what’s in the tin, but in a way that feels a little evocative/mysterious/stylized.