lend an ear to my thoughts on culture, media, faith and individuality as i live the college life :) this blog should be like any good bowl of soup: well-seasoned, warm, and full of wisdom. // 🌷third culture kid🌷english education major 🌷soul music enthusiast
I just know that "party 4 u" would be heavily featured. But I can't think of any other culturally indicative songs that would fit just right. What do you think?
Social awkwardness can be a gift, because it shows genuineness.
Doubt can also be a gift, because it shows there is space to choose faith over despair.
If you're uncomfortable, just say so.
Sometimes we encounter very difficult life situations that seem like they can serve as an overarching excuse for everything. But the truth is, we still have to be good to our friends, still have to do the dishes, still have to be decent people, still have to get the job done.
Exercise utterly transforms one's mental health for the better.
When you have to refuse somebody interested in you, it is kindest to let them know as early as you can. As a good friend once told me, "There is life on the other side for the both of you after you refuse them."
Not every grown adult is as they seem, no matter how many gushing followers and fans they may have.
Similarities in class and hobbies can be more bonding than similarities in culture, race, or history.
I learned how to let go of FOMO. I've always wanted to fit in with other Korean-speakers, but I could never fully blend in with them. But that's okay; God's given me the communities I'm in, and I don't have to be friends with everyone.
If you have the liberty to eat nice organic bread over sad processed $2.99 bread, choose the nice bread. Don't wholly identify as needy unless it's an objective category you need to put yourself in.
🍖 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.
─────── ✦ ───────
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.
─────── ✦ ───────
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.
─────── ✦ ───────
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
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Whenever I see someone refer to "Victorian era-" for places outside the UK I'm tempted to start saying shit like "Han Dynasty era Rome", "Soviet era Australia" etc
Perhaps I'm so obsessed with androids because among other things they're about the ethics of bringing a life into this world and intentions behind it. Is it to serve you? To be made in your image? To be a prize, an accomplishment to take a pride in? To take your place? Is any of it in the interests of the life you create? What if instead of thanking you for this "gift" they were burdened with they'll instead see it as nothing but a curse and seek a vengeance?
I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love
I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on
‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.
need to string together my thoughts more on this but reeeeeally interesting to see the influx of media - severance, the substance, mickey 17 - centered on the idea of a double/expendable iteration of yourself.
the dehumanization of workers by the way of non-livable wages, unsafe working conditions, and identity based discrimination (and the current removal of dei initiatives), all drive a wedge between our personhood and the value we are prescribed as a member of the workforce. something something the effects of ai and deepfakes already putting people in danger, the way we live and present our lives online vs in reality, there’s a lot to unpack here. but it’s fascinating to see this trope so widely translated as a storytelling vehicle for these ideas, and that this is the story that people are interested in telling.
After watching the movie, I've had similar thoughts. I'm glad that we as a society are still making art about the corrupt things we're getting into. The past few years, working as a barista, deli worker, youth ministry director, and now student teacher, I've been learning so much about the nature of work and how it affects us. We can't just go home after clocking out and forget about who we are when we're at the service of institutions which execute varying levels of justice.
I used to view work as a scary and unfair and meaningless thing, and maybe it is--at least in today's world. But after reading an article claiming that leisure, for a Christian, exists FOR work, I have developed a new way of looking at it. We tend to work for the weekend. But if we're each called to a certain job, the article said, then the weekend is there for us to be energized to go back to our work. After all, work is initially portrayed in the Bible and other Abrahamic religious texts as something good. Not in a you-only-deserve-to-be-paid-if-you-have-energy kind of way, but a we-all-deserve-rest type deal. Because a human should not defined by their job in the first place.
Growing up in an immigrant family shifted my perspective as well. The American dream is for those who really care, who are willing to lose sleep, blood, and (obviously) leisure to get someplace better in life. Work is necessary for the survival of you and your family--that much we can agree on. I don't want to over-spiritualize when people are divinely called to a job. But I just wonder how harmful this creation of different iterations of our "true" selves can be.
I dunno. Work of any degree in the Western realm can get so desolate and soul-stealing. Can we ever escape?
hadestown orpheus and eurydice are so. she loves her cringefail husband. he looks like a 16 year old boy at his first prom. he plays wonderwall for her so good it solves climate change. she's a runaway from everywhere she's ever been and just wants him to take her home. he unionizes amazon. they are everything.
OKAY SO HERE ARE RANDOM HAMILTON THE MUSICAL FACTS NO ONE ASKED FOR
• After Maria mentions she is "helpless" in Say No To This, Eliza doesn't mention it for the rest of the play
• In That Would Be Enough, Eliza says: "I wrote to the general a month ago". In Stay Alive we can see her writing the letter
• In Take A Break, when Angelica and Eliza reunite and say each other's names there is a slight pause for "and Peggy"
• In Stay Alive (reprise), Phillip says to Eliza "Mom, I'm sorry for forgetting what you taught me" because Eliza taught him how to count to 10 in Take A Break and he thought that mr. Eaker counted to 10 even though he didn't
• Phillip had trouble with number 7 in Take A Break, got shot at number 7 and died at Sept-7 (guess it wasn't exactly his lucky number)
• Burr always repeats that he's willing to wait for it and Alexander always repeats that he's not throwing away his shot, but in The World Was Wide Enough, Burr doesn't wait for it and shoots Alexander and Alexander throws away his shot by aiming his pistol at the sky
• In Hurricane, Alexander says: "I couldn't seem to die" and the backing vocals/ensemble say: "Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.." because Burr is going to shoot him in 9 songs
• If we count all of the songs in Hamilton + Lauren's interlude, there is exactly 47 songs. 47 is also the age Alexander Hamilton died at
• In Best Of Wives And Best Of Women both Alexander and Eliza say exactly 37 words, which is also how many songs they were married for in the musical
• In Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story when Eliza says: "I speak out against slavery," Washington makes a surprised face behind her because he owned around 120 slaves
• In What'd I miss when Jefferson gets the letter from Washington he says: "Sally, be a lamb, darlin' won't you open it," reffering to a slave of his
Non-English "Cinderella" adaptations that might have influenced Disney's 2015 live action remake
Rossini's La Cenerentola (Italian opera, 1817). In the opera, the king has died, and the prince's search for a bride is motivated by his pending coronation. (The 2010 German Märchenperlen version also makes this choice.) In the 2015 film, the king is mortally ill, and later dies after the ball. Thus the opera's Cinderella and her 2015 counterpart both ascend straight to the throne in the end. Also, the opera's "fairy godfather" Alidoro disguises himself as a beggar and rewards Cinderella for treating him kindly, just as the 2015 Fairy Godmother does. (Although the Fairy Godmother also does this in Prokofiev's famous ballet.) The opera's Prince Ramiro also has a constant male companion, his valet Dandini, much like 2015's Kit has the Captain of the Guard (although many versions of Cinderella's prince have similar companions). Last but not least, both princes disguise themselves as a servant at some point: Ramiro switches clothes with Dandini for the ball to observe the true characters of the ladies, while Kit disguises himself as a guard to secretly observe the slipper-fitting.
Three Nuts (or Three Wishes) for Cinderella (Czech/German, 1973). In both this version and the 2015 film, Cinderella steals a few moments of freedom by riding her horse into the forest, and there she meets the prince on a hunt and stops him from shooting a deer. (Although in the 1973 film she throws a snowball at him, he chases her, and they taunt each other, while in the 2015 version they share a philosophical discussion about kindness and tell each other a little about their lives.) Both of these versions also hark back to the Grimms' tale early on, with Cinderella's father figure (the manservant Vincek in 1973, her actual father in 2015) going on a journey, and Cinderella asking for the first branch that hits his nose (1973) or brushes his shoulder (2015) as a gift. (In 1973 the branch contains the three magic hazelnuts that take the place of the Fairy Godmother in this version, while in 2015 it doesn't serve the plot, but is poignantly brought to her by the messenger who breaks the news of her father's death.)
Sechs auf einen Strech ("Six at one Blow"): Aschenputtel ("Cinderella") (German, 2011). Cinderella repeats a mantra that she learned from her mother: "You must never lose courage." In the 2015 film, she has a similar mantra, also from her mother: "Have courage and be kind." She also first meets the prince while he's hunting in the woods in this version, and the end sees them about to become king and queen, though in this case the old king is still alive, he just chooses to retire.
Zolushka (Russian, 1947). Cinderella has blonde hair, which she wears in fluffy shoulder-length curls at the ball, while the prince has wavy chestnut brown hair. (These could be coincidences, though.) The Fairy Godmother first appears as a humbly dressed old woman (although not as a beggar in 1947), then reveals her true, magical and glamorous form. The prince is also portrayed with boyish vulnerability as well as with courtly charm, and he even cries in one scene. (The '47 prince in the woods when he thinks he's lost Cinderella forever, 2015's Kit at his father's deathbed.)
When I posted my review of the 2015 film, @ariel-seagull-wings noticed the parallels with the 1947 Russian version. She suggested that Kenneth Branagh might have been influenced by that version, since British viewers are more likely than Americans to see the adaptations from continental Europe. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Branagh and the 2015 screenwriter Chris Weitz might have been influenced by more than one European Cinderella.
So cool! This Fall semester I've been enjoying different adaptations of Cinderella (Ever After, Ella Enchanted etc) but none are as grand as Branagh's, to me. I want to study what makes her character so timeless.
and wow, it sure is fun so far. I will never run to class again.
what i've been learning and experiencing so far:
i live in an apartment complex that has a building specifically for married people, and the RA hosted an outdoor get-to-know-you dinner, so I got to meet a lot of them. They are quite young and all exploring the workforce/grad school. It's intriguing to me to live alongside people in this next stage of life.
I don't recognize ANYONE anymore; I feel like I only know juniors and some sophomores. But my freshman year feels like yesterday.
I helped jump a car twice this month and it's surprising how much that opened my mind to learning more about adulting.
I'm still in a fuzzy state of mind in terms of job searching, car insurance/registration, rent, and (honestly) homework...
I am in a crisis, choosing between 1) become a nun and devote my attention to prayer and my small circle of friends 2) putting myself out there, downloading dating apps, and getting eyeliner tattooed on.
If Tumblr is the shrine for hyperfixations that originated in one way or another from our cringey middle school years, what other niche websites did you discover and actualize your interests on? For me it was Scratch.mit.edu :)
Footage of a 12-week fetus reacting to the lethal injection during a selective reduction abortion.
Selective reduction means one or more fetuses from a set of multiple fetuses is killed in utero. The other twins are left to grow while their sibling's body is "digested" (decays/reabsorbed). This is a common practice in IVF.
This footage (and more like it) is available publicly on YouTube from doctors in Asia.
I wonder what the Renaissance equivalent of sharing art was? Honestly, any time before social media, was it just through rich patrons that artists made a living?
They are striking so all performers will have protection against AI
The struck companies are those signed to the Interactive Media Agreement
The listed companies by SAG-AFTRA include Activision Productions Inc, Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc, Electronic Arts Productions Inc, Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc, Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc, VoiceWorks Productions Inc and WB Games Inc. Though this may not be everyone.
Important things from the FAQ:
Some games from struck companies are non-struck (due to the Collective Bargaining Agreement still being in effect)
Localisations will be affected if covered under the Interactive Localization Agreement
Actors who are part of SAG-AFTRA cannot work for non-union or independent/low-budged productions during the strike unless they are signed to an Interim Interactive Media Agreement, Interim Interactive Localization Agreement or a Tiered-Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement
Similarly to the previous strike, struck work cannot be promoted. This includes accepting awards for performances in struck games. This does NOT include hosting/performing a skit at an awards show and San Diego Comic Con (the latter due to the close proximity to the calling of the strike)
As implied by the point above, SAG-AFTRA performers cannot partake in panels related to struck games or companies, including finished games produced by struck companies
The best way to check if a game is struck is to use the search tool provided by SAG-AFTRA
Most importantly: You are NOT being asked to stop playing video games, as highlighted in the FAQ for creators and streamers. This does NOT cross the picket line. Though please do talk about the strike and show your solidarity
I expect to see the same amount of support from y'all that we saw in the last strike. Just because it's video games doesn't mean performers deserve any less support and protection.
Also please reblog with any additions (with sources - we are NOT here to spread misinformation)! And please correct me if anything listed here is incorrect.
SOURCES:
Video Game Strike FAQs | SAG-AFTRA (sagaftra.org)
SAG-AFTRA Members Who Work on Video Games Go on Strike | SAG-AFTRA (sagaftra.org)
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