"Wait, humans have culture? Oh, sorry, no, I was just taken aback a bit. I don't mean to insult your species, you just all seem so constantly preoccupied with your warfare and mating rituals that it hadn't occurred to me that you would have time for the arts."
"Oh, no, we have plenty of art. Visual arts, sculpture, music, storytelling... And their combinations in all sorts of way. I actually play an instrument myself, and one of my favourite songs is based on an old folk tale. Would you like to hear it?"
"Absolutely! I was already astonished to only hear that human art exists at all, not to imagine that I could witness it!"
"Alright. So this is a song about a man who starts a war against his brother because they both want the same woman."
fossil record patisserie
no MCU moment could ever hold a candle to the scene in the incredibles where Bob is at the computer terminal and in the background music the horn section is putting their entire pussy into it as he finds out with dawning horror how many of his old friends Syndrome killed
once i master my adhd and stop believing that i’m waiting for my life to begin and accept what i cannot change and finish cleaning my room and stick to a productive schedule and drink enough water and meditate and organize all the important papers in the paper pile and start being consistent and say the nice things to myself and gain confidence its OVER for you bitches
Another worldbuilding application of the "two layer rule": To create a culture while avoiding The Planet Of Hats (the thing where a people only have one thing going for them, like "everyone wears a silly hat"): You only need two hats.
Try picking two random flat culture ideas and combine them, see how they interact. Let's say taking the Proud Warrior Race - people who are all about glory in battle and feats of strength, whose songs and ballads are about heroes in battle and whose education consists of combat and military tactics. Throw in another element: Living in diaspora. Suddenly you've got a whole more interesting dynamic going on - how did a people like this end up cast out of their old native land? How do they feel about it? How do they make a living now - as guards, mercenaries? How do their non-combatants live? Were they always warrior people, or did they become fighters out of necessity to fend for themselves in the lands of strangers? How do the peoples of these lands regard them?
Like I'm not shitting, it's literally that easy. You can avoid writing an one-dimensional culture just by adding another equally flat element, and the third dimension appears on its own just like that. And while one of the features can be location/climate, you can also combine two of those with each other.
Let's take a pretty standard Fantasy Race Biome: The forest people. Their job is the forest. They live there, hunt there, forage there, they have an obnoxious amount of sayings that somehow refer to trees, woods, or forests. Very high chance of being elves. And then a second common stock Fantasy Biome People: The Grim Cold North. Everything is bleak and grim up there. People are hardy and harsh, "frostbite because the climate hates you" and "stabbed because your neighbour hates you" are the most common causes of death. People are either completely humourless or have a horrifyingly dark, morbid sense of humour. They might find it funny that you genuinely can't tell which one.
Now combine them: Grim Cold Bleak Forest People. The summer lasts about 15 minutes and these people know every single type of berry, mushroom and herb that's edible in any fathomable way. You're not sure if they're joking about occasionally resorting to eating tree bark to survive the long dark winter. Not a warrior people, but very skilled in disappearing into the forest and picking off would-be invaders one by one. Once they fuck off into the woods you won't find them unless they want to be found.
You know, Finland.
hero/villain showdown but one of them has a spontaneous medical emergency and the battle gets put on hold while their archnemesis drives them to Urgent Care
had a dream that someone suggested the best gender neutral form of address would be Mþ (pronounced Myth) and i immediately said "mith me with that gay shit HEYOOO" and woke up at 4:30am hanging sideways off of my bed
more people with the same first name should date. i want to study the linguistical influence
Hmm. Apparently it's starting to be that time of the year when the temperature might be the plausible answer to "why am I unreasonably mad for no good reason." And it's worthwhile to try sitting on the balcony to cool off for a few minutes to see if it goes away, instead of immediately starting fights with strangers on tumblr over which one out of the two of you is the one who doesn't know what it looks like when birds are fucking.
my mum has severe knee problems and needs a replacement. Today she was told she's too fat to be operated on and the knee specialist suggested she gets a gastric band - which also involves surgery. So my mum was like first of all you didn't read my file because it explains that I'm not fat because I eat too much second of all you said it's impossible for me to get surgery and then suggested I get a surgery about it? He then asked her her weight and height, didn't believe her answer, and made her prove it to him because she "looks fatter than that". So she was like so you also just entirely based this on looks instead of actual numbers?