thecrazyworldbuilder

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

What is the strangest world you came up with compared to IRL Earth and your other ones?

Sheesh...

There's Mirves: World of Spring, which is all-homebrew races with no "normal" humans or whatnot.

There's Zpyrle, which is a twisted "saved" post-multiversal collapse realm with an infinite sky above, infinite lava sea below, and an ever-ascending spiral of habitable land ascending into the heavens, circling around a beam of light that transports matter from the bottom and builds the spiral upwards on top, populating it with echoes of people from worlds collapsed into this one (being the magma matter below).

There's Raskol, which is cherrypick-combination of various settings per the preference of a couple friends for whom the setting was made for; Warhammer, Rimworld, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Resident Evil, SOMA. Post-apocalyptic no-firearms technofantasy madness (in which I playtested #caramel dice, the TTRPGS WIP I plan on releasing some other year in the future).

Can't say all of them are that weird, but perhaps these are the "weirdest" in the broad sense of the word.

Also, sorry for not replying to the other inspo-prompts on @thecrazyneographist, I'll come up with something to them when time's right.

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

What program do you use to design your conscripts/neographs?

All scripts from @thecrazyneographist are drawn in Krita, a free art program, with some being made into fonts on the Fontstruct.com website.

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Lately I've been stimming and making some pretty fun geographical maps via a new method involving phong bumpmapping and colormapping in Krita.

Since it's all about lightness values, and I have experience with editing/layering due to running @overstimcore, making these is pretty easy to me. Very funky terrain, shapes, texture, sometimes cursed (hell, in most cases cursed), all very fun.

I'd imagine some person who knows geology seeing this madness and, as an expert, going "What the heck".

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Conceptualizing a Soulslike setting for fun,

To be honest, looking good.

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

When fantasy writers want to worldbuild religions, but they haven't unlearned cultural Christianity, so all their religions end up being Christianity with a new coat of paint or based on the ways Christians misinterpret other faiths, such that when they criticize religion it is always from the point of view that all criticisms that apply to Christianity must apply just as well to every other faith

Call that cross-contamination

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Solid takes, good bits.

🍖 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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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:

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

"You, outsiders, with your made up names. What does Alexander mean? Huh? What does it mean?" "It's… I'm named after an ancient leader, Alexander the Great-" "What does his name mean? Does 'Alexander' mean 'the Great'? No?" "N-No, it… It means something else." "What?" "I… Don't know." "You outsiders with your made up names. Alexander. Meaningless. Moans and whistles to the wind. Us, [ethnonym], we have good names. Iquor, 'foundation of a house', a strong name, given, from birth - A birthname. Aalak, 'iris of the eye', a lookout, watcher, seer - An adult name, a strong name. Faam'axur, 'sharpshooter' - A war name, a name given to a warrior, a warrior who's had his first kill! You are talking to the House-Founder, to the Weary, to the Distant Death-Bringer, Alexander, of no meaning, of no good name."

(possible continuation) "Yes, I am talking to him. And my name means me. I am Alexander Tannich, and Alexander Tannich is me. I am no house-founder, not the weary, I am not a sniper bringing final judgement to his enemies. But by the name of my family and all ancestors; You will not disrespect my name, for I will make sure it will be sung into legends."

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Something about combinatorics, oriental hexagrams, Yin, Yang, the four elements and their combinations, clans, dogmas...

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

My name is Arcee.

This is a blog creating random procedural-generated name stashes of wide variety, using tools like Awkwords, the Cryptolang Documentation Standard Automaton, and Markov Namegen. Since the blog spits out more "exotic" names, it is recommended you visit @444names - The main blog of the two - For solely Markov Namegen generated names.

The stashes will be numbered starting with 1/5/2025. This means the ≈500 stashes beforehand are going to be lacking any numeration. You can find most of the numerated posts via the #444list tag (streaks of me forgetting to tag lists happen - I mass edit posts afterwards later on to add it back).

I strive to have each stash number 444 names within itself, but there is no guarantee about that number; Some will have more, some posts will consist of just one name (and won't be put into the stash list probably).

Archive:

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Unexpected sideblog mention, nice.

My thoughts on Cryptolangs

Sometimes, conlanging is too much work or it does not fit what one is going for in a project, whether it be a story or just a worldbuilding thought experiment. Sometimes, one just needs a way to make something strange without completely reinventing it. Sometimes, one just needs to create a cryptolang. But a cryptolang is just a cypher with extra steps, isn't it? Well, there could be more to this concept than meets the eye. A cryptolang's could have it's own interesting features without becoming a fully constructed language; its function can fit the themes of something being transformed into something else and can be applied to more smaller groups than an entire conlang for a larger one.

But what is a "Cryptolang?" According to @cryptolangsguy , "Cryptolangs are the perfect middle between conlangs and ciphers. They are tools which can be used to encode text, hide it's meaning but keep it pronounceable." How does it do that? By replacing phonemes with other ones. In fact, they could even replace all the consonants of a word with vowels and vowels with consonants, but that will be covered later. While the exact mechanisms of Cryptolangs are beyond the scope of this post, It is replacing letters with other letters. But it could be so much more than that.

Cryptolangs could be so much more than just a fancy cypher with extra steps, it could be creating a new language from an already existing one. For example, one could take all the letters of a word in the English language, take "green" for instance, and add the letters of that word to the end of the sentence in reverse order, producing "greenneerg." Now, comparisons are formed through the affixing of "-er" for comparatives and "-est" for superlatives to the end of a word. One could do the same for this theoretical cryptolang and produce the conjugated formes "greenerreneerg" and "greenesttseneerg" and that would be an interesting grammatical feature already because it already created infixes, affixes that go within a word. A strange feature indeed. But why stop there? Could there be another way of marking comparison? What if one were to create a new rule in which removing the first letter creates a comparative and the last one creates a superlative? Thus, we get "reenneerg" for "greener" and "greenneer" for "greenest." Does this count as a constructed language? maybe. But it is for sure that the aesthetic and grammar of the language is based on the already English language and grammar and the letters haven't even been rearranged yet. There is so much potential for using such transformations in a thematic way.

One of those themes could be the exploration of how an individual's physical transformation is reflected in their speech. For example, taking the above framework that has already been created, the individual who speaks this language could be obsessed with symmetry and balance. Thus, all the words they say become palindromes and the modifications reflect their own biases in choosing one side over another. Of course, this is more reverse engineering a theme from what one already has. A less cumbersome way would be to come up with the character's, well, character and build the features off of those aspects. Granted, this is more artistic than technical so what is considered for features can vary from creator to creator.

However, these features can be applied to individuals, small groups, or even entire nations, in larger number than a fully original constructed language. According to Mark Rosenfelder himself, the author of the Language Construction Kit, Advanced Language Construction, Conlangers' Lexipedia, and Syntax Construction Kit, the bulk of a conlang's work is in coming up with a lexicon, all the words. With a Cryptolang, a lexicon naturally arises from the changes one makes to the letters of each word with each rule laid out. Naturally, these letter changes can lead to mergers and synonyms. Though, theoretically, one can come up with ways to distinguish words from a source language. But that is a thought experiment for another day. What is possible is that one can create all sorts of cryptolangs by setting up rules, changing them, mixing them together, or stacking one set of cryptolang rules on top of another. It is relatively faster to create rules for a cryptolang's phonology and grammar than it is to come up with an entire lexicon in an original constructed language. Thus, one can create more cryptolangs in comparison to a single conlang.

So, in summary, Cryptolangs can have interesting features, they can reflect the lexical aspects of a character's physical transformation, and they can be more productive than conlangs. Hopefully, this badly worded essay will open you cryptolangers' eyes to the potential of these sorts of creations whether you are a veteran with a thousand under their belt or a rookie creating their very first. Thank you all for reading this, and till next time! ;)

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

fun behaviors to give dragons that aren't feline/canine based

cause as much as i love dragons purring and roaring i wish there was just more variety in how they would act

clacking their teeth together to show contentedness/happiness (budgies)

using tails as a defensive weapon in a whip like fashion (iguana)

twitching to express that they're not a threat to members of their species (hognose snake)

feeling calm when eyes are hooded/covered (birds of prey)

head bobbing as a threat display (anoles/bearded dragons)

flattening neck or sides to appear bigger (snakes/lizards)

mantling over food to protect it from hatchmates (birds of prey)

wiggling neck as a courting maneuver (budgies)

audibly grinding teeth as a warning (macaques)

maintained eye contact as a challenge (gorillas)

pounding wings against sides as a threat (gorillas)

slapping other dragons with their claws when their personal bubble is invaded (seals)

hoards used as a site to impress mates (birds of paradise)

snorting when undergoing heightened stress (horses)

making repeated loud noises with surroundings to establish territory (woodpeckers)

loud constant arguments with other dragons when roosting (bats)

building lairs that cause a domino effect of change in the land around them (beavers)

slapping their tails against the ground/water as a warning (beavers)

wiggling tail tip to attract prey (various animals)

wiggling tail tip as a warning (snakes)

plucking or scraping off scales as a sign of stress (parrots)

raising spines/frills as a response to danger and carrying on with their usual business as they believe they're protected (lionfish)

and im not saying canine and feline behaviors are wrong or bad to give a dragon (people wouldn't write dragons with those behaviors if they weren't fun in the first place!) but i feel for creatures that are mythological giant winged lizards that you can do more and get experimental with it. often the more unfamiliar behavior the more dragony the dragon feels

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

My name is Arcee.

This is a blog creating random procedural-generated name stashes of wide variety, using tools like Awkwords, the Cryptolang Documentation Standard Automaton, and Markov Namegen. Since the blog spits out more "exotic" names, it is recommended you visit @444names - The main blog of the two - For solely Markov Namegen generated names.

The stashes will be numbered starting with 1/5/2025. This means the ≈500 stashes beforehand are going to be lacking any numeration. You can find most of the numerated posts via the #444list tag (streaks of me forgetting to tag lists happen - I mass edit posts afterwards later on to add it back).

I strive to have each stash number 444 names within itself, but there is no guarantee about that number; Some will have more, some posts will consist of just one name (and won't be put into the stash list probably).

Archive:

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Writing Notes: Habitats

Coniferous forest - Vast areas of Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska, and Canada are the site of coniferous forests—home to moose, beavers, and wolves.

Mountain - High mountain ranges have arctic climates near the peaks, where few plants grow. Animals must cope in dangerous terrain.

Savanna - These tropical grasslands with wet and dry seasons support huge herds of grazing animals and powerful predators.

Polar ice - The ice that forms on cold oceans is a refuge for animals that hunt in the water. The continental ice sheets are almost lifeless.

Tropical rainforest - The evergreen forests that grow near the equator are the richest of all biomes, with a huge diversity of plant and animal life.

Desert - Some deserts are barren rock and sand, but many support a range of plants and animals adapted to survive the dry conditions.

Tundra - These regions on the fringes of polar ice sheets thaw out in summer and attract animals such as reindeer and nesting birds.

Mediterranean - Dry scrub regions, such as around the Mediterranean, are home to a rich insect life and drought-resistant shrubs and plants.

Temperate grassland - The dry, grassy prairies with hot summers and cold winters, support grazing herds such as antelope and bison.

Deciduous forest - In cool, moist regions, many trees grow fast in summer but lose their leaves in winter. The wildlife here changes with the seasons.

Animals, plants, and all living things are adapted to life in their natural surroundings. These environments are called habitats.

Every living species on Earth has its own favored habitat, which it shares with others. These different species interact with each other and with their natural environment—be it hot or cold, wet or dry—to create a web of life called an ecosystem.

Some ecosystems are very small, but others such as rainforests or deserts cover huge areas. These are called biomes.

Life on Land

Different climates create different types of habitats for life on land. Warm, wet places grow lush forests, for example, while hot, dry regions develop deserts. Each biome consists of many smaller habitats and, in many areas, human activity such as farming has completely changed their character.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References ⚜ Worldbuilding

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Magical healing and comfort, but not just healing magic

A character with fire/heat powers massaging a knotted muscle with hot hands, being able to dig in nice and deep as the warmth relaxes the area

A character with ice/cold powers carding their fingers through someone's hair, soothing a headache

A character with hypnotic powers lulling someone into a trance and clearing their mind, easing their anxieties so they can hopefully get some sleep

A character with plant magic keeping a bouquet fresh and vibrant by their friend's bedside, knowing the colors will at the very least cheer them up and give them something beautiful to look at

A character with water magic combining it with a soft cloth washing away tears, sweat, or blood from another character's face

A character with electricity magic frantically grabbing someone near-death and shocking them, refusing to move until they hear their heart leap back to life and pulse under their hands

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

The idea to build a “stealth vessel” capable of sailing underwater and “knocking a warship out from below” belonged to Yefim Nikonov, a simple carpenter who worked in a shipyard in the 18th century. He had no engineering background and was illiterate. But that did not stop him from being a master shipbuilder.

Here’s the story of the first Russian submarine which was built in 1721 and tested in the presence of Russian Emperor Peter the Great.

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Unusual Curses

Doesn't know what doors are. Can't learn.

Slow, inexorable transformation in a tumblr sexyman.

You don't turn into a ravenous wolfman every full moon, but you're utterly convinced you do.

Every car you enter becomes a cybertruck.

Transparent skin and glowing bones.

You constantly hear Doug Walker reacting to everything you do in your head.

You can't perceive cats anymore.

Everyone you love will die, in probably a maximum of 90 years.

Can't ever enter Nevada.

Will instantly die if you ever see a tiktok.

Every meal you eat is mashed potatoes. No matter what you intended to make, order or buy, it's mashed potatoes.

Thou cannot walketh where a passenger pigeon flew this tenday (this was a bigger problem 200 years ago).

In seven days, Sadako will do a corporate buyout of your workplace and fire you.

You are simultaneously desperate to find truth but have limited perceptions and subjective biases that render you fundamentally unable to ever be truly certain of truth, as well as fearing death while being unavoidably mortal, unlike most people who are immortal and know the universe directly.

Fuck this. Fuck you. Crabs upon you.

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

"Okay, but it's not a dragon, a dragon has" if putting it in the sky would be sick as fuck, it's a dragon. Whales are dragons.