@stolenbrocoli That already sounds like comedy gold lol

Okay I spent a long time today looking through cookbooks with recipes from all over the world and tabbing pages with food that might be in my world. I've spent so much time trying to figure out if they use chopsticks, forks and knives, or if I need to create a whole new set of utensils for my world. THIS IS WHY I'M SO UNPRODUCTIVE.

As a food enthusiast who learned how to chopstick before knife/fork - depending on how much people need to actually slice food before chewing it, you may be able to get away with just chopsticks and spoons for personal use, and a big "family style" serving knife and spoon - no forks at all. Are you willing to share some examples of what cuisines are going to be present? Asking for a hungry person.

Well one kingdom is almost entirely islands and coast, so they eat mostly fish and stuff. They also have a lot of soup, but they drink that straight out of the bowl and don't need spoons.They'd also probably have a special utensil for eating lobster. Because….lobster.
Another kingdom was based off of Russia. Meat. potatoes, cabbage,soup, things that grow in a cold climate. I definitely blini, Russian pancakes.
All these countries are very separate from each other and their cultures hardly mix so they might have wildly different eating utensils.
I promise this is relevant to the story. I'm not wasting my time inventing new eating methods.(the lies we tell ourselves) -_-

So i'm half filipina (which is asian/pacific islander theres a lot of debate over it) but in my culture we use our hands to eat A LOT. So to simplify one of your problems you could have your islandish cultures just eating with their hands. And when i imagine russian cuisine, i mostly imagine very tough foods (idk why) so i definitely think you should have them eat with forks and knives and such. In some older cultures, i think they might've just used knives and nothing else, maybe spoons (i'm not sure tho lol). Hopefully this was helpful !

There's a lot of stuff you can do with just hands (tearing soft, dry food, like a rice pancake or tortilla, to pick up wet food covers a whole lot of possibilities) so I second the possibility the islanders don't use individual utensils! As for the lobster utensil, it's possible they have a multitool that cracks lots of shellfish shells. It can be like a swiss army cracker/pick/scoop, or even something as simple as a mallet. (Adults would pick out shell pieces for younger people, or cleaning a piece of lobster for someone could be a sign of affection. Nothing like getting a beautiful piece of crab or lobster that someone fished out for you.)
The Russian-like kingdom sounds like it would need a spoon at least. Depending on how stew-y they like their meat, and possibly how hunter-focused their culture is, perhaps each person carries a personal folding knife? I had an aunt whose four boys all jealously kept their knives to themselves, keeping them clean and sharp for dinner time. Fortunately, they never needed to use the knife for anything else when I was there, but some ideas: gutting a fish, chopping a raw potato as food prep, foraging, personal defense, etc.

Yep, knives definitely exist in-universe.(more in the stabby-stabby sense though) There are 12 kingdoms and none of them have the exact same eating utensils(some are more similar than others I guess) The island kingdom is very spread out and diverse, so they probably wouldn't even use the same things within their country.T_T I guess I have to think about the geography to see what foods they eat to see what they need.
Then again maybe they all just use forks.>:l

I did the utensil thing. Figured it out a day into actual research.

Adults would pick out shell pieces for younger people, or cleaning a piece of lobster for someone could be a sign of affection. Nothing like getting a beautiful piece of crab or lobster that someone fished out for you.

Just imagine this : As a show of their affection and appreciation for you your date smashes the body of an armored and clawed crushtashian.

Invalid Character Can I get some tips for my antagonist please. He has a long backstory.T_T Not all of it makes sense

@ /justmeagain So it says that he's a very cruel person in his nature section and it's heavily implied in his backstory, but in his notes, it says that he doesn't like killing but he doesn't see the problem with it, which doesn't really make sense to me. Most people try their best to avoid doing things they don't like, but it seems like he results to murder right away. In his backstory, i don't see anything where he tried other methods before killing. That's his first instinct. Is it that he has an overwhelming urge to kill that he simply can't repress? Why does he make the choice to do the thing that he doesn't like.

Hmm so i'm very seriously considering changing the POV in my second book. My current main character is kind of toxic and i would LOVE to show that from an outside perspective. I was thinking about writing it from his love interests POV, which i think would be interesting. My only thing about that is that there's a scene where my current MC kind of betrays his love interest (he lets her beloved brother get captured by that bad guys), but i'm not sure if i want to write that scene in his point of view or hers. If i write it in his then i can explain his thought process and such but if i write it in hers i can explain the initial grief and sadness she feels and then the anger when she realizes that the MC could've done something. Idk, what do you guys think ?

When I say he doesn't like killing I mean that he doesn't enjoy it like a game or something he does for funsies. One of my other villians is like that

Ohh ok. I just wanted to get that cleared up !

*Annoyed writer sounds*

Backstories are hard

^^^^^

Especially when the character is over 1,000 years old!

plugs in laptop
:)

oh, wait, did I misunderstand the title–

plugs in laptop
:)

oh, wait, did I misunderstand the title–

Mir

plugs in laptop
:)

oh, wait, did I misunderstand the title–

Mir

Mir's sense of humour…. I love it. Lol

Hmph. I pulled that dumb joke the moment this thread was opened.

Hm? I can openly express my irritation for worldbuilding to very talented writers instead of bugging my family about it randomly for weeks on end? Sounds nice!

As a comedy writer, I’m trying my hand at writing a psychological thriller.
Characters: serious. Setting: serious. Storyline: serious. Every single other thing: serious.
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
Four chapters in and I can’t stop making jokes. It’s not scary. It’s not biting. The embodiment doesn’t grab you by the throat and demand your pleas like I intended it to. Instead, the embodiment is like a punt-sized sarcastic hamster. Let’s just say I’m not having a good time. :) I’ve done a ton of research on how to write it, but it’s just not going the right way.

Maybe you should surrender to it. The characters are human. They're gonna do what they do. And levity is good for a story. A GRIMDARK story is stuck at the bottom of a well and can't go up or down. Add some sarcasm and casual joking, and you have more room to move around in.

That’s what I was thinking, thank you for the suggestion. However, the characters I’m working with know the bleakness of the situation and the setting is way too serious for me to fit in these comedic breaks. Yes, there are some leverage points where the balance is pure and actually fitting, but in moments that are supposed to be actually deadly serious, I find myself messing it up regardless. It’s a tricky game, I tell you

Well you say that it's a serious and bleak situation, but there are some people out there that cope with bad situations BY being sarcastic and joking and such. So maybe having a character that's ever so slightly for comic relief could help you out a bit. I'd love to take a look at it if you'd be willing ! Maybe i would be able to offer a bit more help since my preferred genre is more on the serious side.

One of my favorite odd human behaviors is how some people sing-talk to cope in terrifying situations. Lots of YouTubers who play horror games do this, and I think having a character who does that makes the story more realistic.

Thanks so much for the offer @stolenbrocoli! Although unfortunately I scrapped those couple chapters and started from scratch at the prologue. I’d send it over if I still had it! (and perhaps if I wasn’t really writing-self-conscious)
And yep, that was gonna be my sort of outlet/comic relief port, (to have a sarcastic-coping character) but I decided to make it a little harder on myself because I tend to have many of those kinds of tropes, and it didn’t fit my storyline as well as some of the other tropes.
And totally, @Ash-has-a-One-Piece-problem! I do that way too much too (and quite often, seeing as I’m scared of a whole lot). I have a character that totally fits that :)

Lol does anyone else insert themselves into their characters in little ways. Like my MC is super into conspiracy theories and i am too (no joke i can probably make up a theory about anything) and one of my side characters is into tarot cards and such and so am i. they all kinda feel like little extensions of myself and the different sides of me, which i don't know if that's a good thing? but whatever. it's done :/

Lol does anyone else insert themselves into their characters in little ways.

All. The. Time! Whether I mean to or not, I notice aspects of their personalities that I myself have. Like how some of them are ambiverts, or how William is a a-hole (I don't say such things that he does, but I certainly do think them).

Lol does anyone else insert themselves into their characters in little ways.

Bold of you to assume that all of my One Piece OCs aren't basically me but with different aspects of my personality projected more