I'm afraid that I have the worldbuilder's disease and it is terminal.
Writing fanfic as a non-US citizen like
In case anyone actually wants to know the answer: it’s the plot of Cars.
The difference is literally the plot of Cars.
Highways are usually two-to-four (at the widest) lane roads that meander the US landscape. Think Route 66, dinosaur statues, mom-and-pop diners, southern gothic. There are state-level and national-level highways. Some run for a 100 miles, some, like US HWY-17, run most of the East Coast:
That red line is US HWY 17. If you follow it, you will go through tiny towns. You may hit stoplights. I kid you not, you will see spinning cows on poles. Businesses exist along highways that you are encouraged to pull over and visit. They were designed to let you see America.
Yeah.
Now, interstates were made in the 50s and were made to get people from Point A to Point B. These suckers range from four lanes to eight lanes around big cities. They cut through everything. If you want to get to a business, you have to take an exit ramp and detour. They are great for getting places fast. You can still have weird experiences on them, but usually at night, when your eyes start playing tricks on you. Or there are deer.
I-95 is a massive corridor that runs from the Florida Keys to the Canadian Border. You can see the difference just looking at the maps.
As far as writing goes:
If you want quirky character development inside the car, you’re looking for an interstate. The majority of Americans take interstates to go on road trips.
If you want mysterious and/or supernatural hijinks, you’re looking for a highway. They are weird, weird places, and they’re surprisingly easy to wind up on if you leave the interstate.
(Even in America, no one’s really sure what a freeway is. Just ignore it.)
Freeways exist in big cities where cars are more prominent than public transport, such as LA or Atlanta. You’ve year of liminal spaces? Freeways during rush hour are a physical manifestation of hell.
Awesome! Now what the hell is a turnpike?
If you find out, let me know. Maybe ask someone from New Jersey.
A turnpike is a highway with a toll. Turnpikes are special highways where you drive really fast and it’s usually linking big cities with each other and you keep going until you hit a toll booth.
They’re called “turnpikes” because in the olden days, there were pikes or barriers up and you had to pay the toll for them to be raised or turned to let you in.
Also, just for the record, Hawaii does have interstates.
For everyone who didn’t want to know, expressways are a form of highway that connect both suburban areas and major interstates to a city
They often have both an alphanumerical name and a colloquial name
In Philly we have the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76)
Would like to add that highways and mainly interstates were made specifically so THE MILITARY could get from Point A to Point B. This combined with a post-WWII boost in the economy and car industry gave Americans the ability to tour the country on their own for the first time ever. A whole chunk of American culture was created by just expanding the road system.
Think about road systems and other systems of travel when worldbuilding!
All this being said, most East Coast US people will refer to all of these things interchangeably as “highways”/”the highway.”
Another note for non-USians trying to write a road trip story – if your characters would definitely be taking the interstate, but you want them on a highway in order for the supernatural shenanigans to start (or whatever), the solution is very simple: they hit a traffic jam. Could be due to construction, could be due to an accident, but traffic slows to a crawl and they say “there’s gotta be a way around this” and take the next exit. Then it turns out their cell phone has no coverage in that spot so they can’t just pull up a map, and VOILA. Into the Twilight Zone! One of the things about an interstate is that USUALLY, there’s an exit and an entrance right by each other, so you can exit, find a gas station or a place to grab lunch near the exit, then get right back on, but this is not always the case. Sometimes there’s an exit, but nowhere nearby to get back on.
I just want to add that there’s a slightly different vibe if you’re in the midwest. Because cities on the coasts are closer together, the interstate is just a super efficient point A to point B, city to city, no interruptions.
In the midwest, and I expect the southwest, to the interstate can get some real wonky vibes because YOU ARE ALONE. You are on one black strip of neverending road across hours and hours and hours of alone. You can drive very fast for a very long time and not see signs of another human being. Sometimes the alone-ness is added to by the sheer flatness of the land around you. You can see for forever and there’s nobody here. You sometimes see dead gas stations or billboards with only scraps of paper left on them.
You are in tornado ally and there is NOWHERE to hide if a blizzard or thunderstorm or twister comes for you. If it’s winter the snow is BLINDING.
It’s beautiful. But it’s horror is less small-town-gothic and more existential threat.
For clarity: the term freeway literally means it’s an interstate with no tolls. It’s free for every driver to use.
The West Coast of the US doesn’t have tolls on our interstates, but some of our big important bridges have tolls.
Seconding @leebrontide’s bit about interstates in the mid and southwest. I have Seen Things doing cross-country moves through the southwest and midwest. One experience that we refer to as “Silent Kansas” we literally went across the entire width of Kansas without seeing a single other vehicle, open gas station, or sign of life, while shrouded in a blanket-thick fog that dissipated essentially immediately upon crossing the border into Colorado. Or the time we were driving south on the I-17 in Arizona after midnight, and there was something following us for a full hour that was a pair of glowing lights that looked like headlights but, I swear it’s fucking true, was not another car. they disappeared in my rearview on a stretch with no exits just outside the Phoenix city limits, and to this day I have no idea wtf it was.
weird shit happens on interstates away from the coasts.
I’d like to expound on what @heywriters said. The Interstate highway system was originally designed for the military AND SEMI TRUCKS to move supplies from place to place, fairly rapidly, and without hindrance.
I’ve seen people thrashing semis for being “in their way” and saying “at least we let them drive on our roads.”
For the first decade or more of the existence of the Interstate highway system, you had to have a military pass or a ClassA license and a commercial pass to even be allowed to drive on the interstate.
So if your strange fiction is set in post-WWII America, the passengers on your road trip would be traveling on Highways and NOT on the interstate.
And the next time you think a “big ol’ semi” is in your way, think again. YOU are in OUR way. We are the professionals, and we have a tight clock. Whereas people in cars are out there commuting every day, and every day are doing it badly.
@ruffboijuliaburnsides : I can second what you said about Kansas. I have been through Kansas twice and it has been dark and completely empty both times. My theory is that Kansas does not actually exist. 
Also:
“traffic slows to a crawl and they say “there’s gotta be a way around this” and take the next exit. Then it turns out their cell phone has no coverage in that spot so they can’t just pull up a map, and VOILA.”
This is how the horrifying action begins in both the original, and the remake of the horror movies The Hills have eyes. They go off of the highway and explore a little road that should be faster and then trauma ensues. 
i understand what you mean, but my reaction to the idea that Kansas does not exist is to panic because I sure hope it exists, I LIVE THERE NOW.
“It unlocked the door.”
NOPE nope nope nope nope nOPE nOpE noooope
monster: hey can i bother— stop screaming— can i bother you for some sugar? i’m baking a pie
-- A'den's first encounter with Madeline during a sleepless night on the human fleet didn't go too smoothly.
How much pie was for Rebecca, and how much was for a curious A’den?
hobbit sayings that I’m inventing for my own devious purposes
‘washes their neighbours’ windows’ - a person who is too nosy. took origin (pretty much Always hypocritical)
‘starts their 4 o'clock tea at noon’ - a person who is overly cautious. took origin
‘they’d take their pony into the bar’ - a person who is very oblivious to what is going around them. origin unclear. common in buckland
‘can’t find the nose on a pig’ - when someone is very drunk. started with the proudfeet
‘swims like a baggins’ - can’t swim. took origin. obsolete for obvious reasons
‘goody two hats, soon to be none’ - a person who is so annoyingly ‘good’ that they make you want to trash them. took origin
‘their head is a hat rack’ - someone can’t think. origins in buckland. became wildly popular through use in gondor and is still in use to this day
‘harder than finding your child at a birthday party’ - a task is difficult. origins in buckland
‘can’t tell a bird from a butterfly’ - a person who is very foolish and naive. origins unclear. most common in south farthing
‘eyes like a spinning wheel’ - someone who is greedy for other people’s things. origin under dispute.
‘kissed by a fairy’ - a person who is insane. hobbiton origin. used extensively
A friend and I came up with a concept for a humorous LotR fanfic a while ago. It was called, “The Heavily Suppressed Adventures of Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took.” Took its inspiration from the one line in the Hobbit that implies that Belladonna might have gone on adventures before she married Bungo, with a splash of inspiration from the idea that at one point Tolkien was considering a line about how vanishing with one’s intended was a bit of a courting ritual among Hobbits.
So Bungo means to propose to Belladonna, but on the very night when he plans to do it she gets recruited for an Adventure by Gandalf, and Bungo, who is either not especially good at recognizing when he ought to change his plans or never one to let little obstacles deter him, depending on how you look at it, also volunteers to go on the Adventure, thinking that he’ll just propose the next day. But the next day is not a great day for it, nor is the next, nor the one after, and so the story goes on. Belladonna is very into the adventure, which she is well-suited for and has been looking forward to her whole life, and Bungo. Loathes. every second of it. But he keeps on going for Belladonna, because he hasn’t yet had the perfect moment to propose to her, and he’s determined to do it, and she’s so excited to share this whole amazing adventure with him.
We never fleshed out the adventure specifically, beyond that it had something to do with dragon eggs in the Blue Mountains. Rather a lot of it was intended to reflect The Hobbit. Bungo had an engagement ring that he was carrying with him and kept very very secret for obvious reasons, and it was meant to be a sort of lighter parallel to the Ring and Bilbo’s behavior towards it. The actual engagement itself was meant to be over the top, ridiculous, hopelessly, sloppily romantic; Bungo would drop the ring and his desperate efforts to get it back would get him into trouble, which Belladonna would save him from, at which point she would discover the ring and ask if he’d meant to propose to him. Or maybe the ring itself would be lost and Bungo would worry that everything was ruined, but it would be dramatically revealed that Belladonna had also intended to propose to him when the adventure was over. We ping-ponged between the two and both have their merits.
Anyway, once the adventure was over, they would return to the Shire together, happily engaged, and live happily ever after to the end of their days. The real kicker was that all this was meant to be told in the frame story of Gandalf telling it to Bilbo on the trip to the Undying Lands; Bungo, unwilling to be known for an adventurer in the Shire, had sworn everyone involved to secrecy so long as they lived on Middle-earth, and Gandalf, who had been itching to tell Bilbo about it for decades, was reveling in the fact that he no longer lived on Middle-earth and was therefore not bound by the oath anymore. The whole thing was going to wrap up with Bilbo’s staunch insistence that he didn’t believe a word of it, to which Gandalf would respond that he was free not to, he supposed. Bilbo would then turn to Frodo and say, “Of course I believe it, Frodo, my boy. I was just hoping to get a turn out of old Gandalf! But of course he probably knows what I’m doing, after all. Well, that is a story! Don’t adventures ever have a start?”
James Patterson books are an invasive species humans brought into library shelf environments because we wanted fast-reproducing, easily-digestible food. But at the time, we didn't know as much about their natural airport environment, which has very few available nutrients. This environment greatly favours the genericalist species like Patterson, so there's very little bibliodiversity compared to the more specialized library or bookstore environment. This means that each species in an airport has an enormously expanded niche compared to just about anywhere else books can thrive - in their natural habitat, Patterson books may be one of only 3 or 4 species competing for available nutrients. In these low-density, low-nutrient environments, Patterson books occupy vast swathes of territory without bothering other species. This history makes it extremely easy for them to outcompete the more specialized inhabitants of the library shelf, who have often been carefully selected to fill ultraspecific subgenre niches.
Left unweeded, Patterson books will expand their territory over multiple book bays, crowding out or even straight-up eliminating space for competitors and sending contributor-author runners out to other shelves. Contained to a single, planned set of shelves and kept strictly pruned, Patterson books can contribute to a healthy ecosystem. But many curators don't know or don't care to do the planning and maintenance, leading to the nightmare of overcrowding and loss of circulation.
THEY'RE TAKING UP FIVE BOOK BAYS AND THAT'S AFTER WEEDING.
THE PATTERSON SITUATION IS SEVERE
THEY'RE THE GOSH-DARNED MINT OF FICTION SHELVES
Have you tried natural biblio control? I have heard that if you release some fairly agressive manga, despite their smaller bibliomass, their raw numbers allow them to out compete and drive out even Patterson infestations.
This has had some small measure of success in the YA Graphic Novels section, but elsewhere he's now expanded into the non-fiction. THE NON-FICTION! MY LAST BASTION OF PATTERSON-FREE SHELVING!
Bad news.
The Patterson novels bred with the manga to produce a hybrid breed.
the-writers-wrench asked:
Re: the wrist kiss post, now I have an image of A’den kissing Rebecca’s wrist and she literally dissolving a la Bocchi the Rock
the-tiny-dragons-tea-room answered:
I have no idea what that is, but it looks like an anime? I’m sure it’s cute. :)
Anime where the main character is a guitarist in a band, but suffers from such social anxiety that whenever she gets too flustered, something like this happens.
tagged by @the-writers-wrench to do this picrew and take this quiz
quiz:
Bastard (Good)
You're a []. A wet cat, if you will. And we love you for it. You're a little [], but in the good way. You are the baddest babygirl. You killed a man, but you looked good doing it. You flirted with the hero and the enemy. All of Tumblr is madly in love with you. Congrats, I guess?
-- HEY!
Preserving the tags for posterity
That’s it, the Professor is truly the King of Sass
The letter didn’t come from the Nazi party, but from the publishing house which had expressed an interest in the German translation of The Hobbit. Tolkien’s response really is a thing of beauty, though, so it deserves to be quoted in its entirety:
25 July 1938 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter. … I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearings whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully
J.R.R. Tolkien.
(Letter 30)
The Hobbit wasn’t published in German until 1957.
This might just be the politest “fuck you” ever written.
W.h.a.t.
Not just “I wish I had Jewish ancestors, but I don’t,” but also “you do realize that’s not what ‘Aryan’ actually means, right,” and “you guys are making it pretty hard to be proud of my German heritage.”
Nazis: Are you Aryan?
Noted linguistics freak Tolkien: Are you?
