Enough random notes that have a written story on them as environmental storytelling, explore the space, get crazier with it.
You move into a house and aw cute, it has the kids height on the walls but you notice there's a three foot difference in height between measurements, you check the date, they're a month apart. The final measurement is on the ceiling. It's dated two days ago.
You're part of a recovery team that have finally found a stranded ship, they were found too late and have all passed a long time ago. They all died of starvation. You enter their storeroom, it's filled with food. In the dining hall you find the tables laden with perfectly fine looking breads, cakes, cured meats, jams, candies. Your medic says all the people sitting at the table didn't eat a Thing.
You wake up in an apocalypse. You can't find anyone at all as you wander the streets but you do hear faint music playing from somewhere. You stumble into a supermarket, to see all the aisles still full, except for the shelf that was full of ear plugs, which look to be the only thing that was looted.
Like there's light, sound, props. Having a street where every house is decimated except for One. Landing on a planet known for having No Water and a plant is growing and you don't know where it could have possibly gotten moisture from but you can't find the citizens Anywhere.
I'm sorry, I'm just kinda over the "graffiti on the wall to show the bad guy is around". That's not environmental storytelling that's just normal story. Show me I'm in the villains territory by the rain suddenly cutting out above me as I'm driving, even though it's meant to be raining all night. I park the car and step out, and realise the constellations are Wrong, until I see they're Not constellations, they're the blinking lights of a massive ship-
I Will stop now because everytime I go to write a sentence it devolves into another prompt but I'm just saying we have a Lot of senses, engage them, show me the Environment in environmental storytelling.
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You guys are commenting on the fics you read right? You’re at least leaving kudos on the Astarion smut and the pairs that have less than 20 fics for them too? You’re bookmarking stories you really like that are still being updated and ones that haven’t been touched in over a year right?
You know that even the smallest interactions are like cocaine to fic writers right? You understand how important a string of emoji hearts left behind on chapter at three am is right?? Right????
You’re treating AO3 like a community and not a content factory….right?
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To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:
A post in 2023:
A post in 2014:
A zoom out of the same post:
This is what a community looks like.
See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.
It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.
Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.
If you want more of something, reblog it.
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just to be completely clear, the amount of military power and political influence Israel has has NOTHING to do with its settlers being Jewish. Israel is a force for American & European interests in the region and they're just doing what America does and allows/encourages its close allies to do.
war crimes aren't considered war crimes when someone America finds useful is doing them. european and american pushback against anyone criticizing Israeli apartheid & genocide is 100% because these crimes are useful to American & European hegemony.
Governments that are deeply antisemitic, like France, aren't suddenly caring about Jewish people. Jewish people, persecuted the world over, don't hold some kind of hegemonic power outside of Israel.
The state of Israel and its attendant brutal treatment of the locals are both incredibly useful to the US, and American hegemony means we're expected to celebrate both.
not bc they're Jewish. this isn't a break in the pattern of western antisemitism and it's not evidence that antisemitism doesn't exist.
it's just like how you could get fired for saying shit against the US war in Afghanistan when i was growing up. it is 100% about US military and political interests (ok slightly western europe too but lbr)
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i love when words fit right. seize was always supposed to be that word, and so was jester. tuesday isn't quite right but thursday should be thursday, that's a good word for it. daisy has the perfect shape to it, almost like you're laughing when you say it; and tulip is correct most of the time. while keynote is fun to say, it's super wrong - i think they have to change the label for that one. but fox is spot-on.
most words are just, like, good enough, even if what they are describing is lovely. the night sky is a fine term for it but it isn't perfect the way november is the correct term for that month.
it's not just in english because in spanish the phrase eso si que es is correct, it should be that. sometimes other languages are also better than the english words, like how blue is sloped too far downwards but azul is perfect and hangs in the air like glitter. while butterfly is sweet, i think probably papillion is more correct, although for some butterflies féileacán is much better. year is fine but bliain is better. sometimes multiple languages got it right though, like how jueves and Πέμπτη are also the right names for thursday. maybe we as a species are just really good at naming thursdays.
and if we were really bored and had a moment and a picnic to split we could all sit down for a moment and sort out all the words that exist and find all the perfect words in every language. i would show you that while i like the word tree (it makes you smile to say it), i think arbor is correct. you could teach me from your language what words fit the right way, and that would be very exciting (exciting is not correct, it's just fine).
i think probably this is what was happening at the tower of babel, before the languages all got shifted across the world and smudged by the hand of god. by the way, hand isn't quite right, but i do like that the word god is only 3 letters, and that it is shaped like it is reflecting into itself, and that it kind of makes your mouth move into an echoing chapel when you cluck it. but the word god could also fit really well with a coathanger, and i can't explain that. i think donut has (weirdly) the same shape as a toothbrush, but we really got bagel right and i am really grateful for that.
grateful is close, but not like thunder. hopefully one day i am going to figure out how to shape the way i love my friends into a little ceramic (ceramic is very good, almost perfect) pot and when they hold it they can feel the weight of my care for them. they can put a plant in there. maybe a daisy.
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Fandom is so different now and it’s becoming un-fun with how quickly shit moves.
I just want to enjoy things. I don’t want to have to play a game of Artist-Race that seems to be afoot lately.
Ya’ll eat up fandoms, leave artists and writers bone dry and then move on so fucking quickly then fucking wonder where all the Good Fandom Stuff is.
Idk Maybe cherish some things for longer. Reblog stuff. Interact with people. Comment and share.
Fandom is Capitalism now and I’m not being nuanced.
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“Ao3 needs an algorithm” no it doesn’t, part of the ao3 experience is scrolling through pages of cursed content looking for the one fic you want to read until you get distracted by a summary so cursed that it completely derails your entire search
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