howlintherain

[howlintherain]

Very occasionally, Twitter has some good advice.

[howlintherain]

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.

[howlintherain]

My favourite thing about fan fiction is the experience of watching/reading something and being like ‘huh - I can see a potential pairing there, those two characters could be interesting together’. And then you casually look up the pairing on AO3 and someone has written the most beautiful, heart-wrenching love story you’ve ever read, with character analysis that makes you want to scream, and they’ve teased out the threads of the relationship dynamic in such an interesting way that makes so much SENSE, but you never would have thought it would be so fucking ELECTRIC. And then you recover enough from that fic to read another one, and it’s JUST AS FUCKING GOOD, and before you know it, it’s 3am and your eyes are burning and you’re squinting at the 100th scene of them confessing their love for each other and it’s still not enough. You know what I’m saying???

[howlintherain]

Fellow aces, if you need garlic bread but are feeling lazy, I have a recipe for you. Just add however much of each thing sounds good to you. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s easier than garlic bread normally is and, if you only cook for yourself, you can tailor it to make exactly as much as you need and not have leftovers!

Lazy Garlic bread

Ingredients:

About 1 tbsp butter

Herbs (I used parsley, oregano, and basil)

Minced garlic (I use it from a jar because I have terrible fine motor skills)

A few slices of toast

Parmesan cheese (optional)

Instructions:

Put the butter (cold from the fridge is fine), herbs, and garlic in a microwaveable bowl (I estimated the amounts)

Microwave covered for 30 seconds

Put in fridge for 5 minutes to cool slightly, stirring a couple times

Add the Parmesan if desired

Mix again

Pour onto toast slices and eat

I would have taken a picture but I ate my garlic bread so quickly I forgot.

[howlintherain]

[howlintherain]

Laurent in a short short chiton during an official meeting aka Diplomacy ✨

[howlintherain]

“I was sent here to be a slave as a punishment and a humiliation,” Damen says to Erasmus, the slave that was trained to be a slave for Damen specifically and was brainwashed so hard into liking it that he apologized for not being quiet enough when he was branded.

This is actually the reason why the books worked for me, because yeah Laurent was a bitch, but Damen was SO MUCH WORSE when they met and he didn’t even know it, and then Damen GOT BETTER as part of his character arc and got to the point where he swore to abolish slavery in the third book. And then we see in follow-up stories that he did, no hesitation or waffling or compromise, he straight up made it illegal and went undercover to bust some slave traders.

In this house we love and respect a character that reforms his entire world view after one hot girl summer romance.

[howlintherain]

they are barring wikipedia. they are barring spotify. they are barring important news - both national news and world news. they are barring mental health forums and LGBTQ related things and so much more. this is not about protecting children, it has never been about protecting children.

the online safety act is an insane privacy breach, and if that does not scare you then you need to think harder about it. it is going to end up in a massive data leak - all the information is getting collected by random third party systems. can we trust them? no. can we even hold them accountable? no. because the government couldn’t even make their own system to do these age checks.

and i hear you - it is important that kids don’t see porn. but even if all this was about protecting kids, it’s sloppy and useless. it’s easy (for now) to get around with a vpn and the only thing the act doing is censoring things that it shouldnt. if the government wanted to protect kids, they would do something concrete about it - they would be putting more funding into education, for example.

of course the policy isnt called “national surveillance”. they’re not going to call it that. everything will be hidden behind things that people want.

so email your MP, and tell other people that this is WAY more than blocking porn from children - this is the first step towards national surveillance.

[howlintherain]

Here’s an ANIMORPHS animation pitch I made last summer! Created it for a lot of different personal and professional reasons, but now I’m happy to share!

LONG POST

[howlintherain]

This is for the people who didn’t party in their teens and twenties. For the people who didn’t have that “coming of age” movie experience with shenanigans and revelations. This is for the people who mostly keep to themselves. Who maybe prefer things to be quieter and gentler. This is for the people who don’t feel like they belong in a culture that values loud parties and flashing lights. I see you. And you are valid.

[howlintherain]

Ok, loves, so we've all got the message that joking about suicide is bad for your mental health. Now we need to get on "joking that the planet/all of humanity has no future is bad for societal health/encouraging resistance to bad shit."

[howlintherain]

Autistic brain really is like, "you have to overexplain so there is absolutely zero chance for misinterpretation"

[howlintherain]

The kindergarten-ification of society

[howlintherain]

"Ship fics where one person gets de-aged are weird" the de-aging trope is about healing your inner child by showing your young traumatized self that in the future they will have someone who loves them I'm seriously gonna kill you

[howlintherain]

since mrs, ms, and mr are all descended from the latin word magister, i propose the gender neutral version should be mg, short for "mage"

[howlintherain]

Annoying that dairy products are demonized as Unnatural and Disgusting when it's actually kinda neat that humans figured out a way to fulfill omnivorous nutritional requirements without killing any animals (and populations historically dependent on dairy even evolved lactase persistence!). This is biopunk to me