#i just think. environmental storytelling

[cpericardium]

thinking about the time someone was in my replies saying "god can we finally cancel wildbow" and had a list of grievances but I could clearly see they were red on shinigami eyes

[melonyfelonyfellonme]

Thinking about the volume of coffee cups in the pantry lessening and dwindling as Rook spends more time there, until after the fight with Ghilly when suddenly there are about 15 cups in there a day, more than there were even at the beginning

And then when Rook comes back, the volume lessens again, but this time even further to 2 or 3 cups a day left in there

[tabithatwo]

do you think shauna learned that cells turn over completely in seven years thing in high school biology and latched onto it and had an existential crisis meltdown of nuclear proportions when it was coming up on seven years since she’d consumed jackie because none of the cells in her body were born out of the energy she got from jackie’s flesh anymore?

[halloweentual]

gaming will make you go man i miss the pathologic 2 barter mechanic

[moe-broey]

I can probably word that deleted post better hold on --

Alfonse is exempt from If A Beautiful Tall Muscular Woman Wants to Pick You Up and Put You In Her Purse Like A Scrunkly Little Dog, It Is Your Sworn DUTY to Oblige on account of ONE: Alfonse does not fit the requirements, he is something else entirely and TWO: His duties lie elsewhere. And Two and A Half, Dagr is too butch for a purse actually. In my heart anyway I know I know "this is the butchiest the general public can handle before they get scared" but LISTEN. A faggot can dream..........

[wreckedhoney]

a while ago on the discord i brought up the "which desk at the station is forrest's desk" question when the answer should probably have been obvious. he's been at the job for approx. one week, so it's the desk with all the unpacked boxes. it just didnt occur to me because thats Frankly A Lot Of Boxes and my first thought was this is where all the storage and junk are piled on, but no. it's all stuff forrest brought (/hc). he's a heavy packer. he spite packed all the stuff he didn't want his old job to keep even if he doesnt need or even like them all that much but now that he's blacklisted then no one in the entirety of chicago can have them

[landgraabbed]

sometimes you gotta take in the lil details

[pa-pa-plasma]

okay i just marathoned the entirety of ATLA live action & i might do an actual review of it explaining my thoughts more in depth, but the TLDR version basically boils down to this:

if you want to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, just go watch the 2005 cartoon

[kalpasio]

T'IS I, THE ONE AND ONLY WEREWOLF KALPAS ANON, RISING FROM THE ASHES OF DEATH(that is work)! _:(´ཀ`」∠):_

Howareyoubuddy?!Ithasbeenforeveeeeeer!Imissedyouveryverymuch!(*´꒳`*)

Anyways, I personally think that with Kalpas, it's either extremely painfully slow burn stranger to lovers or super speedrunning burn strangers to lovers through everything (because why would he waste his time when he knows what he wants!)

WEREWOLF KALPAS ANON!!!! 🧡🧡🧡 HIIII

it's been way too long 😭 I'm so glad you survived work I don't know how you do it but I'm always happy to see you in my inbox!!

oh absolutely kalpas is stubborn and either knows what he wants immediately or it'll take forever to convince him to change his mind lol

but that's also why he's so loyal to his friends and reader cough cough like when he immediately yelled at Mei when she even hinted at Sakura having done anything wrong

I don't think I could write a breakup scenario with kalpas because I would just cry so much the ink smears BUT I think he would either refuse to acknowledge it which like in my head is super sweet but in real life that's a little toxic so... or just go "okay 🫥" and reader would feel awkward but kalpas just Would Not Get It. absolutely oblivious to the tension and the other flame chasers definitely are either laughing or making bets on them getting back together

[astranauticus]

not sure if this counts as an AU but.. thinking about the Per Aspera crew as horror game bosses like.. you are wandering through a forested mountain range and you know somethings wrong because the forest shouldn't be this eerily silent, this devoid of life, and then you hear the crash of falling trees and there is a hand that is half your size glowing golden in the night and it is grabbing you and its claws are digging into your flesh and you see the spines running down the golden arm that is far too long as it lifts you over a crater in mountain, over a coiled, serpentine thing with a visage that is not of this world, and if you look closely you can see the shape of a child curled at the centre of the thing, golden hair reflecting the glow of the creature and if you listen closely you can hear her sobbing, 'Don't hurt me, I don't want to do this'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see an ephemeral, resplendent spelljammer cutting through the starry waters and you rejoice because you have been lost on the seas for so so long, so you board the ship looking for help, supplies, anything, and you are greeted by a blue fire genasi (you wonder, do those even exist? but you can't get off the ship now because where else will you go?) and she tells you she is the captain of this ship but as far as you can tell there is no crew on board, and if she is not appearing right behind you from a trapdoor you've never noticed she is always in the engine room 'fixing the ship' even though the ship seems to be sailing perfectly fine ('Where are we going?' you ask her once and she doesn't even turn to look at you, 'Don't worry about it') and if you are ever so unlucky as to damage the ship in any way, you begin to catch flashes of red and orange out of the corner of your eye, a fire genasi wearing the woman's face who whispers at you with hollow, angry eyes 'Don't you fucking dare hurt my ship'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see a rotting, decaying spelljammer, so badly damaged it's barely moving although you have to wonder how it's even staying afloat at all, and out of some morbid curiosity you climb on board and the deck of the ship is in no better shape than the hull, the marks of hard-fought battle - scars in the wood from sharp blades and arcane energies, stains of blood and oil splattered about - still fresh but you know time doesn't pass on the astral sea so who knows how long ago this all took place, and as you climb below decks you start to notice the writings on the walls, pieces of parchment nailed to every surface and connected with fraying, rotting threads, or words etched directly into the wood, the deep gouges barely readable, and you start to hear the creaking and clanking of rusted machinery slowly moving about and you turn a corner to see a figure standing in a room facing the wall, slowly scratching yet more of that unintelligible writing into the bones of the ship, and it turns as the rusted dented mechanite stares at you with eyes ablaze and he asks 'Who are you? Where is my crew?' as sparks of arcane lightning begins to arc through the room. you are running through a feywild forest and you know, even without the figure chasing you, that you have made a horrible mistake, you should have known better, should have been more careful, should have kept your impulses in check, and now you are being chased through an unfamiliar forest and the figure, the Hunter pursuing you knows this realm like the back of his hand, knows every tree and shrub and vine that is slithering up to grasp at your ankles, and you glance back desperately to catch any glimpse of your pursuer but there is no pursuer, he has hidden himself with some arcane trick or some innate power or just the knowledge that this realm is his home, and you hear his voice even though you cannot see him as he cries out 'You should not have hurt my family. Prepare to face the Hunter of Hundkiln'

sorry no Vhas yet maybe I'll update with one for him once we get more of his whole deal

[gralixe]

One Piece has so much gall giving so much screen time to characters I truly do not give a fuck about

[planet4546b]

finished gourmand......overall REALLY loved that campaign. gameplay + gimmicks were really fun, loved the new regions that i got to see, and the ending was just gorgeous....makes me even more excited for rivulet + spearmaster

[mbat]

okay but why is it that literally everywhere that i see people discussing wings of fire, its to criticize it. like, when i dont see art the only stuff i see is people saying how much they hate pretty much every aspect of the books and how tui sucke and how arcs 2 and 3 are horrible and.... like, i get criticising things, even things you like, i mean im no stranger to liking things that have MANY issues, but damn wheres the love?

like, wheres people talking about the things they like about these books without feeling the need to preface it with 'these books are the worst thing ive ever seen'?

do you like the characters? the tribes? the concepts? the worldbuilding? anything?

like. i love these books so much. they definitely have issues because EVERYTHING does but i dont see what other people see that makes them act like these books are atrocious.

are people just ashamed to like a kids series or something? i just dont get it.

idk, maybe its just what the internet has given me, and there is a side of the fandom that manages to have discussions about these books that arent just acting like they hate them, id love to know how to get there.

i just dont get being in a fandom and acting like you despise the very thing that brought you there.

[thelediz]

I haven't watched Sonic prime bc something in me went "egh, no" after the first three minutes but when I heard abt Nines I immediately though about how you said Tails could be incredibly dangerous and his relationship with Sonic raised him out of a bad path hehe. I just kind of gauge Sonic and Pokemon stuff through your worldbuilding now lol I can't help it

Asides from that, I wanted to ask your thoughts abt Sonic's relationship with Gaia! You've mentioned you had Thoughts abt it in a couple of posts and it stuck to my mind bc I've always thoughts of Chip as a very one-off character (as in, I like him, but I've never thought of the Gaia mythos outside the context of Unleashed) but since you made a point of highlighting environmentalism in the Lost Prince I'd honestly really love to hear however much or however little you've thought on his relationship with the personification of the planet (both of them, even!)

Let me reassure you that "egh no" is a perfectly valid reaction to any media. Especially the first three minutes of ANY episode.

As to Sonic and environmentalism - honey, don't tempt a 90s kid.

I would argue that finding a balance with nature and sustainability has been part of the Sonic franchise since AT LEAST Sonic CD, if not the very beginning. And Sonic himself has been a literal force of nature since his inception, you just don't get into it very often because his ACTUAL purpose is to show off how the Mega Drive can go very fast with lots of colours, stop thinking about it so much.

(And you are skirting DANGEROUSLY close to my going on a gushing rant about why I love this franchise and the whole concept of controlled chaos. I shall try to contain myself.)

First off. I repeat: the actual purpose of Sonic the Hedgehog was to show off the capabilities of the Mega Drive and the technical skill of Sonic Team. Play any Sonic game on any platform (except 06, Lost World, and Boom, which all had Other Issues) and you will see how that team pushes the hardware to its absolute limit without causing problems. These people are skilled developers and they want you to know about it.

Now let me get madcap about character symbolism and worldbuilding.

Now, there's obviously the whole thing about Robotnik/Eggman being evil technology and polluting the environment, yes, yes, par for the course with half the other villains created in the 90s.

But the thing that made the Sonic franchise different is that Sonic never had any issue with technology AS A CONCEPT. He flies a bi-plane, Tails is an inventor himself, the good future as depicted by the Sonic franchise ALWAYS incorporates both technology and nature, and the whole idea of using chaos as a power source is basically code for sustainable engineering and renewable energy, because CHAOS ITSELF is as natural and inescapable as the sun and the wind and the only way we're going to lose them as a resource is if we -

Okay.

Stop.

Come back to the point.

Sonic's relationship with Gaia and the environment. Great.

Short point to be taken as a given, but which I can understand newer fans not realising because of the world they grew up in: the Sonic franchise, since its inception, has carried a theme of sustainability. You can take this to extremes by pointing out some vaguely anarcho-environmentalist takes about freeing captured animals, but I think it's more about the theming.

Every Sonic game starts in Green Hill Zone or a close equivalent: they're always lush and green and beautiful, and the deeper into Eggman's territory you get, the less naturalism you see. Eggman has gotten better about pollution, but he is always destroying nature in favour of machines. He uses and abuses the resources he finds until they cease to be visible, if not wiped out entirely. He has no thought about what he's going to do when these resources run out. He has no interest in how his desires impact the rest of the world. He just wants to build his theme park, staffed by robots, and anyone who disrupts that plan is impinging on HIS DREAMS and -

-cough-

Anyway.

Meanwhile, while Sonic and Tails use resources, they do so in measured ways, and only ever enough for their needs. In fact, in games like Sonic Colours, the resources (wisps) are actively forcing themselves on Sonic to be used. They transform him, and he just kind of goes along with it.

Because (and this is where I begin to actually answer your question), Sonic is a force of nature himself.

There are many versions of early Sonic lore, and you can take whichever one works for you, but in some of them, Sonic's first appearance in the world was him just... wandering lost in the woods, with no memory and no idea how he got there. He just appeared.

A spirit that appears when influence is needed on the world

Similarly, in most franchises these days, Sonic doesn't... live anywhere. He wanders the earth, he goes where the wind takes him, he isn't trying to do good, necessarily, he just stops the spread of bad when he sees it. In most current franchises, even when he DOES have a fixed address, it's... weird. Basically just a place for him to get out of the rain and store his strange collection of Stuff. Because he doesn't and isn't supposed to exist in the way of 'normal' people. He just is.

A lot of this is tied up in Sonic's relationship to Chaos, but I'd argue that nature and creation are inherently chaotic things. Have you ever seen what happens when a rose or blackberry bush is allowed to grow on its own? Madness! Trees will grow wherever they want, dandelions think a scrap of dirt in concrete is a wonderful spot to start a family, animals don't care about this concept of personal property that you have, and the human body doesn't give a damn about your 'schedule', it has NEEDS, dammit, and YOU ARE NOT PROVIDING THEM.

Go drink something. When was the last time you felt sunlight?

Anyway.

Even in the franchise, Sonic is unique among the characters for his relationship to chaos. All three male hedgehogs can use Chaos Emeralds to turn Super, but Shadow is artificial, and there is an argument that Silver is Shadow's son (don't @ me, I'm not invested and I don't want to get into it. Just accept the Dragon Ball Z reference and move on). Sonic is still an anomaly.

ALSO. Since Sonic Adventure, Chaos has been tied to emotion, and Sonic represents the positive side of that. The Water God Chaos represents the negative side of it. When they do battle, and positivity wins, neither side is destroyed. They just calm down and go away. You can't destroy emotion, you can only -

STOP.

So. If we agree that chaos is a part of nature, and Sonic is inherently tied to chaos, then you can see how Sonic can be read as a LITERAL force of nature. He exists to exert nature's influence and re-establish balance by being a positive chaotic force on the world.

And that's why he can also be inherently problematic because sometimes humans need nature to be controlled in order to live safely and SERIOUSLY LEDIZ STOP

The Adventure series made the subtext supertext, and Unleashed happily made it TEXT, but it's always been there. Sonic has always disrupted manEggman's march over the environment with nothing but his speed and natural resources.

Chip was a one-off character, but he is the continuation of a discussion enforced by Chaos, and then Shadow, and in many ways Metal Sonic, and Merlina, and lately followed up by Sage: personifications of how humans and their technology can disrupt and be disrupted by natural forces. Sonic's continuing triumph over these forces is a reminder that with good intent and effort, we can find a way to survive and maintain a sustainable future.

-DEEP BREATH AS WE EMERGE FROM THE THEORY MINES-

Watch me defend the Sega mandate about who can have a Super form with this madcap theory of mine

Listen to me get all cultural studies about how this ties Sonic into the storybook series because fairytales are implicitly tied to nature fables

The point is, Sonic is tied to nature, and so whenever the planet OR technology is personified, in any way, shape, or form, he WILL have a relationship with it.

And I will go back in my box now, thank you for not getting upset with my ramblings, please.

[sydchan]

I maybe said this already but I caved and am replaying Fragile Dream and damn, does being able to kinda sorta read Japanese helps a lot. While they translate enough of the graffiti to get by, there’s enough that they don’t and the environmental storytelling of that game was always one of my favorite things. Apocalypse setting where you can read the tragic messages of those trying to survive (but being able to infer where they def failed) is my jam.

[erstwhilesparrow]

oh my FUCKING GOD.