From 27a65a2b5c034014a57b0338a033e71d0d8a476c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Meta Vens Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:02:29 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Make fun-to-read part of the vault's tone doctrine Operator direction, after reading the 2020 tutorial script: even when things are bleak, people are still having fun, and the reader is too. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 --- AGENTS.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/AGENTS.md b/AGENTS.md index c64b95a..5bb3b22 100644 --- a/AGENTS.md +++ b/AGENTS.md @@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ The September 5 Elaborator campaign is complete. Read `outputs/elaboration-short ## Tone -- The tone is sober, humane, and politically aware. Readers should feel invited into the world, not examined on their ability to interpret it. +- The tone is humane, politically aware, and fun to read, even when the situation is bleak. People in this world still joke, scheme, flirt, complain and enjoy themselves; their humour is how they live inside the systems that grind them, not relief from them, and the reader should be having fun alongside them. Keep the politics precise and the costs real, and let the comedy come from inside the situation: from characters, from institutions producing absurd and dangerous rules, from people who know exactly how bad things are and keep going anyway. Readers should feel invited into the world, not examined on their ability to interpret it. - Give corporate euphemisms and bureaucratic language to the institutions using them. Explain their practical meaning in the surrounding prose: what a "service consolidation" closes, how far the family must travel, or which care becomes an extra charge. The narrator must not adopt the institution's evasiveness. - Show cruelty through decisions and their effects, and give cooperation, affection, humour, and ordinary competence the same specificity. Characters and institutions need motives beyond illustrating a thesis. - Avoid a clever reversal, balanced moral ledger, or concluding aphorism when the example has already made the point. Preserve memorable language that earns its place through clarity and lived detail.