My first ever Twine game is ten years old today! A little over a decade ago, I asked my friends for a prompt for a story, and I made this in response.
It’s stunning to me how much my life has changed since then, both personally and workwise, but writing is still one of my favourite things to do, and I still adore making romances where things people don’t want to talk about are swimming along beneath the surface.
I couldn’t find the code issue again so ended up rewriting the code in a few places. Just running randomtest now.
Baldr lives on.
I like to view the myths as a kernel of truth, with the real truth being either much more complex or much more simple. Like the tale of Persephone being kidnapped by Hades would really be Demeter’s propaganda, and that Persephone really just escaped her mother.
It makes writing and respecting the myths that much easier.
I LAUGHED. omg. this is funny. Like you can really understand exactly the feeling.
that is a big pile of nope from me, friendo
I FEEL THIS MEME IN MY SOUL AND AM ACTIVELY FIGHTING AGAINST IT.
That’s because it was all originally verbal storytelling, and the ones who wrote it down were christian priest/scholars. Sooooo yeah. We’re working on peicing it back together (by that I mean the Norse Pagan community) but it’s honestly a lot of guesswork.
I was gonna comment, but then you did it for me. xD
I am once again, probably not gonna have time to work on my game properly this week. Because other shit takes priority. I’m actually kind of upset about it.
Also the usual issues with trying to form a coherent narrative from folklore that has so much variation between different areas and different times, I would like to add.
I just had a wild experience. I settled on a solid scene break and decided to check my word count. I figured I was probably sitting somewhere around 1200-1500 words, judging by how long I’d been working.
No, I have just short of 4000 words written. This is not an experience I am used to. I’m a pretty succinct writer, so I usually have lower word counts than higher.
I’m proud of myself 
That’s called being awesome. 
I spent half an hour tonight fixing a gosub error and it is fixed now, but I’m still irritated because I don’t understand why what I did fixed anything. Error said I’d already returned. I fixed it by changing a couple gotos elsewhere within my nested gosubs into gosubs as well. And, magically, it works now. I just wish I understood why.
Am I a bad person? God knows I am trying to be less harsh and more polite. Thing is really difficult for me as I am a person who sees a problem and has to put hands-on approach.
I have seen a tendency later on the forum of people who almost demands others to write X genre or X romantic combo… It is almost like they think that we are here AI prompt.
I feel it insulting and negative. I try to not looking at it and not complaint. My therapist says I should try to spinning of the narrative and try to make something positive about it. Maybe an event or an interview. A jam can’t be due it would be too much.
I swear I am trying to be less grumpy but today I had too much.
Black magic. That’s all coding really is. You can’t change my mind 
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I’m a chronological writer - I don’t write scenes and then join them together, rather I write the story in order from beginning to end; I find it helps me avoid plotholes, etc., but it’s not very conducive to writing IF. Being a chronological writer, I sometimes find myself hitting a mental wall - not a writer’s block, per se, but rather just being tired of the subject matter I’m writing about. I start to find it boring and want to write the more exciting stuff…But I have to get through 5-10k words of the “boring” stuff to get to the excitement.
That’s where I’m currently at with my writing, and it’s frustrating. The words are flowing just fine; I’m honestly in one of my most prolific writing phases of my entire life. I’m really proud of myself, but gosh darnit, I want to get to interesting stuff, not keep writing the same old “they get to know each other through this scene and this scene and that scene and the other scene”. sobs
Well done for the big chunk you got done!
It’s such a mood wanting to get to the ‘good part’. I try to take the route of reminding myself that the exciting bits don’t mean anything without the set up. Gotta earn the payoff!
That is a very good point! I’ll try reframing my thought process to include that. Thank you!
Eclipse day update: I’m 5000 words into chapter 7 and trucking along. This week I’ve put some effort into having a presence on tumblr, made some fun graphics in Canva, and updated the main post on the Ink forum thread for the 24th time (yes I like to edit things).
This morning, I read a review on my demo by someone who didn’t seem to like it much, and I’m trying to figure out if there’s actionable feedback there or if they’re just not my reader. I think one of the hardest things as a writer is accepting the fact that you will never please everyone, and trying to stay clear in your story’s vision. The CoG house style is distinct and not everyone who is into IF is going to like it, and that’s okay, but I’m always looking for ways to improve, if possible. Nothing like criticism to keep you humble. (Edit: One of the criticisms was that my writing is wordy. Which, yes, my style is lyrical and sensory, and not everyone likes that. But this review inspired me to add another choice to the very beginning of the game, which hopefully will make it feel like it gets going at a faster pace and there’s less description before the first choice.)
Today, I made the demo of Ink and Intrigue available on dashingdon. I had the link going to Spring Thing for the past week to help promote the festival, but I know lots of people prefer dashingdon so I’ve added that link, too.
I hope you all have an excellent week! 
I feel like I wrote the most epic, final fantasy thing i ever imagined for a scene involving 2 of my characters but it’s not finished & its still only chapter 2 but in its second half. Theres pics too so it only enhances that.
I dont intend to fully release it until the chapters over but jeez I get goosebumps from writing it.
I also write in order from start to finish and I feel this heavily. I just finished a large chunk with a fight scene. I’m not fond of writing those in the first place, but having to write multiple variations of the same fight? Not fun. Buuut doing it this way works better for my brain and makes it easier to ensure every path is balanced. But, yeah, I get you.
One of the strangest joys I get writing is when I come up with an option that exists basically to give people the option of doing something totally dumb and outlandish.
Civil response? Sure. Cunning response? Fine. Aggressive? If you must.
Deciding to punch out George Washington because his hippo teeth are looking at you squiffy? ::chef’s kiss::
Me on that daily grind trying not to compare myself or my work to anyone else’s. Phew, imposter syndrome be tough. Good luck to everyone working on their projects this month. Back to writing for me.
I’ve only written 3k words so far this month because I’ve been busy remodeling my house. Now that we’re mostly done though, I can write a lot more and finish Chapter Two of Meteoric soon.
Also, we got awesome pictures of the eclipse through our solar glasses
If your fantasy things
aren’t as good
as The Lord of the Rings
If when you write your sci-fi
it isn’t perfect
(because you’re not the Lower Decks guy)
If your look at your horror
and you think
“more like abhorror”
If when you try to be funny
Your grandma goes
“That was a good try, sonny”
If whatever your theme
you happen to think
you’re far from the best in the sceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeene
There’s really no stake
because us in the audience
Read it and still go “WOOO, MORE CAKE!”
That first pic looks really chilling. Almost like an eldritch being looking at you with it’s sole red eye.
Earlier today, I wondered if the eclipse would be viewable from the UK, and received a massive middle finger from the moon.
Though it was completely and utterly cloudy so I doubt I’d have seen it anyway.
Oh well, at least I now have a new metaphor for describing the red eyes present in my WiP:
“Red as the blood moon.”
