A word is dead
when it is said,
some say.
I say
it just begins to live
that day.
-Emily Dickinson
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@moonwaterstories
A word is dead
when it is said,
some say.
I say
it just begins to live
that day.
-Emily Dickinson

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i wrote a twin cinema poem about two gay soldiers in wwi
context: the two sides, read separately, are the two soldiers thinking about their futures with each other. when read together, it's a reflection of their final thoughts when they die together struck by bullets <3
is there any look hotter than disheveled and slightly bloody
um?? dishevelled and slightly bloody, with a sword under their chin
Ahem. Dishevelled, slightly bloody, with a sword under their chin, while smiling lasciviously
for your consideration: dishevelled, slightly bloody, with a sword under their chin, while smiling lasciviously, and kneeling
Alejandro Zambra, Ways of Going Home (translated by Megan McDowell)
Natalie Diaz, âSnake-Light.â Postcolonial Love Poem
On generative AI
I know that a lot of writers (and other kind of artists) absolutely hate generative AI. I also absolutely understand that stance.
On the other hand, though... it reminds me of the invention of photography. Back then, when it got big, many people weren't happy. They were calling out guys claiming that photography is art - because they didn't agree. EVERYBODY can take a machine and press a button, right? What art is even in that?
Well. I believe that... a lot, actually. I think that two people can take two very different pictures of the very same thing. I think that a picture of a moment frozen in time has something in it that no painting can ever contain. And I also think that some can never take a good photo, even if they'd try very hard - and that there's some art in that fact alone, too. I believe that photography opened a new sphere of art which was unreachable before and that some people can unfortunately never be artists, even if they pretend or believe to be. And I think that with generative AI, it's kind of the same.
I mean. I get it. The heated reactions towards a tool that can literally write with your own patterns, use your favourite words or use your peculiar drawing style despite your wish so that it couldn't, because you never agreed to give your voice up. I really do. I see the horridness of it.
But I also think that a new kind of perceiving authorship is coming and many people who feel used overlook the possibilities it can bring.
I'm not saying that I'm ok with what's happening. I'm not. But (with a certain amount of fear towards what I'll say): I, in fact, also see so much potential in generative AI as a tool to create art that it brings goosebumps to my skin...

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Rotten desire
Hydrangeas and Other Garden Flowers - John Ross Key , 1882.
American, 1832-1920 Oil on canvas, 36 x 20 in.
Ursula K. Le Guin, âAuthorâs Noteâ from The Left Hand of Darkness
Commission I recently completed! If youâre interested please fill out my commission request form here!!
Today's vibe: Reading Dead Poets Society on a rainy train ride while listening to Hozier

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RF. Alvarez (American, 1988) - The Color of a Cigarette (2023)
my creative writing prof also HATES fantasy. as in if she asks for an example of symbolism in a book, and you give something from a fantasy novel, sheâll ask for an example from a ânon-commercial bookâ instead.
I dunno man, people can have preferences, but the second you discount the artistic merit of sci fi and fantasy I stop taking your opinion seriously. and thereâs such a big culture in Canada of only valuing literary fiction, to the point where one of our biggest authors, Margaret Atwood, refused for a while to classify her books as sci fi or fantasy. she said they were âspeculative fictionâ, which is entirely separate and very highbrow (sarcasm).
and I could go on about how Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin wrote books every bit as intellectual (and honestly, even more so) than their literary counterparts, but I am also an enjoyer of schlock!! I think thereâs artistic merit in animorphs, and in isekais where a japanese schoolgirl reincarnates into a magical spider who has to level up like itâs a video game! itâs like with everything, you canât draw a clean line that separates âartâ from ânon-artâ or even âlesser artâ, and pretending you can do so just makes you look ignorant and goofy. in my opinion.
Terry Pratchett did a really good interview about this.
O: Youâre quite a writer. Youâve a gift for language, youâre a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. Youâre so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?
Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and Iâm feeling quite amiable. Thatâs why youâre still alive. I think youâd have to explain to me why youâve asked that question.
O: Itâs a rather ghettoized genre.
P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every bookâ I think Iâve done twenty in the seriesâ since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. Iâve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.
O: Itâs certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.
P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy.
Guys sitting around the campfireâ Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized itâ Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy.
Back in the middle ages, people wouldnât have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrimâs Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply nowâ a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connectionsâ Thatâs fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.
Now I donât know what youâd consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I donât think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim.
Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliverâs Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor.
So what youâre saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! Iâve got a serious novel. But you donât actually have to do that.
(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
ZenGM - simulate sports
Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
since this post blew up, i've been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there's a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.
anyway, here's all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it's a great mixture of styles. also don't forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.
Games
A Dark Room - text-based science fiction role-playing game.
corru.observer - science fiction adventure web game.
Improbable Island - old-school text adventure game.
Candy Box 2 - incremental clicker game that evolves into RPG.
Arcanum - open source wizard clicker game.
sandspiel, Powder Game, Powder Game 2, The Powder Toy - more sand physics games.
Orb.Farm - fishtank simulator.
Façade - experimental game with a real-time interactive narrative where you try to fix a failing marriage.
The Catacombs of Solaris - trippy art game.
Yume Nikki Online - online version of the surreal classic plus fangames.
The Barncle Goose Experiment - combine element/alchemy game based on antique theories of abiogenesis.
Fallen London - free-to-play text-based open world RPG.
Nested - very unique text-based universe expanding game. described as possibly @orteil42's favorite thing he's ever made.
The Process of Elimination - interactive web novel (by @hypertextdog)
Discworld MUD - multiplayer, text-based, online game (a MUD, or text MMORPG) based on the Discworld books.
Horse Master - surreal text game about training a horse.
EYEZMAZE - flash (RIP) or HTML5-based puzzle games.
You Are Jeff Bezos - text game. spend Jeff Bezos' fortune.
The Password Game - challenging puzzle game where you have to meet password requirements (by neal)
Universal Paperclips - incremental paperclip making game.
Half-Earth - planetary disaster planning game where you try to save the world using socialism.
ChooseYourStory - community-driven website centered on CYOA style story games.
PhD Simulator - random event based text game. make your choice each month and see if you can graduate on time.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - open source roguelike.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival roguelike set in the modern day.
Nethack - open source roguelike originally released in 1987.
FarmRPG - simple, mobile-friendly, text-based farming RPG.
Kingdom of Loathing - browser-based community MMORPG.
PokeRogue - browser-based Pokemon roguelike
Tools
Text Game Builder - works in your browser, with just a little bit of Python (by @grumpygandalf)
Twine - great (free!) tool for making text-based games quickly.
Ink - scripting language for interactive fiction (also free)
Flashpoint Archive - a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.
PICO-8 - fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.
Non-Games
Library of Babel - interactive illustration which attempts to simulate what it might be like to browse The Library of Babel.
Superbad - technically not a game, sprawling website full of secrets.
17776 - serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative about football in the far-future. beautiful, creative, legendary. created by Jon Bois, a legend and one of my favorite writers of all time.
Choice of Games - text-based, choose-your-own-adventure games (interactive fiction). some free-to-play, others can be bought like an ebook.
The Deep Sea - scroll to the bottom of the ocean. encounter the humble squid and his friends (by neal)
Space Elevator - like The Deep Sea, but up instead of down. you can equip your avatar with a scarf (by neal)
Internet Artifacts - an interactive history of the early internet (by neal)
If The Moon Were Only One Pixel - scroll through an accurately scaled model of the universe.
r/incremental_games - reddit community for incremental games.
r/WebGames - reddit community for web games in general.
thank you to everyone who contributed and the creators. please be sure to show them some love where possible.
T.H. White, in his 1958 retelling of the Arthurian legend in Once and Future King
Hypertext Literature
-by Addison Rizer
The rise, fall, and ever-morphing nature of hypertext literature.

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On originality in writing
Sometimes, I see people say that everything has already been written. That you cannot come up with anything new at all.
So I'm here to say that I don't agree.
Firstly: only you can write things from your perspective, even when at the same point of time as some of the best living writers. Even if it has already been done, no-one else can do it like you.
And secondly: If you dwell on core originality, maybe you need to know that it is not always about writing itself... and that to "write", the craft of writing can be blurred sometimes. Also, the ideas to create a new form can come out of where you least expected them.
To give examples of works I find fascinating:
Cain's Jawbone (Torquemada, 1934) = pages in a wrong order, reader has to solve a murder mystery while arranging the pages correctly.
Gadsby (Ernest Vincent Wright, 1939) = letter E never once used in the whole book.
Three of codes (Jonathan Safran Foer, 2010) = book in which there are holes in pages so that they create new meanings as you look at the whole
Trhlina (Jozef Karika, 2016) = hypertexts inside the book to make the reader doubt if the written is true or not
I Have Said Nothing (J. Yellowlees Douglas, 1994) - hypertext, can be cyclic, you can choose storylines... -> makes every reader have a different experience
S. (J J Abrams, Dough Dorst, 2013) - where the real story is actually about the notes on the side of the book's pages
bathroom poetry - been here since forever, hovever: Caitlin Cook took it to another level in Conversations with strangers
blackout poetry - transforming finished texts; my favourite ever example here
experimantal poetry - my favourite ever example from VĂĄclav Havel here
six-word stories - like: "Wrong number," said the familiar voice.
Then, there are stories only using one-syllabe words. Or stories in which all the words begin with the same letter and such... I find them fascinating, too.
...What kind of "weird" form of art do you like? :)
...
interesting bonus, which I no longer see as literature, however, as art, I find hilarious: NeoNio (Jim Andrews, 2001, 2021 - x) - electronic poetry in sound and visuals
âReading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I have accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.â â Norah Ephron.