A Quick Thing On Slytherins

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.

T O A D B U N S

Watercolor painting, trying to do a Hades and Persephone type thing.  Took me about an hour and a half, and I had a lot of fun doing it :)

sooo during this quarantine, i decided to listen to Dracula on audiobook while knitting a scarf because I am not capable of sitting still without my hands doing something lord help me.  it was good for the first hour and a half.  aaand now we are in the middle of an obscenely long rant about this random harbor and this one ship, and a girl just got proposed to three times on the same day, and yes i am enjoying it thoroughly still but can we get back to the vampires and fear part yet?  so confused.   

sooo..

i was able to find free arcane for those who want it

dm or comment in case this doesn't work so i can find another source or correct myself

the links ↴

the og post ↴

https://za.pinterest.com/pin/595812225743603577/

Imagine there being a grand piano in the Slytherin common room. Most of the young witches and wizards had private teachers or knew how to play so there would always be music playing. There was this unspoken rivalry between all the musicians to see who was the best. So without really ever talking to each other they pushed each other to play harder and harder pieces. One day someone who could not play the piano decided to learn and started surpassing most of the kids who could already play. This was the spark of an all out war of Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, etc. The students would start playing the same pieces as each other but remastered putting their own distinct styles into a score. Pretty soon they start composing their own works and melodies. They develop their own sound and that’s how others could identify the musician. There would be that one blonde third year who furiously tapped on the keys creating a dastardly echo of music. Or the portly “meathead” with a buzz cut who danced his finger tips across the piano like rocks skipping on water. Some even started to veer away from the classic era and experimented with Jazz, Ragtime, and the Blues. Slytherin was now the house of music.

It was all a mistake.  A misunderstanding.  Another day, another fight.  Except...this time Eclipse had won. The alleyway was dark, abandoned.  The girl ripped off her own mask, letting even more tears trace their paths down her face.  “Stay with me- no, don’t you dare.  Not now- not yet...”  She clutched the body of her love, shaking in horrible cries.  Small fires burned, not yet having burned themselves out.  The villain didn’t care if the coals burned her, what did it matter.  It had all been a game, of some sort or another.  They had started out as friends, and then she would merely pull pranks on him and he would do them back.  Until one day a line was crossed.  After all, when two people are special and have powers, eventually it all goes downhill.  Her sister died because of him.  She still remembered his stunned face, even through the mask.  He tried to say he was sorry, looked down horrified at himself.  He tried to make it better.  She shoved him away, snarling that she didn’t want any part in it.  Sorrow and anger were easier to justify than mercy and remorse.  That’s when it stopped being a game.  She wanted his death, and she had gotten it. 

There were times when she didn’t have to be different.  Days when she could just be herself.  Narah.  Days when she could just sit in a coffee shop and people watch, or walk her dog in the park, or attempt to do yoga for fun.  But when her sister died, someone new came into her life.

Ronan.  Tall.  Funny.  He had freckles on his nose that scrunched when he laughed, and red-gold hair.  They met at the funeral.  He had come up to her and said his condolences like everyone else.  She gave the same response as she gave anyone else and moved about the room.  But when they ran into each other again, in the park, that’s when something started.  He asked her how she was doing, and she was honest.  That was when their friendship started.  He was the only one who knew, truly knew who she was.  He found out when he knocked on the door of her apartment after she hadn’t talked to anyone, or left in days.  All of the rooms had ice dripping from them, drawing into their source.  Her.  She had been sobbing for days, her grief unquenchable.

As months went by, the line blurred between friend and lover.  They did everything together, and he knew all of her faults and loved her for it.  He never tried to stop her from fighting her nemesis.  Once, and only once, he asked her why. She stopped by his apartment and found him nursing a deep gash on his face.  He just said he got in a fight and left it at that.  But then, later on, while they were talking over coffee, he asked her softly why she fought her nemesis like she did. After a long time she answered, "Because if I don't, I feel like I will forget her."

But that was all gone, her future with him dripping through her fingers just like the blood did.  She pressed herself to him, clutching his body and curling into it.  Her sobs echoed against the stone in the ally, her body shaking.  

“Don’t go.... don’t leave me alone.”  

He didn’t answer.

Prompt #2090

“No,” they whimpered. “N-no, not you, anyone but you.” They slumped to their knees, cradled the hero’s face between the hands that had killed them. “I never knew- never even guessed- oh god, oh god. [Hero] was just my nemesis but I love you, loved you.” They choked on their own sobbing, their lover’s skin going cold under their fingers. “Don’t leave me, please, god, just don’t leave me-”

Past writing from other account

The lost things

      Amirah growled, digging through her leather satchel.  “Third time this week…”  She muttered angrily to herself.  “It cannot be gone!”  Her skirts were starting to get muddy from her hands being occupied elsewhere, but she could care less.  

     First her fan, then her favorite cloak, and now, the cherry on top of the cake,  her dance slippers.  Gone.  Vanished.  She closed the clasp on her satchel and swung it back over her shoulder, turning on her heel and walking back down the muddy streets towards home.

     “Mother won’t be happy…” She groaned at herself.  Mother was never happy, at least not with her.  With seven younger siblings, all of the maternal joy was gifted lavishly on them.  But Amirah, being the oldest, well, she was supposed to pull her own weight.

Keep reading

Classic Book Recommendations For Each Hogwarts House

Gryffindor

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Henry V by William Shakespeare

Beowulf

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Histories by Herodatus

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Hufflepuff

East of Eden by John Stenbeck

Othello by William Shakespeare

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

White Fang by Jack London

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Ravenclaw

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Odyssey by Homer

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Slytherin

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Dracula by Bram Stoker