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Category Archives: prose
Lydia’s Night Out
Lydia stroked her chin thoughtfully. “I hope that I have used the correct knots,” she said, out loud, to herself.
The Betsy Morrison Story
a Twitter novel
by Ryan Veeder
copyright Ryan Veeder MMXVII
The wind blew across the elementary school playground. It blew the orange leaves up against the wire fence. The leaves rustled.
Betsy Morrison wrote in her diary.
“I am a twelve-year-old girl,” she wrote, “the wisest creature upon Earth. I understand the languages of birds, the ebb and flow of the seasons, the past and the future and the space beyond time. Today is my birthday, and I am twelve years old.
“We went to Garbaggio’s Pizzeria for my birthday over the weekend because it was Uncle Boscoe’s birthday last week and we celebrated them at the same time but my REAL birthday is today,” Betsy continued to write, leaves swirling around her ankles, “and I am perfect among humans.”
UNCOVERED: Crocodracula!
UPDATE OCTOBER 30: YOU CAN PLAY THIS GAME. But read below so you know what the deal is:
If you’re the right age then you definitely remember Crocodracula, the terrifying soap opera for kids from the early nineties. If you’re too old, or too young, or your parents (wisely???) prevented you from watching, the show was a lot like Land of the Lost, but in a kind of modern gothic horror mode instead of cavemen and dinosaurs. I’ve also heard it described as “Dark Shadows for tweens” but I don’t know how accurate that assessment is.
HOWEVER, even nineties kids don’t necessarily remember that there was at least one Crocodracula computer game, released by Taleframe in 1991. I say “at least one” because the title, “Crocodracula: What Happened to Calvin,” makes it sound like they were at least planning to release other games, possibly based on other episodes/story arcs from the show. It’s hard to tell. Crocodracula information is really hard to come by for some reason.
The point is, I now have a copy of this game.
Halloween Zeen 2017
BEWARE: The new Halloween Zeen is out!
A lot of really cool people contributed a lot of really cool stuff to this year’s Zeen. Plus there is a board game that I didn’t do a very good job of designing. BUT THE OTHER STUFF IS RAD. CHECK IT OUT.
Luddites of Gich, Part 3
“It was those luddites,” Heldeb grumbled. “They’ve got themselves some new old-fashioned contraption. An impossibly loud one.”
These remarks were directed toward a nebrium-plated breakfast droid, which, detecting Heldeb’s frustration, extended two shiny pseudopods to rub his temples.
Luddites of Gich, Part 2
By degrees the sunlight reached through an unprismed habi-dome window, illuminating an analog selenometer: Piv, waxing crescent; Hed, third quarter; Fewkalek, waxing gibbous. Then the sun shone on the edge of an old-fashioned bed, with old-fashioned Cadëxial silk sheets over an old-fashioned eidetic foam mattress. Tangled in the sheets were two old-fashioned data enthusiasts.
Radix awoke first.
Luddites of Gich, Part 1
Vilt landed his ungraceful vessel with a veteran freighter’s careful hand, despite the relative worthlessness of his cargo. It was midnight on the planet Gich.
“Are we there yet?” squawked the cargo. It was a long-outmoded data entry robot, purchased on the interplanetary vintage robot exchange by a pair of Gichian luddite data enthusiasts. Its designation was ¶‡◊.
Dungeons & Dragons: Alan Smith Returns to Ravenloft
It is not usually possible for our D&D group to play in person, because we all live in different places and one of us lives in Australia. But this weekend, the stars aligned, so to speak, and almost all of us were in the same place at the same time. I took the opportunity to run an adventure that had the same epic stakes as our epic meetup.
That’s me in the WINONA RYDER IN EDWARD SCISSOR-HANDS shirt.
Unfortunately, to tell you that story, I have to give you some background information.
Procedural Generation of Dinosaurs in Inform 7
On the latest episode of Clash of the Type-Ins, we played my game The Island of Doctor Wooby. The game deals with an island populated by teensy felt dinosaurs, which are a passion of mine.
