{"id":327,"date":"2014-01-16T22:50:09","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T04:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/?p=327"},"modified":"2014-01-17T17:14:41","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T23:14:41","slug":"text-adventure-news-and-the-perfect-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/2014\/01\/16\/text-adventure-news-and-the-perfect-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"Text Adventure “News” AND: The Perfect Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I revamped the Interactive Fiction<\/a>\u00a0section, adding separate pages for each game, because it pleased me to do so. You might go ahead and check out the new format, in a spare moment.<\/p>\n

Now, if you never saw the old version of the Interactive Fiction section, you may think that you’ve missed out on something. I assure you that you have not, but I understand your feelings regardless. Let me make it up to you by reproducing a novel I composed on my phone last Friday night:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Perfect Horse.<\/em><\/h1>\n
A Twitter Novel. Copyright Ryan Veeder 2014.<\/h5>\n

A horse was born in Utah in 1989. She had no idea of her amazing destiny.<\/p>\n

The horse’s owner named her Clarriene. He was a horrible man. He ground Clarriene’s mother into dog food and glue, and smiled as he did so.<\/p>\n

He said he’d do the same to Clarriene! But she was too perfect to stay with that awful man. She jumped over a 30-foot fence and escaped.<\/p>\n

Clarriene galloped across America to the city of Iowa City, Iowa, where she joined a circus. She jumped over fences, and balanced on a ball.<\/p>\n

Did she fall off of any ball? No. Did she kick any child in the neck? No. She was perfect.<\/p>\n

The people who saw Clarriene perform were better people after they had seen her, because they had seen a perfect horse.<\/p>\n

I saw Clarriene perform at the circus. I cried.<\/p>\n

The manager of the circus told Clarriene that the show was leaving town.<\/p>\n

“Will you come with us?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“Yes,” said Clarriene.<\/p>\n

“Where are we headed?” asked Clarienne.<\/p>\n

The manager said, “Utah.”<\/p>\n

A chill crept across Clarienne’s horizontal spine.<\/p>\n

Clarienne galloped sadly back across the nation to her ancestral home, the salt-choked wasteland that men call Utah.<\/p>\n

She performed in the circus as best she could in that climate. She performed perfectly. The people of Utah had never known such beauty.<\/p>\n

One day a man came to the circus. He was the mother-grinding owner of the horrible horse ranch. He fixed Clarriene with a hateful stare.<\/p>\n

“I own your bod,” he rasped, “and my legal right is to convert it to glue.” He said these words to Clarriene. She shuddered.<\/p>\n

But the clowns and elephants of the circus, Clarriene’s loyal friends, set upon the man with hands and tusks, and saved Clarriene from him.<\/p>\n

They killed that horse-hater, and buried him in Utah’s salty soil, where no worms would grind his bod into meat.<\/p>\n

The perfection of Clarriene remained unsullied.<\/p>\n

The circus manager protected his employees from prosecution by scattering them across the nation. That circus exists now only in memory.<\/p>\n

But whither Clarriene? I cannot say. I hope that she is happy; I hope that she still balances on a ball and improves the lives of others.<\/p>\n

There is one thing I do know. I know that every horse I have seen since I saw Clarriene was not Clarriene. No other horse is perfect.<\/p>\n

Clarriene is perfect; all other horses are imperfect. But, then, I am imperfect as well.<\/p>\n

…Or am I?<\/p>\n

THE END<\/h1>\n

Copyright Ryan Veeder MMXIV<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I revamped the Interactive Fiction\u00a0section, adding separate pages for each game, because it pleased me to do so. You might go ahead and check out the new format, in a spare moment. Now, if you never saw the old version of the Interactive Fiction section, you may think that you’ve missed out on something. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jokes","category-prose","category-text-adventures","category-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}