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.

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.

run away with me

Steve stares numbly out the office window, his view an ocean of concrete and the few sad, sparse trees that were planted in the median between this building’s parking lot and the neighboring one in a very weak attempt to give an illusion that anything natural or organic goes on here. As if there’s anything more than stiff, soulless buildings filled with stiff, soulless men in stiff, soulless suits who have dull conversations about money and more empathy for a credit card or an expensive car than for any human being. 

Every second is hours long, everything is so important and nothing matters at all, and everyone’s always in a rush but they never seem to go anywhere. It used to make his skin crawl, the slow monotony behind the urgent droning. He used to feel like he couldn’t breathe here, trapped at a desk and a computer, squirming under the constant presence of his boss and father, every eternal second oozing by and settling over him as if it had physical weight. He felt stuck and still, like a fly caught in amber, movements leaden and pointless as he sinks and suffocates slowly in a syrupy prison. But after a year of working here, Steve no longer cares. He’s sunk in deep enough that it’s all dulled out and he’s become just as detached and hollow as the rest of them. He tells himself it’s only temporary anyways.

The phone rings at his desk, dragging his attention away from the window and pulling him out of his stupor. 

“Richard Harrington’s office,” Steve answers mechanically. “This is his assistant, Steve. How may I help you?” 

It's a client, a long-time one who's been around for business meetings and dinners since he was a kid, and she coos over how mature and professional he sounds now. He gets that a lot, old clients and business partners of his dad’s calling or coming into the office and lavishing him with compliments on his role and responsibility. It’s funny; they never thought so highly of him before, but they sure do now. And despite it all, Steve can’t help but preen under the praise, feeling all grown up and just like a child. 

He lets this lady gush for a little while longer before he takes her message for Richard and hangs up the phone. That brief moment of emotion flickers out and the dullness returns. The day drags on. 

“Thank god it’s Friday, huh?” Tommy Hagan leans against the counter in the break room when Steve goes to get a coffee refill. “I had to file so many reports today, I’m about ready to kill myself.” 

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Steve mutters, punching the button to start the coffee machine.

“You’re still coming out with us tonight, right?” Tommy asks. “My cousin’s in town - you know, the one I told you about, the model. I think you two are really gonna get along.” He says it with this gross smirk, double meaning abundantly clear, and Steve rolls his eyes. 

“Dude, stop trying to pimp your cousin out to me, man. You talk her up so much I’m starting to think maybe you want her.”

“But you’ll be there, yeah?” 

“Yeah, I’ll be there,” Steve says. Of course he’ll be there. It’s routine. It’s all routine. They commiserate in the break room like a couple of wizened old world-weary businessmen on workdays and then party like teenagers on the weekend. Dulled out from the week, they buy back their missing emotion in the form of alcohol and drugs. A good buzz makes a decent substitute for a feeling, in a pinch. It’s just enough to survive on week after week. 

“Good.” Tommy grins, clapping Steve on the shoulder on his way out. 

Steve grabs his coffee and returns to his desk, to phone calls and faxes and data entry until the clock finally hits 5:00 and releases everyone into the illusion of freedom. He breathes an empty sigh of relief along with everyone else, shutting off the computer and shoving files back into folders, packing up to leave. “Tell your mother I’ll be working late tonight,” Richard tells him, and Steve nods. Nothing ever changes. 

It's quite a shock to the normal routine of things, then, when he pulls up to his driveway to find an extra car parked out front. Which wouldn't be unusual on its own - his mom sometimes has friends over on Fridays - except for the fact that this car is a total piece of shit, which rules out any friend of his parents, and there's a wild-haired man leaning against it. It's the sight of that old once familiar face that's so jarring to him, has him hitting the brakes too hard and parking jerkily.  

Steve gets out of his car and stares in disbelief. “Eddie Munson.” 

Okay, but.... How do you think we learned to use the computer? That we graduated in computer school after training it from birth???

Some of us may have learned it at school, but I'm pretty sure the majority of us learned using it. Not searching on Google, but actually doing something stupid and suffering to correct it. We live through viruses, spams, malwares, floppy disks, and a lot more horrible things.

There are things you won't learn while asking anyone, you have to go through it by yourself.

(This post is brought to you by the fact that tumblr are, hilariously, claiming that 50% of current users are gen z, and i wanna see how accurate claim that is.)

y’all expose yourselves and take this fanfic test i was just forced to by an irl so now i’m making you too

In my weak defense I’m in a lot of smaller or old fandoms and you take what you get. Also i don’t usually use the exclude option and i love when the crack is treated seriously.

[Image ID: Tumblr tag reading: #prev 20 is Wild i don't wanna see ur ao3 history that's between u and god /End ID]

There are two types of writers:

1. 'It's fiction, it doesn't need to make sense!'

2. 'I didn't account for the rotation of the planet and how that affects the constalations while my characters stargazed at different times of year, I have failed as a writer, and this entire thing is trash'

Written for @steddiesportsau.

Read the Coverage

Prompt #1: Friday Night Lights | Word Count: 2771 | Rating: T | CW: Language | Tags: Pre-Steddie, S2 Canon Divergence/Mild AU, Football Player Steve Harrington, Hawkins High School Football, Let It Be Known: Eddie Munson Did Not Sign Up For This Willingly

Also on ao3.

It was only supposed to be an unfairly issued punishment for a bullshit charge of attempted destruction of school property. The old, if you want to mess with the school's footballs so bad, then maybe you should be on the team nonsense that only a smooth-brained coach could cook up.

An ultimatum to either suck it up and accept the forced task of throwing practice passes to the JV losers, or be suspended, all but guaranteeing himself a third senior year. All because Coach Watkins saw Eddie snag a football from one of the asshole jocks, cock his arm, and send it flying into the trees in a nice spiral Uncle Wayne had taught him as a kid. Back before it was quite so blatantly obvious that sports weren't gonna be an interest in his life. 

Now, months later, he's having a helmet shoved on his head mid-game because Carver, the asshole starting quarterback, is being carted off the field. Knee blown out.

Two minutes ago, Eddie was reading a book on the bench. Now, Steve Harrington is pulling Eddie's jersey off his back, shoving a pair of pads into them, before demanding he put his arms up. 

He does, not sure what other option he really has at this point. Harrington yanks the jersey down over his head, settling the pads onto his shoulders, then slides his hands under Eddie's jersey. Eddie hears the click, and feels Steve yank them tight. Too tight. 

They're not really gonna make him play football in an actual game, are they? That's absurd.

"You should've been padded up," Harrington says, and then pats Eddie's thighs. Eddie is wearing his bottom pads, but if he wasn't, would Steve Harrington try to strip his pants off him too? "Why weren't you dressed out?"

"Uh, I don't really play," he starts, but Steve Harrington, the only remaining captain on the field, is too busy dressing him before they have to resume play. 

remember when it used to be so fun to just fuck around with the settings on the computer? changing the background, screen saver, giving yourself a little rubber duck icon, cursors

I don’t know why that affected me so strongly, but I’m watching a youtube video on disasters on Lake Huron, and the first one involves a coal freighter that was lost in the White Hurricane of 1913 called the SS Argus. Everyone on the ship was lost. But it’s mentioned that the captain’s body washed up later, and was found without a life jacket. So they thought, based partly on testimony of another ship that thought they saw them go down, that it just happened too fast for him to have time to get his jacket. But then another body was found, that of the second cook, and she was found wearing the life jacket marked ‘captain’. And that’s …

It didn’t work. It didn’t save her. But it’s so very possible that he spent his last moments alive trying to save someone else, one of his crew, and they probably both knew that it wouldn’t work, that there wasn’t a lot of hope in a blizzard on the lakes in November, but he tried … he tried anyway. Even if it did nothing but maybe make her body easier for her family to find.

You know that Mr Rogers thing of ‘look for the helpers’? How many times has someone, facing the end, done something tiny and fragile and maybe hopeless just to try and help someone else? Whether it works or not. How many people went to their graves at least trying?

That has to say something about us. As a people. As monstrous as we sometimes (perhaps often) are, so many times we were also …

Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.

And sometimes you can’t save one life, sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes there’s no getting out of this for anyone, but … try anyway. Because it matters anyway.

And maybe no one will ever know. But maybe also some day more than a century down the line, maybe some idiot will be crying into her coffee because of what you died trying.

first line.

All Eddie’s ever wanted is to play hockey. 

Sports have never really been his thing, not in the general sense that they seem to be for most athletes, but hockey? 

Yeah, hockey’s definitely his thing. 

Maybe it’s the sense of belonging, maybe it’s the fighting, maybe it’s just the fun of strapping blades to his feet and zipping around the ice like he’s still ten years old again with Wayne telling him to slow the fuck down. 

Or, maybe it’s the chemistry that he’s never seen anywhere else, specifically his chemistry with Steve Harrington. 

Okay, that can’t be the reason he’s always wanted to play hockey because he only meets Steve during their time together on the Saginaw Spirit, but it certainly doesn’t help sway him to other avenues. He doesn't expect for them to hit it off the way they do— Steve is a certified Sports Guy, a multi-sport athlete who had his pick of the pros and chose hockey over both baseball and basketball— but then Steve cracks the glass off of Eddie’s pass at their first practice together and breaks the ice, so to speak. 

There’s a running joke that the OHL is a little bit of a cult and Eddie can’t deny that claim,  so when he and Steve end up attached at the hip, no one questions them for a full two seasons. 

Two seasons of carpools to the rink, alternating playlists, and memorizing each others’ coffee orders. Two seasons of being seatmates on the plane, of weird little rituals, of pregame naps with Eddie as the little spoon that Eddie maybe enjoys a bit too much. Two seasons of being roommates in just about every hotel across the OHL, of being actual roommates who celebrate every win and suffer every loss together just hoping for their chance. 

It all comes to a screeching halt when Steve’s selected second overall in a loaded draft class, and the only surprise as far as Eddie's concerned is that Steve doesn't go first overall.

↳ read the rest of first line. here on ao3!

Just asked my husband to create an app or website to replace NaNoWriMo (jokingly), expecting him to lol and leave it at that. Instead he says, ‘what shall we call it? SteddieWriMo?’ And I’m obsessed. So this November I’m doing SteddieWriMo, yeah boi!

Okay this has grown legs. Husband is a Webdev and is setting up a site for me, forum and tracker and badges, because he knows I miss the badges 🤣. Would anyone other than me be interested in this? I know we can do discord servers but honestly I’m not a fan, I miss ye olde forums. I’ll still do this by myself, I’m so excited for badges though!

via

?????? rich people are losing it