magic

Through the Bottom of the World: A Choose-your-own-Speed Run (Introduction)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 33 Comments

(blurb)

A speed run is an attempt to beat a video game as fast as possible, for glory and personal satisfaction.  Speed reading a book has never carried quite the same appeal, but perhaps that can change, with the addition of choice.

Here is a challenge, set in a fantasy world based on the principles of the speed run, where you the reader must guide the protagonist to her destiny, and perhaps a world record time.  At crucial points you will have to make her decisions, and you should do so quickly, lest she careen into the void while waiting for you!

Through the Bottom of the World:

A Choose-your-own Speed Run

By

Blaine Arcade

Instructions

Even if you are familiar with speed runs, the subtitle of this piece of interactive fiction will likely confuse you some.  For those of you who aren’t familiar, a speed run is an attempt to complete the story campaign of a video game, or some subset of goals within a video game, in the shortest amount of time possible for a human player who is not using any machine or program to interfere with the game’s function. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Fifth Law of Mischief

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Prompt: An elf boy and his fairy boyfriend are abducted by aliens.

The leaves of the the shy shoot plant were supposed to be excellent cover. It was a magical bit of flora, utterly invisible to human beings and their mechanical lenses, but still solid enough to hide anything under it. All sorts of magical tribes had relied on the tree to act as either neutral ground in times of conflict or safe bunkers for secret keeping. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #2: Melody meets the Slatebrains

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Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring MelodyKazey

It had the distinction of being the quietest forest in all the world. Melody Korrespazey couldn’t even hear her footsteps. It was more than a month into autumn, the wind bit at her cheeks just over her thick orange scarf, so there should have been a healthy layer of crunchy leaves under her feet. Yet it was all yellow grass and whitish lichen. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 10

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Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

The minefield has been moved. It now connects the Trap to a new world, a new game. There is no destruction this time, nothing forcing them to flee. Only the brave, curious, and strange will take the journey. Who will step through the fog and face the myriad dangers of the field?

Three enter: Barton the frighteningly regular guy, Glint the polished talkative labradorite chunk, and the chaotic Man of Lines. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Growlchaser

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Prompt: A swords-woman wields an Eidolon-enchanted sword. The sword holds an array of powers.

Enish, daughter of the irrelevant Sir Nash, knew she was doomed to the same sort of history that plagued her family tree back to its roots. Observers, every last one of them. They’d never starred in portraits or tapestries, always relegated to the sidelines of the scene, their faces so tiny and simply in the paint or fabric that they looked deformed by awe or stupidity. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Needle was my Last Pen

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Prompt: A sad male poet secretly does magical needlepoint

I’m actually surprised I’m allowed to tell my own story here. I thought for sure he would’ve stopped me. Can he not make it past the veil? Truly? It does make a sort of sense. If my art can’t make it, if nobody’s can, then the force that opposes it is similarly kept out. Do you keep anything else out here? Sadness? Pain? A poet can hope. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Sweep the Shadows Under

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Prompt: A famous assassin will be publicly executed, overshadowing the sale of three slaves. A hooded woman buys these slaves and tells them she will let them free if they rescue her brother from his imminent execution.

Nobody could accuse the Royal Regents of not using their space economically. They only held a small section of that country, but nothing in their grip had a chance of slipping out, at least not until that cloudy day when all the knots had been made for the gallows. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Story One: The Pip Cages

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Author’s Note: This story is the culmination of our interactive activities over on our Twitch livestream.  Characters and their fates were partly decided based on audience participation.  Check out the earlier sessions if you wish to learn where these characters came from.

People often feel trapped in dreams. They sink into the ground, encounter locked doors, or become surrounded by shadowy figures. Sometimes it’s enough to pull one from sleep, sweating and clutching at their heart as if the nightmares tried to steal it out of their chest. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Wordener

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Prompt: A writer whose words create life in the real wold takes on a mentee.

Zachariah stared at the little window in the door, not removing his hands from the wood. He kept hissing at it, telling it to stop growing, but it wouldn’t. The strange plant crept up the glass inside the classroom, its leaved unfurling and bouncing. Once the room was full it would sneak under the door, spread its tendrils across the hall. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Character Guide

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This post exists as a guide to the full roster of twenty characters to make it through our interactive fiction activities over on twitch.tv/blainearcade.  The characters were auctioned off to people who acted as the character’s ‘saint’, influencing the character’s future.  Each character was also placed in a squad by their saint, detailing their role in our big on-stream stories and determining the level of risk they faced. Continue reading →