People Are Always Like “are You A Morning Person Or A Night Person” And I’m Just Like Buddy I’m

Welcome to The Rosebush

Welcome! We’re very happy to announce the preliminary launch of The Rosebush, a new online magazine for interactive fiction theory and criticism. The purpose of this preliminary launch is to let the interactive fiction community know that we exist, and to invite submissions. We hope to begin publishing early this summer, perhaps in June.

Learn more below, or you can also read this post on our website.

What is The Rosebush?

The Rosebush will be a free online magazine dedicated to publishing longer form articles about interactive fiction. The interactive fiction community already has well-established channels for reviews of individual games, and several people have well-read blogs, but we’ve been lacking a good platform for in-depth analyses, theory articles, discussions of craft, interviews, historical pieces, and so on. The Rosebush aims to be this platform. It will publish substantial articles that increase our understanding of interactive fiction, from individual works to design patterns, community structures and historical trends. The intended audience consists of both players and authors of IF.

What is the scope of the magazine?

Interactive fiction is a term with many uses. The focus of The Rosebush lies on digital works in which a player interacts with a pre-written story where text is the main medium. In particular, The Rosebush will publish about both parser-based and choice-based interactive fiction. While tabletop role playing games, computer role playing games, visual novels, and choose-your-own-adventure books are also interactive fictions in a sense of that term, they are not our primary topic.

Most of the organisers of The Rosebush come from the communities around the Interactive Fiction Competition, the Spring Thing, the IFDB, and so on; but we explicitly also intend to publish about the works of adjacent communities, such as the ChoiceScript community and the retro text adventure community.

What is the magazine looking for?

Articles! See the submissions page for the detailed call for articles. It is possible to either submit a pitch, which we will check to see whether the topic is suitable for The Rosebush, or an article. Links to submission forms can also be found on the submissions page.

What does The Rosebush offer authors?

Most importantly, a place for disseminating your articles. The Rosebush will maintain its website and ensure that all articles are also stored on the IF Archive, the best guarantee for perpetual availability in the current world of interactive fiction. In addition, the editorial team will work with you on your article, which can range from simple spelling/grammar editing to more substantial ideas and feedback on improving your piece.

The Rosebush is an entirely volunteer effort. There are no plans to offer a monetary compensation to authors of articles.

Who are we?

The editorial team currently consists of:

Aster Fialla (se/er)

Benjamin Slade (he/they)

Daniel Stelzer (they/them)

Drew Cook (he/him)

Josh Grams (he/him)

Kiana Lee (she/her)

Lisa Fox (she/her)

Mike Preston (he/him)

Mike Russo (he/him)

Victor Gijsbers (he/him)

Zee (they/them)

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

24 Invaluable Skills To Learn For Free Online This Year

Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general. 

1. Become awesome at Excel.

Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?

2. Learn how to code.

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Perhaps no other skill you can learn for free online has as much potential to lead to a lucrative career. Want to build a site for your startup? Want to build the next big app? Want to get hired at a place like BuzzFeed? You should learn to code. There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.

3. Make a dynamic website.

You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful (but not necessarily required if you’re patient with yourself).

4. Learn to make a mobile game.

If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could trythis course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience! If you want to make a truly great game, you might want to read/listen up on Game Theory first.

5. Start reading faster.

Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.

6. Learn a language!

With Duolingo, you can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or English (from any of the above or more). There’s a mobile app and a website, and the extensive courses are completely free.

Full disclosure: BuzzFeed and other websites are in a partnership with DuoLingo, but they did not pay or ask for this placement.

7. Pickle your own vegetables.

Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.

8. Improve your public speaking skills.

You can take the University of Washington’s Intro to Public Speaking for free online. Once you learn a few tricks of the trade, you’ll be able to go into situations like being asked to present at a company meeting or giving a presentation in class without nearly as much fear and loathing.

9. Get a basic handle of statistics.

UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased “news” article the same way again — 100% of authors of this post agree!

10. Understand basic psychology.

Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.

11. Make your own music.

Step one: Learn how to play guitar: Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar — from there, it’s up to you, but once you know the basics, just looking up tabs for your favorite songs and learning them on your own is how many young guitar players get their start (plus it’s an excellent party trick).

Step two: A delightful free voice lesson from Berklee College Of Music.

Step three: Have you always thought you had an inner TSwift? Berklee College of Music offers an Introduction to Songwriting course completely for free online. The course is six weeks long, and by the end of the lesson you’ll have at least one completed song.

Step four: Lifehacker’s basics of music production will help you put it all together once you have the skills down! You’ll be recording your own music, ready to share with your valentine or the entire world, in no time!

12. Learn to negotiate.

Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.

13. Stop hating math.

If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL. Very helpful!

14. Start drawing!

All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)

15. Make your own animated GIF.

BuzzFeed’s own Katie Notopoulos has a great, simple guide to making an animated GIF without Photoshop. This is all you need to be the king or queen of Tumblr or your favorite email chains.

16. Appreciate jazz.

reddit.com

Have you never really “gotten” jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.

17. Write well.

Macalester College’s lecture series is excellent. If you’re more interested in journalism, try Wikiversity’s course selection.

18. Get better at using Photoshop.

Another invaluable skill that will get you places in your career, learning Photoshop can be as fun as watching the hilarious videos on You Suck At Photoshop or as serious as this extensive Udemy training course (focused on photo retouching).

19. Take decent pictures.

Lifehacker’s basics of photography might be a good place to start. Learn how your camera works, the basic of composition, and editing images in post-production. If you finish that and you’re not sure what to do next, here’s a short course on displaying and sharing your digital photographs.

20. Learn to knit.

Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!

21. Get started with investing in stocks.

If you are lucky enough to have a regular income, you should start learning about savings and investment now. Investopedia has a ton of online resources, including this free stocks basics course. Invest away!

22. Clean your house in a short amount of time.

Unf$#k Your Habitat has a great emergency cleaning guide for when your mother-in-law springs a surprise visit on you. While you’re over there, the entire blog is good for getting organized and clean in the long term, not just in “emergencies.” You’ll be happier for it.

23. Start practicing yoga.

Most cities have free community classes (try just searching Google or inquiring at your local yoga studio), or if you’re more comfortable trying yoga at home, YogaGlohas a great 15-day trial and Yome is a compendium of 100% free yoga videos. If you’re already familiar with basic yoga positions but you need an easy way to practice at home, I recommend YogaTailor’s free trial as well.

24. Tie your shoelaces more efficiently.

It’s simple and just imagine the minutes of your life you’ll save!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvSEeQWJfeT/

I was walking through the toy aisle at Target when I found this thing and had a VIOLENT AND IMMEDIATE FLASHBACK to when JP first came out and they had a bunch of REALLY COOL T Rex toys that I would have sold one of my scrawny small-child limbs for but my mother wouldn’t get me one because they were “too violent and also ate people” :(

Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966)

Honor Amongst Thieves (WIP) — UPDATED 4/10/2023

Finally an update! Play it HERE!

It's been awhile, but it feels good to get back writing again and to get the wheels of this story back in motion!!

This update is laying the groundwork for some stuff, but I hope y'all still enjoy it!

In this update y'all have a guild to check on and a Papa Duck to listen to, not to mention some thieving to plan...

Once again, thank y'all for your patience and I hope you enjoy!

(Let me know what breaks and Happy Easter!!)

FORUM ~ KOFI ~ PATREON

What Happens:

Get some one on one time with Vanessa and Charlie, chat with Theo or Izzie, potentially have a sneaky kiss with someone else, watch a budding relationship fall apart (maybe yours does, too) and have time with your partner before bed.

Word Count:

Total of 175k words (+38k words), the longest twine chapter yet - I was hoping there would be a bit more content, but the chapter ended up being a bit of a monster as it was.

Game Summary:

Welcome to Summer of Love. You and nine other singles will enter a luxury villa and couple up, spending a month in each other’s company, along with a few extras along the way – you’ll live together, eat together, sleep together, and hopefully, fall in love together. Sound familiar? Thought so – but instead of coupling ceremonies being split by boys and girls as is typical in shows like these, the public will be the ones deciding the order of who gets to pick, and as the cast is an all-bi one, you can pick whoever you like, so long as they haven’t already been picked. At the end of the month, the most popular couple could win as much as £500,000, depending on what challenges you win or lose and how well you win over the public. As for the other couples? As there are no dumpings, everyone has the potential to find love, and those in exclusive relationships by the end could also win as much as £100,000 per couple. So, how much you win is entirely down to you. Ready for your summer of love to begin?

Play chapters 1-6 on Itch.io now!

Skin & Scales: Chapter One is NOW AVAILABLE

Thank you so so much to everyone who has been so supportive, welcoming, and patient with me these past few months, I’m very pleased to bring you the first opening chapter of Skin & Scales! Please enjoy! I’ll be following the tag #S&S IF but as always my ask box is open for feedback!

PLAY NOW

In this chapter:

- Meet 3 2 of the 4 RO’s!

- Get recruited into the King Institute

- Start your investigation

- Eat some bar fries

- Get thrown off a moving train

- And more!

Content Warnings for this chapter:

- Depictions of violence

- Depictions of anxiety

- Intense migraine depictions

- Talks and displays of prejudice and dehumanization

Wordcount: 76k

I love when ancient poets talk about how doomed & hubristic seafaring is. like yess lets surpass our natural limitations and travel to unknown places. let's test the boundaries between life and death with our human ambition. let's shipwreck ourselves and bring nothing but grief and tragedy to human history with our overstep. this is so sexy