So I Thought This Was Commonly Known Internet Navigation (but Apparently It Might Just Be Those Of Us

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.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

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.

A skeleton crew doesn't mean a site is going away (though it likely won't get updates and bugs/outages will take longer to fix), but just in case anyone is concerned, here's a link to instructions to download your entire blog

New Things to Beware on the Internet

On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.

Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.

Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".

This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.

What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.

Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.

This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.

What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.

I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.

Be cautious out there.

is google insane or did it forget about the legal right to ablocking lol. are they trying to challenge the EU? bc they're not going to win that one. europe doesnt think this shit is cute

ive been flicking settings and programs on and off and updating drivers and shit trying to get youtube to load faster but it's being artificially throttled by google bc im using firefox

like. did they forget what antitrust suits are

Here's uBlock Origin's official guide to bypassing youtube's anti-adblock popups, updated weekly. Please share widely. Don't reward google for their predatory anti-consumer bullshit

To summarize: 1. Get uBlock Origin and make sure it's updated to the latest version. 2. Click on the gear icon to get to the dashboard, go to "Filter lists", and make sure that "uBlock filters - Quick fixes" is up to date

Repeat those steps any time you get another popup (google and uBlock are having an arms race right now so it might stop working at any moment), and if you have any more problems, read the reddit thread for troubleshooting advice

“Tenochtitlan,” by Elisa Chavez.

Cortes’ men thought the Mexica’s floating city must be a dream: stone temples jutting from the water, voracious bright gardens and grand estates.

My sun-worshipping ancestors kept their gods close, heeded their rapt whispers. In their names, they built marvelous canals and walked on the waters.

It shouldn’t then surprise that artists have tried to recapture Tenochtitlan, brooding on the dream journals of Spaniards: they imagine her bright causeways, the lush gardens paving her streets like enchantments.

The Spanish, steely god-mongers that they were, knew well how to deal with enchantment: They burned Tenochtitlan to ash.

Leí que los Mexica ahogaban a mujeres de cercanos pueblos para apaciguar a la diosa de las lluvias. Su templo mayor tenía dos estantes de cráneos.

Mis antepasados que adoraban al sol mantenían a sus dioses cerca, escuchando a sus voces rapaces. En sus nombres, perpetraban maravillas y atrocidades.

No debe sorprender entonces que los pueblos a fuera de Tenochtitlan les daron la bienvenida a cualquiera que prometiera un final al sol cruel, las flores mentirosas, los aguas pavimentados con los huesos de tributas.

El dios de los Hispanos fue el oro, y él les mandó a quemar Tenochtitlan, enviándola para reunirse con las doncellas ahogadas.

Is this translation inaccurate? You bet! Miss Translated is a meditation on culture, identity, and the things that get lost in translation by Elisa Chavez. To support this project, check out my Patreon.

How to write a kiss scene

requested by: anon request: How do I write a good kiss scene? As how do I describe it? What details or words would make it good?

What goes into the writing of a kiss scene?

details to incorporate:

the sensations in their stomach, their chest, and their knees

the way their breathing changes shortly before the kiss

the feeling of the other's hands

the texture of the other's clothing

the moment they realise they've reached the point of no return

the feeling they're left with after the kiss

words to use...

... to describe the kiss:

tentative

tender

hesitant

quick

soft

gentle

delicate

languid

feathery

familiar

exploring

hungry

heated

fiery

frantic

impatient

sloppy

messy

aggressive

... to describe how they feel about the kiss:

nervous

excited

giddy

anxious

apprehensive

ambiguous

surprised

reassured

certain

confident

relieved

eager

greedy

... to show what the lips do:

exploring each other

brushing over each other

locking

devouring

touching

sealing

pressing against each other

capturing

lapping

tasting

crushing together

travelling (the other's body)

trailing (down to the other's chin)

grinning into the kiss

caressing

lingering

... to show how their body reacts:

feeling warm all over

buzzing

humming

pumping/palpitating heart

clenching lungs

joy bubbling up

tingly stomach

warm chest

burning cheeks

sweaty palms

blood rushing through their veins

... to describe what their hands are doing:

tangling in their lover's hair

wrapping their arms around their lover's neck

intertwining their fingers with their lover

resting on their lover's hips

pressing into their lover's shoulder blades

cupping their lover's cheeks

touching their lover's chin

curling their arm around their lover's waist

resting on their lover's shoulders

grabbing their lover's collar

sneaking up under their lover's shirt

brushing over their lover's bare skin

lightly squeezing their lover's butt

focus on:

the sensations instead of what's physically happening. (the protagonists might very well not know themselves what is happening exactly, but they feel very precisely)

I hope this helps <3

for writers new to AO3—you know how people sometimes leave comments in their bookmarks? did you know you can search for other people’s bookmarks of your own fic, so that you can view them all at once and don’t have to manually go through each fic’s individual bookmarks page? and even better, if you don’t want to figure out the search parameters for that, you can just go to this handy lil web page;

Fandom Stats

AO3 Bookmark Viewer

AO3 Bookmark Viewer

^ just enter your username, click the second box for ‘bookmarks with notes only’, and there u go. all* bookmarks of your fics with comments in one easy to view space

*obviously private bookmarks won’t show, but it also won’t show bookmarks that only have added tags and no comment

For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

summary: Bruce

summary: "Bruce Banner"

summary: Bruce OR summary: Banner OR summary: Hulk

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use expected_number_of_chapters: -1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

otp:true will return results where there is only 1 relationship tag on the fic. If you want results where there are 2+ relationship tags (and no fics with only 1 relationship tag) then you can use otp:false