Back to obsession – Interactive fiction — It’s pitch dark in here.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Studio Chaotic, a dark corridor

It is pitch dark in here.

Or is it? No, you see something; there is a flickering light ahead, growing brighter for each step.

Listen. A rustling, an offbeat percussion, a disharmonic pan flute.
Smell. Your nostrils flare, mouth crumples in disgust from the sour cold stink of fear, your own fear.
Run. You can’t go that way.
Look. There is a desk. On the desk is your doom. A pile of something. Papers in a frayed uneven pile sit in the centre of the desk. The type on the top sheet is dense and crooked. You step closer.



You reach with trembling fingers. The letters shiver as if sensing you drawing nearer. they blurr and rearrange themselves on the dusty page. The first few pages stirr restlessly, then the entire pile of tightly typed code shudder, the top sheet rises slowly toward your touch. You quickly place your palm on the pile and try to hold it in place as it starts moving more violently. You press down hard but there is nothing you can do. A cloud of dust emits from the neglected pages and surround your head. Holding the struggling papers down with one hand, you cough and choke, wiping grime and grit out of your eyes. It’s no use. There is no stopping the thing that will happen. No hope of reprieve. No end in sight.

You take a deep harsh breath, pulling swirling dust into your lungs. You grimace and spit but then you suddenly relax. You have known a long time that this day would come. “Ok, damn it.” You sputter in resignation. The air clears and the pile of inform 6 classes, objects, and endless hours of troubleshooting settles down. Grinding your teeth you slowly move your hand and hiss at the disgustingly selfsatisfied bundle of code. “Ok, ok, fine, you win. You win you little bastard, I’ll do it.”

Interactive fiction – another obsession

I knew the day would come when i would get a great idea. I have that idea now. I’ve started a bit cautiously to build the world I want to create, the characters i want to breathe life into, the types of objects, classes, files that need to be modified, adapted, or created in addition to the main source code.

It doesn’t even have a name yet, this game. the temporary work name I’ve assigned though is:

Frustrations

It is so named partly because of the initial scene in the game, and partly because I know the work that is ahead of me. It’s not just writing a simple inform game. I couldn’t settle with that. The first game Crystal and stone, beetle and bone, proves that I am unable to keep it simple. In CSBB I had one character, commanded in third person, who had three different states of self. Yes. Each action had three different responses. then if you add that this character had a companion that would or would not follow the MC depending on the state, would or would not follow commands given to it depending on the state of the MC, as well as several important characters that followed the MC around the game. Alternative ending? Yes, that too.

Thinking about it now, I find it hard to believe that I did it. I spent the better part of a year on creating that game. Note that I learned the coding from scratch at the same time as I started writing the story and game world.

This time I have the advantage of knowing what I’m doing. Much of the habit of writing code on the fly is gone and there is quite alot of retraining. But it will be easier this time.

That’s what I thought.

>

Now, I’m chewing on ideas to make my teeth ache:

Initially:

One character – second person. I.E the normal game-play mode for interactive ficction. For example you type “take knife” and the game replies “You pick up the bloodstained butcher knife. Immediately it slips out of your grip and it plants itself firmly in your left foot. You scream like a girl.”

the second character, existing in a parallell story line in the same game-world – third person action mode. I.E You type “go west” and the game replies “Papa roach stares at the west door in disgust for a long moment. He snarls, sniffs his armpits and spits on the floor. ” I don’t think I feel like going that way.” He strolls off east while muttering under his breath. “Mother-fucking control-freak.”

Update 1, massive change in thought:

Okay, I changed my mind. This will be another third person game with characters tagging along. The genre is contemporary thriller. Protagonist is a guy with little or no clue… about anything.

Crystal and stone, beetle and bone files and info coming up.

01 – Select aall, delete – Studio Chaotic Podcast reset

Reading Time: < 1 minute
Play

I’ll be back!

just needed to clean out, refresh, focus on something other than ….

What?

If (self notin player && world has ~sanity) give self ~open; Move player to limbo; give player concealed; print “Okay, if you are sure.” rtrue;

Song: Peter Cavallo “Rain and me”

Audio production tidbit – archived – Session drummer 3 scripts and more

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Session Drummer 3

Scripts, instructions, and tips and tricks, in a nice bundle for Sonar 8.5 users:

Files are included for:
AUTOHOTKEY
Windoweyes
Jaws

Download the Session Drummer 3 scripts here.

Scripts brought to you by

Chris Bell

For all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at
Affordable studio Services
Member of the midimag list.

Session Drummer 3 is a professional drum sampler and pattern player. It features Cakewalk’s patented Expression Engine technology, an anti-aliased, real-time sound production
system for multisample audio playback. Session Drummer 3 accurately replicates the sound of its real-world counterpart and features a highly-detailed user
interface as well as simple but powerful controls. You can load single samples (Wave or AIFF files), or multisamples (SFZ files) which already contain
key mapping and velocity switching assignments. You can load samples in any bit depth and sample rate, in mono or stereo, in looped or unlooped format.
Wave and AIFF files can be loaded directly, or as a sample inside an SFZ definition file.
Samples can be of any bit depth (8 to 32-bit), any sample rate, and either mono or stereo. Each
sample in a multisample can be a standard PCM Windows Wave file (.wav), an Apple audio format (.aiff) or a compressed file in the standard, high-quality,
open and royalty-free ogg-vorbis format (.ogg).
Alternatively, it is possible to open multisample definition files (.sfz) or individual samples by
dragging them to an instrument pad.

Wrinkle – Snapshot from a dog owners life

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Wrinkle

A dog owner snapshot.
By jenny K Brennan (with apologies to Spooky.

It dissipates; the stench is now only a hint. The memory is strong though, intrusive, giggle inducing at its best.

After the bomb, but before the air clears, I can not breathe.

He looks at me, innocent and lighted in curiosity.

He wrinkles his nose not because I do.
No, not at all. He objects to being ridiculed, attached to a chain, and told between choking gasping laughter.

“Stay outside until you’re done. And dog… no more cheese for you.”

What’s in the box – A micro adventure poem of sorts.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

What’s in the box?

By Jenny K Brennan
This was inspired by a writing prompt in a forum contest on Scribophile.

What’s in the box?

I was out of my mind. I knew it could never work. But I couldn’t stop myself. It was that urge, the itching, and the constant need. I had to have it.

And I snuck out late at night, tiptoed along dark streets, peeked through windows at people that sometimes would sleep. Sometimes not so deep.

And I saw it, through a stained pane, which I broke.

So I snuck in, I tiptoed around the darkened home, and frightened as I was, I could not stop.

It was there. I grabbed, I ran, and bells started screaming. Sirens blaring, spotlights glaring. I ran.

Out through teeth of glass that bit, down the alley, across a lawn. I took it, had it, looked at it.

And it opened easily enough as I paced a giggling circle in a shade away from moonlight. Shuffled my feet, froze, and stared.

At the bottom, under the lovely lid, below the frazzle of thin paper, and this I swear I didn’t do.

Through the bottom I saw grass, and edge of asphalt, a darkness, a leaf. I saw it all, through a neatly cut out hole I saw my legs, my feet, the grass, and darkness of night…

anna-open-letter-from-a-sex-addict – A bit of awful writing based on an awful premise

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Anna

A bit of awful writing based on an awful premise. But it has it’s fun moments so it can stay. 🙂

By jenny K Brennan

To: Unnamed girl, thirteen and under.

My name is Anna. I sell my body.
It’s a bargain, let me tell you. But that’s nor here nor there.

I’ve also destroyed my body with drugs. Hash, heroin, shit like that. The drug thing began long after the selling started though. I know it usually is the other way around. An addiction turns expensive and the prostitution comes as a symptom of drug abuse, not the other way. But that is how it was. Because, and here is the real problem.

I’m a nymphomaniac.

It started when my boobs suddenly grew. I had waited for so long to get boobs just like my friends had, and when they budded into pathetic little mini titties, I was so happy. I bought my first bra. With matching panties of course. I padded the bra with toilet paper to start with, and then when my little babies grew, I bought another bra that was just a little bit padded, and pushed them together and up. I looked like a real babe.

I started buying clothes for my weekly allowance, which was quite generous since I was a spoiled brat, and everything I bought was tight and sexy. My first set of stockings, you know the one that go to the thigh and is held up by a sexy garter? It cost me an entire month’s allowance. But I had to have it. Just like I had to have that first piece of lingerie. Silky, red and black, with buttons and ribbons and strategic transparent spots, and did I mention slutty? Very slutty.

It had buttons at the crotch and I played with them so much I wore them out. That was when I realized my boobs had grown so much that I could actually stick out my tongue and touch my nipples with it. I learned quickly to please myself with my fingers, and then by using different things I found in the home. Silly things really, but as long as it didn’t cause injury, it always turned me on and got me off.

Then, as I came closer to fifteen and my boobs were as big as they ever would be, I started inviting friends home for “movie and popcorn nights” as my mother thought they were. She was never home anyways. She was a lawyer see, and she was stabbed, but that is another story.

But really, I had my first orgasm given to me by someone other than myself, or by any of the many dildos I had bought online, on one of those nights. I can’t remember ever eating popcorn.

And then I realized I wasn’t quite normal. I wanted sex all the time. Girl or boy didn’t matter. Two or more didn’t matter either. Threesomes were awesome, in any combination of male female. It was all the same to me.

Life was good. But then I was supposed to go to college. I didn’t have a problem with that. I had a brain that only needed to hear something once or twice, and I learned. It wasn’t fair I know. My fellow students struggled to rise above average. I skimmed through and was top in my classes. It did give me lots of time over for my extracurricular activities though… it was great.

Well, I got my degree, but decided I didn’t want to study anymore. What was the point? All I had to do was borrow a book from the library, read it from cover to cover, and I was done. So what if I didn’t have papers to prove it. I knew what I knew. And if anyone wanted proof, they could just give me a test, I’d ace it, and viola.

But then everything started to fall apart.

I’m not sure what happened first, but my friends, my fuck-buddies as I called them at the time, all started to drift away. They fell in love, found jobs away from me, got married, children and minivans.

I didn’t want that. I just wanted to party. No, actually, it wasn’t that kind of fun I wanted because I never drank, never smoked, and never watched movies or read books for entertainment. I craved sex. Orgasms, the heat, the mind numbing ecstasy. I needed new and exciting things all the time. Tie me up and abuse me, I’m happy. Give me a whip and a basket of rubber accessories along with someone to abuse, and I’m happy. Put me in front of a video camera while being filled and probed and used, broadcast it live on the web, I’m just as happy. Excite me, exploit me, degrade me, adore me, and make a slave of me. Ooh, yeah, that’s the spot Baby.

But all of a sudden I was alone. The HIV scare had started and people became afraid of casual sex. Well, to be honest, it scared me too a bit even if I wasn’t a gay man, which was what the HIV targeted according to those days ignorant prissies and priests. But sure, I got tests for stuff and came back negative. I learned early that condoms would keep me from making babies I never ever wanted to have, so it wasn’t such a big deal, even if the guys grumbled a bit…

So I watched porn and masturbated til my eyes and fingers were sore. But it was so boring. So dull. After a week I was climbing walls in my little studio apartment. I tried to go to a bar, but there is something about drunken people that drunken people never understand. They never perform. Besides that, they smell bad, and they have an annoying habit of wanting to stay the night to sleep it off, or simply pass out, giving me no choice in the matter but to let them stay. Preferably in the tub so I can start their morning with a nice refreshing icy cold shower.

Needless to say, I wasn’t popular. I didn’t want to move away from my home town either. It was a safe place after all. My mother paid my bills. There was also that detail about her not paying for me anymore if I moved far away. So it was easier to stay even if everyone knew me. They all thought I had all kinds of sexually transmitted icky to spread, but I didn’t. But I suppose; once a slut, always a slut. It doesn’t really help if it happens to be true. But I was a slut without aids, or Hep C, or any of those itchy, leaking, smelly, eventually harmful deceases. Why would anyone believe me though? Once a nympho, always a nympho.

I don’t think there is such a thing as nympho anonymous.

There is? Hmm. I suppose that for me, it would be a great place to find likeminded people and setup “play” dates or special group therapy sessions hehe.
Sigh. I really didn’t mean to tell you all of that. But hell, it was my life. From the time I was thirteen until the moment, around twenty-four when my mother died from a sudden loss of blood, and consequent complications; yeah, she was stabbed by some unhappy customer, she was a lawyer see, and she was a good one, thus her well deserved death.

I suddenly had no money, my life had been eat, sleep, and fuck. It wasn’t such a bad life at all. Instant gratification and no strings. Perhaps I simply lacked empathy, or simple human emotions beyond a twisted instinct to reproduce. Flawed mainly because I never did reproduce anything, except my dear mum’s signature on a couple of pieces of paper she forgot to sign.

What papers? Well… just normal papers with numbers on them.

Checks?

I suppose some of them were. But come on now. What kind of responsible person would leave the checkbook in a drawer without a proper lock? What the hell, she didn’t even hide the key.

Where?

Well, in her nightstand, under the drawer. Yeah, with tape. But that’s not the point here. You digress.

Ahem, where was I?

Oh right, my mother died right? So there was no more money coming. Sure I could have found a job I suppose. But why should I? There are millions of other people that can do that kind of stuff.

Hey, don’t get me wrong here; I did try for a while. Online seemed to be a good place to make money. Everybody said so. But it was so distracting to shuffle serious business with web cam masturbation. Trust me, it can get confusing. Chat, invoice for three “this side up, push buttons to open”-T-shirts, video conference with employees and customers that always seemed to end with a virtual nekkid poker game. I’m telling you, those guys are such perverts.

Here I am, making a serious offer for twenty-three boxes of “Super slide lube” and they start asking me how my business is going and I say the money slides in just fine, and they think I’m coming on to them or something. Jeez, and hell, I didn’t know they were serious about not demonstrating products. I do believe in product research and transparency when it comes to things I want people to pay money for. I wouldn’t expect a customer to pay for something if it’s not thoroughly tested first.

There was a big stink about it, and it was suggested I’d shut down. It was expressed quite forcefully I might add. I kept telling them it was not a porn site, and I didn’t need to warn visitors, but hell. I was getting tired of it anyways, so I sold the business on eBay.

That kept me floating for a little while, the eBay money. But as all good things end, there’s a sudden stop sooner or later. I tried being normal. Normal as in working at a grocery store, as a town hall clerk, a pre-school teacher. But come on, face it.

Customers are idiots, public service just sucks, and little kids don’t learn too good.

I could have excelled. I have no doubts. It was just all those other people. Well, you know what I’m saying. A shrink told me once that I had no sense of responsibility and didn’t respect myself, that I should manage my passive aggressive behavior and cut back on my casual relationships and stop blaming other people for my failures.

She was just like all the others, saying shit about me, looking at me funny. I’m telling you, she was fucking sketchy. And fuck her saying I don’t respect myself. I have nothing BUT respect for me. It’s just everyone else I can’t stand.

Shithead skank trying to shrink my head when society just kept pushing me down. It got depressing, let me tell you. I had to tell her to go fuck herself in the end, because I sure wouldn’t touch her skinny ass.

Oh shit, I lost track of my story again. It’s that retarded brain doctor. She put things in my head, some kind of psychic subliminal bullshit. I can’t concentrate when I’m being fucked over every time I turn around.

Sigh.

Oh, yeah, Broke; then one day there was an eviction notice in the mail. I always knew that Nazi son of a bitch landlord had something against me. What the fuck, it’s not like he didn’t get good money from the other five hundred people or so in his fucking building. I gave him good head often enough, I didn’t see the problem.

Anyways, fast forward a little bit. Here I was. I found a pimp, a place to live, and I didn’t have to see a shrink anymore. That was good. It was a bit tricky to tell paying customers to use protection though, or to be a little bit gentle with the soft parts. Or bones and teeth for that matter.

I was fine for a while, then I got banged up a bit and lost quite a lot of my pretty, which depressed me. I started getting lazy, I finally said yes to drugs. So to cut the story short; in my third year of working steady as a sex worker, I tested HIV positive.

I think it was because I shared a needle with my buddy Suzy. She’s alright. I mean, she’s not really right in the head, but she’s cool if you know what I’m saying. And she doesn’t have any teeth left so she is quite good with her mouth…

Well, anyways. I was trying to get at something important. I don’t know if it means shit to you or not. It doesn’t mean much to me anymore, but you know; I have a bit of social conscience left in me.

Morality? Did you hear me use that word? I’m not that fucking wasted. So let’s not go there.

Hang on, I wrote it down. Here somewhere.

Ah, here we go.

Girl, when your boobs start growing, tell your parents that you want to be a nun and move to a convent. Trust me, boobs are evil. You don’t want anything to do with them.

Yours truly
Anna

By J K Brennan

Down the rabbit hole- Unreleased. Want to be on the JennyK list of awesome people? Help me raise some cash to keep writing, and complete my album!