Here's a little experiment. And a little bit of insanity to boot. Those of
you who are familiar with Infocom, or are in on the little adventure game I'm
programming will recognise what I'm doing here.
Basically, the premise is this: The fic is written as if it was an Infocom
adventure game, and it follows.... well, it doesn't follow anything yet. At
the moment, there *is* no plot. Basically, the plot will be down to whoever's
writing the next section. What am I talking about? I'll tell you.
Every few moves, we change authors. Someone else takes the mantle. And then,
the story is under their control. Everything that has gone before sticks, and
it has to make at least a little sense as an adventure game (in other words,
there's a map, etc.) I'm welcome to all suggestions at the moment for this.
To start with, I suggest that only those with experience with Infocom Text
Adventure games should continue this. But after a while, everyone else should
be able to pick up how it works.
As for what's happening, okay, there is a slight bit of a plot. Basically, the
person lands in a fanfic or an anime. Any fanfic, any anime. And the current
author can do anything they like if they need to get the unnamed character
(gender as yet unspecified) to another fanfic. Oh, but try to include puzzles,
and the score system. It doesn't really matter since we're making this up as
we go, but it might help.
(Example: whoever carries on this story next has to add five points to the score
due to the player successfully reading the new mail)
The problem with this 'fic is that I don't know if it'll work as a story.
There's lots of potential for humour with obscure commands, obscure error
messages, misunderstandings, the parser understanding weird and wonderful
things, etc., but it'll be difficult to draw that out.
As I said, this is just a little bit of insanity, so if no-one wants to
participate, I won't blame you. I'll be keeping an eye on this to see how it
goes.
Hope you enjoy it, and ciao,
Terence Fergusson
-- Student of Advanced Murphodynamics
-- Stranded in an Anime-free College
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It's four o'clock, and it's a dismal Sunday afternoon. Somehow, this always
happens to be the most dull and boring part of the entire week. Well, at
least you've got the FFML to keep you occupied. That is, you would have, if
your computer hadn't gone down for the second time today....
SELF-INSERTION
An Interactive Whistle Stop Tour of the World of Anime Fanfics
Copyright (c) 1997 by Terence Fergusson.
Your Bedroom
It's a typical otaku's bedroom. That is, maybe if you hired a forklift,
scrummaged around for about half an hour, and flooded your room with bleach,
you might just find the floor. As it is, every available space is covered
with anime tapes, posters, dolls, pin-ups, mangas, and other otaku fanstuff.
If you clambered over the large replica "Nuclear Tokyo with Real Explosions",
you can reach the landing to the east, while if you climbed onto your bed,
you can just reach your closet to the north.
Your computer is set up in a spare corner of the room, currently turned off.
TURN ON COMPUTER
Hitting the switch on the side of the 486, you watch in consternation as it
runs through the boot-up sequence. Within a few moments, Microsoft's
personal torturing device - Windows 95 - has booted up. Miracles will never
cease.
EXAMINE COMPUTER
It's your 486, complete with 3 1/2" disk drive, a rather modest hard drive,
connected to a small black-and-white TV. The keyboard is battered from
continual use, and the hard drive is the type that sounds like a slipping
gear, chuntering away every time it's accessed.
On the screen, you can see a graphical interface environment, complete with
icons and a mouse pointer. Fortunately, you've already customised the
GUI so that there are no more windows to worry about, just the icons. One
of the icons in particular, "Pegasus Mail", leads to your gateway to the
FFML.
CLICK ON PEGASUS MAIL
Moving the mouse over the icon, you activate it. After a few seconds of
chuntering from the hard-drive, a helpful message appears, "The installed
version of Pegasus Mail has become corrupt. Do you wish to reinstall?"
BLAST! You knew the computer crash had done something this time. You resist
the urge to locate Bill Gates and carbomb him.
At the bottom of the error message are two buttons: Reinstall and Cancel.
CLICK ON REINSTALL
The error message disappears to be replaced by another helpful message,
"Please insert the Pegasus Mail Program Disk." Oh, great. Now you're going
to have to go search for the disk. Where could it be?
EXAMINE FLOOR
If you want to examine the junk, say so. Otherwise: I cannot see any floor
here.
EXAMINE JUNK
Well, it's not exactly junk, par se. It's actually very useful and essential
stuff, which you couldn't bear to get rid of. Like your Sailor Moon figure
collection.
SEARCH JUNK
Rummaging through the stuff on the floor, you fail to find anything to help
you in your current situation.
EXAMINE CLOSET
On the other side of the bed in a slightly clearer area of the room, is your
closet. Even with the amount of stuff on the floor, you think you could get
it open. You'd have to stand on your bed to get close enough.
OPEN CLOSET
You can't reach the closet from here.
GET ON BED
You get on your bed.
OPEN CLOSET
You open the door and are instantly surprised as a ton of anime stuff topples
out on top of you. You lay there on your bed, in amongst all the new junk
that the closet has spewed out.
SEARCH NEW JUNK
Sifting through all the stuff that fell out, removing things like your
Ranma 1/2 "Changes in water" T-shirt, your Urusei Yatsura "Lum Shocker Pak"
and your Bubblegum Crisis "Shedding Skin Boomer". Finally, you hit paydirt.
In amongst a cache of disks, you finally retrieve the Pegasus Mail Program
Disk.
[Your score has just gone up by two points.]
GET OFF BED
You have to get out of the closet junk first.
GET OUT OF CLOSET JUNK
You remove yourself from the closet junk.
GET OFF BED
You get off the bed.
PUT DISK IN COMPUTER
The disk drive churns as the computer accepts it. After a few minutes
waiting, Pegasus Mail finally reinstalls itself. You're glad you automated
the process; but then, after about thirty-seven times of reinstalling Pegasus
after crashes, you do learn a few things.
The computer drops back into the familiar GUI.
CLICK ON PEGASUS MAIL
This time, Pegasus Mail boots up without a hitch. Bringing up the New Mail
folder, you quickly check if anything has been sent while you were down.
Unfortunately, there's only one new mail, but it has no subject header.
CLICK ON NEW MAIL
You open up the mail message to find it's full of garbage, as if it was
compressed or something. Not another one.
But hang on a sec. You're pretty sure the hard drive shouldn't be flashing
like that. And why is the TV flickering like that?
TURN OFF COMPUTER
Before you can do anything, the screen suddenly blanks out of its own accord.
You back away from the machine before it gets any ideas about electrocuting
you or something. It appears, however, to have other ideas.
The screen begins to glow eerily.
PANIC
You scream and shout, generally running around like a chicken with it's head
cut off.
The glowing grows stronger, and you feel a strong gravitational attraction
pulling you towards your TV.
EAST
You attempt to flee, but the pull from the screen is too strong.
With a cry, your feet lose their grip on the floor, skidding on your
scale-model Griffon. You fly across the room, and completely defying any
law of physics, are sucked into your 12" TV.
And then, all is black.
Elsewhere, elsewhen, a shadowy figure gazes at their computer screen. "It
begins."
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"So I was wrong. So sue me .... Nabiki, don't take
that literally."
- Ian Robinson
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