HOTEL_CATHODIA, v0.1
Added 2024-04-30 23:27:04 +0000 UTChello, little birds. i've missed you
so here's something. dug this up after having started it a couple years ago and left it to collect dust. A twine project-- a hotel, located in the same world as a much earlier work of mine, Circadia. i spend a lot of time in this world, and have wanted to take you back to it for a long while. it's one of those 'liminal spaces' the kids are into, insofar as such a term can be used to describe insomnia in a white-walled room lit only by the electric blue or torrential monochrome of a television awaiting input. a place where the only channels are 3 and 4 and every clock blinks 12:00 AM forever, long live the new flesh. it's a house of scattered notes, surrealism and stream-of-consciousness freewriting and whatever i needed it to be at any given minute just to make the ink move again.
it's also hysterically unfinished. barely anything yet. you'll encounter a lot of dead-end halls and broken locks. but i want to keep working on this. update it incrementally. i think that sounds like fun. and I want to hear what you think of it, what you'd like to see more of, what you'd do and where you'd go if you could put a door in any wall you chose. i'd like you to be my co-architects for this one, and let's see where that takes us. maybe once or twice a month, something like that? I don't know. i'm throwing things at the wall here, I'm battling my own brain and body as hard as I can every day but it wins more often than i do. but I don't want to keep on doing nothing, and god dammit I miss you all and think this could be a fun little adventure, if I can get myself to keep to it. a little update here and there, and we'll just see how long that lasts, what kind of place we end up with and where on its walls you've printed your hands.
looking forward to hearing what you think of this one, sweet murder of mine. that's all for now, dear darlings. take care of yourselves and each other out there, and I'll talk to you all again soon
♥
Comments
I'm late on getting to walk through the hotel but this is such a wonderful idea and I've been buzzing excitedly to explore it since I got the notification for the post. Letting yourself go back to your "roots" as it were, free-writing and all, and still getting to feel the accomplishment of building something, being able to share it, and have it be "temporarily out of service" until such time as inspiration strikes is an EXCELLENT compromise. I hope it's felt encouraging for you as such! It's also been so refreshing to read your writing again, I have to say. I still revisit much of your library here, slither myself back into the phantom houses and all, but there's nothing quite like a new release that gets the neurons firing. I've always been so curious about Circadia's world, it's unique in its delivery and its thematics out of your other nanofiction spaces, so I'm genuinely thrilled to get more time with it and simmer in the static. I think everything here is an excellent skeleton so far; the dead ends only make me curious for what will show up next time, whenever that comes around, and what is available so far is great. Not to spoil too much for folks who haven't played yet but what you put down for the kitchen and the hopscotch game both horrified and tickled me. I also liked the guest in the restaurant: I'm a sucker for animal-headed people sneaking in and they certainly fit the dream-like ambience, so if it wouldn't feel too old-hat I'd like to see more of them (from a practical standpoint it might make coming up with new NPCs easier on you, too. Conjuring new people gets me hung up a lot of the time in my personal writing). I wonder if we might be able to bring the lady behind the front desk a treat from the kitchen sometime, even just a coffee (or maybe variables of things, for different reactions), that might be nice. She's probably working hard and pretty tired! I'll have a ponder for some more but judging by your v0.2 to-do list in the read me file, I'd say you're on the right track! Maybe one last suggestion for possible inclusions might be some things you alluded to in previous titles but never had the opportunity to flesh out (whether from inspiration or limitations in the medium), such as the happenings in newspaper headlines from Dust-of-her-Mouth? Candlehounds have piqued my curiosity for a long time. Things like that could be a way for you to tap into some untrodden territory in your headspace without having to conjure something from nothing. I hope you're doing well since posting this, it's always a treat to see any updates from you but this is really a wonderful step to stretch your muscles and I hope it proves to be as fun for you as I think it will be helpful, too - I know this will be a fun journey for all of us and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to be included even by proxy, it's such an honor. Stretch your wings, Mama Crow, no more staying cooped up ♥ and thank you for all that you do with your beautiful brain
five5sixers
2024-06-09 05:30:32 +0000 UTCMari: It's so wonderful exploring one of your stories again, and I'm quite liking this one. It's very nostalgic, and emotional in certain places. Thank you for sharing it with us ^^
JadePerardua
2024-05-03 00:31:16 +0000 UTCI love this so much! Even the incompleteness feels complete, like those dreams of your childhood where you know something is missing but you can never find it or even remember the shape of what you lost.
Narilka Witheryn
2024-05-02 13:37:52 +0000 UTC
