Thirteen Cats
I own two adult cats. Zipper and Zoom. Here’s some pictures my daughter took of them recently.
I have a friend with two very charming, sociable older kittens that visit my house often. They’re also the ‘backup cats’ for the Tabby Time Cat Encounters small business, as I don’t always have foster kittens (and Zipper and Zoom do NOT have the right personality for cat encounters!) so I can ‘borrow’ them whenever I need to.
I am also fostering the ‘Nature Kittens’:
That’s Thunder at the back, then Dawn, Cloud, and Midnight. Thunder and Midnight are the boys, and they’re getting desexed on Tuesday. All four are fully vaccinated and have visited the vet several times for health checks (and some health dramas). Thunder and Cloud have a home lined up, and I’m taking them there for a play date tomorrow. There’s an older cat at the new home who will need time to adjust, and it’s good for Thunder and Cloud to take things slow as well. Cloud is too little to be desexed yet (vets are willing but my pet-happiness adviser and I have higher standards of care). Midnight MIGHT have a home lined up, but Dawn is still available for adoption. These kittens need five litter trays between the four of them, so I’m really looking forward to Thunder and Cloud getting adopted so I don’t have to tiptoe between litter trays on the way to the toilet!
So, until Monday I have eight cats in my care! That’s a lot! Emptying eight litter trays 3-4 times a day is really really a lot. I invested time introducing the Nature Kittens to the friend’s kittens and they now get on well, which is ADORABLE.
Then, on Thursday, someone I know very slightly called me and said she’d caught five very young kittens and the RSPCA refused to take them (or more accurately, would probably release them or put them down because they simply have way too many kittens and cats right now). I know this woman is very poor and would feed them crushed dry food and water, which would probably keep the kittens alive but at four weeks they should have mainly specialised milk and then a small amount of specialised food gradually introduced. They need a huge amount of attention and money, is what I’m saying. I reached out to various people and organisations immediately, with no luck at all. Which wasn’t entirely surprising.
Knowing the crushed dry food would probably make them sick, I picked up the kittens myself a few hours later and took them home (and spent a bunch of moolah on specialised food and items). Temporarily!
And that’s how I ended up looking after thirteen kittens in one house.
When I saw two calicos in the teeny tiny litter, I knew I was in trouble. I love calicos.
Since then I’ve found an organisation that is willing to take them when they reach 1 kilo, which will probably take about a month. That’s my only offer so far, and I’m grateful for it but still looking for help. My advisor has checked them over and noticed one of them has a slightly deformed leg. It’s an old injury, but I’ll talk to a vet about it in a few days, when they all get a health check (they’re too young to be vaccinated, and too frail for worming for a few days). I’ve looked after other kittens from that colony, and they definitely had worms, so the tiny kittens must be quarantined from all the other cats because they’re highly infectious. Also because they’re so young that interacting with other cats could literally give them a heart attack. Yesterday I held Zoom in my arms so the tiny kittens could see her (and vice versa) so that (a) Zoom knew why we weren’t letting her in that part of the house, and (b) The kittens had a distant glimpse of a cat they’re likely to see again in future (an extremely gentle and controlled introduction).
They’re still very scared of everything, although they definitely know I’m the source of food so two of them meow frantically and come towards me as soon as they see me. They’re big on hissing and spitting (the larger calico in particular) but because they’re so tiny it sounds like popcorn, so that’s what I named the bigger calico. Then I named the others Caramel (the other calico), Sprinkle (the smallest), Violent/Violent Crumble (has a very clear ‘V’ on his side), and Curly Wurly (has curling white marks on his back). The two calicos are girls, and the three tabby and white ones are boys.
I’ve been bottle feeding them every few hours, and they’re extremely enthusiastic so after checking with my advisor I’ve started them on solids (suitable for 1 month old kittens) and begun working on teaching them to drink and eat from dishes. It’s a LOT of work!
I do love a crisis, though. But I’m also looking forward to having my friend’s cats go home on Monday so things aren’t QUITE so bonkers.
Zipper and Zoom can interact with the friend’s cats (they’re grudgingly used to each other) but it’s better for Zip and Zoom to get some space of their own.
The friend’s cats can hang out with the Nature kittens. So those six can go in the same room. But they’re fed different kinds of wet food twice a day, and have to be separated for that. I also separate them at night.
The tiny kittens aka the Snack Pack must be kept separate from everyone, including the Tabby Time customers that are visiting today.
And of course all eleven kittens are bent on escape…. from my room, from the bathroom, from the house, into the toilet (two have fallen in while I was dealing with litter), and from the scary monster (me). And I’m doing roughly a million loads of washing per day. It’s been 1.5 days with the Snack Pack, and Popcorn in particular is SO angry and SO beautiful it’s killing me.
Also, we’ve spent $197 on them so far, with a $150 vet visit lined up. If you can help at all with the financial side, please do! I have the receipts if you want to see them. TabbyTimeCanberra@gmail.com is the best place to email to offer help. With Tabby Time Cat Encounters I’ve set aside 20% for emergency cat vet stuff. That’s $20 so far which is… not enough, lol.
Wish me luck!
PS If you’re one of the people that decided a cat encounter business is animal abuse and therefore I am an animal abuser, please do feel free to report me to the RSPCA and/or the Department of Domestic Animal Services. But they all know me and my house by now and they’ve seen how well I take care of cats, so it’s unlikely they will thank you for wasting their time. The only thing I’ve done ‘wrong’ right now is taking on a huge litter that no one else was willing to look after. And I’m still looking for a less hectic household for them.
Hustling Update, 2024
A few months after I wrote the first and second post about all the many many different things I do, I started fostering kittens.
I. Love. It. So. Much.
That is the stunningly beautiful Cinnamon, one of the feral cats that I caught and socialised in 2023. Catching feral cats is definitely NOT something I plan to do regularly! I am the opposite of physically gifted/strong… but socialising cats is something I think I’m pretty good at.
So, fostering kittens is something I want to keep doing forever and ever amen. There are several down sides, including the cost and the cleaning (not so much the gross-out factor, but my physical body struggling with it). I do one day plan to be rich enough to hire a regular cleaner, so hopefully I could find a cleaner willing to scrub kitten poo off the walls (somehow the foster kittens always seem to get poo on the walls). Many cleaners refuse to deal with any pet stuff whatsoever, which is fair enough. But I’m sure I can find someone.
Fortunately, I have a really great babysitting job at the moment, and my health has improved recently (due to new meds) so I’m earning more than I’ve earned since I first became disabled in 2011. Amazing! Of course as a household we have a lot of financial things to catch up on from the cozzie livs crisis, eg I hadn’t seen a dentist since January 2022 and one of my fillings fell out. But things might be looking up financially?
Unfortunately my right knee has major objections to my babysitting work. I am seeing a physio and strapping it daily, as well as not sitting cross-legged on the floor (which is what made it start malfunctioning). But it’s a significant problem.
BUT one aspect of the “Castle of Kindness” concept from 2019 has actually come to pass. Actually several aspects have come to pass—sponsoring refugees; welcoming them into my home; having them play in my (blow-up) pool; running a food pantry with some emergency supplies (such as water)—but this is the first time that an element of that dream has helped me with my own pain/disability: we now have a spa.
It’s a blow-up spa, the cheapest on the market (under $600 from Bunnings, plus electric and chemical supplies which were about another $200), and it is surprisingly good!
Here’s my son showing the “4 person” spa (really it’s only good for one person, or 2+ who don’t mind having their legs tangled up) that he’s not allowed to go in due to his cast (he broke his wrist falling from a climbing frame at school).
I was really anxious that it wouldn’t be deep enough to help with neck and shoulder pain at all (but if I squidge down it works) and that having a ring of bubbles around the bottom would be useless (but actually the bubbles work really well), and that sitting on the bottom of the pool would be uncomfortable (it isn’t—our outside foam helps, but the buoyancy of the water is the main thing making it comfortable—and I can move around more than in a ‘normal’ spa, which is a good thing).
So in many ways I am living the dream.
Last but definitely not least, I started a cat cafe business in January! When I foster kittens, I feel strongly that it is my duty to take and share MANY kitten photos, and to invite my cat-loving friends over to play with the kittens (which is good for the kittens, and enjoyable to them). So to my mind it was perfectly natural, in a city lacking a cat cafe, to… well, to start a teeny little cat cafe in my house. I kept it as simple as possible, with very limited hours and no food or drink. A lot of cat cafes don’t serve hot drinks, because that’s obviously hazardous to both the kittens and to the hygiene of the humans. But a few people were offended on FaceBook that I had a cafe without coffee, and one person shared about it to reddit. That was perfectly fine until people who don’t understand how cat cafes operate (ie using only friendly/social/bored cats, and not letting humans pick them up or follow them into cat-only areas) decided it was animal abuse. That’s when it suddenly got serious. Long story short, although I never did anything wrong the cat cafe was shut and the kittens taken away. I’ve also gotten to know the RSPCA and DAS inspectors (which has actually been a positive experience).
There’s no good reason not to start the business back up again, after triple-checking that all my paperwork is in order and that there is an external person checking on the welfare of the cats/kittens. I love cats and I love sharing that experience with others. It’s also a great way to find homes for foster kittens. I’ll always have to deal with extra scrutiny (fine) and people online convinced that I’m evil and/or incompetent (I can live with that as long as they continue to be wrong).
I realised that with a designated space for the cat encounters, I might as well restart the escape room business too—people can do an escape room and a cat encounter in one day. And I put in a little shop to sell my books, Qusay Fadheel’s art prints, and maybe even some cat merch since I do take pretty good cat photos after all these years.
So that’s where a lot of my brain is at these days.
Welcome to Australia: Mandarin Version
This is the finished version of “Welcome to Australia”, a book I started writing way back in 2020. It is designed to be read by immigrant and refugee children with their parents/guardians.
Please feel free to share all versions of this book as widely as you like. All I ask is that you don’t make a profit from any part of it. Dozens of people spent time working on this book, and most were not paid (all Aboriginal people and refugees were paid or had donations made in their name).
Spanish and Arabic versions are still getting their final checks.
Buy your copy here in my online store.
Colour Taste Texture: An Autistic Cook Book
My daughter is autistic and has a number of unusuakodd behaviours in relation to food. For example, we went to the zoo (she loves animals) and when I asked her the best part of the day she said it was the Chocolate Caramel Slice (just what a parent wants to hear after spending so, so much money). She is obsessed with junk food! But she frequently skips meals because she’s “not hungry”—and that includes meals that are simply us parents begging her to eat a sugary treat (like chocolate caramel slice) rather than nothing at all.
When she does eat, there is an extremely small range of acceptable dishes. We are constantly perusing recipe books to find more foods that she is willing to taste (often even a bite is too much to ask). And she loves recipe books, too! She brings them home from the school library all the time. Of course it’s mostly about the treats, but there’s usually one non-dessert item that she’s at least hypothetically willing to try. Having said that, I’ll often choose and cook something with her input and assistance only to have her change her mind at the end of the process and still refuse to try it.
[Memo to self: WHY does she get full so quickly? Investigate. Maybe it’s some kind of medical thing.]
Every so often, though, we have a real victory. For example, she has been eating a stick of celery almost every day for the last two years. It has to be slathered in peanut butter (smooth not crunchy) and choc chips, but she eats it. This is a HUGE deal. It’s currently her only acceptable green vegetable and if she required it to be deep-fried and served with ice cream we would do that. (She also takes iron and vitamin C tablets, because she would otherwise be literally malnourished due to her many food aversions and her general lack of appetite.)
Celery (and food therapy) was also key to my understanding that a crunchy texture is something that Lizzie really enjoys. (Which was quite a revelation, since I dislike almost all crunchy foods myself.) Today I made her cucumber sandwiches, and even though she ate only three bites before getting full, she said she liked it! (Then Chris and I finished them, and they were so good I made another just for myself.)
Sidebar: Cucumber sandwich recipe
Thinly slice some cucumber, and thickly butter two slices of white bread. Lay out the cucumber slices on the chopping board and press a paper towel on them to absorb the moisture (otherwise they’ll immediately go soggy, plus make your bread soggy). Spread mayo on the lower slice of bread, then arrange the cucumber in a single thin layer and sprinkle it with salt. Cut off the crusts and serve in triangles immediately (or it’ll get soggy). Watch the film “The Importance of Being Ernest” as you eat them for extra flavour.
So that was a win today!
As soon as I heard this book might be helpful for autistic kids, I wanted it.
It literally has chapters on colours, tastes (sweet, bitter, salty, etc), and textures—what autistic people tend to like and dislike, and how to modify dishes based on those criterion!
Autistic people don’t “hate vegetables”… they probably hate bitter tastes, or that farty smell (looking at you, cabbages), or crunchy foods (hello salad), or foods mixed together (again with the salad). If you can figure out WHY they love or hate a food, you might be able to expand their list of safe foods by changing the texture, colour, or environment. Incredible!
The author is autistic, which gives them excellent insights as well as some blind spots (eg his editor pointed out that in the colour section he had completely left out green, a colour to which he is so averse he forgot it existed). He clearly loves bread, and recipes with yummy dairy in them (buttermilk, cream cheese, butter) as there are loads of those.
The book isn’t written with a kid audience in mind, so although I started reading it aloud to Lizzie we quickly decided it was best for me to read it and for her to look at the recipes and pick which ones were best for her (interestingly, not every recipe had a picture with it, which was frustrating for her).
The author also uses cooking spray to stop things like dough sticking to other things, which to me is nothing short of a slap in the fact to autistic people in general and me in particular. Doesn’t he know that cooking spray has a horrible bitter taste that ruins almost everything it touches? And he says to use it on SWEET dishes? IS HE EVEN AUTISTIC??
Ahem.
My daughter likes sweet things, salty things, crunchy things, smooth things, and soft things. She always wants to eat while watching YouTube because that is soothing to her. Understanding these things is key to offering her food she is more likely to eat (it is extremely difficult to get her to eat much at all).
She jumped on the French Fry recipe and I managed to not tell her that it’s extremely similar to the way I roast potatoes almost every day (a safe and delicious food for me). I adjusted it a bit—cutting out pepper (which a lot of spicy-averse people like her also hate) and adding basil and garlic (both sweet flavours) instead. She liked them, and so did every other member of the family. They need to cook for 30-40 minutes, but they’re not super difficult. Given that Lizzie doesn’t even eat potatoes (I KNOW, weird) this is a win! Potatoes are actually a really great food with lots of fibre and other goodies. And I can easily cook her some fries every time I cook roast potatoes (so, about five times a week). Three baked potato chips a few times a week is actually a great improvement in her diet. Here’s how they looked:
I’m in the (long) process of cooking cinnamon rolls right now. They’re rather finicky (eg including fresh orange juice) but clearly they’re also the author’s absolute favourite recipe, honed over many years, so I have to try them at least once!
The author likes specific cooking tools like a dough hook (okay, what is that?) and meat thermometer (ooh, I could do with one of those), and uses Fahrenheit (ugh… why YES I already boiled some bread dough today) but their insights are so incredibly valuable. It’s definitely worth scribbling all over the book as I figure out what works for us and what doesn’t.
I haven’t seen anything like it before.
Pic of the finished cinnamon rolls:
They. Were. Incredible.
The edges were crispily delicious, and the middle was a crumpet-esque land of chewy bread perfectly intermingled with air pockets thanks to the author’s beloved tangzhong (aka roux) method).
I made the icing, which was great (and mercifully simple) but honestly there was way too much. I think the tiniest little bit of icing would be best, so the buns can shine. I also think this icing would take lemon or other flavours really well. Orange would be the perfect thing for these, since they already have a tiny bit of orange in them.
The icing also ruins the look, but perhaps a perfect swirl of icing along the line of the bun would work really well.
Now I’m all excited and I’m looking through the book with newly trusting eyes, thinking, “What other wonders lie in these pretty pages?
I normally get one let’s-give-it-a-go savoury recipe per book, and a few sweet ones that sound good. This book is batting waaay above average.
Of course, I adore bread too.
An unironic curtsy
My daughter just became the ACT’s 2023 Junior Ambassador for the Fred Hollows Foundation. Yes, that Fred Hollows—the Foundation that works to eradicate preventable blindness around the world.
So I was rather pleased and proud of her, and happy enough to bother taking the family to Sydney for the ceremony. “Lounge suit” was mentioned as a dress code (with school uniform allowed for the kids) so I knew it’d be a little bit fancy but although I looked up “Lounge suit” at one point the only thing I remembered was “not jeans” and that it was at Government House. Lizzie already had a nice dress, and Chris and I were incredibly pleased that Tim permitted us to buy him a pair of chinos and a short-sleeved button-up shirt.
On Saturday night, worried about parking (a long walk from a car park is painful for me) I googled the venue, and. . . uh. . .
That is Government House in Sydney.
It’s 175 years old and hosts royals when they visit. It’s directly next door to the Sydney Opera House, situated within the Botanic Gardens that are in central Sydney, overlooking the harbour. That carpark alone is worth more than all the houses on my street. (And, I’m happy to report, parking was free for the event and about 50m from the door). It’s also the residence of the governor of Sydney aka the vice-regal. There are proper, official protocols for the governor, which don’t require curtsying but do allow it.
I was excited and terrified and delighted. It was immediately clear that I should have paid more attention to what a “Lounge suit” dress code means (it means dresses below the knee and heels for women, with suits and ties for men). Not as formal as black tie or white tie, but a whole lot more formal than my wedding (at which, for the record, I wore white sandals when I wasn’t actually barefoot). I started practising my curtsy (and it was extremely unimpressive; my balance sucks… I was also never going to wear heels, even if I owned a pair).
I would be wearing crocs. My ‘good’ crocs, that are the same approximate shape as regular black non-heeled shoes, but are made of plastic.
Chris doesn’t currently own a suit.
I began psyching up. Confidence is more potent than any dress code. I could do this.
I began consciously flipping through personalities in my head. Would I be charmingly witty? Ironic about the fanciness? Would I act as if I went to this kind of event every day, and conduct the most perfectly boring normie conversations ever? Would I focus on networking with the rich and powerful, hoping to gain money, influence, future patrons, or some combination of the above? And if so, which of my many selves would be the most likely to gain something useful (the Castle of Kindness self, obviously, since that’s what Lizzie was getting the award for)? Would I chat with the governor about the intricacies of living in a semi-public imitation castle, as I plan to do one day?
On Saturday we visited the beach, enjoying the tidal pool at Collaroy (also fancy, but in a very different way and with a very different dress code).
The big day came around, and fortunately we had all morning to get ready, which I kicked off with a massive panic attack (stifling the sobs so as not to wake Chris). Nowadays, I get a panic attack every time I want to try to look vaguely presentable. I guess it’s officially part of my process as an extremely overweight woman. It’s a factor in my not going to markets any more. Luckily, I don’t get panic attacks for job interviews, because in job interviews I’m trying to look reliable rather than pretty. Still masking in a big way, but that’s a legitimate part of the job interview process.
The kids looked spectacular though. I think it’s been at least 5 years since Tim last submitted to a button-up shirt, so that was very exciting. Lizzie is wearing my jade necklace.
I am not coordinated enough to apply lipstick well (on either Lizzie or myself, it turns out), but so be it. I used a hair straightener on Lizzie’s fringe, which I was happy about. Her shoes are too big (we were in a mad hurry at Kmart when we bought them for her “Limelight” performance), and Tim’s shoes have holes in them (he kicks stuff a lot) but… oh well.
Chris does at least own a jacket and several ties.
I informed Lizzie that she should still smile in photos, and off we went. It was muggy weather and some of my meds make me feel the heat. That and anxiety makes me sweaty, which is… not ideal.
Still, we arrived and went inside and (eventually) realised Lizzie was meant to sit in the front row. (This gave the organiser conniptions which I didn’t know about until later because she could see Lizzie’s empty chair and was calling and messaging and emailing us, but we had cunningly turned off our phones when we arrived forty minutes early.)
As we walked into the building I heard music and correctly guessed that it was coming from a musician’s gallery. That was fun. A navy guy stood up to tell us the protocols that I’d already studied from the web site, and then I recognised the MC—TV and radio smart and funny guy Adam Spencer—which was cool too.
Everyone was dressed well, although some commoners were dressed in cocktail style rather than lounge suit.
Unfortunately the room was fairly warm, and I spent most of the ceremony fanning myself with the program, knowing it was probably rude and definitely distracting but that it was also necessary. You can’t easily install AC in a 175 year-old building that is painted and gilded on every inch of the walls and ceiling. And of course one couldn’t possibly have ceiling fans—nor would they be much use with a ceiling so high.
Sitting up reasonably straight for 1.5 hours was beyond me. My back hurt so much that at one point I had to go outside (after the Junior Ambassadors received their certificates, thankfully, or I would have stayed no matter what). There is a stunning Moreton Bay Fig just outside the entrance that is only slightly younger than the 175 year-old house. I took several photos and it may end up on the revised cover of “Bali B&B” as there is a giant banyan in that story (and it needs a post-comp cover).
Lizzie’s phone went off promptly at 3:05pm, which would have shattered our illusion of classiness if it had still been intact at that point.
The ceremony ended at last (I’m sorry, but I really do hate speeches even when they’re not causing me physical pain) and we were invited to the eastern side of the building for canapes and drinks. I took some photos of the gorgeous Lizzie before she was whisked away for the pro photos.
She was returned to us eventually; I tried and failed to secure a mini lemon meringue pie for her; and then it was time to go home.
That is a nice verandah.
I didn’t actually talk to the notables, and the people I did talk to mostly had some kind of role that I was unable to remember (so I spent my energy trying to hide the fact that I didn’t know who they were even though they’d definitely been introduced to us all during the ceremony). Then I talked to a parent because they were a Muslim woman standing off to one side and I hated seeing them excluded even if it was both purely symbolic (they were certainly not being shunned; few people present knew each other) and entirely due to them keeping an eye on their kids. Which, after all, gave us something in common.
So kudos to me I guess for not being tacky and chasing the rich folk.
Then we left, pausing only to thank Her Excellency and Mr Dennis Wilson for their hospitality (I performed a real live unironic curtsy and a very appropriate court bow, respectively) on our way out.
Something extraordinary (for me) happened as Her Excellency complimented Lizzie on her dress and tried to engage her in conversation. Lizzie, nervous, did a perfect imitation of me joking about her and Tim from a few minutes earlier.
I was stunned to hear myself repeated so accurately and I knew I hadn’t said anything inappropriate so it would be okay. Chris heard her gently mocking Tim and cut her off before she could say how annoying he was (which was not actually where the sentence was going).
I realised with all the clarity of a voice from Heaven that our autistic Lizzie isn’t a masker, exactly… she’s a mimic. Which is a type of masking, but a very specific one. I’m still very much thinking about what that means for her in social situations. Mostly it makes her seem weirdly stilted because of course she’s imitating someone else—especially tone and humour, which in this case was super weird for a child to use. But now that I understand her so much better, I can teach her… something. Not sure what, but something. I’m still thinking.
So in the end I think Tim came across as the most normal, sane, and classy member of our family. Here he is running away from the camera after dancing in front of it.
Here’s one of the professional photos, from this article.
Due to the sweatiness, boringness, panic attacks, and (more than all the rest) physical pain involved in fancy events, I won’t be seeking out anything fancy in future. Unless it involves sitting down (with the ability to move around as needed), excellent parking, no speeches, great food, and interesting company. (Ideally super rich and powerful company that is desperate for someone to mention charities and projects that they’d just love to immediately throw money at.)
But I’m glad I got to curtsy for real, just once in my life.
And then I changed my clothes in the carpark, because I couldn’t cope. Realised later that of course security watched the whole thing—they have to.
My body is really not my friend, and really really not classy. But since I knew that in advance, I had set aside clothes to change into that prevented me flashing anyone. Yay?
IF Comp Review #5: Lake Starlight
by SummersViaEarth
I sorted the remaining entries into choice-based, 1.5 hours long, and this one sounds perfect. Young Adult coming of age is a genre I like. I’m 41 and still working out who I am, so the themes work for me (and tend to be fairly gentle, even if the world might be ending).
Lake Starlight says almost nothing, but evokes a mystical, natural feel. So does the cover, which is simple and effective. The description sounds pretty gentle too, and the writing style is pleasant without making demands on me. Perfect.
There are some minor grammar and spelling errors, that would not be picked up with a thorough spell check (which I’m confident this writer has done). They’re not egregious enough to truly annoy me.
Ooh, use of a language other than English. Love it.
And a choice of weakness, which I also love.
Neat stat and notification system. Very similar to ChoiceScript, which of course I like. Some neat visual tricks too.
The magical teachings are all, I think, therapy tools. And it is really working in the story. It feels like a story my daughter could easily enjoy—and, thanks to the forms of magic, it could be really beneficial too.
I… think I’m in love.
And a choice of weakness, which I also love.
Neat stat and notification system. Very similar to ChoiceScript, which of course I like. Some neat visual tricks too, used appropriately and effectively.
Many of the magical teachings are real-world therapy tools. And it really fits in the story. It feels like a story my daughter could easily enjoy—and, thanks to the therapeutic magic, it could be really beneficial too.
Hmm. I got a little bored due to the simplistic story and writing. Appropriate for a tween I think. The “evil corporation is coming” plot was told in a very expository and cliched way.
I was surprised to get to the end and find out I’d only read Part 1 of a much longer story. It’s sort of good because I can compare it to the two other ‘beginning of a much longer tale’ games I’m judging this year, but it also means I didn’t get to see where my strengths were useful. Or an ending, of course—although doing one successful bit of magic was satisfying.
IF Comp Review #4: One Knight Stand
By A. Hazard (SURELY a made-up name?)
This game has plenty of violence, despair, etc… so I’m upping my emotional defenses. But they also have the option to read a detailed list of possible triggers, which is great! So I read through them and I think I’ll be okay. There is violence and mature themes… which I’m hoping means sex and violence, not rape. If there’s rape, this warning isn’t quite cutting it for those with that specific trigger (which is a lot of people).
As usual, I’m more ‘live blogging’ than reviewing.
I’m a fast reader and decisive, so let’s see if it’s possible to actually get through the game under 2 hours despite it saying “Over two hours” in the description. [Edit: not a chance. It’s another monster-sized game.]
Title has a pun but also suggests a desperate last stand. I like desperate last stands and hate puns (but forgive them in titles).
Uh oh. There’s a typo in the first sentence. That is more ominous than any foul prophesied horserider.
The rest seems deliberately verbose, but probably just for a prologue-y quote-y bit (otherwise it’ll be a real slog). Writing seems solid, though, I think.
The first choice happens nice and quick, and it’s instantly intriguing.
Hmm. The following text makes me think it was a fake choice.
Onto Chapter One!
Up to the first choice and yep, I’m sold on both the game and the writing. There is enough clearly going on to intrigue me, the writing is indeed solid and not the overwrought stuff of the opening, and I’m pleased to see King Arthur is apparently involved (you may want more originality in your tales, but he and his knights are old friends and I like familiarity).
I LOVE a choice of weakness! And there are several here.
There is a LOT of customisation here, which is great. Except the writer made an error. When they described the hand-shaped bruise on my arm it is said to be a sharp contrast to my light skin. Which means the player character must be white.
Okay! My two hours is up and I feel like I’ve barely started this game. I’d guess the full game takes at least six hours to play. There is enough to keep me interested, but the pacing is fairly relaxed at first (giving plenty of space to ramp it up later), with some action scenes. The horror elements are certainly horror, but they’re more disturbing to the characters than to me, so I’m fine reading along.
My feeling is that there’s a little too much customisation, but I’m sure some readers will love it. It was only in the last half hour that I actually had much idea of what was going on, so a lot of my choices felt largely meaningless (although I don’t think they were actually as meaningless as they felt like they were, eg they were measuring my investigation skills) and a little repetitive.
There are a few very minor errors of spelling or grammar.
It’s extremely hard to judge a game without an ending, but I’ll do my best. There are some really cool plot beats, and a nice sense of ominous things coming closer.
The action ramps up considerably at a certain point, but I can certainly tell this game is just getting started.
IF Comp Review #3: One Does Not Simply Fry
by Stewart C Baker and James Beamon
ChoiceScript comedy. I’m in.
I am suspicious of comedy as a genre, as taste varies so very much. I personally love the “Lord of the Rings” movies with a fiery passion… but I hate puns. So this will be quite a journey!
Now that we’ve established I have massive biases in both directions, let’s jump in!
Also, there will be massive spoilers because this is more of a live blog thingy than a typical review.
The writers have already done something rather clever. ChoiceScript has a specific visual style, designed to be non-distracting. It’s very basic. The games also automatically open directly into the first bit of text when you click ‘Play Online’. Entrants in the IF Comp typically upload an html file with the link to the game (mine is literally just one hyperlink and nothing else). These guys had a nice-looking page of instructions and other details which is not done in ChoiceScript at all (or if it is, they would have had to sort through a bunch of code to shift colours etc)… but then links to the ChoiceScript file.
I shall definitely do that next time I enter. It is much classier, and feels better to the player.
I do love the name “Mount Boom”.
Props for giving vegan and vegetarian options! I am not at all a vegetarian, but when someone actually thinks about minority groups and chooses to bother doing extra bits of code for them, I am impressed. It also makes me instantly feel safe, because a thoughtful game tends to be a kind game (kind to easily-traumatised readers like me, I mean).
I was scared this game would be entirely built on puns, but they seem to be mostly just for names. The style is fun and amusing. I’m on Paragraph 3 of Chapter 1 and I can now fully relax, because it’s clear I’m in good hands. As I’ve said before, if it’s got good writing I will like it. If not, I’ll hate it.
This is good so far.
At the choice of character, having one who can only be accessed on replay is brilliant, especially as it’s clear the writers really want players to go through the game at least twice. Ooh, and only if you WIN the fry-off. These writers are playing hardball!
There are quite long blocks of text between choices. I wonder if that changes when everything’s set up and properly getting started. We’ll see.
What’s with the dice roll? The story basically told me this was my first test, then it appeared to be randomised and not based on anything I’d done. I’m past the first chapter and I’ve made hardly any meaningful choices at all (although to be fair, the two choices I made were significant: character and goal).
It feels weird to play a ChoiceScript game and not choose my gender. I think the writers felt everyone was sick of choosing gender, sexuality, name, etc every time they play a ChoiceScript game. But I like that stuff.
Uh-oh, things are ending badly (which is good for a game very focused on being replayable—it shouldn’t be too easy). It’s a well-written bad ending.
It’s not my favourite game ever, but it’s pretty darn good, and well executed.
Playthrough #2!
Hmm. I bet the Which King? can influence the dice roll and get the super cool kitchen. [Edit: He can’t. Seriously, what is even the point of the dice roll?? Is it merely to make poor innocent completionist players take a fourth play-through in case the one character they didn’t try gets the good kitchen? Well, probably.]
On two different tests I had two viable choices and one obviously poor choice. But my relevant stats were exactly equal for the two choices, so that was unhelpful. The stats are completely static, too—nothing I do makes any difference to my skills. Which is fine, just unusual in ChoiceScript which is specifically designed for delayed branching.
At a couple of stages, a particular choice is correct regardless of what other choices I’ve made along the way. Good for rewarding replayability (and the player’s short term memory), bad for distinguishing one character from another.
I won this time! I was very anxious because I wanted to win this time around, but I knew my onions weren’t perfect. So I feel good about that.
LOL. I’m literally allergic to onions (yet craving them due to this game) so of course I enjoyed having that option (and the torment of wanting to eat onion rings anyway, which is extremely true right now).
Third Playthrough.
I was planning to play the game twice, but they have lured me in. I’m playing as the Which King? next, even though it didn’t entice me at all the first time around.
On this third play-through I saw some things I hadn’t seen before, but it was also very clear that much of the game remains the same. For example, EVERYONE apparently finds Smeagol (you know who I mean right?) slightly attractive, which is statistically very unlikely. There are so many bits of flavour text that could have been different for each character. It’s a shame they didn’t get developed.
I feel like replaying this game was moderately rewarding but not as rewarding as it should have been for a game that is so determined to have players returning for a second (or third or fourth) go.
Still a good game though.
IF Comp Review #2: How Prince Quisborne the Feckless Shook His Title
The author saw my last post and suggested I try his game, since it’s specifically designed to be moron-friendly (that is not actually how he described it).
After installing a TADS er… thingy and downloading it, including going into my security system, I was tired out from problem solving and took a break. I’d been using my brain for almost three minutes!
But I was greeted with a pretty screen and music, which was a nice reward.
The full instructions took about ten minutes to read, and serve as a good intro to parser in general I think. I remembered how much I hate re-reading the same description over and over (a rather essential part of parser games) and opted for the read-through.
Ah! I love the opening paragraph! The exact same humour as was clearly indicated by the title.
Love the whole first page, which starts strong and gets better (and more original) from there.
(In case it wasn’t clear, my main bias is in a highly writer-centric direction. If there ain’t good writing, I will hate it. So far, I love this.)
The author pauses a couple of times to give hints about formatting stuff, which sort of interrupts the story but as a raw beginner I love getting little bits of info juuust when I need them, and in easily-digestible fragments. Ooh, and they develop into gaming hints as well. I’m still allergic to parser (to the extent that I tense up when someone mentions a compass direction) but any moderately sane and intelligent person could easily fall in love with parser because of this game helping them along the way and giving them the option to continue the read-through or put in their own commands.
It does seem to me like a lot of text. I’m not complaining personally, it’s just that my usual experience of IF has the shortest possible bits of text followed by a decision (choice-based IF, of course). Fortunately, fun writing is the author’s strength so why not use it?
There’s some seriously excellent world-building, such as the roads being designed with living creepers to keep them harmonious to the landscape.
Still regularly making me laugh out loud.
I reached an ending (in the sense that the read-through gave it to me), which was delightfully macabre and easily undone. The “undo” button is a wonderful thing.
There’s evidence of thorough programming here, where the scene ‘remembers’ where you dropped things previously.
I just reached the end of the prologue, still enjoying the story (although I thought the paranoid king would believe his rutabagas were somehow sabotaged out of winning first place). It took me less than an hour and a half to get here (it really helps to do the read-through, of course!) so I’ll keep going. I’ve deliberately kept a timer on so I give this game two hours—no more, no less—as per contest rules (we’re meant to judge a game based on the first two hours of play if it’s a monster of a game like this one).
I’m quite delighted that the main focus of the last hour and a half has been some vegetables. I adore low stakes. I also love the prince. And the odder commands in the read-through (eg “Drown Prince”) are delightful. I sometimes find phrases a little clunky, but I think that’s part of the deliberately verbose style rather than actual grammatical clunkiness.
Every so often I know just enough to see the elegance and hard work happening behind the scenes to make the story flow nicely. There are dozens of snippets about what Prince Quisborne is doing as you poke around, and when you leave an area the game very kindly tells you that you leave certain items behind (keeping the inventory to useful items).
I can’t truly comment on the ending, of course, but this seems like a really excellent game that is also very polished and charmingly written.
IF Comp Review #1: Help! I Can’t Find My Glasses!
The Interactive Fiction Comp runs every year, and it is a huge deal among interactive fiction writers and fans. I first entered it in 2015, when I was very new to the whole field of IF, and the entire experience was intense and amazing and lovely. Apart from anything else, part of the forum is a secret Author’s Section where only those who’ve entered the contest that year can talk to each other.
The judging lasts six weeks, and during that time there are HUNDREDS of public reviews.
It is NOT a popularity contest. The community is expected to judge as fairly as they can, and the judges keep an eye out for suspicious trends. But the basis of the contest is community and trust, and I LOVE it.
I am a terrible judge. About half the games each year are parser-based, ie they have puzzles to figure out. Given that I barely know what day it is and live in a permanent state of near-panic, those games are no good for me. I’m also amazingly bad at figuring out even the simplest of computer-y instructions, so a lot of the games are cut off from me for that reason.
So, in sum, I’ll start with games written in the same engine as my own—ChoiceScript. There are three other than my own, so at some point I’ll gird my loins and see what other games are suuuper accessible for my particular neuroses. Because I aim to judge at least 5 games (which is the minimum to take part).
Oh yeah, and I don’t want to give my brain anything too dark, because my depression feeds on that quite badly. That includes any mental illness stuff, so I’ll be avoiding any “this is what it’s like to be mentally ill” games.
Enough rambling! Let us begin!
Help! I Can’t Find My Glasses!
ChoiceScript? Check. Non-Traumatising? Almost certainly. Short? Very.
This game sounds SO easy to play and judge. I’m in.
As a writer, this title is brilliant. It sets tone (tiny, real-world, highly relatable, small-stakes drama), it tells the reader exactly what the driving force of the narrative will be (need glasses), and it immediately makes me sympathetic towards the main character (it gives us a serious problem, as anyone with glasses can tell you, and also gives us a key vulnerability).
The first few choices immediately set name, gender, and sexual orientation, with non-binary options (although no asexual options for those who don’t feel like a fictional romance). This gets some mechanics out of the way very neatly (important in a short game) and allows gender and sexual diversity which immediately makes me feel safe. (Not that I’m in danger from a game, but it means the writer is kind and therefore much less likely to accidentally have casual racism or something else hurtful. The names also had some cultural variety.)
I was immediately let down by the grammar, which is clunky eg “Your hand swipes through…” is saying that your hand passes through solid wood, which would be magical… which is not what the writer intends. Referring to glasses as “it” rather than “them” makes me think English is the writer’s second language. Which makes this an even more impressive achievement. But if this was a longer game, I would quit within three choices. This is what beta testers and editors are for.
The author captures the helplessness of a person without their glasses very well, but the choice to either “beat”, “gut” or “forgive” the person who took them doesn’t allow for any middle ground between violence and forgiveness. Why can’t I report them to a teacher, for example? Or steal something belonging to them?
It’s also odd that someone would fall asleep in a club room. Yes, students will fall asleep anywhere, but it still needs a line of explanation.
My first ending I chose to go and take another nap, and my glasses just appeared back on the table as if nothing happened. It was a little abrupt, but okay (and, no romance happened). My actual theory is that Minh or Jaime knocked the table while being silly and the glasses fell on the floor. Let’s play again and see…
Second ending I discovered Jaime’s dark past (or at least some of it) and asked them on a date, which they agreed to. But I don’t think I found my glasses, so that was a weird ending.
Third ending I wandered around the school a bit, which was quite pleasant, and then I thought I was clicking through familiar endings when I was suddenly at the end. Oops? Or an error?
Fourth ending, I simply ran out of time and the game ended. That’d be the bad ending.
I won’t rate this game very highly, but the writer certainly shows promise. It was smart of them to enter a short game in the IF Comp—a (relatively) small amount of effort for a lot of feedback and community involvement.
Felicity Banks 