Thank you!!
it’s up for me (also there’s a website called downforeveryoneorjustme.org that lets you check this automatically!)I kept getting 502 error but then it worked, I checked their twitter and apparently their sysadmins are trying to diagnose intermittent slowness issues. Anyway it’s working again now, and thanks for the useful information.
and just when I started reading Floornight ofc
You can download it as an epub (or mobi or pdf) file when it goes back online to protect against the site going down. If it you have a kindle, it is then possible to upload them there. Also there are ffn/ao3 reading apps for android that allow you to save and read files on a smartphone.
I don’t know if you know about these things, so I say them.
@nostalgebraist wasn’t there somewhere you could download a better-formatted kindle version of Floornight than the a03 one?
Yeah, the .mobi (for Kindle) is here and the .epub is here. These links are also in the “Notes” for Floornight on AO3.
On the whole I’m a lot prouder of Floornight than TNC, even though the fine details of TNC are much more successfully executed. What makes Floornight work is that I was writing exactly what I wanted to write, all the time – this results in a world and plot that are kind of a sprawling mess, but in a way that is very honest and direct: “here’s something new I really like! Maybe you like it?”
Hence, I still sometimes go back over bits of Floornight and smile, thinking “man, I love that part,” where when I look over TNC, I see some sentences and phrases I’m proud of, but also kind of cringe thinking about how I’m leading the reader around saying “no, the fun is over here. What? No, I meant it’s over there.” Floornight is just like “the fun is right here.”
Hopefully I can write a third (or fourth, or etc.) thing that has the upsides of both and the downsides of neither.
fwiw i enjoyed tnc a lot and it feels a lot more like, inviting than floornight which i will go back to eventually but dont think i can right now
Thank you – it really cheers to me up to hear people say they enjoyed TNC as a whole.
Floornight is more of a … free-for-all, like it’s objectively more of a mess but I feel less bad about it being a mess because being messy for fun was the whole point.
aprilwitching replied to your post “Chapter 25 of The Northern Caves is up here Close, but not done yet.”
rob what is it with you and eleventh hour gay makeout scenes in your fiction is this gonna become a stylistic trademark bc id be on board with that
also you do character voice better than i think i appreciated before– i was able to follow all of this fine and tell which characters were talking when even without any dialogue tags :)
On the second part – thanks, and glad to hear it!
On the first part … (under a cut for both Floornight and TNC spoilers)
Phrase of the week, from a Goodreads review of Floornight:
Floornight’s indulgence and freedom to disappear up its own beautiful asshole […]
Thanks. Writing stuff that is “weird” on purpose can go wrong in a lot of ways – being unintentionally cliched or otherwise not as weird as you wanted, seeming “random” in a contrived way, just being gibberish with no resonance for the reader at all, etc. – so I’m glad my weirdness is working for you.
Thanks!
Floornight dot png
Then there is a thing he can see: a small scuttling creature that dimly illuminates the space around it. It has maybe eight or ten little legs and is furry. It looks a bit like a tarantula. It pauses and looks up at him. It has a face, an incongruous face with big dewy eyes. It is cute. It looks like some sort of CGI advertising mascot.
“hello, [potential-friend] [you-who individuates]! [this-one-who-does-not-individuate] is glad we could establish this interface!” says the little creature.
Kyle doesn’t know how it is speaking. The words appear in his mind, not quite as heard words but in some place between words and concepts. Some of the words are fuzzy at the edges, somehow.
“Hello,” Kyle says to the creature. When he opens his mouth, no water flows in, and this seems right. "Who are you?“
”[this-one-who-does-not-individuate] is one of the [Teeming] who live here on the floor and in the trenches, among the baths of [Pneuma Heat?]. [we] are not human and [you-who-individuates] are human, and so there is an unavoidable [communication barrier?] given the nature of this interface. [we] apologize, but [we] [hope] the contact will be [valuable/fruitful?] nonetheless.“
Floornight, Chapter 3