Interactive story or poem – what was this website I remember?
June 2, 2020 9:42 AM   Subscribe

I'm trying to find a website I saw probably five or ten years ago. It was an interactive text (I can't remember if it was more like a poem or a story), which began with a single line of descriptive writing. When you clicked a word in the text, the writing expanded to include more detail.

For example, if it began as "The sky was cloudy," and you clicked "cloudy," it might expand to "The sky was full of fluffy dark cumulus clouds." Then if you clicked "cumulus clouds", it might expand to "The sky was full of fluffy dark clouds, the kind that sometimes foretell storms".

If you kept clicking, the single line expanded into a much longer passage that more or less filled the screen. The sky example is made up, I don't remember what the text was actually about.

It works a little bit like Nested (by Orteil, the guy who makes Cookie Clicker) but simpler. I'm pretty sure it was the same every time, not procedurally generated. There's a good chance I first found it through a link on MetaFilter, but searching hasn't turned anything up. Any ideas?
posted by oulipian to Media & Arts (7 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
That sounds like interactive fiction using Twine. With Those We Love Alive by Porpentine, for example - that's one I like a lot, but it could be a lot of different Twine stories.
posted by Jeanne at 10:32 AM on June 2, 2020


If you saw it on Metafilter, it may have been in my 2014 post compiling various notable Twine titles. Of course, there's been a lot of great releases since then.
posted by zeusianfog at 10:51 AM on June 2, 2020


Response by poster: I really appreciate these answers, although I don't think it was built with Twine (I'm familiar with interactive fiction and think this was more of a one-off JavaScript-powered project). I remember it being a single screen (no links, just text expanded dynamically) with a white background.
posted by oulipian at 11:02 AM on June 2, 2020


Best answer: What you're describing sounds exactly like how I'd describe Telescopic Text (which I always remember as "that hypertext about making tea?").

Interestingly, it doesn't appear to be working properly anymore.
posted by AndNeverWell at 12:03 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]




Response by poster: Ah, that's exactly it! For sure! I remember the biscuits. Funny that the version at the main domain name appears to be broken, but the other one is working? Thanks so much for finding it!
posted by oulipian at 12:09 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Aaaaand of course there's a MetaFilter thread about it. A very snarky one!
posted by oulipian at 2:11 PM on June 2, 2020


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