#e jade lomax

[ink-splotch]

More a Haunting than a History - Version 2.0!!

an (updated!) interactive fiction game from E. Jade Lomax (ink-splotch / dirgewithoutmusic), the writer who brought you Beanstalk, Second Star to the Left podcast, and Stay?. "Return to your sleepy, strange little hometown after years away. Explore your old haunts, reconnect with old friends and new, and dig into the mysteries that rise up in the town like mist. It's a story about leaving home and coming home; about life after death-- in more ways than one. This choose-your-own-adventure game lets you explore who you used to be so that you can decide who you want to be."

More a Haunting than a History is my second IF (interactive fiction) game, a story about returning to your childhood small town and finding both it and yourself different than you left them.

Version 2.0 is cleaner, stronger, with new content and a trophy system! If you've already explored MAHTAH, dive back in to see what's new to find, experience, or break-- if you haven't given MAHTAH a chance yet, I'd love it if you gave the new & improved version a try!

PLAY IT HERE:

In version 2.0, I made three main changes, as well as various bug fixes (thanks everyone who wrote me about bugs!):

Updated the dialogue system to make for smoother, less awkward conversations-- dialogue being the main gameplay mechanism!

Streamlined the dreams & climax/river scene systems to improve the narrative experience (ensure certain backstory content got seen/emphasized/excluded as relevant)

Introduced a trophy system (more details on the why of this under the cut)

MAHTAH was both a blast and a slog to write, just like Stay? was a rush -- I'd love to hear your thoughts, feelings, and experiences as I start chipping away at my next IF project.

Why trophies? I've added in "trophies" at the end of the game because a) it seemed fun and b) I'm hoping this will help shore up one of what I see as the weaknesses of MAHTAH-- a single playthrough feels "complete."

In some ways, this was a goal of mine; I wanted non-repeat players (players who get to an ending and never pick up the game again) to have a satisfactory and full experience & to not feel like they were "missing out" on anything. 

But this also leads to there being no clear motivation to replay the game, and no hint of the different secrets you can find, relationships you can build through the game, and endings you can have open up to you. It makes the "exploration space" feel more shallow than Stay?'s-- and it is certainly different than Stay?'s-- but they are both stories about exploration & discovery.

In MAHTAH, the discoveries are your friends, your feelings, your relationships, your past-- yourself, even. You can get a pretty full picture in a single playthrough if you max enough things out, in just the right way, but generally I think it takes a few playthroughs of MAHTAH to get the full experience and story.

Even if a single playthrough can be "satisfying,"  it's not the end of the story or the experience, but my focus on trying to make single playthroughs "stand on their own" undercut the visibility to the gaps and holes still remaining that required repeat playthroughs to access. 

So: trophies. They're fun! And they both inform the player at the end of the story that there is content they didn't access -- and ideally make some of that content interesting and desirable. It gives the player a goal as they launch into the next playthrough, and hopefully having that goal lets them play the game in new ways and meet new experiences. 

#interactive fiction #dirgewithoutmusic #ejadelomax #mahtah #e jade lomax #reblogs appreciated :)

[queer-book-character-tournament]

#Lily Chen #the shadow hunter chronicles #cassandra clare #Rune Saint John #The Tarot Sequence #kd edwards #Red Uyeda #Leagues and Legends #e jade lomax #Simon Spier #simon vs the homosapiens agenda #becky albertalli #polls #lgbt books

[echoesofagiantkiller]

A young man named Jack the Beanstalk left the Forest, once, and he never truly came home.

Beanstalk, by E. Jade Lomax

#read this sentence at work and had to Take a minute i love jack So Much #beanstalk #e jade lomax #leagues and legends

[eruditetyro]

@thriftdyke tagged me to post my 9 favorite books! secretly, this is just a list of books/series I read or reread this year. once again as always whenever there is a book question I am directing everyone to the beanstalk series by e. jade lomax aka our very own tumblr user @ink-splotch, because I have been proselytizing about this series for, like, at least nine years now. one of the series of all time. i tag @joculine @premiumgelato @unloneliest @adhdnarut0

#when people want me to be/when i want to be pretentious i say other things. but these are what i like.

[isolatedphenomenon]

“For Rupert,” said Laney.  “Do you have another boyfriend that might be lurking in the Graves’s dungeon?” said Spider. 

...

“You and your girlfriend having little secret conferences without us?” said Grey. 

...

The sound made Rupert shiver. “Your girlfriend’s the one who nabbed me,” she said. “Didn’t invite Farris for some reason.”

...

“I need to get to work, and so does Doc,” said Susie, as Doc nodded gruffly. “Jack, you got your people?” “Yes’m,” Jack told the woman.

...

“They’d left Dadlus alive. Your people."

...

“I’m hurt, Jack. Don’t you think, if I stole one of yours, that I would have the decency to make sure you knew all about it?"

...

“But also, yes, Jack, you’re special. You’re Rupert’s,” she explained. “That matters to me.” “Me, too,” he said

...

“Marian understands sticking with your own; she and I just both didn’t know that you lot were mine.”

...

“I’m a stranger.” “You’re Uncle Jack’s,” she said. “You’re not.”

...

“I don’t want it to be like this,” said Rupert. “I don’t want to leave holes in people, good people, my people.”

...

Laney lifted her head and told Jack on the upper bunk, “He’s bright, this adopted kid of yours.”

...

“I have a feeling,” Laney croaked into the darkness, “that was our boys.”

...

The sentry Jack was relieving glanced at Jack as he climbed up onto the platform and said, “This yours?” Grey looked up at Jack. 

...

“They’re not strange, they’re mine,” said Jack.

- Leagues and Legends by E. Jade Lomax

#obsessed with the main crew getting called each other's partners and just like fully not acknowledging it #and the related phenomenon of them going 'mine. ours.' #anyway i'm on lal lockdown for the foreseeable future pals #leagues and legends #beanstalk #echoes of a giantkiller #remember the dust #1

[sandersgrey]

No one:

Me: you can find E Jade Lomaxs ebooks for FREE on her website ejadelomax.com where you can read them. for FREE. On ejadelomax.com.

#alex wont shut up #in my defense the leagues and legends trilogy changed my life #id def buy the physical books if international shipping werent so complicated

[ursae-minoris-world]

TAG GAME 🌟

Tag 9 people you'd like to know more.

Tagged by @starlightvld thank you!!! 😊

Last song: in all honesty... I was just watching this amv so that's the last song I heard lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPaysUywNZg

Currently watching: I'm in the middle of the last Candela Obscura episode (The Collectors) by Critical Role

Currently reading: Currently reading again the Leagues and Legends Trilogy by E. Jade Lomax ( https://ejadelomax.com/leaguesandlegends/beanstalk/ ), I just started the 3rd book (Remember the Dust).

Current obsession: Still very focused on VLD!

Tagging: @cruelisblue @hazeleks @jacqulinetan @dylexa @eaion @tomatocages @cinnamondjinn @kissingkeith @goldentruth813

(if you feel like it!)

#tags #memes

[light-imperfected]

4, 14, 18!!

4. Favourite thing about roleplaying?

having an excuse to think about gabriel one hundred percent of the time. i ramble about this on masto all the time but it's super super rare for me to relate to a character. gabe's one of the first guys i've seen myself in, straight up ever. he's really close to my heart! hearing from people that they care about him and writing him getting nice things brings me a lot of joy.

14. Who is an author that inspires you?

eulie oh my god i've read so few things recently. (i'm not answering herman melville because i love his stuff, don't get me wrong, but i don't find him inspiring as a writer)

i really love e. jade lomax's beanstalk (leagues and legends series, not to be confused with a game of an only marginally different name); the worldbuilding that goes into writing that series is truly beautiful. really really cool, strong recommend (though iirc you've read it lol), it's free!

18. Are there any AU’s you’d like to explore but haven’t had the chance to yet?

i have one million ideas about what's happening with gabriel/gabe and v1/vee in elarips (which i also have rambled to you an extensive amount about a bunch). i just think subversion/subsistence should get reruns. for me specifically

#ooc #merynger

[circumstellart]

[ID: A digital drawing in color of Tam from More a Haunting than a History by E. Jade Lomax. They are tall and thin with dark skin and buzzed hair and wear a long blue coat, orange flannel shirt, off-white slacks, and brown dress shoes. They are looking backwards and reaching back with one hand while the other holds onto their messenger bag.]

sometimes you meet a character and Immediately know you’re gonna spend the rest of your life doing magic science with them

#tam my beloved #mahtah #more a haunting than a history #ink-splotch #digital art #my art #artist described

[swarmkeepers]

hi sola! happy sleepover saturday! how's your day going? today i went to the library in my new town for the first time. what are some of your favorite books that most people don't know about?

happy sleepover saturday shiloh!! my day's pretty okay, it's raining so i've mostly been in bed or on the couch all day haha (went to my first therapy session in a while though! that was good). and yay for new libraries, i hope it was a fun outing and you got some good books! i love love the beanstalk series by e jade lomax and the queen's thief series by megan whalen turner, just god tier worldbuilding and also such fun plot twists. so rereadable i'd recommend both to anybody!

#sola answered #deep-hearts-core #beastalk is free to read fairy tale inspired adventurers but also. oh my god it's so much more #the queen's thief is byzantine/grecoroman with gods and guns and heists #sola said #sleepover saturday

[quantummindclassicalheart]

10 and 36 for the writer asks? :3

10. Top three favourite fic tropes.

I do enjoy a friends to lovers plot, though thinking of some of the published media I've consumed, enemies to lovers can be very good too. Is "the love is requited, they're just both idiots" a trope?

In order to not have all of these be shipping-related, I'll also say that highly-researched canon divergences really do it for me. The one that burns in my mind is E. Jade Lomax's (@/ink-splotch on Tumblr, dirgewithoutmusic on AO3) a life of smoke and silvered glass, which made me extremely emotional about the Harry Potter franchise in a way I did not know I was still capable of in the year 2022. EJL describes it in the tags as "only a few bare steps away from canon" and yet does so much with those steps.

36. How do you come up with fic titles? What’s the one you’re most proud of?

It's a little bit haphazard-- some pieces are a line from the fic or a variation thereof (ex. like it's the last time, the nature of possibility) while others are song lyrics (ex. a soft place to land, you're still there). But my most common title convention is some kind of short phrase relating to the theme of the work (ex. verbal and somatic, drawn together), with a punny double meaning if I can swing it.

I think the one I'm most proud of might be the divine transmutation of the self, which is a play on the phrase "the divine alchemy of the self," which in turn is a misquote of Julian K. Jarboe's quote that "God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation."

Thanks for the ask!

(ask me questions about writing)

[queer-book-character-tournament]

#Jonathan Bane #Jon's Downright Ridiculous Shooting Case #aj Sherwood #Alex Claremont-Diaz #Red White and Royal Blue #rwrb #casey mcquiston #Percy Newton #The Montague Siblings #a gentleman's guide to vice and virtue #Mackenzie Lee #Sezly Ruedotter #Leagues and Legends #e jade lomax

[echoesofagiantkiller]

But at the base of Jack’s ladder, the closest anyone would come to the scattered magic still hissing and dripping down, there was a girl with short gold curls and Jack knew every one of her names.

- Remember the Dust, by E. Jade Lomax 

#rereading this series and oh boy #I love them so much #remember the dust #beanstalk #leagues and legends

[eruditetyro]

Favorite books besides trc!

GREAT question, i'm so glad you asked

I adore the Beanstalk series by e. jade lomax and I think trc enjoyers in general should check it out, because it checks similar boxes of large cast of protagonists who are all a little in love with each other, magic, big world, school antics, and Secrets. one of the highlights of what Beanstalk does differently, in my opinion, is just how big and detailed the world is: yes, we have our protagonists, and they have their quests and mysteries to solve, but they impact the people around them, and the books take time to really dig into that. also, there are more women, no romance between main protags, and more queer people in general. lomax (tumblr user ink-splotch) poured a lot of detail and love into these books, and they are close to my heart. definitely the most niche piece of media i will recommend (independently published, ebooks are FREE. the website seems to be down atm but should be back up soon). this series warms the soul for me.

I have a soft spot for the foxhole court trilogy, because of course i do. other fantasy books i have a soft spot for are cashore's Graceling and valente's Deathless. a childhood favorite of mine is pyle's Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

those types of books i consume like a fire consumes kindling and will reread with some frequency. i work through others more slowly. i have a book of Rilke's poetry and a copy of Faust in the original German which i sometimes try to work through :P. big fan of Anne Carson's greek play translations (Antigone, everything in Grief Lessons) and I want to read more of her work. also had fun reading Emily Wilson's Odyssey translation earlier this year.

[isolatedphenomenon]

on love:

He laughed, the deep boom a ten-year-old Jack had always hopped his own high chortle would grow up to be. “It’s not about being a husband, Jack, or raising a family. It’s not that. That woman and this family is what I fell in love with, but that’s me, not you. It’s the falling in love, Jack. That’s what gives you meaning and makes you stand tall. It’s finding something worth building.” Light filtered down through the bush’s tangled branches. “What are you in love with, Jack?”

Beanstalk by E. Jade Lomax

“Jack’s a romantic,” said George. “Less so, after Liam, but still more than he claims. He thinks if you love hard enough, things will be okay. There’s a poem or something somewhere—love cures a multitude of sins.”

Echoes of a Giantkiller by E. Jade Lomax

“Is there always evidence when things happen?” said Jill. “Someone goes brain-dead and they could just be sleeping, except they don’t wake up. You fall in love—what evidence?”  “Pupils dilating,” George told the ceiling.  “Not the kind of love I mean,” said Jill.

...

“Let them take care of you,” she said. “They love you, Rupert, and they want to be there for you. Let them.” “Couldn’t stop them if I tried,” he said. His cheeks had pinked, but he was keeping a straight face. “Don’t try,” said Miz Eliza

Remember the Dust by E. Jade Lomax

#do any of the baby rangers+ actually Need to Say they love each other to prove they do? no #shoutout to miz eliza for vocalizing it anyway #leagues and legends #remember the dust #echoes of a giantkiller #beanstalk #1

[knittedbond]

2 and 18 for the book asks? :0!!

top 5 books of all time?

really coming out SWINGING w this first one... ok i dont think i can put a numerical order but

- the essex serpent by sarah perry

- beanstalk - e. jade lomax

- the murderbot diaries (yes the whole series i can't pick just one) - martha wells

- through the woods - emily carroll

- i am the messenger - markus zusak

- OH one more the things they carried - tim o'brien

do you like historical books? what time period?

HELP i accidentally posted this before i answered. anyways not reaaaally generally i tend to read fantasy/sff or contemporary novels if i end up reading realistic fiction. i think if smth is historical the era doesn't matter to me it just is abt like. the story aspect. i have read my fair share of fun historical novels tho

#answered #marsjoram #THANK U MIRZA MWAH