The subject matter and theming is interesting, Halloween first time meet up with people you only know online, who you've come out to as trans recently. The anxiety of the character is well framed as well using Twine's ability to autoscroll text to make the protagonist Alyssa seem like she's stumbling over her words. Alyssa is shown to be quite paranoid throughout the course of the text about how others are percieving her, taking passive remarks and reading deep into them.
This text is reminiscent of a piece of writing out of the Romanticism period like Frankenstein or The Sorrows of Young Werther which focus on descriptive flowery language to reflect high passions and feelings. In this case the main qualities being reflected are dissociation and anxiety which is why I use those 2 literary examples because I would say they have similar emotional thematic tones. Here though its utilized in reflection of the genuinely mundane moment rather than a big existential tragedy and trauma. Although there is still reflection on transition and the paranoia with being perceived, the mundane party atmosphere is meant to quell this.
Anybody who is tied to romanticist literature would probably tell you it's effective but I find that whole movement overwrought, oversincere, and on the nose. While I can see the artistic reason for it, there's an excessive use of alliteration and sophisticated words like 'japery' and 'olfactory' which are resonant yet distract from discription and quite simply don't work for me. It led to parsing issues which is exasperated further in twine where only a paragraph of text is on the screen at once. I would be remiss not to mention this is far from the only Twine game with this issue though.
I'm much more tied to naturalism or modernist writing. Where the narration of the mind is simple and usually reflecting on the past rather than the current moment. So you could chalk that up to a preferential thing. Darkest Dungeon has a narrator who speaks with this kind of paranoid sophistry to, and it was one of the main reasons I never finished that game. Mainly I would have liked to know more about Alyssa's friends, and in particular I think the monologue with Natalie is both simplistic and unrealistic. I think given what we know there would be a few more attempts by Alyssa to downplay Natilie's regrets, or given they are all Discord nerds that it would be more stuttering and contemplative rather than 1 giant unbroken monologue. This monologue would work if it was typed to somebody instead but that's not how it went down.
On the positives, there's an immaculate use of color throughout the text, which soothes into the tone perfectly. I also think that when Alyssa's narration was actually given a direct voice, the reflections were really cool, for example this passage on comfort:
"In a way, that’s sort of the implicit cost of comfort, right? After all, what is comfort without some sort of negative to base it on? While this film… isn’t particularly fun, being part of it, part of this moment, is what makes the comfiness of friendship, of family, of life, worth it. Like, for all the talk of safety and happiness, it’s really at its most safe, most happy, most intimate and welcoming, in the face of discomfort, right? "
While I'm far too pessimistic to agree with it, I think the hesitancy and uncertainty matches that sensation of wistfulness that usually goes with the holidays, which is one of the enduring reasons we associate these times with Peanut specials. It's within that window that I see a text that, while I personally don't have much love for, can see it as an acceptable reflection of holiday alienation in relationship to queerness. If you like this, I recommend Three Lesbians in a Winter Special which performs a similar tone and subject matter.
At the end of the day, I'm glad to have another text I can add to this list. Twine games are really neat, and I think it's a great medium for the biggest nerds on here to get more familiar with the difficulties of story design when it comes to game immersion. I also think that seeing or having to figure out how to critique the work of our peers is sort of fascinating, am I treating this work with a similar level of respect and consideration that I did of Presentable Liberty or No One Can Ever Know? And also how fair can we be about judgements and criticism in comparison to both debut work, and work made in time constraints? These are heavy questions, especially because comparatively I feel like this is the type of work that certain goons on the site would openly deride and degrade for being sincere and internal.
Perhaps my main takeaway here is I always feel particularly disappointed when I'm dropped into a world and don't have a firm grasp on the characters I was interested in by the end of it. I'd love to know more about the history of almost all the characters and so it's a shame I only have the fragment to go off of. As a result, I hope to see what else the developer can make outside of time constraints since Game Jams are by design not friendly to polish anyway.
This text is reminiscent of a piece of writing out of the Romanticism period like Frankenstein or The Sorrows of Young Werther which focus on descriptive flowery language to reflect high passions and feelings. In this case the main qualities being reflected are dissociation and anxiety which is why I use those 2 literary examples because I would say they have similar emotional thematic tones. Here though its utilized in reflection of the genuinely mundane moment rather than a big existential tragedy and trauma. Although there is still reflection on transition and the paranoia with being perceived, the mundane party atmosphere is meant to quell this.
Anybody who is tied to romanticist literature would probably tell you it's effective but I find that whole movement overwrought, oversincere, and on the nose. While I can see the artistic reason for it, there's an excessive use of alliteration and sophisticated words like 'japery' and 'olfactory' which are resonant yet distract from discription and quite simply don't work for me. It led to parsing issues which is exasperated further in twine where only a paragraph of text is on the screen at once. I would be remiss not to mention this is far from the only Twine game with this issue though.
I'm much more tied to naturalism or modernist writing. Where the narration of the mind is simple and usually reflecting on the past rather than the current moment. So you could chalk that up to a preferential thing. Darkest Dungeon has a narrator who speaks with this kind of paranoid sophistry to, and it was one of the main reasons I never finished that game. Mainly I would have liked to know more about Alyssa's friends, and in particular I think the monologue with Natalie is both simplistic and unrealistic. I think given what we know there would be a few more attempts by Alyssa to downplay Natilie's regrets, or given they are all Discord nerds that it would be more stuttering and contemplative rather than 1 giant unbroken monologue. This monologue would work if it was typed to somebody instead but that's not how it went down.
On the positives, there's an immaculate use of color throughout the text, which soothes into the tone perfectly. I also think that when Alyssa's narration was actually given a direct voice, the reflections were really cool, for example this passage on comfort:
"In a way, that’s sort of the implicit cost of comfort, right? After all, what is comfort without some sort of negative to base it on? While this film… isn’t particularly fun, being part of it, part of this moment, is what makes the comfiness of friendship, of family, of life, worth it. Like, for all the talk of safety and happiness, it’s really at its most safe, most happy, most intimate and welcoming, in the face of discomfort, right? "
While I'm far too pessimistic to agree with it, I think the hesitancy and uncertainty matches that sensation of wistfulness that usually goes with the holidays, which is one of the enduring reasons we associate these times with Peanut specials. It's within that window that I see a text that, while I personally don't have much love for, can see it as an acceptable reflection of holiday alienation in relationship to queerness. If you like this, I recommend Three Lesbians in a Winter Special which performs a similar tone and subject matter.
At the end of the day, I'm glad to have another text I can add to this list. Twine games are really neat, and I think it's a great medium for the biggest nerds on here to get more familiar with the difficulties of story design when it comes to game immersion. I also think that seeing or having to figure out how to critique the work of our peers is sort of fascinating, am I treating this work with a similar level of respect and consideration that I did of Presentable Liberty or No One Can Ever Know? And also how fair can we be about judgements and criticism in comparison to both debut work, and work made in time constraints? These are heavy questions, especially because comparatively I feel like this is the type of work that certain goons on the site would openly deride and degrade for being sincere and internal.
Perhaps my main takeaway here is I always feel particularly disappointed when I'm dropped into a world and don't have a firm grasp on the characters I was interested in by the end of it. I'd love to know more about the history of almost all the characters and so it's a shame I only have the fragment to go off of. As a result, I hope to see what else the developer can make outside of time constraints since Game Jams are by design not friendly to polish anyway.