Minor fall, MAJOR LIFT - a WIP of an Interactive Fiction Piece in inkle's ink language!

The only way that’d be a mood killer is if the dragon wanted to join in.

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This was really sweet and realistic. Lev’s schizophrenia is handled with beautiful subtility. I love that.

Now a few minor things:

  • The “explore” button is misleading imo, like @FairyGodfeather was saying. It gives me the impression that Lev’s going to physically get up and explore the surroundings, check out the other rooms etc. In fact, it seems that it’s just descriptions of the place and the people in it, and Lev is really just glancing around. Maybe just renaming the button to say something like “Look around” instead would be more appropriate and get rid of that feeling that you’re ignoring the person in front of you and going to get called on it.

  • At one point you write “You don’t bother to use the formal “thou” […]”. This is a bit jarring to me, since “thou” used to be the informal way of addressing someone and was used only with people that you were very close to, or as a sign of disrespect. It was dropped in favor of the formal “you”. So did the people of this world reclaim the lost pronoun and flip the societal weights of “thou” and “you”?

  • I prefer not seeing things described the same way several times. Anya “cocks his head to one side like a curious bird” twice in this WiP. Maybe there’s another way of saying that? Maybe the second instance can be shortened to just “cocks his head”? Same goes for his “harpyish cackle” that comes up several times. The cackle has already been established as harpyish, we don’t need to be reminded at every single cackle.

Those are tiny little gripes though, otherwise it’s great. I’d love to read more!

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Hmmmm…nope that would be bad…point taken

how did i miss this, not once did i notice it.

I was assuming there that language had changed. We see thou as different nowadays, and most certainly would think that someone using it was being overly formal (and slightly pretentious). I can see language changing so that it becomes used as a formal form of address.

Or it could even be assumed that they’re not even speaking English, or it’s not their first language, the names aren’t English after all, and that ‘thou’ is just being a placeholder for something else.

Or maybe Lev’s just wrong. :slight_smile:

But that was my own thoughts on it. (I did pick up on thou having changed meanings too.)

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That was my assumption. A lot of languages still have formal/informal ways of saying “you”, and I assumed it was just a translation convention. It could seem a little unusual to someone who didn’t know that, though.

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I like the concept of the “explore” option, how it fleshes out and flavors the space so that the player can be said to proper inhabit it, which is useful in such a linear story where you’ve lost the automatic engagement and identification from giving the player control. That’s something Emily Short has pointed out is “missing” in choice-based IF versus the parser. I think it might be served better, first, with more environment descriptions overall, and second, as Twine-style highlighted words that expand out, if that’s possible in Inkle. Placing it in the menu does make it seem active, which is I think where FairyGodfeather got mixed up.

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Hey, just to clarify I didn’t get mixed up. I wouldn’t even say it was a criticism just my own personal musings. It actually strangely seemed to work for me, fitting in with the narrator’s voice. The narrator’s so inside their own head most of the time, the ability to be able to look, to further examine, to delve deeper into this world and just drown in all the luxurious descriptions, it seemed fitting to me. But I’d have liked an in-text acknowledgement of it, pulling it into the story more maybe, as opposed to it just being this passive thing that’s not reacted to.

I do find that look options in choicescript completely disrupt the narrative flow, that they’re most certainly best to be kept in the main text.

I think twine’s concept of clicking on words to make them unfurl like flowers is a very interesting narrative tool when done well. Although I’ve also found that I end up getting frustrated and wanting to continue on with the story instead of just getting more and more things examined.

The writing of this story seemed closer to twine than choicescript.

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I started writing fiction with Twine, so I still have a lot of Twine-ish habits, I suppose!

Also, I use formal-thou to mimic Russian’s T-V distinction. The setting is heavily based on fantasy Russia!

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That also mildly irritates me when I play Twine games, or even the other way around, when I just want to take a closer look at a couple of things and end up advancing the story by mistake. That’s effective if you want the interface to be capricious for effect, but sometimes it just comes off plain sloppy. What I’m proposing though, is that they actually keep the menu of choices and supplement it with unfurling, which would make for a sharp and clear division between moving the story forward and flavor, with the added bonus of not really impairing narrative “flow” so much.

(And sorry for mischaracterizing your stance glibly.)

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Your writing style is truly beautiful, and your characterization is wonderful.

You’ve already created a very intriguing world, and I’m curious to get to know the ins and outs of it. (Will there be more on the world you’ve created that we can explore? I see that this is a mostly character-centric story but you’ve really piqued my curiosity.)

Also the characters seem wonderful already. Lev’s shyness is something I know all too well, and all of the dialogue flows very naturally. Plus you have a very “stream-of-consciousness” style which really helps immerse the reader in this idea that they’re taking on the eyes of someone else.

There’s also something very… calming, about your tone. Everything has this very languid pace, you’re not rushing around, trying to rapidly find answers… It’s more reflective, peaceful, like a stroll through this story you’ve created. It’s almost a ‘sunny-afternoon dream’ kind of pace, which adds to the atmosphere you’ve created, if that makes any semblance of sense. It’s lovely to read.

Overall: This is a beautiful story and I can’t wait to see where you go with it. Good luck!

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Ohhhhhh goodness. I love this. So, so much.

I’ll gush more when I’ve the time. But for now, thank you for sharing. This was a treat.

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Oh my god, thank you so much, everyone! This is a far more positive response than I expected. I think I’m definitely going to write the full story’s prototype/initial incarnation in ChoiceScript. And I’ll keep a devlog/WIP thread on this forum, for feedback/encouragement/because people see so interested in my silly story. <3 You all are great.

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Anzu is effeminate; a queen. A poof, to be crude. A man who deliberately affects femininity to signal he’s gay and gender non-conforming.

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Is it unclear that Lev himself is also a man?

Can we not use homophobic slurs please even if they’re blurred behind spoilers?

@Thunder-Man Please do not use “a queer”, it’s used as an adjective not a noun. For all that there has been a lot done to reclaim it, it is also still a slur. In this case I’d ask “is he gay?”

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No I thought lev was a man.
Though for about half a second I thought anzu was a escort. It threw me off for a second about the ending since I made the assumption anzu was a shifter changling based on story, though I liked the ending section it showed Anya too had emotions and worries other than just silence about stuff. it made me connect a little more.

A question: the larger project (The Bitter Drop) will have the characters self-refer to themselves with slurs at various times, because they don’t have the education or the self-acceptance or the context to use other words, sometimes. Would this be a problem?

I think it’s all a matter of context.

Let me see if the guidelines has a quote. (While they are for the official games the hosted games aren’t a complete free for all.)

Avoid casual sexism, like “he’s crying like a girl”. (Characters in the game can be sexist, but make sure to be clear that it is the character, not the authorial voice, that is expressing these ideas.)

Our games do not endorse or perpetuate rape culture, homophobia, or transphobia.

If your game includes one of these topics, it should be treated seriously and with respect for the victims. The PC should not be the one perpetuating these ideologies.

My own call on this would be that the exploration of internalised homophobia from a gay character would be acceptable. That having a straight cis protagonist throw around homophobic slurs wouldn’t be.

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Sorry to use the word, but what would I use instead?

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