Passages is speculative fiction by Jared W. Cooper.
I wondered whether I should try to piece together its chronology on my own. Then I decided to follow the narrator’s example and accept things as they are.
Honestly, you can ignore my review. Graybeard’s Plunder, by Julian Mortimer Smith, is short enough that your time would be better spent just enjoying the work itself.
Seasonal Apocalypse Disorder, written by Zan and Xavid, is a parser-based mission to save the world from fiery destruction. (Xavid is also credited on Vain Empires.)
Accelerate is a choice-based multimedia project credited to The TAV Institute.
This story is set in a future world where nations have already been remade by violent conflict, but political and economic actors are still engaging in familiar behavior that divides and controls the public. It’s quickly apparent whether this experience will appeal to you.
The narration of this story fits the perspective of a naive magical creature trying to survive as an entrepreneur in the City of Sand — it’s exactly the kind of blank-slate optimism that you would expect from an entity that knows nothing about humanity.
THE PICKLE ENDORSES THIS REVIEW HEARTILY AND REMINDS THE READER THAT THE PICKLE ONLY WANTS TO BE GOOD FRIENDS. THERE IS NO REASON TO DEFEAT THE PICKLE.
I’ll tell you what, one of my favorite moments in the game was when the pickle took care of the raider in the bakery. Whatever else you want to say about the pickle, you can’t fault its priorities.
“You Will Thank Me as Fast as You Thank a Werewolf” could have put more helpful information in its blurb – calling it “an experimental story about a lifelong romantic relationship” is insulting. (EDITED TO CLARIFY: Trying to present GPT-2 output as a mimicry of other IFcomp entries is an insult to even the weakest, most poorly crafted work submitted by actual people.)
From its in-game About section:
“This work is a collaboration with GPT-2, a neural network model designed to predict the next word in a block of given text based on its study of eight million web pages. In this application, I input a text file of my own prose from the past twenty years into GPT-2. It then generated new writing in a similar style. I selected, arranged, and lightly edited the resulting output.”
I’d be entertained if somebody collaborated with GPT-2 to generate a review for this entry, but otherwise I’m giving it a 2.