50 | FIRST CONTACT
50 | FIRST CONTACT
by: Piergiorgio d’Errico
Progress:
- I reached the end of this narrative in about 1h05m.
Things I Appreciated:
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My favorite element of this piece was the physical presence of winged characters, and how that was described in scenes. That’s when I was having the most fun in reading this—seeing how characters with physical features like wings and horns in a cramped space had to manage that, and how that was built into the scenes. I really like when fantasy writers imagine how things like architecture would be different in the case that many different species are living in the same social spaces together. Having wings isn’t just an incidental feature, it was central to shaping the day-to-day lived experiences of the characters. That was a nice touch.
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I appreciated some of more humorous moments of the piece, like when people were aghast that one of Azuj’s attunements was “construction and demolition,” after she caused a disruption, or the intriguingly-worded observation, “She’s an indirect witness, but a first-hand indirect witness.” I liked those social elements of the piece where it was less about the lore/history and more about seeing how these quirky individuals interacted with each other, because that added some texture to the narrative that I latched onto.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
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It’s apparent that a lot of energy for this piece went into developing complex historical lore for the fantasy setting. But much more could be done in artfully conveying that information to the reader. So I am going to focus my feedback on what I think could facilitate that.
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(1) Reduce visual clutter. I am not overly bothered by things like misspelled words, questionable translations, etc. I try to come to pieces like this with the humility that it is challenging to have to cater specifically to an anglophone audience. What I want to direct attention toward instead are the pervasive formatting errors. The inconsistent capitalization significantly hinders the readability of the piece. Many nouns are capitalized that don’t need to be, or are sometimes capitalized and sometimes not. Similarly, the paragraph breaks, spacing, and punctuation, are structured in a way that is often difficult to parse visually. Even if the text of the narrative remained identical, if the formatting/presentation was made to be unified and consistent, it would greatly improve the reader’s ability to absorb and retain the details of the narrative, which serves both the reader and the author. Attention that the reader spends on decoding the formatting is attention taken away from the content/heart of the piece.
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(2) Integration of lore into the narrative. The first scene of this work involves the main character thinking about a lot of different worldbuilding/background details in the form of long exposition paragraphs that the reader is meant to read before being allowed to proceed into the plot. As an author I think it’s important to know this lore information when writing the story, but also to remember that your reader doesn’t have the same relationship to the lore and world and characters that you do yet. I think the approach here was: the reader will care about the protagonist because she is living in an interesting world, so the reader should be told as much as possible about that world first. I think this is exactly backwards. It’s more likely that the reader will attach to a character who is doing something, and then develop an organic interest in that world because of how the lore affects that character in the process of doing something. To put it another way: I think the highest priority is to write a character into a situation that forges a connection with the reader, so that the lore information has a context that the reader cares about (how is the lore detail helping or hindering that character from resolving their immediate conflict/situation?) As a reader, I remember more details from exposition that happened deeper in the story when the protagonist was actually living in the world in real time, as opposed when she was sitting by herself thinking about those details.
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(3) Conflict/stakes: In terms of the story structure, I felt like there was a distinct lack of conflict. Etuye doesn’t face much resistance/opposition to her goal of becoming more comfortable with herself/her powers. As a reader, I wasn’t that invested because I could not sense the struggle that she was earning the happy ending that she received. Take the relationship between Etuye, Azuj, and Miyai. Etuye feels connected to them instantly, and there really isn’t much of a narrative arc to their relationship. What if, instead, these characters don’t all instantly like each other? Or, since it’s a 3-person relationship, what if Azuj and Miyai start off in conflict, but Etuye has to work to mediate their relationship a bit to help them bond? I don’t think it takes away from the peaceful setting to have momentary conflict based on first impressions that ultimately gets resolved when the characters get to know each other on a deeper level. It just felt like all three of them accepted the situation based on external factors (it being destined) more or less without hesitation.
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So to wrap up my comments, I’ll say this. I personally did not enjoy the breastmilk fetish content, and if I wasn’t determined to give each piece as fair of an evaluation to learn something from as possible, I would’ve just skipped this. But, I’m not here to kink-shame. What I’m getting at with my preceding commentary is, the presentation and plotting of this narrative could be significantly enriched/polished, so that people who are into it can have the best possible reading experience. If you’re going to go to the effort develop this complicated lore about rituals of communal breastmilk consumption, present that exposition in a way that doesn’t fight against the pacing and readability of the piece.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
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As someone who has written and plans to write more demon/devil characters with attributes like horns, wings, claws, etc., the physical presence of Azuj in scenes made me refocus on something important for my own work. Namely, that if you are going to give characters these attributes, you need to account for what it’s like for them to navigate in a world that either is or isn’t structured for beings with that feature. This piece goes out of its way to note how Azuj’s carelessness with her wings causes irritation for other people in the room, and also in terms of worldbuilding, there are references peppered here or there that note how the building is designed to be accessible for winged characters. So my takeaway from all this is a reminder that a fiendish presentation should not only be aesthetic, but that body should feel “lived in” and interact with the world in way that is specific to that character.
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This piece is a great example of the challenges of writing the introductory chapters to a high fantasy type setting. You have to introduce key world-building/societal elements, forge an emotional connection between the reader and the protagonist, set up the conflict of the piece to create interest, be sure to make spaces that have sensory details and atmosphere to be more immersive, but also, you need to do all that while maintaining efficient pacing. Adding to that, if you want to do that in interactive fiction, you have to also develop interactive elements that are satisfying for the reader to engage with. That’s such a tall order! So I think it’s always worth testing out different ways of introducing a narrative/world like this to find the right balance of those many factors.
Quote:
- “The definitively unique Remembrance continues.” (It sure did.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
- It’s hard for this to be anything other than when everyone gets together to communally drink breastmilk.