Week 3, Day 3: Discussion Questions for Galatea

>tell Galatea about love

You’d rather know what she thinks on the subject.

>ask Galatea about love

“What do you know about love?” (As long as you’re catechizing her, you might as well be thorough.)

“That it makes people behave like idiots,” she replies harshly. “That it takes more than it gives.”

Ok- Emily Short- Interactive Fiction

1- Let’s begin where I’m sure we’d like to begin: WTF…right? Let’s talk about our frustrations as well as discoveries, our dislikes as well as our loves, things that were exciting, witty, surprising, and areas you found boring as you stumbled–bumbled over the landscape of this text. **Also, let’s talk about your knowledge of the myth of Galatea and how that may have made your experience easier/different.

2. Which brings me to point 2- is this a text? How can you define it as a text? According to Nick Montfort, Interactive Fiction (IF) is:

  • “a text-accepting, text-generating computer program;
  • a potential narrative, that is, a system that produces narrative during interaction;
  • a simulation of an environment or world;
  • and a structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game.”

Montfort wants the reader to remember it is a computer program that accepts user texts in an input-output format.  You are the interactor in a potential narrative. So, how do you feel about calling this a text, or rather, a type of fiction? 

3. Montfort also explains that what you all ended up with during your session with Short’s Galatea last night was a session text. If you start over, you begin a new session. We all have different session texts as interactors. So, how can we continue to define this as a text or genre of fiction? Let’s talk about some of your experiences to see how similar/different our pathways were. Then, let’s return to this question of session text vs what is the text???

4. How do we discuss, critique, and write on a body of work that is manipulable and nonlinear? 

5. You as an interactor have agency in the realm of IF. You are a character. How does this feel in relation to other genres of writing you’ve come across?

6. “Although IF works are always called games” do you feel this is a game? Did you feel like you had to “win?” Did you? Can you? Is it necessary to feel a sense of completion when you leave the IF?

>tell her gown is pretty

You can only do that to something animate.



2 thoughts on “Week 3, Day 3: Discussion Questions for Galatea

  1. I got Aphrodite to show up and make Galatea fall in love with me! That’s right! Even in IF and with cold stone statues, I still got it! I guess I won? She’s a cheap date- never has to eat or drink- and she’s already on a pedestal! Ha!

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