Reviews by Andrew Schultz

I meant to make my IFComp 2023 reviews public, but I never did. So I had a think, which entry affected me the most? Which gave me the most memories? Bez's MPDE hit the mark for me. I wasn't surprised to see many high-star reviews when I went to submit mine.

MPDE is a virtual museum, autobiographical, about the author's experiences in an abusive home. Going back, I didn't remember all the details, but I wound up remembering the technical and aesthetic choices more than the story despite not being an aesthetics person. The writing is good, but the way the author goes about sharing episodes helped me think about how I share my disappointments, big or small, with others, and how I hope they share with me. It was also unexpected, even though I know Bez is a quality writer. (The strongest line for me, which I want to share, popped up early on. "But that's when it hit me: if I wanted to kill myself, why did dying in a dream disturb me so much?") This veers off into how I would write something, so be warned.

Because the museum is a good choice for what the author wants to present and allow the player to empathize. It's largely choice, with custom programming, but it takes in the parser elements of a map, which I found effective. Each museum allows you to back up in-game, away from the main exhibits on the walls (think: 4x4 map where you need to touch the edges to see stuff,) which was a surprisingly nice way to violate the "no unnecessary rooms" principle. In fact it works a bit better as rooms on a 4x4 grid in a parser can't really "see" each other.

There've been times I needed to back up physically when addressing a serious problem, and with these actions the game itself said "you can back up physically if you need to and come back later." And I did. Often writing about my own parallel problems. "Here's what I'd do if I had a museum." I think we'd all like to build one for ourselves, recognizing how impractical it would be if everyone built one (no-one'd have time to visit!) But I enjoyed the thought experiment. I enjoyed being able to go at my own pace, not just by getting up instead of clicking "next" but by being able to wander around in-game or revisit a part of a room exhibit, now I'd seen the others. (Yes, Twine has undo, but that arrow is off to the side. I'm grateful for the convenience.)

There's a price of sorts to enter the museum. Not dollars and cents, but waiting to download a 200 MB file. And it is worth that price. It brought back memories of "No way, I'd never download something like this" in the old days of IFComp, even the message of "if your multimedia extravaganza is over 20 MB, please cut it down." And weirdly, taking 5 minutes to download it is proof of how far we've come, and what we expect, with download speeds, maybe something we never really expected to have consistently. It's a big ask from the author, in a way. But it's also an acknowledgement that we don't have to worry as much about technological restrictions. Also, the author realized that they could take advantage of resources such as faster download speeds to give us their full vision, with what we want to keep or get rid of. In my case, I turned down the sound. For focusing on the issues in MPDE, even relatively soft music is a distraction. I wondered briefly how many seconds would've been shaved off the download, but I didn't bother to calculate. The TLDR here is that I had a moment of realization: we deserve to take advantage of resources to get the help we need and maybe pass it on. We deserve to risk bogging down other people who may be all "say what you want and get on with it." And I think MPDE did that.

My memories of museums are mostly "don't go wander and get lost" or "do you really want to stay here that long?" I did both with abandon, though the big museum rooms are pretty much one-way, since a sequential story is being told. I enjoyed having the third way of just doing whatever I pleased and not having to worry about museum guards. And I also enjoyed the shift from the early days of Twine, where good writers might bludgeon the reader with lots of details at once, making a conclusive case they've suffered more than you. This catharsis is a necessary and good outlet for the writer, but it's hard work for the reader, and it's not the way to connect. MPDE was still hard work for me, but it was work I wanted to do. And noting one detail then another left me to think on and off about my own museums. Highlighting where I knew I reacted badly, and I was able to forgive myself for that without blowing it over. Where I saw I'd improved, or I realized the people chiding my for my bad reaction to nastiness ignored the, uh, nastiness.

On the actual exhibits: one thing I found interesting was Bez's discussion of a support network. I realized I did not have one for certain things, and the Internet provides that now. In fact, I realized some people that I should have been friends with on paper, or with whom I got put together in classes, actively discouraged that, or me finding that sort of thing, or suggesting that I really didn't need that. I might even have had a network of people who just saw me as a target to feel smarter than. High school was like that, not with the classic bullies, because it was a well-regarded high school, but with people who told me that I was kind of weird and not reaching my potential, and the only reason that got the grades or achievements I did was because I had no social life. This is a bit of whining on my part, but seeing the simple things that Bez brings up makes me realize that the things I was asking for, the things people said was too much with that I had to work for, I didn't really have to work for. Well, I would have to work to keep relationships up once I found them, but I didn't have to work to justify that I wanted these sorts of things, the small things that helped Bez get out of what was way more than a rut. I imagine a lot of people feel they don't deserve a support network, at least not until they get more social!

This wasn't the only contradiction MPDE reminded me of in my thoughts past and present. But it also reminded me life is tricky, and contradictions happen, and we can fight and push forward. And when Bez talks about a support network, it's important at least for me to realize, the support network is someone who helps you work through these things, and it's much different from the self-proclaimed life experts who say, well, that's stupid to have that contradiction. And whether or not we have had this bad experience with people, or we can sort things out, or we do have a strong logical background, we are people, so we see these inconsistencies that turn out to be nuance, and it's rewarding to work them out for ourselves, all while not blasting other people for legitimate, honest inconsistencies, or not understanding how things work but wanting to, or realizing sweeping rules that seemed to work as a kid aren't always right.

And I remember someone who gave me a notebook years ago, as Bez received early on. I never really used it. I equated it with the notebooks my parents would buy me at the start of the school year, because We Buy Kids The Supplies They Need. I think about that notebook a lot, and how I missed the point of it at first, and how I bought my own notebook in college and slowly started building a file of notes and daily writing that got to 10MB and then I managed to organize it or at least be able to siphon off lines with certain keywords.

There was other stuff, too, that I didn't need to share. But I remember wanting to Show People that I had a right to behave the way I did, that it was rational. The people who say "Oh it's your life" but then "remember this, not that." But I had a lot of "I forgot that, that really happened, and I missed the meaning, and I wasn't overreacting feeling awful about it."

There are a lot of exhibits, and MPDE gives a really homey feel. I enjoyed the feeling of not being pressured to look at any of them and the hand-drawn maps of each exhibit area, where it was clear where the exhibits and exits were. The graphics were well done too, with an option just to read the text where appropriate. There's also space in the middle of the exhibit you can wander around.In a parser game, this would be flagged as a waste of rooms, but here, it's kind of neat. You don't have to be looking at the exhibits, and there will be no security guards telling you to move along or even just glaring at you, a potential suspect who might deface an exhibit with the pen or pencil you're (allegedly) using to write ideas that are pouring in. (Yes, the guards are just doing their job.)

One other thing that struck me about MPDE: my IFComp entries are very much the opposite of Bez's entries, on the surface, but in other ways, the protagonists have similar goals. They start with something missing in their lives, and they deal with people who've betrayed them and, possibly, overcome them by the end. I just put more jokes and puzzles and silly existential despair in, and it's helped me work through some things. If the comp were full of only Bez-like entries or only me-like entries, it would be the lesser for that. And if Bez's entries evaporated, the comp would clearly be less, too. Yes, yes, I'm implying and hoping the same thing can be said for mine. But it hit home for me in a way that well-intended pro-diversity messages can never quite, because you're aware they ARE trying to convince you of something.

There's a lot of miscellaneous stuff right, too. The title is particularly strong, as many of Bez's are. You know what you're going to get, but at the same time, it's a phrase you haven't heard before, and it's not a cliche. It got me thinking right away of what to expect, and what I hoped to see, and what I hoped not to see, and it largely hits the mark for the first. With the caveat that Bez did not, in fact, write this work specifically for me. Not even close. But it got me thinking of my own museum, as well as places I am glad to have visited, and if I can't physically visit them again, I am glad there is the Internet as a, well, pseudo-museum dementia can't corrupt. Or a place to visit locations that actively hurt me.

MPDE is not, strictly speaking, fun. But it is rewarding, and it will assure you that you deserve to have fun in real life, and it helped me have fun sorting out bad stuff from my past. I looked up a few other people, too. I worried it might cause something bad to flare up. But I also said, yeah, okay, I'm okay with not liking this person or that person, or when they reached out, it was to push me over. So I felt like I'd come some way over the years, maybe not as far as the author did in two years, but good enough. Much quicker than hoped, without the "Look! I was faster than you!"

It inspired me to find ways I'd bounced back, or ways I still need to. I felt comfortable with the uncomfortable scenarios it related. Some, I'd been thre. Some were more intense than what I had. It was work to get through, rewarding work, but I never once felt like skipping ahead. It felt like someone saying hey, here's a note, can you look at this later, and having the person requesting it have faith in me that I will, and wanted to do that, even though I know it might be tough. This game has that, and I value that trust highly, and it's not easy to say. I've had my share of exasperated "Look, dude. I trust you/you need to trust me." With this review, I hope I've repaid the game's trust I would pay attention.

If you'll indulge me, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I made my own museum. My own MPDE. Nothing ever written about in a text adventure. I hope you have one too, but only if you need one.

(Spoiler - click to show)With my reading notes, the weekly stuff, where I point out incongruities I remember, or where I realized I just had trouble remembering basic stuff around certain people. I couldn't explain it. What goes wrong with me? Didn't I have this motivation? This went as far back as high school, where people assured me that I really was smart in all that, but I wasn't reaching my potential because I was kind of flaky, you know. It bothered me that I should be flaky around certain people, and it never really occurred to me that this was a feature and not a bug of how they treated me. Apparently I hadn't given them a fair chance, but they documented, publicly and privately, they'd done so for me. (This had holes.) It's legitimately rewarding to fix these holes and move on. But I feel okay and not selfish placing the blame for my flakiness around certain people around, well, them. Especially those who claim to have leadership qualities.

I can only assume that they would be equally "lovely" and "tough but fair" to Bez as well. Likely even more so. If they could be bothered. They slate some people as nobodies, for abuse or neglect, and during abuse you should be glad you're not neglected and vice versa. It's tough to realize they have nothing new to offer, even if they throw out a factoid to trip you up momentarily.

One such person was a physics teacher. I thought of the exhibits I would show. They're in my own museum, but I think above several I would have his quote, words no teacher should be caught saying: "They can't get rid of me." It was not my fault he tried to intimidate me into science extra-curricular activities and I wound up intimidated by him. I only wish I'd saved the email I'd received about how alleged bad actors were trying to push him out. They succeeded, and I met his successor, who was much kinder and saner.


Oh yes! About the soundtrack. On finishing, I realized I had a song of my own I thought about. I remembered some people had songs to go with their reviews--I figured it just wasn't for me. And it usually won't be. But it will be now.

(Spoiler - click to show)I never felt a reason to until now. Mine is Public Enemy's "Brothers Gonna Work It Out." I remember in high school people saying, "what, you don't know Public Enemy?" Then a friend at math camp played Public Enemy for me and I was hooked. Then people said "Come on, dude, you can't like it that much." After all, as last names go, Schultz is about as white as you can get. Was I minimizing racial struggles? Was I trying to be Black? Appropriating Black questions?

These were troll questions. I didn't see how to deal with them. I learned, over the years, forgetting what that song meant to me, and how I had belief in myself in some areas, that I would work it out. And even though I forgot that song, I still did. I guess that's a small pseudo-dementia exhibition of my own. I thought I'd just forgotten it, but I'd actually found a bunch of other motivators, one of the originals faded. I'd forgotten some demons I'd buried, and I forgot why they were so powerful, and yes, there were unexpected good things I forgot I'm glad MPDE brought back up.

This isn't the first time that a work of Bez's has helped me say, yes, the things I have are worth saying, at least in a certain context. I want to measure them out and say them carefully, but I don't have to feel guilty my struggles are less intense or acute than Bez's. And it's been the best one so far for that.
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