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Previous | << 1 2 >> | Next | Show All - mrfrobozzo, December 15, 2023
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1 people found the following review helpful:
Confusing, December 2, 2023I played this after playing Pageant by the same author.
It’s a very different story and expansive in its ambition.
So expansive it’s overwhelming.
There’s so much game play mechanic cleverness going on that in the end I stopped caring as it just seemed to be getting in the way of everything.
There are 3 layers. The fictional story, the fictional fanfic, and the fictional IRL relationships.
I already was overwhelmed by trying to figure out the different ways to set up a profile that ultimately seemed to have little relationship to what was actually happening and all the reposting and blog reading just got tedious.
I wish it had just stuck with 1 of the the 3 fictions.
In the end I just skipped over all the fictional and fanfic stuff and was most interested in the IRL story developing in the messaging.
It’s a shame as there’s such a lot of careful crafted rich detail that has been developed for this fictional world.
And I like the very starting quote about story and the stories we tell.
I found the original article and that is the thing that will stay with me.
And I do wonder what Luna is doing now…
- Edo, November 7, 2023
- Laney Berry, September 29, 2023
- elysee, September 3, 2023
- Drew Cook (Acadiana, USA), July 27, 2023
- Kastel, June 9, 2023
5 of
5 people found the following review helpful:
A nostalgic and critical snapshot of (Tumblr) fandom, May 29, 2023To this day, I am still baffled about how this game was able to recreate the vibes of Tumblr fandom from the 2010s (I shouldn't be surprised considering Autumn's references). From the old Tumblr Blue to the very virulent fandom conflicts, or the fan-organised conversions, or the always-left-behind character (sorry, Tycho), APBW perfectly encapsulate a prolific time of fandom culture.
It was kind of nostalgic to me, having lived through quite a bit of the Supernatular/Doctor Who/Sherlock shenanigans... Though I was not really into the fanfic side of it all.
But APBW is more than a snapshot of the very fascinating ecosystem of Tumblr fandom. It is also a commentary* on how the relationship between a piece of work and its fans change overtime, especially when a ripple in the fanbase, like a mundane headcanon post, creates a storm as the author of the work gets involved (and not for the better). Raising questions (but not answering) about what fans would do in this situation: do they keep on enjoying the work that is so deeply personal to them (maybe even have helped explore their identify) or do they disavow it completely; do they band together in support of the victim/targeted group or do they have a blasé attitude about the issue; do they try to keep the fandom community alive and stand as one or do they become fragmented**;...
*might not have been the author's intent, but this was my perception.
**the death of fandoms are... something. It was very bittersweet to kind of relieve it.
It gets even more shocking/impactful when the OP of the post identifies as trans and the author goes on a (inter-?)national broadcast spewing transphobic rhetoric, leading to the teenager being harassed and abused. The fandom (and online communities at large)'s reaction is very troubling, but neither new not surprising. From the hard-core fans who will support the author no matter what, the ones who will question any actions trying to show support for the targeted group (like a boycott), the ones who will not engage with the drama, or the ones who roll their eyes at it because they were calling out the author all along... this is a real thing that happens. And is portrayed in this game with all the visceral intensity you'd find on Tumblr/Twitter/other social media.
Even without the author (GTM) adding onto the fire (which was already sparking before their disgusting action), the games portrayed the parasocial relationships between the fandom users, how even adults can get caught up in what people would think as petty teenage drama, or how being online is not just an escape from IRL problems, feels very real. I have personally seen those call-out posts between fanfic authors about plagiarism, those fake-pologies to calm down the fandom in hopes everyone forgets, the "kid-friendly" spaces still filled with inappropriate/problematic contents, the Discourse, the fights between people not following the conventions of interaction...
Even if the online characters are based on tropes, they all have their stories to piece together: the self-proclaimed fandom mom, whose chronically online presence hides her avoidance to live her life truthfully*, the supportive adult who plays a double-role to take down bigger name accounts, the always critical-puts herself in the discourse-calls out the shitty stuff-overall is kind of a bummer (but a correct bummer), and the kids who just want some space for themselves. I have followed this people before (have I been those too?), I have had those weird-ass URL, I have been in those fandom fights... It was not just real, it felt being right back in those communities.
*I really didn't like Claire, but the more I've been thinking about their arc, the more I find her arc compelling. Her shitty actions still isn't fully balanced by the end, but there is some steps taken in the right direction.
And then there is you, the player, trying to navigate the dumpster fire that is the Nebula fandom as you want to reach your goal of writing a fanfiction* and gain a bit of notoriety (I did manage to double my followers count in this playthrough :P), balancing your relationship between the different users you follow, and your relationship with the Nebula universe. You can choose you name, your pronouns, your URL, your favourite character, your ship, the reason why you are creating fanfic, and what kind of post your blog is filled with. But your character is not the focus of this game (the above paragraphs are).
*I, of course, titled mine A Paradox Between Worlds.
This PC-is-not-the-MC is reflected in the fanfiction you are "writing", as each part reminds you/Gali this is not your story. Gali moves on from one universe to the other*, finding different versions of [their] friends entangled in trope-y AU (Alternate Universe) and feeling out of place/alone/like an outsider every single time (like You the player might feel this way in the Nebula community). Your actions defines the ship you have in your writing, as well as the quality of the writing. The focus on senses at the start of each new scene made me giggle a bit, from a parser "player" perspective.
*the multi-verse take was so meta, with APBW having the Canon/Fanfiction/Online universes in play. Autumn, your mind!!!
As the drama of the Nebula community unfolds, you find yourself struggling with writing/finishing the fan-fiction, reflecting on the feelings you have about the series itself considering the author's comments. In my playthrough, I pushed through, and found... myself, as the Destroyer (the Nebula baddie), meeting Gali, reminding [them] it is not [their] story, telling [them] the story is about to end, that maybe it should never have existed in the fist place... and that maybe you learned some lessons along the way... Writing the last part of the fanfiction hit me like a ton a brick, and made me question how I have consumed and created content in the past.
Finally*, there is the Canon. Each movement/chapter starts with a snippet of The Chronicles of the Shadow Nebula to contextualise the fandom, but also give some sort of preview of what is to come in the Online universe (very much a Cassandra vibe to them...). Though the author has mentioned the influence coming mainly from Homestuck**, I found more similarities with other YA universes (HP***, Divergent, or any YA-series-with-a-house/class-system-having-to-fight-a-big-baddie, and even a bit of the Hunger Games...). I dove into the codex in the stats page and devoured it, finding nuggets of gold and trying to link it to works I knew. One of my favourite bit: the Selene Dione character who is a Hannah Montana parody.
*lol, i've organised this in the reverse of how you experience each part in game...
**that's mainly because I never got into Homestuck that I didn't pick up on those references
***especially the main gang...
I don't know how to conclude this review. So I will leave with the final chat you can have with the gang: no one goes through character arcs like the books, IRL is messy and not everyone wants to share this part of themselves online, growing up is hard but so is growing apart from something that was important for you, moving on is also part of life...
So yea...
Go play this game.
- Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid), April 10, 2023
- Ann Hugo (Canada), December 30, 2022
- tylersharris, September 30, 2022
- Nightmare Threnody, September 16, 2022
- Kinetic Mouse Car, August 15, 2022
- thesacredbagel, July 25, 2022
- ArloElm, May 3, 2022
- dollweiss, April 7, 2022
5 of
5 people found the following review helpful:
Ambitious but unfocused, January 11, 2022(This is a lightly-edited version of a review posted to the IntFict forums during the 2021 IFComp. My son Henry was born right before the Comp, meaning I was fairly sleep-deprived and loopy while I played and reviewed many of the games, so in addition to a highlight and lowlight, the review includes an explanation of how new fatherhood has led me to betray the hard work the author put into their piece)
This ChoiceScript game about a fictional online fandom is a lot. Before you start, there are two full pages of stats, eight or nine pages with background on the online personalities as well as in-universe info on the Nebulaverse, the tropey YA series the fandom focuses on, and a character-generation process for your blogger-avatar that comes complete with two “what Hogwarts House are you?”-style quizzes – and then gameplay itself involves going through five or six “rounds” of play, each of which has you first reading half a dozen different Tumblr-ish blogs and deciding whether to like or reblog (or possibly reply to) each of their 5-10 posts, then making choices about how to write your own fanfic set in the Nebulaverse, plus some optional additional engagement with other bloggers.
There’s a lot to be said for creating a detailed and consistent world, but there’s also a need to present the player with a compelling hook to bring them into said world – a resonant goal, some emotionally-engaging conflict, an interesting puzzle or strategic challenge, or even just a clever take on a familiar milieu – and here’s where I found APBW fell down. Notionally, you’re meant to be optimizing your follower count by reblogging good content and writing resonant fanfic, but this is presented in a pretty bloodless fashion and is clearly more a pretext than a motivating force for engagement. The breadth of the game also means there’s less time to go deep and make any particular character or mechanic stand out, plus the incredible tropiness of the Nebulaverse, while clearly intentional to help it resonate with more real-world fandoms, made it really hard for me to care about shipping the blank-slate chosen one, the genius love-interest, the blue-blood frenemy, the white-bread sidekick, or… the other one who I don’t remember that clearly two days on from playing.
Eventually the game reveals that it is about something specific, and I found it got a lot more engaging (Spoiler - click to show)(it ultimately hinges on a pretty much note-for-note riff on the Harry Potter fandom’s reactions to J.K. Rowling’s increasing transphobia). But it took too long to get there for my tastes, and didn’t integrate the fanfic stuff with this main thread tightly enough for me to stay invested. Works of IF are almost always in real need of a good editor, because all pieces of writing are in need of a good editor (the beta testing process isn’t a substitute, in my experience) and I think APBW suffers that lack – it puts in so much effort to create a plausible world, and has something to say, but needs some nips and tucks to better help the player find what's engaging.
Highlight: Despite the game making clear that I was making incredibly suboptimal choices in terms of follower count, it was perfectly happy to let me express myself as a normcore loser – I took a gleeful joy in choosing the most boring hero as my favorite one, eschewing shipping to focus on the setting’s lore in my blog posts, and even quitting writing the fanfic super early because of (Spoiler - click to show)the transphobia incident.
Lowlight: As I alluded to above, I found the blogging sections offered way too much granularity of interaction – so the game’s bow to realism by having characters re-post stuff you’ve already seen on the pages of other bloggers made for extra drudgery.
How I have failed the author: Due to a general lack of brain-bandwidth, I wasn’t sufficiently motivated to read the multiple pages of background info on the Nebulaverse, which probably reduced my engagement with those sections – and that in turn meant I was eager to stop writing the fanfic so I could skip those bits and get to the end faster, missing out on most of the thematic resonance that I’m sure exists between the different strands of the story.
- Zape, December 22, 2021
- EJ, December 6, 2021
- thiefnessman (Massachusetts), December 4, 2021
- dgtziea, November 24, 2021
- E.K., November 22, 2021
- quackoquack, November 13, 2021
- wisprabbit (Sheffield, UK), November 11, 2021
4 of
4 people found the following review helpful:
Massive effort, November 8, 2021There is so much to this game. I don't know if I would have had more success if I was familiar with Tumblr or had been active in an online fan community, but I don't think getting ideal stats is the point. The reason to play "A Paradox Between Worlds" is to explore, try things out, and think about how you would react to certain situations. In the story, you are a fan of a series of books, and you like them so much that you keep a blog and write fanfiction. I liked reading the different users' blogs and interacting with the other fans. The sections of the game dedicated to passages from the novels weren't as interesting to me, nor was the fanfiction. This caused me to try to hurry through some portions of the story. I expect to read them more closely on my next playthrough, which this game absolutely warrants. The "walkthrough," which includes an extensive list of influences from all kinds of sources, is especially magnificent. It gives you some sense of how much effort was put into this work, and it is an uncommon amount of care.
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