Moons and Waves

This Twine narrative by Merritt Kopas is a stellar example of how the interactive medium can communicate things that a standard book or poem or treatise cannot. It's kind of a standard thing Twine has become - a place where people with poetry or just imagery can write it out and sort of get things off their chest.

This one is extremely well done. There are pauses built in, and some ambiguity about whether you are supposed to click something or not at times, but this serves to make the incident that Merritt Kopas relays feel like a very personal telling, with all the hesitation and occasional tangents that might be interjected into having words with a friend who will listen.

There are also times when the script spawned another window full of what appears to be twee/twinecode. I am unsure if this was supposed to happen this way, but seeing the Twine broken out and reading some of the English sentences within the code I think supplement the personal feeling in that I was reading behind the fourth wall and seeing what Merritt actually wrote behind the flash of html. I hope I was supposed to be seeing the code and it wasn't just a glitch.

This is not a game so much as a short experience where you can connect with the author and perhaps empathize or sympathize with raw feeling and experience put forth. I can't say I really enjoy this type of presentation in itself and hope to read lots more of them...but the piece is definitely worth a read if you enjoy raw image-filled prose poetry that can exist in an artist's head.