CYOA – Christian Swinehart
The author makes a quick comparison between CYOA and dictionaries near the beginning. The difference between the two however, is that in a dictionary you have a specific goal in mind and each step you take directly brings you closer to that goal whereas in CYOA your goal is to generically win and you may or may not take steps that will bring you closer. You have no idea how your actions now will affect you later. I’m curious if it’s possible to make a dictionary style CYOA.
The author also never mentions whether any of the orderings (random, serial, coordinated) have any advantage over the other. Logically it doesn’t seem like one would be better than another but there also has to be a reason why authors choose the pattern they do.
The Garden of Forking Paths
I was surprised that this story didn’t reflect the novel it referred to that is, I was surprised that the outer story about Tsun wasn’t itself a “Garden of Forking Paths.” And where Ts’ui Pen’s novel at least recognizes that bad can happen, in the outer story nothing “bad” really happens. One could argue that the death of Albert and the main character are negative results, but I argue the opposite. With the death of Albert Tsun was able to ease the fear of his commanders off of his race and the secret of the labyrinth no longer stays hidden in Albert’s mansion but will most likely be publicized with a possible publication of Dr. Albert’s restoration of the work.
I’m also curious as to how a book like the Garden of Forking Paths could be written. in order for all outcomes to happen at once, wouldn’t the reader have to be aware of all possibilities at once? but the natural makeup of a book (that is it’s page set up) makes this impossible because any given section of the book would have to pick a single path to follow thus ignoring all other paths .
Laslty, what was the point of mentioning this text at all? It seemed to have little relevance to the story as a whole.
The text seem to structure itself as if we were in the mind of Tsun so some of the action seemed sudden or jumpy. It’s an interesting addition to the story.
