A Treatise on Heartly Manners

After getting to the epilogue, I must say that there's a certain charm and poise to the writing that is here. Just when I think I've found a favorite line or page, I would find another upon reading another page.

This is great work, enterpride. Now I wouldn’t mind a sequel if there was one in the works.

Regardless as it stands, this story left me happy and content. Although this is certainly one that I wouldn't mind reading again multiple times. Because the writing makes that a tempting sentiment.

Kudos to you.

Clearly, this is an ambitious story, both in terms of scale (36k words cranked out in a matter of weeks!) and scope (epic story of an ill-fated romance!), although I can see where it would impress some readers and turn off others.

Structurally, as a CYS storygame, this is certainly in an upper tier. I appreciated that the dialogue sequences were anything but formulaic, deftly avoiding the "he says / she says" format and instead attempting to put us in the heads of these characters. Once past the opening sequence, there was a remarkable amount of branching, leading to various unique endings.

On the other hand, I kept thinking that this was the kind of writing that would piss off Hemingway. Not that ol' Ernest was an authority on storygames, but he believed that writing should be honest: one does not use words to show off a vocabulary, but instead uses each word carefully through a personal understanding of its meaning.

And there are a lot of vocabulary words in this story, many of them not used with much understanding of their meaning. The result is a few nonsensical sentences, which read just a little bit like something by Lewis Carol or John Lennon, but without the sense there might be a more far-out meaning to be gleaned through a chemical influence.

I might be willing to chalk this up to the rush to meet a contest deadline. To some degree, the overwrought language with its reliance on misplaced modifiers could be seen as a sort of stream-of-consciousness technique: it's just a first draft, so don't fret about perfection, just jot down the first words that come to mind and fix it later.

The reason I can't commit to that defense, though, is that as a romance this story is structurally flawed. It opens with a very long sequence about a bear hunt gone wrong, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the central conflict of the story: do I or do I not still love my wife, even after she's been caught "cheating" with my superior? Most of the choices throughout the storygame keep bringing me back to that question, even though I don't feel that I've been given enough of the backstory to make a reasonable response. (Also annoying: I have to answer what amounts to the same question over and over again.)

I mentioned earlier my appreciation for the dialogue format, in that the "he says / she says" format is broken up with tidbits of information that attempt to put us inside the characters' heads, seeing what they think of each other and whatnot. This tells me that Enterpride has much promise as a writer.

The problem is that once inside their heads, we realize there's not much there other than hormonal raging. The religious mores of this particular culture in regards to marital infidelity and/or divorce notwithstanding (is that even discussed?) from a modern point of view, if she's sleeping around with other men, then dude, she's not that into you. There was not really a romance here, just page after page of teenage melodramatics.

This brings me back to the Hemingway bit: none of the high-stakes emotion evoked in this story comes through experience, and very little of it was something I could relate to as a fellow human being. OK, sure, it stings to learn your wife has been sleeping around, but what one does in that case is get good and drunk, sleep it off, and go find a good attorney. Waffling back and forth about whether or not I still love is really poor form. At age 16, a girl leaving you is OMG THE END OF THE WORLD! After the first experience, things start falling into perspective.

So, to an adolescent reader, every single one of the (exactly) 36,000 words in this story might resonate. To others, it gets overly emotional. I think Enterpride has all the right tools to become a very good writer, save one:

Life experience.

But, thankfully, that just comes with time.

A Treatise on Heartly Manners is a very well-written story with an almost poetic prose. As I mentioned when I was helping to beta test this story, I absolutely loved the titles in this one. Your descriptions of the surrounding world, political relations, etc. all helped to establish a realistic setting for your tale.

I liked the protagonist in this story. He was very introspective, as well as very emotional. I like how this story offered the reader so many choices to make -- many of which were of moral consequence. How you choose to react to your wife's betrayal in this story is entirely up to you. I played through at least ten endings, and it seems that there were many more to explore. Some of these endings also featured an interesting epilogue. While I feel like the story offered an excellent degree of interactivity, I would've perhaps liked to see the first choice of the story lead to a different path, rather than one that loops back with the first.

The central conflict in this story is the problematic relationship between Isa and the protagonist, with the secondary conflict being the one between the protagonist and the Duke. While it was interesting to explore the story from the main character's perspective, I feel like I would've liked to see things from Isa's shoes more. I'm not suggesting a point of view switch, but rather perhaps more dialogue or backstory that further develops her as a character.

In alternate scenes throughout the story, Isa is either portrayed as lonely and regretful, or cold and uncaring. Her feelings for the protagonist do not remain consistent. I understand that was partially the point -- that both main characters were wrestling with their emotions -- but I still felt like more could have been done here. Also, (SPOILERS): there are some scenes in which the protagonist is rewarded for reconciling with Isa, and others in which he is punished for doing so. The fact that Isa betrays the protagonist in some of the endings also lessens the impact of those in which the two characters get back together.

I loved the twist that you included in the epilogues of some of the endings. It was very creative, and an offered an interesting meta-narrative. I did wish that an epilogue had been included for a few more of the 'good' endings. My favourite ending (SPOILERS: the one in which the protagonist forgets about Isa, and embraces his friendship with Garreth) did not have an epilogue, even though I think this was perhaps one of the happiest ones. By contrast, many unhappy endings (like the one in which you reject Garreth's offer for friendship) have epilogues.

Overall, A Treatise on Heartly Manners is a poetic, well-written piece set in a medieval land. It is a good story to read if you want a tale revolving around the themes of love, betrayal, forgiveness, and regret. I give this a 6/8. Good work!

Good shit

g00e

Wow…beautiful writing!

It’s pretty good, but pretty short. I’m currently trying to write a story that’s dragging out way longer than I originally planned, so I can understand the length. It’s really interesting, though! Kept me paying attention until the end

I really enjoyed this. The paths felt different enough to warrant replaying it. This was just a good solid effort all around.

This was definitely not my favorite. What happens if we want to be a lady instead of being a male?

this game is really good