Sabbatical Report Presentation

All right, Gower. Here you go.
I need to start off by saying how hilarious this story is. The intense passive aggression--so unsubtle, that I don't know if it can be called that--shown off by such statements such as this,
"“address how the afrosaid (sic) goals or objectives (backing away from the demand for both) were met as evidenced by the assessment of your goals and objectives (no, they want both)”"
really starts the game off right. The contempt Greg Gower holds for administration and the math department and, well, almost everyone is one of the highlights of the story.

There are other parts that had me laughing throughout too. One of my favorite portions of the story was the section with Pritha and the letters, particularly the bribery part.
The ass counter was pretty great too, as is the "research slideshow" and most of the story really.

One of the best parts about the story was how it managed to paint people you might meet in real life in such ridiculous. I read this, and I thought the way things were so over the top was funny, but then I realized that I knew people just like those in the story. It's generally less that they are absurd and more that Gower describes them in such a way as to make them SEEM absurd.
The one professor's obsession with his cows and constantly going on about his farm and thinking he is best buddies with Gower is humorous, but if I think about it, I know a lot of people exactly like that.
Exactly.
Like, a lot.
Perhaps a bit cleaner.

These lines here are another good example:
"“I love you / like a pickle in a shoe!

I love you / like a pickle in a shoe!"

The lines are ridiculous, and Gower points this out in the story, but they are just the sort of thing someone could be overheard saying to a child as they play with them.

In some portions of the story, things get weirdly melodramatic, but it fits Greg Gower's personality as being someone who views things through a lens that is just a bit warped. If some people's characteristics can be described in an over the top, comedic way, it makes sense that others can be described melodramatically.
It also fits with Gower's general weirdness throughout all his stories. (On that, fun to read after "Private Game For Natalie" and think of each end and what they would imply for THIS story.)

The branching is interesting. There's a lot of it, and it takes a while to get through it all. This is partly because of the way it is set up. There is a lot of delayed branching and effects going on. This gives the story a high re-readability, but someone might miss how high if he tried to reread it like a time cave story.
It can be a bit difficult to find all the branches, but there are un-clickable choices in various places that help give clues as to when you are still missing something.
Without that, I probably would have been pretty frustrated with finding all the endings, or I would have thought I found them all when I didn't, and I would have missed half the story. Either way is not ideal, but the un-clickable links solved those problems.

Anyway, the "Sabbatical Report Presentation" is an all around good game from Gower that I would recommend.

I was thinking of starting this review with either a snarky comment that plays into the metanarrative, or praise for the novel way the branching narrative slowly reveals more and more of the story as the player finds new endings; however, like with your previous stories, I expect at least 10 more writers to show up and find far deeper insights that I ever could. The prose which gushes personality, and the amorphous reality of the narrative had been talked about in Gower’s previous stories. So, I decided to take on the story from a structural approach, by trying to flowchart the story on a whiteboard (emphasis on try, there are probably a few errors).

https://imgur.com/7ikEgzB (pls I spent 3-4 hours on this)

(Squares are pages, lines are links, the blue lines mark when a bunch of branching in the faculty route gets “pinched”, the large black circles are endings, and the blue-green circles mark parts accessible only by Whitney)

And yes, my final exams are tomorrow. No, I haven’t begun reviewing. Also, minor SPOILERS ahead if that wasn’t already clear.

At first, I thought that the narrative played out like a sorting hat, where in the beginning you chose between 3 choices and get “sorted” into fairly linear narratives all separate from one another. In truth, I was correct to a certain degree. What I got wrong however, was that after being sorted the narratives would continue with more or less no branching. There is a LOT of branching, in the 3 (4?) different “routes” I’ve identified, all with their own possible endings (about 20 in total). There’s the administration route, the student route, the faculty route, and the Whitney route depending on who you decide you are in the beginning.

I’d like to go over them in detail, but alas, my notes on Chi-Square Tests beckons. Instead, I’d just like to comment on the overall design of the storygame. A recurring pattern is for a large number of choices to appear, but only to get pinched into one route a little later. While this does seem to take away some of the “agency” of the reader, it’s actually quite common. “Delayed branching”, as the COG-ites put it, is when instead of giving choices weight by having long routes diverge into their own narratives, the writer has them tie back together and the only lasting difference is that a variable as been changed. This variable then helps to determine the ending later. In this story, there’s 4 different variables: Fire, Kind, Love, Whitney. On some paths, the final ending and the decisions of the narrator is determined by the first 3, the others are hidden if you don’t have the correct “stats”.

The effect is that you often feel immersed in the story, as the narrator addresses “you” and like how he has his own clear identity, so do “you” which is something many storygames get wrong. While, you may not actually be Whitney the loving descriptions that the narrator helps you to shape an image of her in your mind. And when you reach an ending with one person, you go on to look for another ending. Each time, you get to see another side of Professor Gower’s personality, like his hatred of the school’s administration, or his compassion for his bright students.

But this personality can differ depending on your choices, so like Gower’s earlier games, reality doesn’t always seem to follow a set mold. But unlike a fever dream, there is sense in the madness. A cohesive picture can be formed of the plot, and its structure grasped. While, you control certain parts of the story not everything is at your whim. The most important plot elements stay constant all around.

I wish we could discuss this more, but I don’t have much time left. You see, I’m driving west. Still, I think this was an outstanding sabbatical report presentation. It moved me, and I think it set a flame ablaze in my heart.

8/8

P.S. There is a glitch with the “You finally just signed it muttering under your breath.” Link where you just loop back to the “You went in there and told Leonardo in gentle terms to keep it down.” page.

I would have given it a 4 but there's good homework out there.

So clever!

This was really well written (of course), and I completely enjoyed it.

I liked the ideas in this story, it was pretty good.

omg..........speechless

I enjoyed the story. I don't have anything nearly as detailed to add to the comments which are posted already. Thank you for making me laugh and remember university.

It's me again. Rating 7/8.
The run on sentence was on the page Go on, then. Here it is You think of me as the fellow who knows all manner of complex literary topics, and because I study medieval and Renaissance literature and therefore read Old and Middle and early Modern English, more intellectually studly than the wimps who study the limp eighteenth-century or the flaccid nineteenth century or -- worst of all -- the yawn-inducing and wholly impotent twentieth- and twenty-first century.
Also the I want to make them sorry option worked this time.

This part is for everyone. It was quite good. Well written. I followed the Jules Wine story line. Not what I expected but I enjoyed it. I would like to read some of the other storylines as well.
This is more for the author. Two little things: There was one option near the end of the storyline that couldn't be chosen. It was "I want to make them all sorry" Maybe this was intentional.
Closer to the beginning when the professor is describing himself there was a long sentence that got kind of bogged down and didn't make sense.
Otherwise you did great!