How do you detail the obvious ineffable?
How do you detail a shape that stays in shadow, always changing?
How do you convey the coalescence, the layering and wholeness just in sum?
Hi there.
This is both a devlog and a postmortem, another layer on those of Epitaxy. For its mirrored selves, take a look at A void in Indigo and Yellow — science, American Gothic, and Denpa and The shape around the space — I’ve forgotten how to see the , Everywhere I go I see the , and spaces beyond labels.
⟡ | We meet again, after the finale.
⟡ | I was not originally planning to write any more on this, but the locks of self-expression fell away with the completion of the archive, and I’ve been dealing with this world again in preparation for a tabletop system, so we find ourselves returned again.
⟡ | …
⟡ | It’s hard to talk about Epitaxy.
⟡ | I mean that in the sense of the visual novel, of course, but also the story, the setting, the relation to other things.
⟡ | It feels like a betrayal of the ineffable contained within to detail more of it.
⟡ | So, what I’m going to do here is make a promise, to myself, to my readers, to the experiment itself. I will not explain Epitaxy. I will instead talk around it, to show you what it looks like to me, knowing that even that is a small but important betrayal.
⟡ | There is a memory, floating somewhere between the ages of 2 and 5, of turning the mind’s eye out to the world, and wondering what it would be like to share, continually, the lived experience with someone completely different, nearly opposite.
⟡ | There is a hunger, not just of knowledge or omniscience, but for experience. The void reaches to the things that glitter, knowing it impossible and knowing it not worthwhile.
⟡ | There is a land of stacked and staggered castle walls, ramparts, fictional and real at once. A tower of Babel in its own right, splintering as the walls and halls stack to a heaven no-one there cares about, nor can even see again.
⟡ | The concept for Epitaxy came about rather quickly. It predates the jam’s start by a fair margin, though not its announcement—this was a theme and story that fit a niche within the world of Alabaster (and what lies beyond and outside of that) very well, that would allow something to express itself in ways different from all others planned, that would allow the world to develop through avenues previously inaccessible to it.
⟡ | The code proved difficult. Even now, there are things I wish we had managed to do better with the display, limited as it was by time, by inexperience, by the engine itself. And, make no mistake, I am fond of how it did come out in the wash, but if there was one thing I could change about the presentation, it would be the specifics of the layering and layout of the text. It falls just short of what we wanted.
⟡ | The… Well, there’s no music nor sound in particular, right? I will accept that there are beats, and the beats resolve very well. That was an experiment of its own, due more to time and energy restrictions on reaching out to someone else, but the development of that also directly influenced the writing and characterization, and on those notes (or lack thereof) I find myself pleased with it, very much.
⟡ | What I can say directly about the story and text in detail is that I wish also there was slightly more room afforded for each one’s disabilities, traumas, and setbacks. Again, as with the code, I am still fond of how things are. But of the details left out, these are the only ones that were set aside without the corresponding initial intent to do so.
⟡ | In all of these stories, in all of these visual novels, there is always both something physical, something mental, and something individual about the separation. That trifecta finds itself embodied fully in each of another trifecta; one with breathing issues and anxiety, one with a half-working limb and a growing distaste for solid foods, one with a limb fully unresponsive and the growing dread that she isn’t doing enough to help. All with worries and kinks revolving around their state in their world, the state of their bodies, and the incident that set them all on the same path.
⟡ | Epitaxy was surely the most odd one to write for, considering this is largely the only smut (or anything in that caliber) any of us have ever written, and that things that fall under the broad umbrella of “sex” (as a verb) do not interest us much. But one cannot eschew the physical part of the relationship, the sexual aspect of the lines being crossed and crossed again fully deliberately, the connection of the connections.
⟡ | On that note (the one about writing about sex and things that they may or may not call sex), the prose in Epitaxy is definitely my favorite of the three visual novels in discussion here. There are beats in both of the other two, and the one outside this grouping, that can match up, but the vibe was very much out in full force while writing this one, and I do think it shows.
⟡ | As one sort of conclusion for all this, or the beginnings of one, I will say that I don’t think we’ll be writing anything quite like these three again for a long while. Whether that comes true is largely up to the ones that read whatever is after, but there are a few reasons I bring this up.
⟡ | One: Sorcière (the first volume of her antics can be found here) and the Key Fairy (this one’s a game, we’ve mentioned it here and there, I believe?) both are heavily affecting the approach to fantasy prose. None of this will fully overwrite things, but the rest of Alabaster is also likely to stray far from the intimate scope of (gestures at the them) whatever happened in this story, whatever I am avoiding describing.
⟡ | Two: The yearning subsides, the gnawing draws back. Thanks in large part to making these at all, the impulses that had no real outlet before (save for piling into something that I hear we are still pretending to call “an essay” despite it refusing that shape entirely, exactly inasmuch as it refuses to come together still) have now found that. And with working out the void, and the hunger, and the shape, and finding happiness on the other side of this longest of pangs, well. Things are sure to be different even if we tap into these same feelings again.
⟡ | Three, and finally, because of course it must always be threes: There’s a lot more to be done. A virtual tabletop. A method of typing and interacting. That damned essay. Job woes, potential life changes, and a whole lot of reading.
⟡ | Time constraints are part of what defines these, and not just as submissions to game jams. That science was made in the first place is a serendipity more than anything, let alone in the method-acted week it was. The archive, for its part, felt burnout during the process. And there are so, so many other stories that we haven’t had the energy nor time to sit down and sit through and process, let alone respond to to our satisfaction.
⟡ | There is limited time, and for now, the focus must shift away from visual novels.
⟡ | Perhaps one day, it will return here. But until then, take care of yourself and of others, as best and as much as you can.
⟡ | And, if you’ve enjoyed what there is already from us… Well, don’t let me tell you what to do, but there’s plenty of directions to hop about.