Blog Post 6

Patchwork Girl is the story of a monster, styled like "Frankenstein." However, there are many differences. The author, Mary Shelley, falls in love with her monster through her travels and tribulations with it. She attempts to make a whole person with fragments (or organs) of other people. Mary Shelley incorporates many elements into her hypertext, including links, images, and many other literary elements. The structure was intensely difficult to follow, but in the end I realized that this was the point, that everything is "patched" together.

The story began with the title page, which basically introduces the story itself. Mary Shelley creates her own monster (essentially herself, as she attributes authorship to). The links on the title page lead to multiple different parts of this hypertext. The graveyard is a link to stories about organ donors and their biographies for Mary Shelley's monster. This is done by clicking on the organ, and it will bring you to these biographies. The inscription on the headstone tells of the organs that are present in Mary Shelley's monster (I found the headstone later on; there was no chronological order so it was difficult to put the hypertext together as one). The journal link is simply Mary Shelley's experiences with her monster throughout her travels and trials. The story link leads to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" story; it has many quotes from the novel. I had much difficulty figuring out what the quilt link led to. However, I found out eventually that it is essentially the creation of Mary Shelley's monster, the different parts and organs.

This began the journey of the journal, where Mary Shelley dictates her experiences with her new monster.
Although almost impossible to read, this came after clicking on a random spot on the picture above. It is an explanation of a simple day in Mary Shelley's life. She explains walking down the street on a gray day, and proceeds to mention her monster: "As I write this, she is muttering to herself in the bathtub; the water is bitterly cold and must be frequently changed." Mary Shelley incorporates both her life and the monster's life - which seems as though they may be the same thing.

Mary Shelley describes how her monster is now hers, yet she has not "breathed fire" into her. The monster is waiting for her. I was confused at the non-chronological order here, because at first she is explaining a simply day in the life with her monster, then she is talking about how her monster fled her after conception. The monster has only a cloth left, devout of any clothing Mary Shelley had given to her before she fled.

This portion of the hypertext entails Mary Shelley's actual creation; the stitching of the monster. "Authoress, I amend, smiling," is one of the quotes from Patchwork Girl that really stood out to me. It seems as thought this is technically the theme of the story; that Mary Shelley is the creator and lover of this new monster. Mary Shelley also mentions the unity that will be very true later on in the adventures of this hypertext.

This is the beginning of the life of the monster. Stark naked, the monster stands in front of its creator, but it did not flee. Mary Shelley compares her monster to Autumn foliage; in the same way that the colors are beautiful, Mary Shelley's creation is beautiful to her.
Mary Shelley's monster departs. She tells of the feelings she is having at the moment: "repugnance, fear, and profound responsibility." She tells of how her neighbors stare at her, which seems like a metaphor for how Mary Shelley lives her life. This hypertext is becoming more and more of an actual narrative to me, because it is starting to patch itself together and I am beginning to realize the structure does not really have much of a point to it.
Again, this is just a recollection of how Mary Shelley is attempting to teach her monster. This time, she is attempting to teach it about life, and hold conversations with it. However, it is seemingly impossible, because of the imperfection of the creation. Mary Shelley is able to hold simple conversations with her monster, from topics of blackberry preserves to sorcery. Mary Shelley says "I despise of treating any one subject adequately, unless it be by crossing it enough times ... that our overlaid footprints begin to cover the whole..." Mary Shelley is talking about how she is unable to have social interaction, but was able to with her monster. There are a few themes I found at this point. Destruction, femininity, and sexuality. Mary Shelley seems to be in love with her creation, not repulsed by it as she is at first. She feels it must be destroyed for fear of society, but instead she considers it to be as important as a significant other. The next few screenshots I have are of the same nature; they are from the journal and document her interactions with the monster, the creation, and society.

Although I was using "links" all along, I very rarely used them. At this point in the journal, I decided to try a non-chronological route and just click the link that seemed most relative. However, there was only one choice for this.
These two segments are both about the creation of the monster, once again. They go into detail about the operations involved and the pain that Mary Shelley's monster endures to become an actual...thing. Her monster begins to help assemble herself, pulling off scraps of skin and giving them to Mary Shelley to attach. "I swabbed the blood from both our thighs." This again reminds me of the main theme that Mary Shelley's monster is herself.

This tells of the departure of Mary Shelley's creation - something I thought that I would come across much later. The hypertext goes on to explain the sort of post-partum depression that she felt after the departure of her monster; the feeling of being "bloated" after having such control over her monster. She goes to a dressmaker's shop outfitted in a mourning outfit, which she calls a "monster's disguise," or a farewell to a monstrous life left behind..."my own."

I was confused again by where the hypertext lead me. However, I found that this could be one of the donors for Mary Shelley's monsters. The biography of the donors seems pertinent to the story, seeing as there were many, many screenshots that told of the donors' lives and activities. This entry was about a spiritualist's view on the departure of a loved one, or in Mary Shelley's case, her monster. "Perhaps you are a skeptic, you believe we are alone here," seemingly reflects Mary Shelley's attitude about life, and her monster. The spiritualist advises to consider the monster a memory, a story in the bank of all possible stories.

When Mary Shelley talks about the donation of a tail from an armadilo, and how this happened. This hypertext to me seems so full and rich with text; it is multiple stories within itself. This link also represents the man who donated it, and his life story.

This is the headstone to Mary Shelley's departed monster. Each limb listed on the headstone inscription is a link to a different organ. Each time you click on one of them, Mary Shelley goes quite in depth into the human body, talking about plastic surgery and the nature of the human body. It goes on to have quotes from dismembered individuals, such as James the Dismembered, who said "Be comforted, little toe, because great and small have the same resurrection," yet then goes on to describe her brother. It especially emphasizes the similarity between difficulty creating the hypertext and the story itself. "I am like you in most ways. I have an introductory paragraph..." This simply shows how Mary SHelley made the hypertext a theme in her own electronic novel. The creation of the monster was essentially the creation of the hypertext.
This begins the phrenology. Each time you click on one of the links in the brain, it would take you to a different explanation as to how Mary Shelley created the hypertext, and how it is so similar to Mary Shelley's monster itself. "We live in the expectation of traditional narrative progression..." This quote from the hypertext further portrays how Mary Shelley is attributing her monster's creation to the creation of the hypertext.

There are many themes in this hypertext. The issues of sexuality, femininity, destruction, re-production, love, and others appear. She ensures emphasizing these themes by implementing them into the hypertext through links and images. This is certainly a narrative; however, it is not typical to what one would assume a narrative to be. It has many allusions, and dramatic irony that is incorporated into her writings about her monster, for the most part. The biggest theme I found, however, was that Mary Shelley's monster, is Mary Shelley herself. The most important thing I learned from this was that not all narratives have to be chronological; if you can patch them together to create the story it is all the more worthwhile.

Blog Post 5

My basic plan for the subject matter and theme varied at the beginning of creating my interactive fiction. At first, I wanted the player to have to do puzzles and find clues that led to the ultimate ending, but I found myself changing the plot time after time. This was in order to excuse my poor computer programming skills. My basic plan at the end of it was to have the player use compass directions to find clues that led them outside, to where a stranger resides. There is a diamond ring missing and the stranger wants it, and the player must figure out how to get outside (and figure out that they must go outside in the first place). As I said before, I hoped to incorporate plenty of puzzles that would make the plot all the more interesting. However, this was not achievable, again due to my amateur Inform 7 skills.

I began by reading the documentation on Inform 7, and creating a few rooms and things to lay a foundation for my plot. I basically just copied examples, and then applied them to my story; this is something I did throughout my experience with Inform 7 that made it all the more easy to understand after a while.

I experimented with compass directions constantly, trying to make one-way connections and correlate the directions I gave the reader with the actual compass directions. It was extremely hard at first, and I got very frustrated with it.

I then added more rooms, and started to add descriptions as I got further into the Inform 7 documentation. Many creative opportunities were opened up to me; I could make a description about every object and room that I created. I began to develop my plot from here, now that I had a bit of a handle on what I was doing. I tried to make it like a mystery short story, but that did not work out. This is because of reasons I will discuss later. Mrs. Goodman is having you over for a cup of tea and you must investigate the rooms because there is a diamond ring in her Master Bedroom and a CRASH! in the Living Room. This was what I originally started with. I also placed (along with the diamond ring in the Master Bedroom) a note in the Bathroom with a description.

There were multiple times that I came up with this error message, which must have annoyed me for a solid hour or two. I could NOT find the "If...then" directions, and at this point I turned to the official Inform 7 Handbook, which was available online. The Inform 7 Handbook helped me in many ways, as well as taught me many things that the Inform 7 documentation could not.

I began to get very excited about the possibilities of my interactive fiction once I began reading into the I7 Handbook. I started to understand how to craft things, but I was still stuck at the point. This is where I was trying to get something different to happen the second time the player enters the room or does something. Even after consulting the Handbook, it wasn't possible for me to find a really good description of how to do this. This made me feel extremely limited about my plot, because a giant part of the plot was finding Mrs. Goodman dead on the floor. I also put a joke or two in, just because I knew how to. For example, if one were to try and take the money, it would reply "Why don't you go investigate the noise?"

I realized that maybe the key to getting the if...then action to work was to use "instead" instead. This, however did not work. I kept getting error messages, and having no idea how to interpret them, I would ignore them and go back to the Handbook. I felt at this point that I would not be able to create a short story to my liking, however inspired that I was.

I actually had a friend volunteer to play. This screenshot shows that they were not able to navigate as well as I had wished. They just kept going back and forth, eventually giving up on the game. This is how I felt at the time; I did not want to keep going although I had already begun to get the drift of Inform 7. I thoroughly enjoyed that someone was able to play a game that I had programmed, however, and was inspired to get back to it.

After another hour or so of reading the Inform 7 handbook, I definitely had a good idea of how I was going to put my idea into the program. I used examples from the Handbook, and implemented my own actions into them; after this I was able to do it on my own. For example, I got the "instead" to work. I found that I had to define every little thing if I were to use "instead."

I was ecstatic when I got the door to open. This took tedious work, referring to the Handbook every few seconds. I also began to craft an NPC character, the Stranger, who I actually figured out how to interact with. I figured that after so many hours of work, that I should probably wrap up the story, so I consulted the I7 Handbook for how to end a game. It gave a perfect and clear explanation; however, I wanted to be able to hit the Stranger with something and not just end the game in death.
This is the transcript of me trying to give the stranger things. What comes after this is me trying to hit the stranger with objects in the player's inventory, such as the hammer. I was able to have a small conversation with my NPC, which I thought was necessary but no more conversation was needed (I didn't want to do more coding for the talking). The coding was hard to do for my NPC; not just the talking but any other action as well. I had to define each and every verb. I must say that my muse was severely limited in that I was not able to kill my character the way that I wanted to.

I took more and more examples from the Handbook, and kept applying them. This worked so well that I was able to finish the game by myself. I got bored by the ending having already been completed so I decided to add more detail to the NPC stranger. I gave him a description and finished up on how I would be able to allow the player to hit the stranger with the hammer.

This is the first ending to my interactive fiction. I was able to take the hammer and hit the stranger with it (although it's not shown in screenshots), and I was able to finish the game by giving the stranger the ring. I felt accomplished at this point, because everything had led up to the ending very well because of my going back and refining the coding every couple seconds.
I ended up with 5 rooms and 7 things, which was pretty impressive to me due to my complete inability to use Inform 7 in the first couple of hours of playing around with it. In general, I enjoyed my experience with I7. It made me more inspired to craft my own story, and it made me happy to see others able to interact with something that I did. I was more apt to program my short story, I think, than rather to sit down and write it. And I was very content with the outcome!

Blog Post 4

"Galatea" by Emily Short

"Galatea" seems very appealing at first. The session begins with the set-up of Galatea in the art gallery. The prologue is all about Galatea's physical appearance. The narrator talks about senses; how she smells and looks, and even about how she would look at at an event. It is evident here that Galatea is to be the protagonist that I will be interacting with. Galatea balls her hands into a fist, and speaks, which is confusing because I thought that she was a statue, since she is in a spotlight and on a pedestal with a placard. After inputting by pressing any button, I am brought to the initial situation. It is a brief sample of what the prologue was, telling of Galatea being on a platform with a placard in a spotlight.


My player character begins to interact when I command it to examine the surroundings. Currently, Galatea is only able to be seen from behind, i.e. "Back View." Specifically, I input "examine Galatea." The output was a surprisingly long description of Galatea, more in-depth than the prologue's description was. It was basically the narrator speaking about the beauty of the protagonist. Really, nothing is helpful whatsoever, until I get to the part that says "you might try speaking to me." The output that follows this suggests that my player character seems nervous or anxious about something, and there is an apparent "visceral" vibe in the room. This confuses me; this exchange makes me figure that the non-player character is directly inviting me to start asking Galatea about general subjects. Before examining Galatea, I decided to examine the placard. It tells of Galatea's roots; where she came from, how she was made, what she is made of, etc. Because of this, I decide to ask about her placard; maybe there will be some information that will lead me closer to the end.

I input "ask Galatea about placard." This diagetic command causes a reply that infers that she is immobile; so it is affirmed by the interactor that this is indeed a statue in an art gallery, and not an actual living being. I then decide from this cycle that I must interact with her as if she was the center of attention, so I begin inputting random general questions such as "ask Galatea about gallery." Surprisingly, she had nothing to say about this, but she had answers to many of the other various questions I inputted after I asked her about the artist. It seemed as this was an important topic to the protagonist. She begins to get uncomfortable and speaks much less, so I began asking more questions about how she came to be such as "ask Galatea about art," which brought me to "ask Galatea about airport" (she mentions murals that she saw in the airport when talking about art).

When the protagonist mentions Cyprus, I command my player character to ask about her home, which I assume that it is since she came to the art gallery from an airport in Cyprus. The output again is just a description of where she has been. I begin to wonder where this interactive fiction is going. There seems to be no real flow to the story, just asking random questions and having seemingly unconnected exchanges. Each cycle is just an explanation of her life. I should have tried, at this point to interact with her by telling her about my player character, but that never occurred to me during the session. I figure that maybe Galatea wants to get philosophical, so I begin asking her questions such as "ask Galatea about life," "ask Galatea about death," "ask Galatea about philosophy." The latter did not yield a viable output but the first two commands caused the protagonist to ponder about it for a while, before declaring that she genuinely has no idea, being that she has lived in an art gallery her entire life and is essentially, a statue. At the end of the exchange, it seems that the narrator is suggesting to stop asking her such questions - it says "you brush away the thought of people you could be talking to." However, this can also be an implication of how important continuing the interaction with Galatea is.

My worst mistake was to input "ask Galatea about love." I could not even capture with the screen shot because the output was so long and detailed; filled with emotion, especially anger and sadness. It seems to me that this entire session is about the protagonist's creator and her feelings towards him. This was evidently the final reply. I had exhausted the protagonist by bugging her about questions about life, death, love, and her past, apparently. I was disappointed, but I understood the importance of Galatea's creator to her and it made sense that this would be the final situation. Although unhappy it was over moderately quickly, I was content that it was an final situation that would make sense to end abruptly at. After reading the entirety of her love confession for her artist, I command the directive "quit."

Galatea was not much of a puzzle to me. I never needed to use extradiagetic commands (other than the ending), or directives, such as to give me hints or something of the like. There were really absolutely no mini-games; nothing to figure out in comparison to say, "All Roads." It is certainly not lacking in its literary content. This is one element of this interactive fiction that stands out. The narration, the protagonist's replies, amongst the other content is simply amazing in that it described very well the situation that is going on. Also, the output it almost always helpful to lead you to the next question. Although I didn't mean to, following these slight hints throughout each reply lead me to my ultimate demise. I really do wish that this interactive fiction was a bit more like a game, because honestly I was quite bored of it after asking hundreds and hundreds of questions and swearing at her multiple times in a row (explains the lack of screenshots). It was interesting to read about a statue's history, and to figure out that it was a statue in of itself, I suppose. But as the interactor, I wanted to do more than just input "ask Galatea about..." every opportunity, and this seemed like the only way to be able to move through the games. Now that I think about it, I'm sure there would be many interesting replies to actions I could do, other than asking. I just figured that that was the entire point of the game; to ask Galatea about herself. I didn't think to "hug Galatea," "kiss Galatea," "kick Galatea," and actions of the like. However, I believe that inputting these actions would make Galatea a more fun-filled interactive fiction.

I cannot call it a game in any way really, because I did not feel at all through the transversal that it was challenging. I didn't even feel as if this interactive fiction would have any sort of mini-game or puzzle such as in other interactive fictions we have perused, the entire time I was playing. In conclusion, although the literary content was impeccable and interesting, I was extremely disappointed in the lack of actual interaction that I could have with Galatea, other than just asking her simple questions. I had a very uneventful time with Galatea.

Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. London: The Mit Press, 2005. Print.

Blog Post 3

This poem is about hope for humanity. It explains that you must look beyond the general pleasures of life, into the smaller things that make you happy. Eventually, you will be able to live your life contentedly; as J.R.R Tolkien says, "the crownless again shall be King." Honestly, I used this poem because it seemed like it was a perfect poem to animate. The verbs used, such as "glitter," "wander," and "frost" made me excited about which animations I could use. I hoped to emphasize those words, because they are the last words in the lines of this poem and are the most significant to animate (and the easiest, I suppose). I hoped to engage the reader, conveying J.R.R. Tolkien's meaning of the poem and influencing the reader to think about how he articulates this meaning.

I did not enjoy having to cite the poem; I feel as if it takes away from the creativity aspect, and the wholeness of the electronic poem. However, it was neccessary, and I really wanted to do this poem.

Powerpoint was extremely easy to use, at least for me. Being that I have used Powerpoint since high school, perhaps earlier, I used my previous knowledge of animation and my intuition ato properly create this e-poem. However, it may not be easy for somebody who has never used Powerpoint. Here, I began with inserting text boxes (which is really a pain, since you keep having to click insert), then began to animate the "glitters" and "gold." I also made a freeform path for "is not," which looking back I feel was unneccessary; I just did it because I began to get overly into animating the poem. I used an old-looking layout for the background because I thought it was appropriate.

I, at first, had a hard time trying to put in one of my own pictures as the background to the second line of the poem, but I just fiddled around and eventually found out how to send the picture to the background so that the words would show up. I animated "wander" to move right, and I animated "LOST" to grow, shrink, and move left off the screen, as if it were wandering away to get lost somewhere.

I used a canvas background, attempting to portray that Tolkien was talking about being old. I used the checkerboard effect on all the words not significant to the poem (in my mind). I made "STRONG" at 8 point font, making it grow 400% with the grow animation. I then animated "wither" to flicker, and turn into the color of the canvas as if to wither away. I must say I lost sight of my intentions at this point, because the animation became a routine - I would just animate the important words and use entrance animation on the unimportant words.

I loved that I had already taken a picture that corresponds to this part of the poem. However, I also realized at this point that I am simply following the words' meanings in the poem, and not conveying the actual meaning of the poem. I tried to fix this after this line. I used the diamond animation for the first three, and on "FROST," I used the Chiller font and made it grow into a lighter shade of blue, as is the color of frost. I also wished at this point that I was able to do more with pictures, and more with animation; however, I am not skilled enough (yet).
I used the fade technique for "from the ashes a...shall be." I animated "FIRE" to turn 360 degrees, then made it so that it turned blood red. The last words to this slide are "shall be woken," and on "woken" I used the faded zoom, as well as the flicker. I found many limitations in that I was not able to use copyrighted material, and I did not want to use all of Powerpoint's designs, so I had to choose applicable pictures of my own. I believe that if I were able to use copyrighted material without having to cite it, this would be a much more interesting poem. The fact that we had to use that made me a little less excited about the possibilities of this poem.
Again, I feel like I am just animating the words and not giving more meaning to the poem. It seems as though I'm just trying to engage the reader with the interactive properties of some of the words. I left all the words that weren't positive in the darker side of my picture, and used the fly-in effect for the words that were not "emphasized," as Powerpoint calls that specific animation. As for "LIGHT," I put it right above the lamp, and made it enlarge from a normal size into a bright yellow. I also made "shadows" darken, and "spring" bounce. I feel like there is not much else that I can do here but animate simply.

I used the unfold animation and enlarged the font size of "renewed." This line goes "renewed shall be the blade that was broken." I used unfold on "shall be," then made the word "blade" fly away and made a picture of a sword descend into the slide to take its place. I had to use clipart, and I feel that this took away from the slide because of the...cheesiness of it. On "broken," I used the flip animation to make it seem as though it was splitting apart and falling off the screen.

I used the expand technique for "crownless;" the other words except for "KING" I simply used checkerboard entrance. I made the crown appear with the "KING," and made the word flicker slowly. I used a picture that I made because of the hands at the bottom; emphasizing that the crownless again shall be King.

All in all, I enjoyed this experience working with Powerpoint. Although I went a little overboard in my first attempt, I found out a lot by just playing around with it. I believe that if one stays on the right track and does not simply animate for the fun of it, it is very possible to create a meaningful e-poem. However, if you just animate words and don't completely think about the general picture of the poem, it might just be completely pointless, such as I feel mine is. Although, it was fun to create a piece of artwork that was my own.

Blog Post 2

"Faith" was probably my favorite example of electronic poetry. It examines the meaning of a word, and plays with different sentence structures and word placement. The words correspond to their definition (such as the word "bend" bending), and the interactive nature requires you to pay attention or you will be unable to understand the poem's meaning. The audio emphasizes each movement of the words, letters, and sentences, and helps you to focus on where the changes are happening and follow the order of them. The conclusion of the poem made me impressed, because the entire poem is structured around the end, and it all "falls" together very well in the end.

Faith begins, getting showered by bright yellow "logic," and saying that logic can't bend this. Every time logic hits faith, a weird chime occurs. The last word on the screen is "So..." with an arrow to go on to the next page. It encourages the reader to ask this question themselves. Each page has a rhetorical question or comment that you must click on to continue through the poem.

Red words then begin to appear throughout, filling in the "logic can't bend this" sentence and turning it into a long open-ended question about the deep "or." The colors of the words seem to correspond to the pitch of the chime that occurs when the words rearrange themselves. The poem seems to be talking about how we perceive logic and our purpose for being here. I enjoy that the only way to the next page is by clicking the answer to the author's own question (Maybe, But...). It puts forward how important it is to go on to understand what the speaker is talking about, and tells you to press on. Now, instead of adding words, the poem begins adding letters. It then begins to activate the words. For example, "red winking neon" blinks red on and off for a good couple of seconds. Words arrange and rearrange, creating new meanings. The word "button" is pushed, as it wiggles up and down such as someone did press a button. The words move within themselves, and change colors. The word ''theory'' comes on to the screen as upside down, and realigns itself at the end of this screen. This is just one example of how the words seemingly define themselves as the poem goes on. Letters begin appearing as though they were meant to be there the entire time, blazing gray and turning black at the end of the screen. "Leave-taking" leaves the screen, as does "walking out." The audio seems to get more intense, and the whimsical sound that chimes every time words and letters move appears louder. Words change their spacing to add letters, and the chime sound continually gets higher-pitched.

The word "leap" flies and enlarges onto the screen, after being defined as the "deeper world's One True Word." The words "off the rocker (yipeee!)" falls sideways, such as it was falling off of an actual rocker.The words begin to fall down on the screen, into a pile at the bottom. The differently colored words seem to make a dark rainbow at the bottom, with the elegant font of Faith clearly presiding over the words. "Just sum up to" are the only words left, along with Faith itself. The meaning of the poem is advertised in this, and a black replay button appears at the top to document the end of the poem.

"For the Moon" was an electronic poem that immediately appealed to me. The fact that you must interact with it in a click-and-drag manner like it was a panoramic picture in order to read the entirety of it made it seem like the author was visually revealing their thoughts and feelings as you scrolled sideways. I thought it contributed to the theme of the poem, especially the repeated imagery and colors. At first glance, this seemed like it was a poem written by a child (because of the childish-looking font of the title). However, when I noticed the fancy italics used in the actual content of the poem, I considered it being a poem that was going to be written for a child. I was correct in my assumptions, for the speaker begins talking to someone named "Luna." The somber nature of the colors used (gray, drab yellow, a pastel sort of black), as well as the imagery (a hazy fog in front of naked, damaged trees) portrays a nostalgic, melancholy speaker who seems to be yearning to see Luna, or reflecting on the last time that they saw her. They also present the theme of space by comparing how oddly Luna dresses to "perihelion presence," being that perihelion is the closest planet to the sun. The author says that they remember Luna in their attire or "remembrance, regret," relating to the fact that maybe they dislike telling this story, or reflecting about Luna. Again, the space theme is brought up, with the moon drawing all attention to it, and the constellations shining a bright blue. The author seems to be sticking to describing Luna's appearance (or a time in which she was dressed this way), because he relates back to her outfit, calling her shifting dress "night's crystal ball." Night was her fortune teller, and the dress, her fortune. Everything was perfect when you were in that shifting dress, the speaker seems to allude to. Previous to this comparison, the speaker says that Luna was "bloated with anticipation," again relating back to a sort of obsession about Luna's appearance. Luna's garbs are brought up again, this time in the sense that they are growing larger. Underneath the text, a moon is consistently growing larger, consequently into a half-moon. Constellations are still visible; however, there is not much more imagery present. It is a matter-of-fact part of the poem, and doesn't seem to need accompanying imagery to enhance its meaning.
At this point, the imagery changes to subtle gray clouds and the author elaborates on Luna's growing garb by saying that stars were stretching to contain her. The words become more and more intense, such as "I expire." The speaker says that Luna "fills to empty" which sounds a lot like a metaphor about bulimia. "Inhale, expire" are the next two words, also possibly relating back to the deathly nature of eating disorders. Although it is talked about in the poem's content, for some reason, there is no imagery of space, planets or the moon in this screenshot; there are just barely noticeable clouds. "Luna, I pray" is emphasized as the last line by being larger and more noticeable than the other words. It seems as thought there will be an outburst as I scroll to the right.
Instead, it is now introduced that Luna is going through an eating disorder problem, which makes the constant relation back to Luna's appearance, and the obsession about it, understandable. She was emaciated, but now, her garbs grow larger. The speaker prays for Luna to fit into the costume that they have waited for her to wear, which seems like it could be that they wish she could fit into her own skin, or to have more self-confidence and be comfortable with her body. "I have waited lifetimes" shows that the author has known Luna for a long time, and this has been a struggle that has been going on for a while now. He yearns for Luna to be happy.
The end is simplistic, marked only by a dull "X" to signify the conclusion of the poem. However, there is a bright blue arrow, which could perhaps be symbolizing hope, that offers another chance to read the poem.