478. The Magic of Interactive Fiction with Rebecca Slitt from Heart’s Choice

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hi there! Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell, and this is episode number 478 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. Today Amanda and I are taking a deep dive into the world of interactive fiction with Rebecca Slitt from Choice of Games and Heart’s Choice. We are going to get into the details of how interactive fiction works and what the process of writing it is like, and we have recommendations; never fear.

I will have links to all of the games and books we mention in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

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And if you are looking for additional podcasts to listen, may I suggest the SSR Podcast?

Alli Hoff Kosik: Do you love books? Even if you don’t now, did you love them when you were a kid? Do you get equal parts embarrassed and emo and giddy when you really think about the things you were into when you were a teen or tween? Are you cool with a healthy mix of nostalgia and hindsight? Then you have got to come over and hang out with us over on the SSR Podcast, where every week we take a look at a book from our awkward, angsty years from a 2021 perspective. It’s a fun, thoughtful time, and I would love to have you. New episodes drop every Tuesday on your favorite podcast player.

Sarah: I will have a link to the SSR Podcast and where you can find their latest episodes in the show notes, but if you’re looking for new shows to try, definitely check that one out.

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Are you ready to take a deep dive into interactive gaming? This is such a fun conversation. On with our podcast with Rebecca Slitt.

[music]

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this, Rebecca! It is so lovely to talk to you. I’m so excited to ask you about all these games!

Rebecca Slitt: I’m excited to talk to you about all these games!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Rebecca: And, and thank you so much! Like, I love your podcast! I listen to it all the time! I am super excited to actually be on it! [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s so nice to hear! Thank you! Oh wow! ‘Cause usually it’s, you know, it’s just me and my microphone and my headphones, and it’s, it’s really lovely to have someone so excited to talk to me. Thank you!

Rebecca: Aw! [Laughs]

Sarah: Can you tell I have teenagers? No one’s excited to talk to me.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So if you would please – this is the only awkward part – if you would please introduce yourself and tell the people who will be listening who you are and what you do!

Rebecca: Hi! I am Rebecca Slitt. I am an author, editor, and publisher of digital interactive fiction. I’m a partner at Choice of Games and its spinoff label dedicated to romance, Heart’s Choice. I also write and play and produce role-playing games, both tabletop and live action.

Sarah: Wow, that’s super boring. I have nothing to ask you.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Like, my brain just exploded with, like, nine different additional questions!

Rebecca: I’m happy to answer all of them.

Sarah: How did you get started in this field? ‘Cause it’s really cool.

Rebecca: [Laughs] Thank you! I am really lucky to have gotten into it. And I got into it pretty much by accident, you know. I get asked a lot, how do you get into this? by people who want examples of a career path to follow, and, you know, unfortunately, I, it was totally by accident! I started out in academia, actually. I used to be a medieval history professor.

Sarah: As you do.

Rebecca: As you do. I got my Ph.D. in 2008, right before the economy crashed the previous time, and –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Rebecca: Yeah. So, an already difficult –

Sarah: Speaking of interactive, yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Amanda: It’s sad that you had to specify which time, by the way. [Laughs]

Rebecca: I, I know, right? [Laughs] So, an already, you know, difficult and precarious professional field went into this huge transformation, and so I was very lucky that I was able to be continually employed in academia as a history professor for a few years, but there were fewer and fewer permanent jobs, and so I’d get, like, a one-year post-doc here and a two-year visiting gig there, and after a while I was just tired of moving every year and being on the job market every year. I wanted to live in a place and have a job.

Sarah: Gosh! Such, such just incredible expectations of adult life!

Amanda: So much to ask!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Rebecca: I know, right? Aim for the stars! Having a job.

Sarah: Right? Just the one, where you don’t have to constantly be looking for the next one while you’re in this one. Yep, mm-hmm.

Rebecca: Exactly!

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Rebecca: So coincidentally, at the same time, Choice of Games was looking for a full-time editor. Choice of Games had been founded in 2009 by a couple of friends of mine from college, so I had been a fan of theirs for a while, you know, of course. My friends are making these cool games; I want to buy them and support them, and I really enjoyed playing them as well. And as I mentioned, I had been playing and writing role-playing games for a while too, and so these games are already, you know, on the edge between a novel and a role-playing game.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s a little overlap there.

Rebecca: Yeah! There really is, and I can talk more about that when we get to the discussion of narrative design and –

Sarah: Yes! Yes.

Rebecca: – and, and how that all works.

Sarah: Cannot wait.

Rebecca: So the serendipity just worked out that they needed a new editor at the same time that I needed a new job. And this is why I tell people, like, I can tell you how I got into this field, but I can’t actually advise that you follow it, ‘cause, like, step one is go back in time and have your friend found a company.

[Laughter]

Rebecca: Yeah, and as it turned out, the distance between being a history professor and the kind of work I do now was not that far. In the content, you know, we do a lot of medieval fantasy; that’s one of our wheelhouses –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – so I can bring my knowledge of actual medieval history to it to help make that better, to help correct a lot of the misconceptions people have –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – of the middle ages when they’re creating their fantasy worlds. But more than that, most of our writers, when they come to us, a lot of them have never written any kind of interactive narrative before, and most of them have never written in ChoiceScript before, which is our scripting language. So what I find myself doing a lot is teaching! You know, just as I was when I was a history professor teaching first-years, I’m teaching people how to write in a new intellectual framework, teaching them how to understand this new format. I’m looking at their writing, helping to see what the coolest parts of their writing are, and helping them express it more effectively.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: So I, I feel like you might have the same problem that Sarah and I might have in, for people who aren’t familiar with your field – [laughs] –

Rebecca: Yes.

Amanda: – how do you explain what you do?

Sarah: That’s my favorite question to answer when I –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – what do you do?

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: Well, how comfortable are you with cursing? [Laughs]

Rebecca: Right! [Laughs] So the first thing I say is, do you remember the old Choose Your Own Adventure books from the ‘80s?

Sarah: Oh, good reference!

Rebecca: Thank you!

Sarah: Yep.

Rebecca: Except! I’m, in using that as my opening line, I’m discovering just how narrow a window of reference that is? It’s like my section of Gen X and maybe a little older, and anybody outside that window, I get these blank looks.

Sarah: They didn’t exist! It’s like they arrived and then they disappeared.

Rebecca: I know!

Sarah: It’s weird, right?

Rebecca: Yeah!

Amanda: We have to discuss what kind of Choose Your Own Adventure reader you are.

Sarah: Okay –

Rebecca: Ohhh!

Amanda: Do you –

Rebecca: Okay.

Amanda: Do you go through and you just follow the path that you take –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Amanda: – or do you make your choice, and if it’s not the choice you want, go back and be like, whatever; I just wanted to do the other one anyway; I just wanted to see what this one’s like? Or do you go through and try to read every single path you can get? Which kind are you?

Rebecca: [Laughs] It really depends on the story. You know, there are some stories where, you know, like, I’m flipping through the pages and I get a glimpse of another storyline, and, like, ooh! Ooh, how do I get there?

Sarah: Yes! It’s like, it’s like when you see a cut scene on a videogame and you’re like, I want that ending; how do I get it? Yes!

Rebecca: Yes! Exactly! So most of the time I will choose my path and stick with it and keep following the options that I chose, unless, you know, I turn to a page and something really bad or really boring happens –

Sarah: Yes!

Rebecca: – and then I’ll flip back.

Sarah: Nope, nope! Undo, undo, undo, undo, undo!

Rebecca: Undo, undo, undo!

Sarah: Flip back! Yes!

Rebecca: [Laughs] But that dovetails actually really well into the differences between the Choose Your Own Adventure books and our games, and I’ll, you know, summarize how they actually work for the listeners who are outside my window in Gen X.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: So the way these books work and the way our games work is it’s a novel in which you play the main character, and you decide what happens next in the plot. So you see a page of text, and then at the bottom of the page there’s a set of options, and depending on what you choose, something different happens next. Now, where our books, where our games differ from the physical books, we don’t have a Back button; you can’t flip back.

Sarah: I’ve noticed.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Noted!

Rebecca: But the reason for that is that, is one of the advantages that we have over the Choose Your Own Adventure books, is that we can record the effect of every choice, so our stories can have a longer-term memory than the book. The book can’t tell what you chose, you know, three choices ago.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: It only knows where you came from most recently. So what we can do in the digital format is, the code can record much more subtle differences, and we can record much longer-term story effects, so we can build up more complex branching narratives, we can build up more complex character arcs and narrative arcs, and we can make the game world react to your choices to show you the effects that you have had on the world. And what I think is one of the coolest parts is, you can build up really interesting and dynamic character relationships, because you can record, like, you can have the characters remember what happened before!

Sarah: How much has the world of interactive stories been growing lately? Because I feel like I am hearing about them more and more –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – but that just, could just be my own nosiness –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – and then –

Rebecca: Yeah –

Sarah: – finding information that is being sent to me because I’ve enquired about it before. If Google knows that I like pants and chocolate and interactive fiction, I’m going to find –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – you know, pants –

Rebecca: Yep! [Laughs]

Sarah: – chocolate, and interactive fiction. That’s, I accept that this is how it is, but am I, am I alone in that, or is this growing as a field?

Rebecca: No, you are right! We are growing really quickly as a field and expanding, and, you know, some of it is because of the expansion of multiple different fields in interactive fiction. You know, Amanda, you were talking about visual novels. You know, a lot more are being translated into English, being made accessible outside of Japan, so this one particular genre is finding a new audience and growing. There have also been new platforms for interactive fiction coming up in the last few years. Choices and Episode and Chapters and game platforms like that have a very accessible type of interactive fiction that’s also drawing in new audiences. On top of that, there have been a lot of new tools for creating interactive fiction; most importantly, a lot of free tools for creating interactive fiction, so that is –

Sarah: Oooh!

Rebecca: – lowering the barrier for creators as well as for readers. ChoiceScript is free and open source; there are others. Probably the most inter-, influential has been Twine. Twine has been the, the first step for a lot of game creators. It is free; it is very flexible. You know, there’s a learning curve for using it, but much lower than a lot of other tools. And so people who might have felt that making games was, you know, “not for them” or were excluded from the game-making process for economic reasons – you know, they didn’t have the time or money to take a class –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: – or, you know, were gate-kept out by people who purposely excluded their voices – those voices can now be heard as creators, and so there is a lot more being written. There are a lot more different stories being told, and that is just a wonderful thing for the interactive field as a whole. And all of this is going hand in hand with, yeah, interactive stories are having a moment, and so once there were these new formats for it, people just loved them.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: You know, I think people like being able to participate in their own stories.

Sarah: Yeah. And the customization –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – which I’ll ask you about in a little bit –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – the customization also allows them to create their character in a way that is –

Rebecca: Mm.

Sarah: – much like a videogame creator, right? I mean –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Amanda: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah! Yeah, definitely! And that’s something that we have found at Choice of Games in particular: because a lot of interactive fiction is told in the second person –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – you know, we address the character, the, the player as “you,” and so a lot of players want to make their characters like themselves. So yeah, at Choice of Games we try to offer as many options for character customization as possible so that as many different kinds of people can be themselves in the game and see themselves in the game, and that is so valuable for players who have never gotten to see themselves in a videogame before.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: That’s one of the advantages that we have being a text-only format: you know, we don’t have to worry about rendering infinite graphics for infinite character customization.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: We can just write a couple lines of code and it swaps out the text variables to swap the description, so you can describe your character to look like yourself in all ways.

Amanda: So with games like this –

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – there’s more than just one linear storyline.

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: There’s multiple storylines with –

Rebecca: Yes.

Amanda: – multiple outcomes, lots of different branching paths. Can you tell us about the writing process? And then what’s it like working with other writers who are going through this process?

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, I can hear the authors listening to this podcast episode going, wait, I j-, I’m, I, I kind of have a problem coming up with one! You want me to come up with how many and how many different varia- –

Rebecca: [Laughs]

Sarah: – how many, how many possible romances? How many possible plot outcomes? Are – what?! No.

[Laughter]

Rebecca: Yeah. So one of my, one of the authors I’ve worked with calls this quantum narrative, because it exists in infinite possibilities.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: So, yeah, how to approach writing a story like this. One way that we help authors through it is by helping them create a very detailed outline. You know, if you are a pants-er –

Sarah: [Laughs] I was just thinking that.

Rebecca: – now would be a real good time to become a plotter if you are trying to write a branching narrative.

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s exactly what I was thinking: all the people who fly by the seat of their pants are like, well, that’s out.

Amanda: Yeah.

Rebecca: I mean, I’m not saying it’s impossible – nothing is impossible – but it’s going to be real hard. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: So creating a detailed outline is a very important part of the writing process –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – so that you can see what the possibilities are for your story. Another thing that’s really important to remember and something that authors need a little time to wrap their minds around when they’re coming from writing, you know, regular novels is the idea that you don’t get to decide what the main character wants. That kind of blows people’s minds, because of course the whole, like, the most important thing when you’re writing a novel is to know who the main character is and what they want and have that drive the story.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: But when you’re writing our style of interactive fiction, the player is the one who decides who the main character is and what they want. Your job as the author is to figure out the most likely things that they might want and to –

Sarah: Oh boy!

Rebecca: – and to offer those possibilities. So you have to do a lot of thinking about what kinds of people are going to play your game, what most people will want to do –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – at every branching point, and how to steer them towards that, ‘cause you can’t offer infinite possibilities for actions. You know, you are only one person and you can only write so many paths through the story, so you have to figure out how to steer the player towards the branches that you have and how to offer incentives to get them to those places.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: And then once you’ve written it, you have to make sure that every path through that story works, that the logical continuity works, that the emotional continuity works, that the character development arcs feel natural no matter which way they progress.

Sarah: Right. So you have to really know the motivation of the character more than the plot of their singular choice.

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: Wow. And then, you know, people are motivated to do different things, depending on the circums- – oh my goodness, my brain just exploded.

Rebecca: Yes.

[Laughter]

Sarah: My brain hurts.

Rebecca: I mean, and, and, you know, this is never a one-person or a two-person job. You know, we send every game through, you know, multiple editors look at it –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – because it is so complex –

Sarah: Yeah! Oh boy.

Rebecca: – and no matter how care-, and no matter how careful you are, like, you will miss something, and that’s okay. We have, we have multiple layers of editorial safety nets to catch you and help you untangle that continuity. It goes through multiple rounds of beta testing, so people play through the games to test, you know, when you get to this narrative intersection, is there something else that you feel like it would make sense to do?

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: And that is some of our most valuable feedback, when players say, hey, I wanted to do this, or, you know, I wanted to be nice to this character, and there was, there was only –

Sarah: There’s no option, yeah.

Rebecca: – and there wasn’t an option to do that. Can there be something nicer to do here? Or I really, I was really curious about this other plot point, but there wasn’t any option for me to go looking at it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: So that’s really valuable.

Sarah: You teased me and I didn’t like it!

Rebecca: Aw!

[Laughter]

Rebecca: We have a lot of specialized testing, you know, debugging, and continuity testing –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – is another major thing. You know, continuity errors can creep in everywhere, you know. If you skip one scene, then you miss seeing that this character learned this piece of information –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – and then you don’t know why they’re talking about it, or you miss one bit of code and, you know, somebody who was killed in this scene then comes back, comes back from the dead.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oops! And if it’s not that kind of book –

Rebecca: Yes. [Laughs]

Sarah: – theeeen you’ve got a problem.

Rebecca: Yes, I, when I, for one of my games, Psy High – it’s a game, paranormal romance thing – I had the saddest bug report ever –

Sarah: Oh no.

Rebecca: – was, I told Allison I loved her, but then on the way to the prom she said we were just friends?

Sarah: Ouch!

Rebecca: I don’t know what happened!

Sarah: What did I choose wrong?

Rebecca: And what happened was I, as the author, missed this one line of code –

Sarah: Oh no!

Rebecca: – so it defaulted into this other scene where you’re –

Sarah: Just buds.

Rebecca: – where you never had a romance with Allison and you’re just friends with her, and that’s what’s happening when you go to the prom.

Sarah: Why is, why is Allison gaslighting me on the way to the prom? Why?!

Rebecca: [Laughs] So, so I fixed it.

Sarah: Good job!

Rebecca: And now you –

[Laughter]

Rebecca: I fixed it –

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: – and now you and Allison can be very, very happy. [Laughs]

Sarah: Fabulous!

Rebecca: But yeah, stuff like that happens all the time because it is just so complex. But it’s worth it for the satisfaction of having those complex –

Sarah: Yes.

Rebecca: – dynamic character relationships.

Sarah: Yes, absolutely. You mentioned earlier and you mentioned in –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – when we’ve exchanged email messages –

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – that Heart’s Choice wants to be as inclusive and as welcoming for every reader, and I know in the games that I’ve played –

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: – I can choose my gender and how I want to be identified, and I can choose –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – to have all of the romantic interests be agender, a different gender, all genders, no genders! I, I can choose pronouns; I can choose so many –

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: – and then there’s scenes where it’s like, okay, well, hey, what do you look like? ‘Cause you’re looking in the mirror. Do you look like this or this or this? There’s, there’s the visual, but there’s also the people with whom I will form relationships, there’s an enormous amount of control.

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: How do you focus to make that happen? What are the choices that have to be in place to make it as open and welcoming? Because you’re still dealing with, essentially, if this, then that coding, which is –

Rebecca: Right.

Sarah: – which is a binary! Like, this is mind-blowing! You are, you are deploying a binary to destroy a binary? Wait, first of all that’s really hot, but how do you do that?

[Laughter]

Rebecca: Thank you! Yeah, so we are very proud that all of our games for Choice of Games, you can choose your gender, you can choose your orientation. Lot of our games have a really wide range of options for gender diversity, gender presentation. We are getting a lot better about offering asexual representation and aromantic and demisexual and a lot of other options to help people – again, we want to help people be themselves or be the person that they want to be in the story.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: And so, as I mentioned before, it’s easy to offer that customization. You can choose, you know, your own appearance with just flipping a couple lines of code. You can have gender-variable NPCs as well with a couple lines of code. You know, you just have a, have pronoun variables.

Sarah: Yes.

Rebecca: And when you choose the gender of a given character, you just set all those lines of code and thereafter it will refer to that character with those pronouns. And we can break it down even further. You know, I know you’ve played Crème de la Crème, and I know that that particular game offers a lot of customization. You know –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Rebecca: – you choose your, you choose your gender, but you choose different shadings of presentation in your clothing, what title you want to be called.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: We also pay really close attention to consent. That’s something else we’re, we want to make sure that the reader feels comfortable. Again, because of that second-person perspective –

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: – everything is much more immediate.

Sarah: Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely true.

Rebecca: Yeah. Which is what makes the romance scenes so fulfilling and intense! But also means we want to make really sure that people are getting what they want and only what they want.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: So the interactive format means that we can be much more explicit about consent. You know, having choices where the NPC asks, do you want to do this?

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: And the player gets to say, yes, this and only this; yes, that and a little more; not right now, but maybe later –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: – no thanks, that’s not my thing.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: You know, we want to make sure that whatever the reader will have fun with, they are empowered with the information to go forth and find that fun, and also to steer away from the things that they will not find fun.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: And we, and we work really closely with authors to help them frame those choices.

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: So all this talking about Heart’s Choice –

Rebecca: Yes.

Amanda: – I’m sure there are –

Rebecca: Yes.

Amanda: – many people who will be listening who will want to download it, play it, pick a story. Are there any stories that you would recommend for first-time players, ones that are the most popular? It’s easy to get overwhelmed –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – with, I’m sure, an abundance of choices?

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: Yes!

Amanda: So where would you recommend people starting, if you could recommend a few?

Sarah: And if possible, I would love to also know what your favorites are. Like, what do you recommend for new people, and what are the ones that you just absolutely frigging love?

Rebecca: Oh my gosh, like, asking me to pick my favorite kid!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Rebecca: Like, I don’t have kids, but if I did it would be like that.

[Laughter]

Rebecca: So there are two labels, so Choice of Games, there’s over a hundred games in there –

Sarah: Whoa.

Rebecca: – so whatever – in all genres – so whatever genre you’re looking for, there will be something that you will like.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: Heart’s Choice is much newer. We are just coming up on our second anniversary, so we have a smaller catalogue to choose from. If you’re coming to it as a romance novel reader –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – the one that has gotten, that feels the most romance-novel-y and the one that romance novel readers have responded to the best is A Pirate’s Pleasure.

Sarah: Can’t imagine why!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: There’s nothing in the title that –

Rebecca: It is –

Sarah: – that signals us, hello, hello! Come over here!

Rebecca: Exactly!

Sarah: Pirate’s Pleasure.

Rebecca: And it is, it is what you want. It is –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Rebecca: – sexy pirates. [Laughs] If you are a paranormal fan, our most popular in that subgenre is Never Date Werewolves. You are a single mom to a litter of werewolves. There is adorable werewolf puppies and sexy grown-up werewolves.

Sarah: Oh darn!

[Laughter]

Sarah: That sounds perfect!

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: And also like you probably have a Swiffer and some vacuum needs that most people do not.

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah, lots of those little –

Sarah: Lint rollers? Yeah, mm-hmm.

Amanda: Furminators.

Rebecca: Lint rollers –

Sarah: Yep.

Rebecca: – yep.

Sarah: Yep.

Rebecca: [Laughs] Let’s see, one of our most popular recent releases is If It Please the Court, which is f/f. It is sexy intrigue at Versailles in the 18th century.

Sarah: Y’all are just dispensing the tropes –

Amanda: I feel like we should have to tell Tara about that one.

Sarah: I, yeah, I definitely think we need to spread the word about that one.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Rebecca: So we, we, we aim to have catnip for everyone –

Sarah: You know how when you go shopping for tomatoes, there’s the little cans of tomato paste, and there’s little fourteen-and-a-half-ounce cans, and then there’s the big, jumbo Costco cans?

[Laughter]

Sarah: That’s what you’re giving here to the – you’re like, I have twenty-eight-ounce cans of paranormal romance. Like, ka-boom, here you go.

Rebecca: We do.

Sarah: Yeah!

Rebecca: And that is exactly what we want, you know. We want to give people what they are looking for, and we know that, you know, there are people who are just looking for the sexy werewolves, and we want to give it to them. [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s fine! We appreciate, we appreciate that.

Rebecca: Gosh, do you still want me to pick my favorite? All right, so back in the Choice of Games catalogue –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – one game that’s a little older, but I just love the heck out of it is A Midsummer Night’s Choice. I edited it. It is a Shakespeare game –

Sarah: Ah!

Rebecca: – and it is sweet and funny and whimsical and, but also has these moments where it turns, emotional turns into seriousness and poignancy, and I remember when I was editing it, I didn’t know what kind of audience there was going to be for this game, but I remember thinking, you know, I kind, I almost don’t care; I love this game enough for a thousand people, so – [laughs] – and fortunately it did have an audience, and that author went on to write some of our most successful games.

Sarah: Is there a particular trope or subgenre that’s the most popular inside Heart’s Choice or in Choice of Games? Like, do you have some, some particular themes that are like, yep, yeah, uh-huh, mm-hmm, people are going to like that?

Rebecca: Medieval fantasy, especially, you know, the kind that feels like you’re playing a D&D game.

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: There are people who really look for that. Superheroes are also –

Sarah: Oh!

Rebecca: – a big draw for us. Yeah!

Sarah: Makes sense!

Rebecca: We found that players really enjoy stories that let them feel powerful?

Sarah: That makes sense.

Rebecca: And let them feel powerful right off the bat, you know.

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: It’s also interesting ‘cause I feel like a lot of people want more superhero stories in fiction, but, like, book publishing hasn’t really got there yet?

Sarah: No! I can only think of like two or three, right?

Amanda and Rebecca: Yeah!

Rebecca: There, there is, there’s a couple, yeah. There’s the Not Your Sidekick.

Amanda: There’s Hench; Hench was really good.

Rebecca: Hench, Hench is brilliant!

Amanda: Yeah.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh, I love that book!

Amanda: And then –

Sarah: Isn’t it so good? Oh my gosh!

Rebecca: It is so good!

Amanda: – Mike Chen has one, I think called like We Could Be Heroes, where, like, two people meet –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – at, like, an, they have, like, memory loss? And one of them is a superhero, one of them is a villain, but they can’t remember who they were, and they start up, like, this friendship as they’re trying to put their memories back together?

Rebecca: Oh my gosh!

Amanda: But, like –

Rebecca: I need to read this right now!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: It is called We Could Be Heroes by Mike Chen.

Rebecca: Okay.

Amanda: But yeah, there aren’t a ton of, like, superhero fiction, and, like, that’s a bulk of what people are, I feel like, are consuming right now is, like, Marvel stuff and DC stuff, so –

Rebecca: Yeah!

Amanda: – that makes sense, but not something that we –

Rebecca: Yeah!

Amanda: – would see in, like –

Sarah: In bookstores.

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly! You would, you would think there was more, and maybe it’s because people just are so used to seeing superheroes as a visual genre? You know, because so much of –

Sarah: Oh, that’s a good point!

Rebecca: – ‘cause so much of superhero movies depend on the spectacle and the explosions –

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: – and the special effects, and that doesn’t always translate easily into text on the page.

Sarah: No.

Rebecca: But it can! You know, you just have to do it a little differently! [Laughs]

Sarah: So the story that I have the most experience that you’ve published is Crème de la Crème –

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: – which is –

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: – really kind of incredible in terms of the options and the potential characters, and one of the interesting things I think about it is the central conceit is that the character has to choose things that may bring back her family’s good reputation, because her parents have squandered their money and their reputation socially?

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: But also she is in conflict with the desire to restore her family’s good name and her desire to finally be happy, because it’s not her fault her parents screwed everything up. So is she going to go –

Rebecca: Right.

Sarah: – into some sort of flirtation with someone who isn’t going to advance her socially, or is she? And then you have choices within that parameter, like, oh, so great.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: Is there a storyline that you recommend or a person that is the most popular? Because the other thing that’s great is that as you read you get the stats? Like –

Rebecca: Yes.

Sarah: – these are how your character is shaping based on the choices that you’ve made. Are they empathetic or are they mercenary? That kind of thing. So –

Rebecca: Right.

Sarah: – that is fascinating to me. But I’m curious –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – is there, is there a storyline that is, that is the most, the most popular?

Rebecca: It’s great. So, so yeah. So first I want to say, you know, thank you for expressing it that clearly; you’ve really put your finger on one of the things that we like to, that we, we try to do in Choice of Games, which is offer competing goals and conflicting motivations.

Sarah: Yep!

Rebecca: This is getting back to what I was talking about a while ago: when we say we want to leave open a range of motivations for the player to take their actions, one of the ways that that plays out is giving them conflicting motivations. They have multiple things that they are trying to do at the same time –

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: – and, and they may or may not be able to accomplish all of those goals. And yeah, in Crème de la Crème, one of the main conflicts in the motivation is do you want to be ambitious, help your restore your family’s good name? Do you want to just find someone you love for yourself?

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: Do you want to pursue your own career goals –

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: – and what are those goals? Do you have what it takes to get there? So yeah –

Sarah: Do you want to blow stuff up?

Rebecca: Yeah!

Sarah: There’s a number of questions about, well, do you want to go blow things up? Like, what?!

Rebecca: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, yes. This group is going to –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – set things on fire. Do you want to go – what? Yes, I do!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Rebecca: Yes. Yeah, and, and one of the awesome things about Crème de la Crème – I will, I will drop some tantalizing hints for readers – is when I was going back and replaying it – so rewinding a couple steps – I didn’t edit that particular one; that was Abby Trevor. She did a fabulous job editing it –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Rebecca: – but that means that when I came back to it to review, ‘cause I knew you played it and wanted to refresh my memory, I’d forgotten a lot of things, because I hadn’t –

Sarah: Oh!

Rebecca: – looked at it that closely. So I played it through, and I got to the bit where there was the fire –

Sarah: Yeah!

Rebecca: – and I was like, oh, there’s a fire; that, that’s a bummer. And then I played it through a couple times more and finally got to the storyline where you find out who set the fire and why. So people out there, if you do not know who set the fire and why, you can find out if you follow a different path.

Oh, favorite storylines, favorite romances – I think my favorite romance is, in Crème de la Crème, I love playing out the romance with Rosario, the princess?

Sarah: Ohhh!

Rebecca: She is, she is more difficult to meet and more difficult – you know, there are a lot of obstacles in the way.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: But she is really fun and funny and happy and lighthearted. And there are all of these fun, trope-y challenges where, you know, the overprotective bodyguard, how do you get some time alone with her without the bodyguard looking, and things like that? And that, that’s super fun.

And I also love the Delacroix romance.

Sarah: Oh!

Rebecca: Delacroix’s kind of on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.

Sarah: Yes.

Rebecca: She’s, she’s just very sad and gentle, and you find out if you get close to her, you know, she has a lot of deep hurt, and so that sort of gets at the, the hurt/comfort trope in me, where I want to give her all the comfort, ‘cause she’s so sweet and sad and deserves so much better from the world!

Sarah: Yeah. I, I love the, the groundskeeper.

Rebecca: Oh, Karson!

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: Yes!

Sarah: Every time Karson is on the page I’m like, she, Karson –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – Karson steals the scenes every time –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sarah: – that they’re, that they’re on page. It’s just really gravity-center character.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Amanda: So our last question that we usually ask –

Rebecca: Yeah.

Amanda: – everybody –

Sarah: Yep!

Amanda: – what are you reading and loving right now?

Rebecca: Ooh! Okay, so I just finished Incense and Sensibility by Sonali Dev.

Amanda: She’s wonderful.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh, it’s –

Amanda: She’s just so wonderful.

Rebecca: – so good! I adore Jane Austen, and so I adore Jane Austen adaptations. Incense and Sensibility is obviously the Sense and Sensibility adaptation. It is also farther on in the series, so you get to see characters growing from earlier series, and one of the most interesting things in Incense and Sensibility is that the Edward Ferrars character was also the Lydia character in Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, so he’s got a history. He has all of these layers of trauma, and it deals very, very sensitively and in a nuanced way about, deals with trauma and how to work through it and the, and the effects that all of that can have on a person.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: You know, readers, if you, you should know that the plot involves a shooting. It’s right at the beginning, so that’s not a spoiler, but if that is something that you need to avoid, be aware that that’s what it’s about. If you are okay with that, it is a beautiful book.

Sarah: Ooh, good call.

Rebecca: Yes. Another thing I read, you know, I’ve also gotten into a lot of cozy comfort type romances, unsurpri- –

Sarah: Understandable!

Rebecca: Yes, exactly. One of those is Wrong Number, Right Woman by Jae?

Sarah: Ohhh!

Rebecca: The author’s name is J-A-E.

Amanda: Oh yeah, yeah!

Sarah: Tara loved that book.

Amanda: I think she reviewed that one?

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, she loved that book.

Rebecca: Oh gosh, it is so sweet! It’s f/f. The premise is that a woman is trying to text a friend, gets a number wrong, and texts a stranger instead. The stranger turns out to be really nice, and they start texting back and forth. It’s gentle and kind; it’s a very slow burn. It’s a slow burn that makes a lot of sense –

Sarah: Right.

Rebecca: – because they’re just meeting. The whole first part of the book, they’re only corresponding by text.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: And the relationship grows really naturally. They’re, both women are just really good, kind people who want the best for each other, and they’re surrounded by loving communities of friends and family, which is also just really wonderful to see.

Sarah: Aw!

Rebecca: So those are, those are two of my recent faves.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Rebecca Slitt and to Amanda for hanging out with me. I will have links to all of the books and the games we talked about in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

I am curious, though, have you played interactive fiction? What games are your favorites? I would really love to hear from you. You can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com or Sarah with an H at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books dot com [Sarah@smartbitchestrashybooks.com].

This podcast episode is brought to you in part by OUAI; that’s O-U-A-I. They have a detox shampoo that I absolutely love. As I’ve mentioned, taking really good care of my hair and changing how I care for it has made a massive difference in how I start my day and how I feel. The OUAI Detox Shampoo is some clarifying magic. I have been trying out a few different products, and some of them worked great, but after a while there’s buildup. The OUAI Detox Shampoo smells so lovely, and after washing, my hair felt so soft, not at all dry or fragile. I follow up with their super rich conditioner and spritz their leave-in – and my hair loves their leave-in conditioner, by the way? It is wonderful. And OUAI’s line of products are cruelty-free, sulfate-free, and paraben-free. When you’re ready to undo some damage, hit the reset button with the OUAI Detox Shampoo. Go to theouai, T-H-E-O-U-A-I, dot com [theouai.com] and use code SPTB to get fifteen percent off your entire purchase. That’s T-H-E-O-U-A-I dot com, code SPTB.

Coming up on the show next week – [squees] – it is the first of my Sweet Dreams Romance Recaps, where I read extremely vintage romances from like 1981, and I recap them. The first one is Barbara Conklin’s PS I Love You, which is a bit of a cult favorite book, I’ve discovered. I know many of you really loved the Sweet Dreams, and I am going to be recapping the first twenty! Wow, are they something! So check your fabulous podcast feed for this show next week, and we will be recapping PS I Love You.

And as always, I end with an absolutely dreadful joke. This comes from a listener named Katie. Hi, Katie! Thank you for this joke! It’s awesomely terrible; I adore it. Are you ready?

What do you call a dog that does magic?

What do you call a dog that does magic?

A Labracadabrador.

[Laughs] I love it so much! If you want to share your favorite terrible joke with me, you know that I would love to hear it, right? Sbjpodcast@gmail.com.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading, or game-playing. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week for the very first of our Sweet Dreams Romance Recaps.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[lovely music]