Self as Fractal

Coraline, the IF Heroine?

'Yes,' she said. 'I think I like this game. But what kind of game shall it be? A riddle game? A test of knowledge or of skill?'

'An exploring game,' suggested Coraline. 'A finding-things game.'

Tomorrow the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novella Coraline will be released. If reviews are any indication, it should be quite good. But the adaptation I really want to see is an IF work.

(Major book spoilers below.)

Adapting books to IF is tricky. It's been done before, of course - Douglas Adams' adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is particularly well-known - but presents some problems. Most obviously, books have static narratives. Things happen in an order. Flashbacks, parallel plots, and other devices can mess with this order, but the reader generally doesn't.

In IF, however, the reader or player can do all sorts of things to derail the narrative. He or she can wait around for 100 turns, or ask the same questions of characters over and over, or do other things that don't advance the plot. This leaves an implementor with a lot to fill in. If the author's involved (as Adams was) this task is significantly easier, but that isn't always the case.

The point of Coraline's beginning is to get her beyond the door into the mirror world. Everything she does and everything she sees is tilted toward this goal. It's all flat, all boring - not boring to read, mind you. There's always a hint of something more. Everything returns to that door Coraline isn't to open.

Of course, she does, and nothing is boring anymore. There are so many wonderful toys to play with, sights to see, and grounds to explore. Indeed, the middle of the book is an "exploring game" - as Coraline states in the quote above. This exploration takes the form of a treasure hunt. Some people pooh-pooh treasure hunts as cliches, but there's a reason why they're used so much. A treasure hunt forces the player to examine everything, think about his or her surroundings - in short, to engage with the story. It's also convenient for authors identifying with the PC, since both have the same basic goal: finding what needs to be found.

Of course, it's boring to treasure hunt in a world that doesn't reward it. Looking for a needle in a haystack is boring not only because of the enormity of the task but because of the unrelenting sameness of it. Who wants to dig through endless straw? Similarly, who wants to look for anything in a world full of underimplemented objects, lackadaisical descriptions, and default parser messages everywhere you turn? Part of the reason people hate dorm and office games is because, for all the specificity authors often claim about their experiences, too many of them seem to implement the same guy in the chair at the same desk in the same cubicle, drinking the same cheap coffee and avoiding the same pointy-haired boss.

Thankfully, Coraline's world rewards exploration in spades. Everything is weird and fantastic and richly detailed and something you just want to gape at and touch and pick up and play with forever. That's why it's so alluring. That's why it's so disappointing when things are not as perfect as they seem.

Who created all this rich and wonderful detail? Gaiman, yes, but in the story? Pretty much everything is the handiwork of Coraline's "other mother." She designed every object, every room, every trap. Sound familiar? It probably does! She's an implementor. An evil implementor, yes, but that's beside the point. Now, anyone who's ever implemented IF knows how much effort it takes. And even if you do put the effort in, your implementation is always going to be incomplete. Your little world has abrupt boundaries, like some ancient idea of the world's edges. Descriptions get fuzzy. Extraneous details are shadowy. Someone living in this implemented world would notice things going awry fairly quickly.

A particularly apt illustration of her implementation is in one scene where Coraline attempts to run away into the forest. Her other mother hasn't implemented this part of the world; it isn't important. As she gets further and further away, therefore, the trees become more stylized, less earthy, less detailed, and more like sketches of trees, then the vague ideas of trees, until she finally learns what's going on. When reading this section, I was reminded of Paul O'Brian's "Wearing the Claw." In his work, you can flee the village for the forest at the very beginning, but it's pointless; you discover nothing new and a lot of repetition. (Oh, and there's the tiny detail that it will make you lose.)

There are plenty of other analogies. Early on, Coraline encounters the counterparts of Miss Forcible and Miss Spink. In the real world, they were former actresses, reminiscing about their days on the stage; in the mirror world, they are on stage forever, locked into a never-ending performance. A magic trick here, a quotation there. For me, this was one of the most disturbing scenes. Their greatest dream becomes their endless task.

But isn't this the plight of the NPC? The underimplemented NPC, that is. They stand in the same room, doing the same things every minute - and that's only if they're lucky enough to get an every-turn rule. They can't move or leave. They have no agency. This is how Coraline's other mother designed them. They're not important to her. They're set pieces. They have no real identity as people. And that is terrifying.

By the end of the book, it is well established that Coraline's other mother is evil, but the potency of her arguments is undeniable:

"Stay here with us...Your other mother will build whole worlds for you to explore, and tear them down every night when you are done.... Remember the toy box? How much better would a world be built just like that, and all for you?"

A lot better, if you ask me. There's a bit of a problem here - namely, how can you create an IF adaptation that implies the form is bad? It's telling, though, that the very last words of the novel describe Coraline's conjuring up a dream she had: a tea party with the children she rescued from the mirror world. Dream recall generally isn't like this, and besides, she's still awake. What she's doing is recreating her own world, and a wonderful one. It isn't a substitute, a "bad copy" of the real world, or an elaborate trap. It makes her smile. And she'll have that world of hers, I imagine, for quite some time.

I think an adaptation could be done, and it could be great. There's no way Neil Gaiman's ever going to read this. But, just in case - it can be done, and it can be beautiful.