A Eulogy for Kuranes 2


This is a review of Porpentine’s game howl­ing dogs, which is writ­ten in Twine.

The review is also writ­ten in Twine, and here it is:

A Eulogy for Kuranes

It does not require any down­loads or spe­cial soft­ware to use, and is host­ed by the Ontological Geek, so you should have no fear of virus­es.


Bill Coberly

About Bill Coberly

Bill Coberly is the founder and groundskeeper of The Ontological Geek, now that it has shifted over to archive mode. If something on the site isn't working, please shoot a DM to @ontologicalgeek on Twitter!


2 thoughts on “A Eulogy for Kuranes

  • notthatjack

    This was absolute­ly amaz­ing. It expand­ed upon my appre­ci­a­tion for ‘howl­ing dogs’ (after fin­ish­ing the game, then replay­ing it in part, I had gone on to read var­i­ous peo­ple’s writ­ings about it, includ­ing Porpentine her­self and Emily Short among oth­ers) but also added to what I took away from ‘howl­ing dogs’ itself — more so than any­thing else any­one else had said about the game.

    And then, on top of all that, it gave me a deeply per­son­al view of what the game had meant to you, specif­i­cal­ly and indi­vid­u­al­ly. This facet of your review also expand­ed upon my appre­ci­a­tion for, and added to what I took away from, ‘howl­ing dogs’; but it meant far more than that.

    Thank you for shar­ing so much of your­self in ‘A Eulogy for Kuranes’ (though I’m no longer sure, hav­ing reached the end of it, that call­ing it a ‘eulo­gy’ is entire­ly cor­rect, I do think it was nec­es­sary for it to be con­strued as such at the out­set). (Or per­haps it’s enti­tling it as a eulo­gy specif­i­cal­ly for Kuranes that’s what’s not quite right…?)

    Transformative works are often con­sid­ered — not unlike works cre­at­ed with Twine, appar­ent­ly — “wom­en’s” in near­ly every neg­a­tive way that label can be con­strued: emo­tion­al, niche, weak, soft, silly, less­er, insignif­i­cant, embar­rass­ing, child­ish, sim­plis­tic, miss­ing the point, of inter­est only to women, etc. Fanfiction is a prime exam­ple of this, but far from the only one. And a trans­for­ma­tive work is pre­cise­ly what I would call your ‘Eulogy for Kuranes’; it builds on a prior cre­ator’s work and will have the most res­o­nance for some­one who is famil­iar with the orig­i­nal work which inspired it. The fact that it’s also a high­ly ana­lyt­i­cal work of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism does noth­ing to dimin­ish its trans­for­ma­tive nature.

    Congratulations, sir, on prov­ing your­self to be “a straight, white, cis­gen­dered American male. A Christian, even!” who gets it. You’re absolute­ly cor­rect that it would be stu­pid (I avoid “dumb” as some peo­ple who can­not speak well, or at all, using their mouths con­sid­er it ableist) for any­one to sug­gest that you should­n’t use Twine, just as it would be stu­pid for any­one to sug­gest that you should­n’t cre­ate trans­for­ma­tive works.

    Congratulations also on hav­ing craft­ed a pow­er­ful and mov­ing review/game/experience.

    And thank you, sin­cere­ly, for shar­ing it with us all.

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