I don't get it
Submitted by notmyrealname on Sat, 03/15/2008 - 12:59.
Okay, so I finished Photopia. I thought it would all make sense when I reached the end, but silly me, I'm still confused.
I suppose I should put a spoiler-alert here. If you haven't played the game yet and don't want to know anything about it in advance, then read no further, my friend.
So, there's a bunch of different story lines. Alley's the main character. She makes up stories--one of which is about the astronaut Wendy and her adventures. We seem to be flashing to different points in Alley's life: from when she was a child, to her babysitting the actual child Wendy, to when she gets hit by the car and possibly dies. Then there's the part at the end where photopia is a pretty light display that Alley's parents are showing her as a baby. That's the part I don't understand. Does it negate the rest of the story? Are all the other scenes just dreams induced by photopia, or is this just a flashback? And what about the queen and the wolf and the rest of the story? I'm so confused. I guess I'm off to google or wikipedia to find someone who can tell what the point was...
Keywords: Photopia
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The queen and the wolf
The queen and the wolf storyline is being played by Wendy with help from Alley while babysitting. The dreams Alley talks about are caused by Sam installing a Photopia machine above her bed as a kid. Alley is killed in the crash caused by the drunk driver at the beginning of the story. The story is told out of order for the hell of it (it also makes it more interesting as you're playing).
The only thing I don't get is the part where the queen game is being played by itself. I don't know if it's just supposed to be Wendy or Alley playing it or what.
What it means
Really? You mean the queen dream (purple), which Alley has as a teenager is caused by this device her father bought her when she was a baby? Or are you talking about some other dream?
Well, it's a dream, so things don't have to make sense, but since this is Alley relating this dream to Wendy, I take it that the actions are Alley's, narrated (essentially) in the past tense.
The point
What various elements mean within the work aren't necessarily "the point," however.
I think there's a danger in thinking of literary or creative works in this way because it reduces criticism to identifying a singular authorial intent behind a work. Doing so precludes multiple readings, and places the author on an (often undeserved) pedestal of authority. In other words, if we identify a singular meaning and justify it by claiming that it is what the author intended, we often give the author way too much credit for successfully delivering some moral objective. I much prefer multiple points or multiple readings in which the author's opinion of their work's meaning doesn't have any special value simply because they wrote it. This is most important when an author's reading runs counter to everyone else's.
Take a recent example, J.K. Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore is gay. Sure, that might have occurred to some people, but it really isn't made clear at all within the text. So should we believe Rowling? If we disagree, should we consider her to have failed in that she didn't adequately communicate a pretty important aspect of a major character's life?
My point is just that we should be careful to keep our minds open to multiple readings and be suspicious of finding the point or moral of a story.
But anyway, yes, I think Alley is supposed to have died at the outset of Photopia.