This intends to loosely revise Dave Ciccoricco’s assertion (from "Lecture Twelve: Interactive Fiction" Engl242: Digital Narrative in Digital Culture) that Textual Adventure Games (or Interactive Fictions) are not necessarily "games" per-se because there are no "oppositional players, [rather,] the narrator often helps you," in terms of dam Cadre’s Varicella. This assertion holds true within its original context, however, if framed in a different context this can be reversed to augment a revised perspective of Interactive Fiction. As I discussed in A Paradox of Objectivity, meanings within fictional discourses emerge from dialectic interaction between readers and narrators. Accordingly, IF’s can be seen as fundamentally grounded in conflicts between oppositional forces.

As Dave Ciccoricco assertion follows, Varicella cannot be viewed as a game because it does not stipulate a competition between opposing agents . However, it is nonetheless founded in opposition between extra-diegetic forces. While the reader may desire to advance one linearity, the algorithmic text is pre-inscribed to predicate a certain narrative direction. This engenders conflict between reader and text and which necessitates a degree of flexibility on the part of both in order for the narrative to function. Indeed, if these oppositional divergences could not be synergized narrative progression would cease.

This diegetic opposition also operates on a more implicit level. In the very process of reading there is a conflict between oppositional meanings, created by the imaginative discourse between reader and narrator. For instance, in the prologue to Varicella, the reader’s objective is outlined by the narrator in a directive which presupposes some kind of ideological accord with the reader. However, the reader is not necessarily a passive receptor of this prescribed manifesto; rather, it is almost certain that the reader’s incentive is at least to some degree in conflict with that presupposed by the narrator(s). In this way, textual meaning is established as a resolution of these oppositional forces. Likewise, while the Adam Cadre may have desired Varicella to function in a specific way, readers will always interpret a text within their own cultural frames, and thus their understanding of meaning will inevitably conflict with the author’s intention in some ways.

Varicella itself has no implicit meaning. As a blank signifier, textual meanings are created by the processes of writing and reading, not by the text itself. The dialectic between the narrative forces of reader and text formulates an implicit opposition between potential meanings. In this sense, Varicella becomes the venue where cultural narratives compete yet unite, forming a dissonant chorus of conflicting linearities.