One of the interesting things about art is that while you can have a precise interpretation and meaning for something, once someone else takes in the work their interpretation gets added to the whole. There may be things you missed due to how many influences are thrown at us subconsciously every day, or maybe things that only make sense to the reader and their life. However, together you make a tapestry of experiences to hopefully become greater than any of you alone formed from the threads being weaved in that invisible back and forth.
Thanks for giving us a room in your hotel. The conversations and ideas shared being part of the game is apparent and vital. I hope we can be as guests and staff, and by sharing some of ourselves bring enjoyment and fulfillment to you, as well. Humans are storytellers by nature. It's our essence, whether one realizes it or not, and I feel incredibly honored to be around to experience one of your entries to this tradition. Hopefully one of more to come in whatever form that may take.
I actually never got the feeling you were American. There are themes in American literature that are fairly unique that are missing from the majority of Minotaur Hotel. Mainly how we live on land that was taken from others, destroying their monuments to build temporary ones of our own only to be abandoned and replaced with something just as temporary. We have a constant need for identity in a history that has shown it will throw away any and everything if it suddenly loses its original purpose. I think Echo is a fairly good example of something American, and that is something that is inextricably haunted. This is very separate from mysteries or the unknown, as our fears come less from gods, myths, or tradition and more from paranoia and ourselves. People who died unsatisfied damning us relentlessly, not poetically. Minotaur Hotel has shackles, hardships, and horrors, but likewise it has meaning and the chance to have your actions change things. Like you said, it's magical realism: taking something human and giving it impossible power through words and actions. Whether that power is good or bad is wholly dependant on what is trying to be said and how one reacts to it.
My own culture lies somewhere in between the two, with my Spanish and American background, which I think the Hinterlands really captures despite leaning considerably in one direction. There's no denying its Latin American roots, but likewise it's haunted, which I think is part of what makes it so engaging and positively received. It allows people from multiple backgrounds to see things they might recognize and show how connected the human experience is, even if the specifics change.
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It's funny you bring up Ace Attorney. I've been playing the newly localized The Great Ace Attorney and it's addressing some of the things you've mentioned. It's a duology, to the point that there are cliffhangers and mysteries from the first game and cases in the second that involve those from the first, all trying to build up to core themes. They deal a lot with racism foreigners experience outside their homeland and what justice even means. They're considerably more somber and a bit slower despite having some of the most lovable characters in the series, as almost every case makes sure you understand why someone would commit a crime and how often it's formed from injustice they've experienced themselves. The verdicts can be unsatisfying because of how tragic they are or what's left in the wake, but unlike the episodic main series, nothing is forgotten and it's heavily serialized. Like a more extreme version of Trials and Tribulations. It wants to give you hope, but you have to fight your way through a system meant to crush it to find any. If you're ever in the mood for another, it's highly worth checking out.