I like the opening. There’s a sense of foreboding and mystery as we see this strange wedding tape play out and this person watching the wedding tape. We see Brock’s hesitation and unhappiness and William’s calming presence. There’s a lot in the audiovisuals, and the descriptive text is evocative. Not too long after, however, there’s a lot of explaining in the text. There’s a lot to explain about this marriage set up, so I think there is room to explain, but it ends up being repetitive between the explanation of Brock’s thoughts and feelings in his POV, then the explanation of William’s thoughts and feelings in his POV, and then the explanation of Brock’s thoughts and feelings to William in the emotional climax. There’s not a lot of change that goes on. It’s not a revelation to the readers or the characters in the scene that Brock feels this way about their marriage. I’m not saying that you have to hide information to maintain tension, necessarily, or that Brock’s not moving their relationship forward by having that conversation by the fire, but there was a bit of repetition I didn’t like.
I like the visual transition to them in bed with the pillow between them before the pillow is even addressed in the text.
A few others have commented on this already, so I won’t go too deep into it, but it’s a very drama-laden premise. William is essentially getting pimped out by his family to a stranger on another continent, but his emotional response to this is something more like you’d see out of someone who moved because of their job. The surprise same-sex marriage thing comes up, but their sexuality isn’t something that’s really explored or talked about past the opening. There’s a mismatch between this complicated scenario that’s set up at the beginning and the road the story ultimately goes down, which has more to do with cultural differences and Brock being hesitant about their relationship because of guilt. Not that the guilt is mismatched topically, but the kind of guilt he has and the kind of conversation he has with William about it don’t match the intensity of this particular arranged marriage scenario.
There were some moments of conflict between them that I liked: William making a comment early on about Brock not wearing his wedding ring and Brock shutting William out with his insistence that the Badger Moon is “a badger thing”. (I like the inclusion of folklore as a component of conflict between spouses who have different cultural backgrounds.) However, William immediately apologises about his comment, and Brock lets William participate anyway without much of a fuss, so the conflict doesn’t feel that important.
The more I write, the more I think that my problems are more with execution than with idea. It’s a well-scoped project focusing on an inflection point in a relationship—it takes place over a short period of time, it only has two characters who appear on-screen.
A few notes on presentation: The music is nice and well-suited to the scenes it comes up in. The names are hard to read over the text box. They’re not very bright and the letters are thin. I appreciate that it has a custom toolbar icon, and that it’s legible at small sizes. Brock’s eyes being a bright colour against his black-and-white fur and neutral-coloured outfit is a nice touch.