I recognize I might be prodding the wasp's nest by bringing this up which is why I only wanted to do it in a comment a couple days removed from the initial post but something was on my mind while playing through and thinking about this game:

Thematically and presentationally its almost indistinguishable with Squigglydot's debut work "Post-Disclosure, Devil's Night" in which I wrote about here made for a game jam. I feel like it might help to compare and contrast what made this game specifically to me more effective than that one.

Across both games there is very similar thematic tensions, the worry of how you'll be perceived in person and the anxiety about trying to maintain social support systems. In Can You Say My Name the story takes a quickly romantic and lewd direction while in Post-Disclosure, Devil's Night the catharsis in found in a monologue of vulnerability from a friend. The function of the text comes to very similar conclusions though, that friendship/romance is vital and that having people you can express yourself truly who desire your company is important to affirming life and protecting oneself. There's also the fact both focus on transitioning.

I think to describe the functional difference between both texts is to point out firstly that can you say my name takes a more naturalistic and stumbling insecurity in the dialogue whereas the more early victorian concreteness of the dialogue in Post-Disclosure felt stilted. In Post-Disclosure there is an emphasis on vulnerability through monologue especially shown for example in how the main character justifies their own cosplay but these monologues feel fractured from the readers awareness of the other speaker and their comfort, which registers simply as uncomfortable to them with no sense of mutual clarity or passion, there's never a point where monologues are exchanged by rather orated from scene to scene. Whereas can you say my name focuses on short sentences constantly exchanged with the effect of making the reader feel a connection. Following this, can you say my name completes its catharsis through a physical action (orgasm) which functions to add a descriptive functional act. Post-Disclousure ends with a small hug and a night of non descript gaming, it also states to the reader the moral of comfort outright leaving no ambiguity of the events open to the reader. On a personal point, the only issue I have with the prose itself in Post-Disclousure is the clumsy and excessive use of alliteration which I feel often trends to making the reader call attention to the text, mainly this is exaggerated by the fact that most of the alliteration follows a specific pattern, adjective followed by noun combining the adjective directly to the noun. The result for the reader is not reading a natural sentence of prose that glides but a qualified noun that has to be constituted as 'doing' something thereby disrupting the flow of reading itself. Instead of seeing this openly as a failure of an amateur text this could be seen as the intent of the text to disrupt the reader and make them feel clumsy, awkward, and uncertain. The result for me at least was dissonance and irritation, especially as somebody who already feels a lot of paranoia around parties as having 'too many people' and too much to follow and make sense of. No strong establishing information of the characters doesn't help and thus makes the waterfall monologues feel even more disquieting. The establishing information of the characters and conclusion mark the biggest difference then in my appreciation of each text and personal relationship to them. Non-ambiguous moral conclusions can work it's just very difficult to pull off without lulling the reader out of their own critical analysis and thoughtfulness and also can make the desire to return to a work of fiction lessen through knowing the open intent of its artifice. Even children's cartoons like My Little Pony try and move away from 'learning lessons' as soon as possible. The overall effect is being disrupted only to feel so quickly and easily soothed through a single monologue and generalized self justification, which doesn't even remotely map onto my own real life experiences with anxiety.

I want anybody who has found this comment to bear this fact in mind for what media I tend to give focus to and what media I tend not to enjoy. I'll be sure to mention this difference in more depth in the future though aside from just making general awareness posts.

Sidenote but also the fact this game is a 2 character story might have a large degree of prominence to. I tend not to like short stories like this that have casts larger than a relationship between more than 2 actors as I tend to feel it squanders the intimacy of the text. I personally seem to care a lot about intimacy and vulnerability in fictional portrayals which is probably why its like that. Even on a functional level though a simplicity of cast allows for a complexity of responses with which to analyze, you can more easily think about the erratic responses. This is something that I tend to find I like a lot in plays to, like preferring Samuel Beckett over Shakespeare so there's probably something there.