'Close and Distant' is a heartfelt and raw look into the modern follies of adolescence and the discovery of gender expression and trans identity. The paintings of the sprites and backgrounds are extremely well done, even down to recreating the feelings of older websites where plenty of youths spent their time on. It was quite the revelation to figure out just what was going on, since it started with the email when they were older, and transitioned to the teen years when they met, and then coming to realize "oh, they're both trans, that's what's up".
I can definitely connect with the whole 'staying up late to be on websites you're not supposed to be on', so that really connected me back to some early memories. The way that Em and Nat navigated their friendship-into-relationship is so painfully teenager in the best way; super messy, super optimistic, the extreme reactions and the absolute egos with both of them. It is nice that they got to reconcile in someway once they've both matured a bit and realized the missteps of their youth, though the romantic in me wishes that this acted as a jumping off point for their friendship as adults, and I could be privy to that story.
Having the framing device that one hated the other in the beginning, did leave me in suspense for what they could've done in their past to cause them to split up. Though having it only be that one said they were feeling anxious and the other taking it as a personal attack does feel super teenager coded, I had expected a certain 'outing' that might've occurred that really threw a wrench into their friendship. While I understand that it was a stylistic choice, I wonder if it might've been more effective to not lead with the email, and leave the epilogue as the epilogue, instead of book ending it.
As for the theme of 'light in the dark', you definitely get that imagery of a laptop screen in the middle of the night, but only kind of figuratively, in a 'friendship to help express yourself' kind of way. The music was great, very evocative and atmospheric. Overall, it's a cute and nostalgic story, a hard learned lesson of avoiding blowing up your support structure over small things.