Entry - IFDB - More by Kastel - @kastelpls
CW: Sexual harassment, transphobia, racism.
Family Dinners, am I right?
We've all been stuck in one of those dinners, the one you don't want to be at but have to, the one where the host mainly organised it to show off, the one where guests came there to make themselves look better than the rest, the one where snide comments are thrown left and right... and the food? well... usually not worth it...
You really want to leave but can't really, not for a while. You could participate more, but it would mean pretending to be someone you are not (like a man or a meat eater), and that's exhausting. So you quietly sit through and maybe mumble a few words, or clench your jaw when an aunt tells you your degree is probably useless, or an uncle reminds you never to trust [insert minority/other ethnic group]. Or maybe you just listen, drifting your thoughts somewhere else, or finding refuge on your phone for a while.
Even through this very linear parser, and the short prose, this game manages to encapsulate all these murky feelings of uncomfortableness, stress, and exhaustion. The error messages when trying to engage with others or yourself or the meal is humourous, even if at time self-deprecating (I saw the influence of the Pageantverse in there too). There is not much to do, mainly because you don't want to do much as the character either...
And this worked quite well as the author's first try in parser and Inform!
(via Roger Kastel, ‘Jaws’ Poster Artist, Dies at 92 - The New York Times)
Roger Kastel, an artist whose painting for the “Jaws” poster — of a menacing shark with bared teeth looming below an insouciant skinny dipper — became one of the most enduring images in modern pop culture, died on Nov. 8 in Worcester County, Mass. He was 92.
The Neo Twiny Jam (@neo-twiny-jam) is an interactive fiction game unranked jam where participants could not write more than 500 words per entry.
You can find every submitted piece on the jam's Itch Page.
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June 1998, Sydney by Kastel
Entry - More by Kastel
The Merging of Different Worlds....
In May of 1998, riots erupted in Jakarta, resulting in of the diaspora of Chinese Indonesians towards, among others, Australia. This is an important context to understand the situation of the main character and her family.
As the broken family settles in their new home, a strange dynamic forms, leaving the main character in a sort of emotional limbo state, avoiding acts that could tip the balance of this fragile situation the wrong way.
It is heartbreaking.