Yancy at the End of the World by Bez
Ok, this is a sprawling work that is doing a LOT. The word I keep coming back to is ‘unfocused’ though, and I think it has to do both with how much it is trying, and how those things play off each other. Here is a laundry list of elements at play here:
- zombie apocalypse
- corrosive preconceptions
- marginalized populations, and socio-political aggressions
- audio acting(!)
- safe space creation and policing
- inter-generational aggression
- family loss
All of these things ricochet around the narrative, caroming off each other, as often as not to cross purposes rather than building to something.
The piece opens with an underplayed ‘zombie apocalypse’ sweeping the planet. Our core cast of characters then proceed to basically treat it like background noise to their lives of creative pursuits and online community. The thorough and complete disconnect from the world around them, and lack of consequences in that world!, put me in the mind of the cast of Seinfeld. Deeply self-absorbed people, impervious to the outside world in the cocoon of their own drama. Notwithstanding the walking dead, one character wanders aimlessly outside, looking for photo ops. Another lets his daughter play in the neighborhood! An early scene in a supermarket establishes the perceived threat, but makes no impression on any of the main cast beyond ‘did you see the news?’.
The world itself seems to be adjacent to our own, except that surprisingly dog-/cat-/and snail- people exist. But so do dogs that are only pets! I guess in this world that’s just the way it is, but MAN does that open so many wormy cans that go unexamined. Nothing is done narratively with this by the way, it just is.
The online community itself, an enclave of high school friends and acquaintances who all found artistic outlets and non-mainstream sexual identity journeys, reinforces this disconnect at every turn. As society is presumably in turmoil, they are preoccupied with reconnecting, establishing their journeys, and policing a not-quite-empathic-enough member. Yes, his transgression was clumsy. But it is hard to believe as a longtime member of this community that this is either a) his first transgression or b) that he hasn’t absorbed norms by being corrected before now. Instead it generates great drama, ECLIPSING THE ACTUAL APOCALYPSE. This presages an exchange between the protagonist and the MOST generous, MOST sympathetic NPC where the PC reveals their sexual identity, then reacts really badly to the confused response.
Before I wander further onto that VERY thin ice, let me sidebar about gameplay/interactivity. The choices are really two varieties: exploration and protagonist character building. Depending on how generous/enthusiastic/wounded/angry you choose to play, you are building a character in your head. As far as I can tell, there is no impact to plot in these choices. Similarly, your explorations are either geographical, or whom you choose to IM. For the most part, you get one explore, one IM, a group interaction where you shade responses and a similar 1-1 facetime for ~10 days of gameplay (spread out over months). The exploration is interesting, and provides some latitude to privilege some interactions over others. The heavy lifting though is in pure character build.
Ok ice, here I come. The chance this ends with a cold dunking is very high. After some collaborative protag character building, we reveal that they are aroace (not a spoiler, in the blurb!). Our most sympathetic NPC responds, conveying their emotional loss at that revelation. Is that a great response? No obviously, they did take the fraught revelation and make it about them. Was it heartfelt and earnest, and from a place of honesty? Well, yes. Was it in turn responded to with grace and forebearance? Um, no. It was treated as every bit the emotional violence as the prior, much clumsier transgression. And here, the character I had carefully built - a mix of forgiveness and pain, cycled into a reactionary a$$hole because of the limited choices I was given. To the character that had bent over backwards to make me welcome in this new space! I was no longer aligned with my protag.
I can hear the ice cracking under my feet. The Awful Right has this narrative that ‘wokeness’ is nothing more than a ‘cancel-happy gotcha machine.’ At its best, wokeness describes grace and humility in meeting people where they are, and supporting them for it. The first transgression, yes, was clearly from a place of entitled cross-examining. This one though… no. I have more to say on the voice work, but for now let me just say that the actor that played Nekoni is a star. Their voice work in this exchange was so CLEARLY expressing internal regret sourced from real affection for - and NOT judging of - the PC. How anyone could listen to that performance and decide “outrage” is the right response… I have nothing to say to that person. If you want grace, give grace yeah? The fact that both PC and NPC immediately tacked to this overbearing and rigid authorial line… it pushed at me.
This dissonance was compounded by another plot development. At one point you have opportunity to meet a character who tells you, in no uncertain terms, they want no interactions, please go away. If you ignore them and revisit anyway, you are thanked for getting them ‘out of their shell.’ (Lol, that’s funny for reasons). You see the issue? You are explicitly asked to respect a character’s choices, violate their wishes, then are thanked for it??? How is this not a GREATER transgression than what was so dramatically escalated above? Yet is REWARDED?? On the one hand, I think this is a very subtle and effective nod at the complexity of these issues where people sometimes get trapped in their own mind. On the other, that very complexity requires MORE grace, not less, and makes the above stark condemnation even worse!
Hey, we’re barely halfway through this.
So that zombie apocalypse? Turns out it’s fine, actually. Yeah, there are now zombies in the world, but no worries. They seemingly don’t eat people anymore? And now zombies are a repressed population, drawing ire of reactionary right dickheads? Sounds about right. Our core cast is suddenly MUCH more engaged in this (not the least of which via a neat twist where one’s brother is left zombified). There is a lot of social business that gets observed and then resolved, but our core cast is not really involved except as spectators, one of whom has big stakes in the matter. As a story arc it was interesting but backgrounded enough that it failed to engage. There are also SO many unanswered questions that really muddy the waters. Do zombies eat people? Seems like they did at some point. Can they ‘turn’ others against their will? Seems like they did at some point. These questions corrode the situation enough that there’s a lot more grey than the narrative acknowledges and instead kind of hand waives away, leaving the player at a loss.
There is also the matter of the protag’s mom. An aggressive ‘no, you are my SON’ shrew of a woman, swallowing the Awful Right party line so hard it literally kills her. She is portrayed as irredeemable and unpleasant and I pretty immediately avoided her like the plague. When she develops health issues, the game suddenly got real. She was no less irredeemable, arguably more so by denying the evidence of her eyes. But, as protag, my choices suddenly became much more constrained. Leaving her to her own devices, which might have been my first choice, was not an option. Above, I decried authorial choice steering that made the protag react in ways I did not believe in. The crucial difference here is, the limited choice in this scenario was not only COMPLETELY BELIEVABLE, it was a powerful use of interactivity to drive home the awful complexity of these toxic relationships. Lack of true choice was a powerful narrative tool that made me understand and empathize with the protag MORE, not less. I found this entire sequence difficult, complex, infuriating and powerfully realized. It was the showcase sequence of the work, I think.
So, where does this leave me? A patchwork of dramatic preoccupations that narratively, with one very notable exception, missed more than hit. I kept coming back to the question ‘why zombie apocalypse? It is mishandled so often, why is that even in the narrative at all?’ Then it occured to me. What if I treat the world of this work as PURE metaphor, not story at all? Holy crap do things open up then. Animal beings become a broad range of perplexing humanity our only duty is to accept as is. Online communities become echo chambers that can be equal parts supporting and blindering.
The zombies become a masterstroke of genius. The concept of ‘zombie’ is pretty universal at this point, beyond mechanical details. As a consumer of pop culture, we bring all those preconceptions to the table. As I reflect, it occurs to me the NARRATIVE does not confirm zombies’ threat, it is us (and their world) that ASSUMES it. So later, any inclinations we have to question zombie personhood comes from a place of preconception and prejudice. What a powerful, amazing choice! It puts the reader squarely in the difficult place of having to combat their own prejudices! While I rebel at the narrative storyline of the zombies, the METAPHOR is an incredible, subversive choice. It also retroactively forgives some character choices that do not presume flesh eating.
As a story, the work was too all over the map for me, with too many jarring, baffling choices. (And one searingly effective plot point.) As a metaphorical construct to challenge the player, it positively sings. It also opens up what I feel is its crowing allusion: that the zombie apocalypse is NOT about zombies themselves! It is about surrendering to the shittiest side of our nature. THAT is the real apocalypse. Unlike most zombie fiction, we’re not just the worst part of the apocalypse, WE ARE IT.
Played: 9/3/24
Playtime: 1.5hr
Score: 6 (Sparks of Joy in parent storyline and metaphor/mostly seamless outside audio)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience is complete
I know I promised some feedback on the audio acting, but I really think I can’t top that final line. So think of this as an appendix.
On balance, I think the audio detracts more than enhances. Like timed text, it has the effect of making the player (who has already read the page) wait for the game to catch up, with the attendent impatience that can generate. There are definitely some great performances, highlighted by my favorite above, but the lack of ambient background sound (when warranted) further detracts from the overall effect. Newsroom, crowd, workplace, etc settings make it glaringly obvious when background noise is missing. It is also distracting when the text notes a beeping sound absent from the soundtrack! Lastly, the mix seemed a bit off. In particular the volume difference between Laz and Nekoni went from barely audible to quite loud, and was jarring.
