For my first review of the season, there were many tantalizing choices, but one more than any other that I simply could not wait to discuss.
Review of Uninteractive Fiction
This one, I fear, may go over many players’ figurative heads. It is clear that one would need a very high IQ, along with several advanced degrees in literary theory and cultural studies, to fully appreciate the profundity of what Thargic has created here. I’m still working on those qualifications, so for now I can but regard this epochal opus with the childlike wonder of a near-ignoramus who knows just enough to know what he does not know. With that caveat and in the deepest humility, I will attempt an analysis.
My cool Intro to Philosophy professor from freshman year, who habitually wore jeans with a suit vest and tie, and who could frequently be found standing outside the building smoking cigarettes and doing French Duolingo lessons on his phone, once read a book by David Foster Wallace. I have not read a book by David Foster Wallace but I understand that he said some things, and other people said some things about him, and somewhere within that tangle of things, someone came up with the following classifications of authorial intent in literature. I offer my summary of them with apologies; you can tell that I have only the barest education in such things, since my explanation of them will be disappointingly concise and easy to understand.
- Sincerity, wherein the writer directly conveys what they want to convey.
- Irony, wherein the writer conveys the opposite of what they want to convey, but it’s fairly obvious what they really mean.
- New sincerity, which employs the same technique as sincerity, but specifically belongs to a class of writers who are aware of the existence of irony and consciously choose to reject it. Apparently this exists as a category because irony was invented sometime in the mid-20th century, so it is important to distinguish those who consciously reject it from those who merely predate its invention.
- Post-irony, a term which is defined in different and contradictory ways by every source I consulted, but which may or may not be one or more of the following: the same thing as new sincerity; sincerity masquerading as irony; an ironic depiction of something that is itself already ironic in nature; or a state of ambiguity with regard to sincere or ironic intent.
- Meta-irony, which is the same thing as the 4th sense of post-irony, which is to say, ambiguity such that no one except maybe the author can determine whether it’s intended as ironic or not.
Bearing this classification scheme in mind, one thing should be obvious: a whole lot of writers who are secretly from the modern day somehow traveled back in time to write ironic things decades or even centuries before irony was invented in 1940-something.
Like them, Leah Thargic is, without a doubt, a time traveler, because Uninteractive Fiction employs degrees of irony with deftness and panache that exceed contemporary practice by incalculable years.
Let’s break it down (heavy plot-related spoilers to follow).
Uninteractive Fiction is a Twine game (or, perhaps more accurately, “work”) in a default style, consisting of a button that says “PLAY”. When you press the button, it then says “You lose.” The experience is made complete with a plaintive wah-wah-waaah sound effect to mock your pathetic performance. A pdf walkthrough is provided, consisting of the following advice: “Don’t.”
On the face of it, it is clear that aspects of this work are deeply sincere. The author’s pen name, a play on “lethargic,” is an honest signal of what you’ll get from Uninteractive Fiction. In its construction, the author has exercised the very same lazy, slapdash ethic that the prospective player is led to expect. What’s more, the accompanying blurb—“The only winning move is not to play”—is brutally upfront about the content and conclusion of the narrative arc. No attempt is made to obfuscate the nature of the work. On the contrary, every reasonable attempt has been made to ensure that clarity reigns. The player should complete the work feeling that they have been given precisely what they were promised.
…and yet…
When subjected to the gaze of the player, that clarity, so impeccably laid out for us, becomes undone. You lose? Is that all there is? Surely there is more. What if I refresh the page, check the source code, wait for half an hour…?
This is some subtle post-irony (in the 2nd sense of the term) right here, folks: sincerity masquerading as irony. It made you think it was trying and failing to fool you, but actually, it was telling the truth all along.
…or is that quite right?
Was it, indeed, Uninteractive Fiction that masqueraded as irony? Or was it you, the player with your metatextual baggage, who imposed such an interpretation upon it? Perhaps the work is innocent in all of this; perhaps Uninteractive Fiction is simply a sane text out of place, set adrift in an insane world. Or perhaps not—perhaps you thought what the author wanted you to think. Therein lies the meta-irony.
The brilliant thing, here, is that all of what I just described—the sincerity, the post-irony, and the meta-irony—all of that springs not from the text per se, but from its packaging and the expectations it engenders. I have scarcely even begun to discuss the implications of the text itself. Truly, a trick befitting a master.
Let us proceed, then, to the actual content of Uninteractive Fiction.
Play and you lose.
But what does this mean, really? Is it a blisteringly nihilistic message, an uncompromising rejection of optimism itself? Is it a purely self-referential work, with nothing to say about the broader world which it inhabits? Is it a warning against the dangers of video game addiction? Maybe it is a staunchly classicist work, lamenting a perceived devaluation of traditional narrative structures in the face of contemporary trends—such as melancholic Twine mood pieces—which reject the upward trajectory, “play to win” gaming ethos that evolved out of the Campbellian monomyth? Or maybe it is a critique of capitalism, a j’accuse to a society where winners and losers exist in abundance, and where the simple act of play is for many reduced to a matter of acquisition and consumption?
The beauty of the work is that its brevity permits it to be all and none of those things. In an online space where everyone has something to say, Uninteractive Fiction merely holds up a mirror to reflect the values, prejudices, and preoccupations of those who come to it. The old adage claims that a picture is worth a thousand words. But Thargic—with only three words—has created arguably the world’s most efficient Rorschach test.
I implore you: experience this masterwork for yourself.
