This is the first time I’ve written a post-mortem for one of my games, so I apologize in advance if I don’t follow the expected structure in these cases. I will structure my article as follows: First, I will talk about the genesis of the game, how the idea came about, and why I used the creation tool (PunyInform). Then, I will give a brief explanation of the political context relevant to the game and finish with a short analysis of the most common criticisms I have received, ending with a request to the people on this forum.
Thank you very much to those of you who take the time to read it, and I hope you will forgive my very possible mistakes.
The genesis of “Just Two Wishes”
“Just Two Wishes” was initially conceived as a work for Rayuela de Arena 2025, one of the most important regular competitions in the Spanish language. The theme of this year’s competition was “system failure.” As I know the organizers personally, I suspect that what they were looking for with this theme was probably to encourage the creation of political works. Fortunately, this agrees with where I am in my life and how I understand artistic creation at this moment.
Not long ago, I read an article that stated that “writing with a militant spirit is vacuous and yet advantageous: it has social prestige, it is comfortable, and it frees the author from confronting the miseries hidden in real politics.” I don’t agree. I believe that the creation of militant fiction is a complement to political activity, which should not replace it but neither should it deny it. And in a context of cultural war, where the media accuses those who simply want a more humane world of being “woke,” the creation of cultural artifacts that resist this trend is almost a necessity. I feel that the world is changing in very ugly ways: the far right is growing everywhere, cruelty is becoming normalized, and public discourse is becoming increasingly extreme, racist, and inhumane. I believe it is the obligation of those of us who create fiction to row against this general current and influence the collective mindset with works that propose other ways or at least point out some of the injustices.
Obviously, I don’t intend to “change the world” with a work in such a niche genre as interactive fiction with a parser. This is partially a personal experiment to see to what extent a political opinion on a current issue can be expressed through a text game. On the other hand, I am the translator of the PunyInform library into Spanish, so I feel a certain “moral” obligation to create works with this tool to help popularize its use in the Hispanic community.
Why a piece about Palestine?
This is an easy question to answer: because I spend a lot of time thinking about the current genocide, and I am frustrated by the lack of international response to what is clearly one of the most atrocious events in our recent history, captured live before the eyes of the entire world. So when I was looking for ideas to participate in Rayuela de Arena, this was one of the first that came to mind. Not the very first: I had been mulling over a magical realism story set in Louisiana after the devastation of a super-Katrina, but I discarded that first idea as too ambitious given that I only had a couple of weeks to program a game for Rayuela.
The subtitle of the game is “a triptych on anger.” The anger it refers to is my own, and this is reflected in the work. It is certainly not the first interactive fiction to deal with the subject of Palestine (in this same IFComp you can find The Olive Tree - Details by Francesco Giovannangelo, and in the 2024 Ectocomp how to fly a kite / cómo volar una cometa by rubereaglenest ), but the approach in these cases tends to be more poetic and elegiac. In my case, I wanted to talk about anger and helplessness through this simple idea: what would happen if the least powerful and most punished person suddenly had the ability to transform reality? What would this person do if they could return some of the damage that had been done to them?
After Rayuela de Arena, I was asked to translate it into English and submit it to IFComp. I saw it as a form of “activism” in a lot of quotation marks: bringing a political discourse to a community such as the international interactive fiction community, where, in my opinion, these issues are often swept under the rug “so as not to upset anyone.” I believe that the international political context is serious enough to make us consider that, perhaps, it is necessary to start “upsetting” people a little.
About the results
I came in 46th place in the competition, which seems like a reasonable position for a piece written and programmed in just two weeks, given the lack of depth and the rush that entails. The votes were mainly concentrated between 6 and 8 points, although there were two ones and two twos. My work is not the most polished in the competition and probably does not deserve a very high score, but I also don’t think it deserves a 1 or a 2. Perhaps the readers are not very familiar with interactive fiction with parsers, but it could also be “hater votes” from people offended by the subject matter. I like to think it’s the latter, because I can guess the type of people who would be offended by an anti-Zionist work of this nature, and that means that the work has partly achieved its goal of not leaving them indifferent.
I received several reviews, for which I am very grateful, that have allowed me to identify some of the most common criticisms of the work, both in terms of usability (which I hope to correct in a post-Comp version) and in terms of the perception of the work’s message. One of the reviews that made me think the most was this one by Mike Russo, which initially did sting a little, but over time I have learned to appreciate it for how much it has made me reflect on the focus of the work. I wish all comments had as much food for thought as his review. From the response I gave him at the time (which an administrator deemed appropriate to move to a private message), I will take some of the ideas that I am going to write below, but two of Mike Russo’s concepts that surprised me the most were his emphasis that this is a fantasy of revenge and his opinion that I misrepresent the Jewish people in general and Israel in particular. I will discuss these points below.
From this point on, I will need to include spoilers, so I recommend stopping here if you haven’t played the game yet.
Fantasy of revenge
Just Two Wishes is divided into three chapters: the first takes place in Tel Aviv, where we play a genderless Israeli character; the second takes place in Mar-a-Lago, where we take on the role of Donald Trump; and the third takes place in Gaza, where we control a Palestinian mother. In the first, we discover that Tel Aviv is covered by an impenetrable dome that isolates it from the rest of the world, and we see Netanyahu transformed into an anthropomorphic bear. In the second, we witness Donald Trump also transforming into a bear and losing the presidency of the United States, and in the third, we discover that all of the above is the result of two birthday wishes made by a girl in Gaza who has lost most of her family.
Put like that, it does indeed sound like a fantasy of revenge. But that’s not how I thought of it: the transformation of Netanyahu and Trump can indeed be taken as my personal revenge against these two undesirable characters, but if I decided to put the player in the role of an Israeli, and if I spent more time researching Tel Aviv to create the work, it was precisely to provoke empathy in the player with the situation of an affected Israeli person. I don’t think I’m advocating (as someone suggested) collective punishment against the Israeli population. I’m simply pointing out Israel’s false sense of security and how the ongoing genocide could end up turning that nation into a pariah.
Let’s look at examples of other works of fiction that could be considered “revenge fantasies”:
- “The Exterminating Angel”, a film by Luis Buñuel (1962). It tells the story of a group of wealthy guests who find themselves unable to leave after a lavish dinner party. The work also uses magical realism, and is generally accepted as a scathing critique of the bourgeoisie of its time.
- “Audition” by Takashi Miike (1999). A middle-aged widower organizes a fake audition for a movie to find a new girlfriend. The woman he chooses “takes revenge” for her objectification with one of the most unpleasant torture scenes in film history. It is considered a feminist film.
Are these films also “revenge fantasies”? If they are not considered as such, then mine shouldn’t be either, and if they are, then mine is in good company. I believe that both films present a real conflict of their time in a visceral way in order to appeal more directly to those who see them. And I believe that both are made with rage and anger. And both are excellent films. This may serve to rethink the idea that an emotion considered “negative” (anger and rage) can generate good works. Anger is often a legitimate and even necessary emotion [ Why Being Angry Is Okay (and Even Helpful) | Psychology Today ].
Liberal Zionism
Another criticism my work could receive is that it is “anti-Semitic.” First of all, I dislike the term “anti-Semitism” to refer to Judeophobia, because on the one hand it is not true (most of the population of Israel is not of Semitic origin, whereas the population of Palestine is, for example) and on the other hand it has colonial connotations.
The use of accusations of “anti-Semitism” has been one of the classic tools used by the state of Israel to silence criticism of its policies. It is so important to its survival that it even influenced an international body such as the IHRA to equate “anti-Semitism” with “anti-Zionism” in six of its 11 examples in its definition. The accusation of “anti-Semitism” is a typical criticism from liberal Zionism.
I believe that liberal Zionism fulfills the specific and critical function of providing the Zionist project with the veneer of enlightened, Western civilization and democratic, progressive politics. As a result, the Israeli regime is rarely described in mainstream Western circles for what it is: a settler-colonial state that practices apartheid.
This is not to say that “there are no good Israelis.” Of course, there are good and bad people (although, according to a recent poll, 82% of Israel’s inhabitants want genocide, regardless of whether they like Netanyahu or not), but Israel, as a project, is a colonial and racist project. Genocide is not “a political accident” due to a very bad president, but the logical consequence of the 1948 Nakba (which displaced 750,000 Palestinians from their homes) and the unconditional support of “Western democracies,” which want a geopolitical presence in the Middle East, close to where the oil is.
Liberal Zionists base their creed on four core beliefs, mainly:
- The establishment of the State of Israel is the only method to guarantee the security of the Jews and resolve the Jewish exile.
- The Jews have inherent, biblical, and sovereign rights to the land of Palestine.
- The Zionist project is a heroic and miraculous undertaking that brought the torch of modernization and civilization to the so-called land of Israel.
- The “War of Independence” of 1948 was necessary, and the results of the war were natural and must be accepted.
Of course, there are liberal Zionists who agree with some of these theses and not all of them; not all white Zionist liberalism is a monolithic creed.
A liberal Zionist loves narratives in which a Palestinian and a Jew become “besties” and call for peace. Some liberal Zionist organizations such as B’Tselem (which, incidentally, has been very brave in saying so, being Israeli) recognize that genocide exists. But what a liberal Zionist will never do is recognize a Palestinian as a political subject capable of fighting for self-determination. For a liberal Zionist, Hamas is a terrorist group and not the ruling party in Gaza, the IDF is a “moral army” (and not a terrorist organization for the same reason that Hamas supposedly is) and the “good Palestinian” is the perfect suffering victim, who merely asks for mercy and lacks ideology.
These days we hear a lot of politicians advocating for a two-state solution. And that, I fear, clashes with the structural reality of Israel as a state where your religion and race determine your social status. Unless a new state is created in which Israelis and Palestinians are equal before the law (and I am aware of the difficulties involved in that), the country as it currently stands, as a project, has no possible moral salvation. And the proof is the continuous and perpetual need for military funding regardless of which political ideology is in power: what was taken by force in 1948 can only be held by force.
Trump and Netanyahu
This section focuses on explaining the significance of Trump and Mar-a-Lago’s appearance in the second chapter. In my game, Trump is there because he is the current president of the United States. He represents the United States. If Biden were currently in power, Biden would appear, and the jokes and vilification would be about Biden. Because who is there is irrelevant: Israel exists thanks to the support of the United States and Europe, whoever is in power.
Only American voters see differences between them. For anyone like me who views American politics from the outside, it is clear that they are two flavors of the same ice cream: Republicans and Democrats have “different ways,” but the same goals. Some support firearms and others do not. But what they both agree on is their unconditional support for Israel.
Similarly, it is irrelevant that there are Israelis who oppose Netanyahu. Of course there will be. But whoever governs Israel, whether “progressive” or “conservative,” will continue to demand US weapons ($310 billion so far) and will continue to buy representatives in both parties through AIPAC to further their interests. Because the Israeli project, as it is designed, depends on it.
We live in a time of significant geopolitical change: from a single dominant pole (the United States) we are moving to a multipolar situation, where several nations (mainly, but not exclusively, China and the United States) are competing for dominance, and as in the past, the nation that loses its predominant position defends itself violently. This has happened before (such as when the British Empire lost its dominance), but in no previous era did nuclear weapons exist, which makes our era particularly “interesting.” From this perspective, it is easier to understand what is happening in Israel, because this nation is nothing more than the safeguard of US interests in the Middle East.
Other criticisms of “Just Two Wishes.”
- Mike Russo’s review complained about a description of Gal Gadot and Natalie Portman on the cover of a magazine as “Zionist beauties,” and Mike commented on how Natalie Portman had made a comment in support of the Gazan population. I agree, Gal Gadot and Natalie Portman have different positions. Natalie Portman would be a good example of the “Zionist liberalism” I was talking about: she rejected the Genesis Prize in Israel because she did not want to support Netanyahu, but she also considers Hamas a terrorist group.
- But something I didn’t answer at the time and which I think is relevant is what that magazine cover is trying to explain: Israel knows full well that it has a battle to win on the propaganda front. It is so important for the survival of its project that it even has a name, Hasbara. To sell itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” it tries to be present at sporting events (sportswashing), to show off its LGTBI-friendliness (pinkwashing) or having famous faces in the entertainment world, such as Gal Gadot or Natalie Portman. (In defense of Natalie Portman, I must say that she has been very brave in refusing to accept this role of “ambassador for her native country” during the ongoing genocide.)
- Mike also found it distasteful that the elevator brand on the ground floor was “Schindler.” Here, I had a hard time figuring out why he found it offensive. Although the reference was not at all intentional (it’s the elevator brand I have in my building):
- Does the offense stem from the reference to Germany? Perhaps that reference is deserved: Germany’s unconditional support for Israel has been continuous, even at this time. The criminalization of any pro-Palestinian protest has been constant. To give one example: According to Germany’s Federal Commissioner for the Fight against Antisemitism, accusing Israel of genocide is antisemitic. Publicly accusing Israel of genocide can lead to arrest in Germany, even when the accusers are Jewish or Israeli.
- Is it because it’s a veiled accusation of Nazism? Although I don’t think it’s acceptable to associate Germany with the Nazis in 2025, perhaps I can also agree in part: Zionism, like Nazism, is a racist and supremacist ideology.
A request to the forum.
After this lengthy explanation, there is one part of Mike’s article that made me think a lot and, frankly, worries me: the idea that I may be misrepresenting the Israeli population or the Jewish people. Spain is a country where the Jewish presence is very small (40,000 people out of a population of 45 million), so I have never had the impression that my ideas or impressions could be judeophobic.
Now, if I engage in some self-analysis, is there some of that “revenge fantasy” I mentioned earlier that is also mine, as the author? I don’t know. It’s possible. I confess that the ongoing genocide causes me a lot of pain and a lot of helplessness. Perhaps this has led to an unconscious desire for collective retribution. And if so, that should be analyzed.
Therefore, I would like to make a humble request to the people in this forum who have played the game. Are there elements or ideas in the game that could be judeophobic? If so, please comment on them. I will try to explain why those elements are there, and I will try to reflect on what I may have done wrong.
There is one thing I must warn you about, however. I do not and will never consider criticism of Israel as a nation to be judeophobic. Not even questioning the legitimacy of Israel as a nation. I will die on that hill. But for any other aspect in which I may have been judeophobic, I will be very attentive to your opinions.
it was merely a coincidence.