Seven marriages and seven women doomed to die by their husband's hand., February 16, 2025
by Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid)
A story that is actually seven stories, intertwined. You are Bluebeard's eighth wife and walk around his home accompanied by the ghosts (literal talking heads) of his previous wives. Each has a story of how she came to meet and marry the husband who would kill her, and each story is compellingly told.
It made me think about the institution of marriage as a whole. I saw some feminist critiques of marriage a while back, arguing that it's a forced labor contract where the man has all the power and the woman has none and must do unpaid domestic work at his bidding. This is especially true of marriage in historical times, and most of these wives don't seem to be from the modern world.
A woman who marries someone is traditionally expected to go along with his wishes, accompany him wherever he wants and defer to him for judgement. If he wants you to leave home and go with him, you go. If he wants you to clean house and play hostess, you do, because he gave you everything, didn't he? If being an old and single woman isn't socially acceptable, you have to bear with it. And if the marriage turns bad and divorce isn't allowed, there is really no escape. As a side note: In the US, banks could prevent women from opening their own bank accounts independently, without a signature from their husbands, until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed in 1974. And today, of course, there are still countries in the world where the status of women's rights is quite miserable.
WIFE #3
...[T]here were matters that needed to be tended to at the estate, he told me. We would have to travel back. My heart dropped. I had forgotten that we were now one entity, and in all the dreams I had of this moment, he was the one telling me that he had to leave, not that we had to leave. I opened my mouth to protest, but already I knew it was futile. Behind me, my sisters trailed up from the ocean, silently watching our conversation unfold. I told myself I would not let myself cry in front of them, but in all honesty, I was too angry at him and at myself to cry.
As the situation gets worse, each wife's ability to escape it also lessens. Taken back to the estate, removed from their own familial and social ties, all these women lose their individuality in the eyes of the world and become nothing more than "WIFE": 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Marriage to Bluebeard grants them some power, but it is really his borrowed power, not her own, and when he decides to take it all back there is nothing she can do about it.
There are no choices that split the story, so the entire thing can be experienced in one playthrough. A good read.
Excerpt:
WIFE #2
When we were married, we paraded through the streets of my small village, the dress he chose all but swallowing me up. I held my head high as we passed by in the carriage, looking each person who had referred to me as a devil in the eye. Still smiling as he waved to the villagers outside, he had asked me which of them I would like to punish for wanting me dead. My mouth opened and closed in part-astonishment, part-fear. There was no need to reply now, he had said. Think about it and let me know if there are any names. You own them now.
There were a few days before our honeymoon began in earnest, and the question kept me awake at night like a hot coal burning in my chest. I lay awake long after Bluebeard had begun to snore softly. I had the power to destroy them now, but did that mean I should? I thought back to the year, how the comments and barbs directed at my parents had at first been subtle, then more pointed, until they became bolder and bolder, to the point where my father returned home with bruises and scrapes after getting into a fight at the tavern, and my mother was snubbed by all our neighbours. I unfurled the list of grievances in my heart, and made my mind up.
The day before we left on a tour of the mainland, I whispered the names into his ear. He reacted as if I were merely giving him the names of flowers I liked. Smiling, he patted my hand and said that he would take care of it.
I had almost forgotten about it completely by the time we returned. As our carriage drove through the village, we passed by the big gates that led to Bluebeard’s estate. Like a welcome parade, there were the villagers I had named, tied spread eagled, nude, to the thorny brambles that surrounded the chateau. Their cries for us to be merciful were like a symphony to my ears. I turned to Bluebeard, who had grinned at me. I hope my wife has enjoyed her welcome, he said. The gates closed on the villagers’ cries.
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by Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid)
After you die, if your coffin isn't sealed all around with pewter nails, you'll seep down through the soil. Thinner than mist, you'll drain past root, worm, and stone, through the spigot, and into Lozengy.
My transcript, with commentary, is linked. I played for more than an hour and got both endings.
Of the Shufflecomp games I played this year, this was one of my favorites. I consider it inordinately charming. The puzzles were a little difficult, though others didn't seem to have any issues with them, so I guess I'm just not great at catching details. There is also some underimplementation, but that's to be expected from a small comp game.
What I really adore about this one is the setting. It's one of those surreal fantasy settings where there are no true problems in the world. In real life you can turn on the news and hear stories about the most godawful thing possible, but Lozengy is beautiful in an alien way because it's so far removed from humanity and all its issues. It's dreamlike and bursting with endless new wonders. It's somewhere not here, somewhere so far from here that it doesn't even know where "here" is, and it doesn't need to care.
The setting also happens to be an afterlife. I say "an" and not "the" because the opening implies there are other afterlives, alternative possibilities for the soul after you die in this universe. But the afterlife part is relevant to the gameplay, which consists of doing tasks to care for this interstitial space people can find themselves in when they die. A wonderful realm where the grass is purple and the water hums and cake can be made out of thin air.
That's a digression and not really relevant to the game, except as an example of how stories about afterlives often go. Often you get parables with some kind of sly moral. This story isn't like that at all, it's more an exploration of a fantastical world that is part of a greater, all-encompassing universal order. There is a Heaven in this world, but no Hell, not even an interstitial Hell like the one in the story I described above. The one soul you guide to Choirmount was a killer in his past life, but when it's his time to join, he is welcomed with open arms. It seems that everything is forgiven. I think there's something beautiful about that, a world with no eternal punishment and no fiery gates, no torture and brimstone. Also a world without the cold annihilation of scientific atheism, not a dreamless oblivion but only eternal love for everyone... Now, maybe I'm projecting. Who knows. Anolelona does call Choirmount a "dead end", but they end up where they want in the end, so it's plausible that Choirmount simply isn't for them. At any rate, I personally wouldn't mind joining some kind of eternal blissful chorus. It feels far preferable to the real world.
I might compare this game to another game about the afterlife I've played, Provizora Parko, and Beautiful Dreamer, which I thought Provizora Parko resembled in certain small ways. An aura of surreal whimsy unites all three. But this one takes the cake (the magical infinite free cake) for me in terms of how much I would love to sink into the setting and live there forever, following the protagonist and Anolelona in their adventures through a world where you can explore eternity to your heart's content...
As the ending says: (Spoiler - click to show)"I'm coming down!" you cry. There is no answer, not yet, but there is plenty of time for that, so much time, all the time.
Also compare Joel G's ENA animations, though they're twice as surreal and come with a general feeling of threat humming along in the background, and the many whimsical children's books I read in elementary school, like The Phantom Tollbooth.
Really, it's a marvelous thing.
Oh, and I guess the main character and Anolelona are abandoning their duties by skiving off to explore the infinite realms of magic instead, but it seems like this afterlife can mostly run itself. At the least, the workload seems small enough that Aowma could probably handle it on her own. Is that wishful thinking? Maybe, but there's no evidence against it, right?
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