Fascism - Off Topic

You might expect a game about fascism to be angry and confrontational about why fascism is bad. This one is more indirect than that. I'm not even sure I ultimately got the point.

The title is certainly a reference to the Fascism - Off Topic thread that was created on intfiction.org in relation to the itch.io and Steam adult content bans, and the growing trend of internet censorship in the West. I caught that reference (and funnily enough, there's a movie poster featuring fictionalized versions of intfiction users that you can examine), but still felt too stupid to understand the game completely.

The game takes place in what seems to be a fascist US, in a subway in NYC. There are hints at a fascist takeover: the rundown subway, the ominous detail that there are "only a few people left riding".

The protagonist, from the x self response, seems to be onboard with the fascists: "Normal, unlike the clowns still left in this car. You know what I mean: white, male, patriotic." (Unless that was supposed to be irony, and I missed it, but the use of "clowns" feels too derogatory to be ironic. Or maybe that description is supposed to be from the narrator's perspective, and the protagonist is separate from the narrator, but the narrator seems to be an impartial spectator on every other occasion, so I doubt it.)

But the protagonist also has the option of interjecting in an argument between a couple on the subway to talk about how fascism works, indirectly accusing either the man or woman of fascism. The woman has cheated on the man; the man is confronting her not about that but about an Instagram post she made. Both are paranoid and controlling of the other. We don't know the content of the post, or the couple's political views.

If you interject (Spoiler - click to show)in a way that accuses the man, as I initially did, he fumes and asks "Is that what I am now? A fucking fascist?" This is the true ending; if you interject at other times, your interjection about fascism is off-topic and the two react with confusion or disdain. For me, the whole situation was ambiguous and hard to read. Possibly the entire game is a shaggy dog joke based on the title: (Spoiler - click to show)when I got the true ending, it told me "You made fascism on-topic. You lost!"

(Note: The version of the game I first played had the "true ending" notice appear for the wrong ending, while the actual, author-intended true ending was labeled a false ending. This contributed to my confusion, but it has now been fixed. I changed the above paragraph to reflect the fix.)

My major point of confusion: I'm not sure if the fascist protagonist is the right kind of person to talk about the evils of fascism to random people on the subway. I can't imagine the kind of person who would describe himself as "Normal, unlike the clowns still left in this car... white, male, patriotic", and then read a news article about fascism and tell two strangers on the subway that "the enemy ain't anyone. The enemy is uncertainty. Uncertainty and fear, that's fascism." (I'd sooner expect this kind of person to explain how leftists/islamists/illegal immigrants/etc are the enemy.) Maybe I'm missing the life experience required to comprehend this type of person. Is it supposed to be irony that the protagonist has read a news article about fascism and can spout eloquent talking points about it but can't comprehend that he currently lives under it? Is the point of the game that his words are empty and meaningless because he (presumably) supports the fascist government?

Another message of the game could be how life continues on as normal, no matter how awful the government becomes. The other people on the subway are browsing their phones or trying to get to Central Park, ignoring the argument, completely caught up in their own worlds. It speaks to the ability of humans to remain oblivious to what's going on around them, as long as their own lives can continue on unimpeded. No one can be bothered to get involved in strangers' problems. I did this the first time, too, hesitating to intervene until the man had left the subway car and the game informed me it was too late. --- But then, considering the lackluster response if you do intervene, and the protagonist's character in the first place, is intervention really a good thing? In this case, all you're really doing is getting involved in an argument between strangers. Are you actually helping people?

There's an element of helplessness in this game world, a world where awful things are happening far away and you can't see or prevent them. You can only deliver your off-topic monologue to strangers who are just as helpless as you. "maybe a bit something like... our own world currently, to be extremely heavy-handed about it."

No "fascism is bad" or "we must stop fascism"; just "fascism is off-topic".

I remember the Fascism: Off Topic intfiction thread from earlier this year and I had heard about this game cooking up for a long time so I somehow imagined that it would be a twine game with a fake model of intficiton where you participate in a thread but you have to argue with increasingly irrational people. I had such a strong imagination of what I thought this game was that I thought it was real.

Instead, I was shocked to open it and find a well-implemented (well, that part wasn't surprising) parser game set in a grungy subway with graffiti on the wall and an arguing couple. Where was the thread? What was the reference?

Playing around and examining things, seeing some well-written descriptions, I tried talking to people, and that's when I discovered the mechanic:

You can talk, but if you do, the game ends. You only have one thing to say, a one-note parrot's catchphrase. It might be relevant to the current conversation; it might not. It doesn't matter.

It reminds me of the Introcomp game Gallery Gal, where you have the superpower to turn into an art gallery, but only once, and permanently. You go through a normal game and choose to end it whenever you want to, crushing all those around you as you assume your true art gallery form.

Similarly, you can at any time interrupt the conversation of those around you with your irrelevant comment.

Because of my pre-conceived notions, it's taking me a bit to suss out the message. I had imagined (in my fake mental version) that the game was originally pro-discussion of fascism, and that we would be playing the role of someone who was pointing out the rise of nationalism in the world and that others would poo-poo our notions and shut us down. This game seems to be the opposite, where it paints out the discussion of fascism as an obnoxious interruption to others' conversation.

Whatever the true meaning of the game, it's well-put-together. My apologies to the author for fabricating a fake game from whole cloth and spending half of my review discussing it, and thanks for entering!