The Archivist and the Revolution

Some self-indulgence, first: last year, while I was playing A Paradox Between Worlds (the author's 2021 entry,) it just so happened that it tied in very nicely with what I was doing at the moment. I was paying attention to an Internet community that was much more stable than what was described in PBW. It was run by adults, 4 adults, and in a way, about adults, but it was about adults younger than all of us. There was no focal point of the whole community. There were American college football teams, and golly there were a lot of them. Under the SBNation umbrella, people pretty much stay in line with basic decency, and if the founder wound up being a jerk, we could move on. Yet still I found a ton of parallels and a ton to be grateful for. Purdue was playing at Nebraska in American football and won a game fans from both sides, at http://offtackleempire.com, verified was very dumb. So, being a fan with superstitions, I decided to look through AatR while Purdue played Nebraska. The game was even more exciting than last year's, but of course we all thought it was very dumb. Both teams forgot to play defense, but fortunately, Nebraska forgot a bit more. And I forgot to, well, tune into this. I was still wrestling with AatR. Whether it's better than PBW, I can't say. It brought up entirely different issues, and I felt a lot less immediate personal involvement. So I'd definitely welcome a third entry that swerves in yet another direction, because I now have an established silly superstition.

This all may be a long and tedious joke, but the TLDR is that though I'm clearly not the intended audience for the author's works, I get a lot out of them. And seriously, it's this sort of thing that distracts me from watching football games I don't want to waste time with. I may not be Mr. Busy, but I value stuff that makes me look for better ways to use my time, or think big ideas, or whatever. And the author's IFComp entries are two-for-two in that department. I wound up falling asleep soon after playing, and when I woke up, I didn't check the late-night football scores. I poked at the alternate paths through.

So what makes AatR good? For starters, combines a few things that could be (and have been) beaten into the ground if done wrong: a job that pays and uses your skills a lot less than it should, money problems, relationship problems, and oh yes, being ostracized for being different. It'd be painful if an author focused too much on any one of these and of course it could get unwieldy if they're not mixed together right. The money angle seems intended to be frustrating. You're too tired to do your job (within the first five minutes, a polite email assures you you've just been reallocated, not demoted,) due to chronic fatigue syndrome and, well, other stuff. So you can never make as much money as you want, and a bit of quick mental math after my day's first pay showed me the pay was inadequate. But this is more than an argument for living wage. You find out you're an undesirable person (AatR discusses being trans and what it means or can mean–even going out for food is a bit dramatic) and perhaps your company is trying to push you out. The rent jumps exponentially, along with the late fees and so forth. And through it all, the archives you search through (your job) have a bunch of things you want to read and a bunch you're paid to file. I've read a lot of treatments of mean employers all "YOU COULD DO THE WORK IF YOU'D JUST BE NORMAL," and I've had times I was unable to work after "normal" conversations that excited everyone else and drained me, but this provided a new angle without the "hey, others have it worse than you, feel for them before moving on."

Because your job is not hard, at least technically. Emotionally? Perhaps--knowing you can and should do better, and sometimes you can't even do your job, must take a toll. To prevent the plot going too slowly, AatR may make it trivial on purpose, perhaps, once you get what to do. The file names tip off how to sort them, if you're paying attention, though it's not obvious at first glance. But given who you are, well, it feels almost like a lie to settle into something normal, or if you do settle into such a routine, you might let something else slip, and then society's out for you. This is captured in CityNet's messages about horrible "righteous" punishments for "men who impersonate women." Forgive the quotes. The news is obviously slanted and meant to attract the "what the hell is wrong with the victims?" responses found on in-game message boards. You admit it's exhausting to read CityNet, but you also can't avoid it. (Plus ca change, eh?) There's that plague going on, too, and wearing a mask, normally a common-sense pro-health thing, is seen as maybe disguising yourself further.

And of course the additional fees that crop up just for existing make it pretty clear you're not going to make it. Fortunately, you have old friends, exes in fact, you can lean on. Though it's hard. These choices are frequently blocked out, to show you're not up for it yet, or the fear of asking an ex is still stronger than the fear of eviction. Certainly I've faced this in much less dire circumstances–maybe it's just having the fear of an IFComp bug slip through versus the fear of "geez, how didn't you see how to code this?" on the message board, and if these fears are neither fully rational nor critical to my well-being, they're there.

I missed a lot the first time through, and I know it. In some ways there seems no path for me to really sympathize with the main character. Works where exes still care about each other are tough for me, given the sort of marriages in my family. (People stayed together and sniped.) But I appreciate a believable scenario where, yes, this is the case, and no matter how horrible the government is, people are willing to take risks for people they still care about, if not as intensely as usual. And that's uplifting, as is ending one, which I don't want to spoil because I may not fully have a handle on it. It's just that there's a weird feeling certain sorted messages are for you, and it's even weirder when you realize how justified that feeling is and reach that certain ending.

I spent a lot of time trying to poke through the different messages after downloading the source. I felt too mentally exhausted to play through again, but I wanted to find out more about the archivist's world, just as they wanted to find out about, well, mine. I remembered the times I wanted to go out and didn't, and the times I felt forced to go out but didn't want to, and the times I went out late just to avoid people to talk to. I think I'm missing the main point, and I'll need to read other reviews. But I got a lot out of it. Looking at the endings, I realized how tough it would be to actually play through the ones where you accept the friendship and help of someone you broke up with. It's something that would be effective in a dystopia or a normal world.