it sucks to be us

A curious game that reminded me of negative experiences I've had in the past. Mild spoilers within this review. Major spoilers are labeled.

I'm not in any kind of queer scene, but the feeling of being the odd one out at a social event where you don't know anyone and don't feel like you belong, which leads to questions about whether you'll belong anywhere or whether you'll be alone forever, is familiar.

I also liked what Xinyu says about his former relationship. Xinyu's ex (Spoiler - click to show)was forcing him to present as a cis butch lesbian instead of a trans man, and yet he stuck with her. For years he stuck with her, even though he knew something was off and people shouldn't act that way, because of a particular kind of inertia: it's one thing to know something and another thing to act on it.

Quote: (Spoiler - click to show)"I never really identified with the label but I— she never let me explore other scenes or groups unless I was with her, saying how cool and 'progressive' it was for me to be a masc butch lesbian, and that I didn't need the HRT to be masculine, or subvert gender roles or whatever. The 'evil' hormones were 'poisonous' and would make me 'inauthentic' and 'a defector,' and I'd never be able to undo the 'damage.' Being born a woman wasn't something I should have been ashamed of or something I should throw away because feminism makes biological females equal to males."

It culminated in him just walking out one day. He got up one morning and left, ghosting his ex-partner completely with no warning. Usually, the person who ghosts is the villain in a relationship story, because ghosting is commonly regarded as impolite and a sign of immaturity. It's in all the relationship advice online: don't ghost. But Xinyu must have been at some kind of breaking point, to do what they did, from years and years of a partner who couldn't tolerate who they actually were and wanted so hard to push her own expectations that she didn't think about what he actually wanted.

Quote: (Spoiler - click to show)"And I tried really hard to appease her, but one day I woke up next to her and realized that I was sacrificing myself for this woman I didn't see myself having a good future with. I just stared at her sleeping and thought, 'Why am I subjecting myself to this? Who am I trying to convince that's worth all of this? What would happen if I stopped trying?' So I got dressed and instead of making her breakfast in bed like I always did, I left."

I've been on both sides of a situation where one person abruptly cuts ties with another, and it hurts from both ends, but I can't say that in either case it was undeserved. I've hurt people and I've also been hurt. I don't hate anyone for what they did, but there are reasons we're no longer in touch. Especially when someone's been ghosted, it's tempting to put all the blame on the other person for being irrational, stupid, or immature instead of remembering that every relationship is a two-way street. It's easy to pin the fault on the person who does something extreme in a moment of crisis instead of looking at all the factors that added up to that moment, the proverbial straws before the last straw on the back.

Sometimes people aren't compatible with each other, and that's fine. But when one person needs the other to be someone they aren't, and won't take no for an answer, the problems start brewing.

I wonder what Xinyu's ex would think about all this. (Spoiler - click to show)The story's obviously not about her, and it shouldn't be, but she casts a shadow over his life. Five years is a long time to be together. Does she blame them for everything? Is she a full TERF now? Has she tried to get into contact with them? Has she looked him up online? Does she hate him? He's in a new city now, far away, but she must still be continuing along as always. It's chilling to think that while you're living your normal life, trying to just be an ordinary person, someone out there might hate you with a vengeance, and might be dedicating their free time to that hate.

I could only find Endings 5, 4, and 3 after a few plays, but there are 5 endings total and the author wrote a guide to them. The author's postmortem is also worth reading. He writes about the difficulty of being in the game industry when you don't know anyone and lack the vital industry connections, and don't have the time or money that other, more successful people have. The essay also discusses being queer, but not belonging in communities that are supposedly built for you.