My Gender Is a Fish is a choice-based work that Carter Gwertzman entered into IFcomp, and it is beautiful.
Maybe it’s not technically
beautiful — MGIAF uses Twine’s basic Sugarcube format with default font
colors — but I really enjoyed the writing. Your gender gets stolen by a magpie,
and you make a sequence of choices on the path to reclaim it. Each playthrough sees
the same choices, but the story is short and the text changes enough to make it
worth playing more than once.
I'm reluctant to call My Gender Is a Fish an allegory. For one thing, it doesn’t take itself seriously. Also, I’ve never clearly understood what makes an allegory. But that feels like a good fit for this entry's affirmative message about being okay with ambiguity.
My Gender Is a Fish asks thoughtful questions and makes sharp comparisons: How much of your life is tied to your gender identity, and what would you do without it?
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