As per the Twitch description: "Everything is going to be OK" is a desktop labyrinth of vignettes, poetry, strange fever dream games, and broken digital spaces. It is a collection of life experiences that are largely a commentary on struggle, survival, and coping with the aftermath of surviving bad things.
Let's begin with, Everything is seriously NOT ok.
All about Nathalie Lawhead's Everything is going to be ok, is an "interactive zing" that reveals trauma and talks about healing. It feels deeply personal but not shy or cheerful. It led to me think rewarding a close examination is a special and important task.
For example, a short list of non-OK things that are happening in the news these days includes a culture of pervasive sexual assault that corrupts our society and ultimately bears fruit. Or, as more and more people die from the Earth each week, our Earth appears in the rebellion of our human destructive power. On top of that, on a personal, I feel cheated on my assignment as to the amount of effort I had put in my projects. So, everything is defiantly not ok!
The unstable world is crippling. But the delightful quirks of Natalie Lawhead, web artist and quirky game designer's, Everything is going to be OK, gets it. You do not agree, all is not well, but, when you play, you can't help but feel that somehow it will. Because the person on the other side of your computer screen knows what your beautiful, broken soul is. Probably I have made this too philosophical, but I guess that's what happens when you play a game like this after an intensive discussion on philosophy in class.
It's hard to explain exactly what "Everything is going to be ok" is. You have to play something like this to believe it. The free playful zine main screen has a series of unordered interactive pages, each with a dark and humorous vignette exploring "an alternative perspective of the force from the survivor's perspective."
The zine revolves around recurring rabbit characters. Attribution of the rabbit character is enhanced only by his ongoing physical disconnection, often seen with torn limbs. But it's soldiering on anyway (which is just, like, S A M E.)
As per Lawhead's description of this weird concoction, Everything is going to be ok is a, "a collection of life experiences, commentary on struggle, and oddly enough my own version of a power-fantasy."
According to Lawhead, the notion of power behind society shows that respect is gained only at the expense of others and is measured by the number of people a person can fear.
"Everything is going to be OK flips the script on the victim narrative in the most delightfully unexpected ways." - via her Twitter
"Strength [shouldn't be about] how many people you can hurt, conquer, overcome, but how much of this abuse you can overcome," - via her Twitter
Lawhead also writes,
"How long you can live with what happened to you. How strong you are for being here. How powerful you are for being strong because you have no other option but to be strong." - via her Twitter
In today's world, popular culture and the media often indulge in the trauma of the victims. And it transcends survival and rarely provides a story to truly live again. But everything will work. It transcends pain in the most cathartic, abstract, and humorous way you can imagine. Whether you're suffering from PTSD, anxiety, mental illness, or suicidal thoughts, the overwhelming comfort of this weird "Everything's is going to be ok", art game is how much it sees you.
"We have created a culture where we cannot really ever move past pain. We don't teach people how to heal, to overcome, or be powerful. or how to help." - via her Twitter
Not "un-crediting" the efforts done by some to help people in order to spread awareness, including Lawhead herself. But this needs to be a topic discussed on main-stream media. The efforts of one person needs support of other in order for it to become a movement.
Everything is going to be ok's scattered, tattered, fragmented pages all want to be explored endlessly. From scrambled jokes embedded in the coding to countless little secret methods, you can spend hours discovering each hidden gem. Everything you discover, no matter how crazy or ridiculous, exudes that intimate and grounded kind of humanity. You don't have to understand "what's going on" to see yourself in this bunny who's been beaten, torn, abandoned, and still reassuring everyone that it's okay. I am fine. that's good.
The traumatic scene is shown with unwavering honesty, but it's really the cheerfulness of the game that makes you feel understood. Because, as the trauma survivor knows, you shouldn't talk about your trauma in public (obviously too unpleasant for others), but you shouldn't joke about it. But as Lawhead writes, "humor reflects the real ridiculousness of life when it's a pity one after another and after a while there's nothing else to do but laugh at it."
Ultimately, Everything is going to be ok is an ode to those who feel that society has rejected and their scars have been rejected.
Lastly, in Lawhead's words:
"You should be celebrated simply for being here, you are normal for your imperfections, and the way you cope. You are the hero in the story of your life, and you have every right to be proud."
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