#going through hell

The Thief, the Witch, the Toad, and the Mushroom

As an evolution from books, visual novels don’t tend to revisit their roots the way other games do. It makes sense – most of the time, a downgrade wouldn’t be more than plain text – but Australian VN The Thief, the Witch, the Toad, and the Mushroom goes beyond retro, embracing the presentation of decades- to centuries-old physical media for a unique experience. It blurs the line between visual novel and “gamebook”, a medium often referred to as “Choose Your Own Adventure” after a specific brand of gamebook. TWTM styles itself as a relic from your local library, right down to a barcode sticker, a “This Book Belongs To:” page, and other people’s scribbles in the margins.

At the end of my suffering there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little. And what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember passage from the other world I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice:

When you're going through hell, keep going, 2010. Paper collage on mat board by Christian Holstad.

Your phone keyboard is in your first language so the autocorrect is a mess

Using a foreign keyboard is the worst

You know how to discuss classic litterature in your second language but you are not able to explain how to make soup

Always lacking vocabulary

Living in a different time zone than where people speak your second language (does that make sens ?)

Loosing vocabulary in your first language

Your friends never understand your references

You sometimes forget in which language you heard/read/ said something

Sometimes you freeze in the middle of a conversation and realize you forgot in what language you Are supposed to speak (happens more often with mental disorders that include dissociation)

Especially if you are white and from a country where people are known to suck at language, people assume you can't understand what they are saying

Consequently, you reffer to conversations you werent supposed to understand

You suck at grammar

You can't differenciate "levels" language. Like, I used "spieffing" and "kind of" in the same sentance and even now I'm not sure if this exemple is relevent

You have no concept of local "slang". Using "laddie" and "y'all" in the same sentance ? Why not.

Your accent is probably all over the place, a mix of your country's accent, your first teacher's accent, accents from movies you watch...

Like, I'm French. My first teacher was Canadian. My current teachers are posh English and Irish. I just watched an Australian serie. I love David Tennant. Right about now, my accent sounds like a wix of all that plus American from the general cultural exposure

Alternating between languages is the worst

When you say you speak, let's say, French and English, monolinguial people will assume you only speak those two languages. People who speak 5-6 will assume you speak minimum 4