8/11/2023 0 Comments Twin mirror trick![]() Many of the essays in Trick Mirror end up diverging in wildly different directions. “A blanket defence, an automatic celebration, a tarp of self-delusion that can cover up any sin.” “Feminists have worked so hard, with such good intentions, to justify female difficulty that the concept has ballooned to something all-encompassing,” Tolentino writes. Not that they shouldn’t be idolised, she argues, but that it’s had an unexpected trickle-down effect wherein more politically dangerous individuals like Ivanka Trump have undergone similar reframing by mere proxy of being a woman in power. In another essay, she reflects on the rise of think pieces that celebrate “difficult women”, stories that have reframed the likes of Kim Kardashian, Lena Dunham or Caitlyn Jenner as feminist icons importantly disrupting the status quo. The anti-Photoshop crusades that propelled to notoriety the late-Noughties feminist site Jezebel, Tolentino’s one-time home, unknowingly spawned an expectation that women should strive for a “natural” beauty which “requires almost no intervention”. She also guiltily uses her own history in journalism to explore how things went so awry, particularly positive-seeming movements that unknowingly left far more insidious problems in their wake. “Where we had once been free to be ourselves online,” she writes, “we were now chained to ourselves online.” She then explores how it all became corrupted, the endless possibilities of the internet growing harsher and meaner, until it felt like we had become at the mercy of an online world that had shaped our real-world personalities for the worse. During Trick Mirror, her first collection of essays, she writes about her earliest memories of the digital world, the Angelfire web page she filled with choppy HTML flourishes and Dawson’s Creek references. In her best work, she uses the rise of the internet to chart our collective anxieties. Her work, as a staff writer for The New Yorker, often doubles as a kind of existential survival guide, regularly driven by how odd it is for a generation to have to navigate a world increasingly lived online, where toxicity, capitalist horror and self-loathing has long bled into our everyday existences. This is where you’ll find yourself feeling the most in control during the whole game, even though the choices come thick and fast, and it’s these moments of tension that are most immersive as a player.Jia Tolentino has spent the past decade as our foremost expert on how to exist in the 21st century. ![]() At one point, just before he’s about to have an anxiety attack, you get whisked to the mind palace and have to perform simple mini-game style tasks to distract Sam and calm him down. Things can get quite stressful during your investigation and Sam is not the most together person as it is, since he’s prone to blackouts and pill popping. It’s these moments when you, as a player, feel real pressure but be aware this isn’t a black and white narrative and Dontnod have managed to create something that feels much more complex than the normal binary, moral decisions. His alternative take on important situations has you questioning your instincts and sometimes your mental health. This twin, an imaginary friend from your childhood, looks like a cross between a shrink and an Armani model and regularly pops up when there’s a big decision that needs to be made. Your twin is also sitting in the back seat of the car while she’s talking, telling you if you don’t you’re a really bad person. After two years of silence, you feel you owe her some of your time and agree to investigate. ![]() ![]() Once you arrive at Nick’s wake his daughter confronts you and confides that there might be more to her father’s death than meets the eye.
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