You do not belong here.

You have known that as long as you could know anything.

You do not belong in this house, wrapped in the arms of Mother and Father like wires. Sister like a knife. The names they give you are wrong. Even the one that is closest, the one you’ve come to fit like wearing in once-blistering shoes.

It is not your name.

But they have the Words to bind you. To spin you up in telephone cables, pin your arms to your sides. Tangle your feet till you fall. The have the tools to make your body heavy, fat, thick and clotted with possessions and expectations.

They love you. They are so very proud of you.
Don't you want to make them proud?

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Interactive fiction exploring what it is to feel wrong. To neither fit, nor be able to make yourself fit.

And to consider that maybe what they've told you is wrong is simply different. Is belonging somewhere else.

Written for the #NeurodiversityJam, this game is about growing up with brainstuff that wasn't allowed to be real. About what it can feel like to finally begin to accept that it is. That it's a part of you.

It uses the language of make-believe to make the unsafe, safe, and the safe, unsettling.

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Disclosure:

The author knows that the language of this game might be seen as othering. She wants to say that this particular way of seeing has helped her come to accept herself, and how she works. That seeing herself through Other, through Elsewhere, has been the most powerful tool of self acceptance she has found.

She is a person with various brainstuff, including sensory processing disorder, autism, dyslexia, and synesthesia.

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