Listen, everything is absolutely not OK right now.
The short list of not-OK things just happening in the news lately, for instance, includes the pervasive culture of sexual assault that rots our society and is finally coming to bear. Or that our earth appears in revolt of our human destructiveness, as more and more people die every week because of it. Health care, too, in America was knowingly sabotaged by our president, making it harder than ever for sick, lower income people to get help.
And on top of everything, my dog keeps having nightmares where he makes those really distressing whimpering sounds.
The world is paralyzingly not OK. But weird-web artist and game maker Natalie Lawhead’s delightful oddity, Everything is going to be OK, understands. You are not OK. Everything is not OK. But, when you play, you can't help but feel that, somehow, it will be. Because the person on the other side of your computer screen knows what your weird, broken, and beautiful soul is.
And she loves you for it.
It's hard to describe what Everything is going to be OK even is, exactly. It's the kind of thing you need to play to believe. The free, game-like zine's main screen offers an array of out-of-order interactive pages, each with darkly humorous vignettes exploring "alternative views of power from a survivor's standpoint."
The zine centers around one recurring bunny character, who's relatability is only heightened by its perpetual state of bodily dismemberment -- often found with its limbs torn clean off. But it's soldiering on anyway (which is just, like, S A M E.)
In an artist's statement, Lawhead (AKA alienmelon) describes how this interactive zine is "a collection of life experiences, commentary on struggle, and oddly enough my own version of a power-fantasy."
According to Lawhead, society's backwards concept of power dictates that respect is earned only at the expense of others, and measured by the amount of people you can subjugate into fear.
Everything is going to be OK flips the script on the victim narrative in the most delightfully unexpected ways.
Now, more than ever, is the time for us to redefine that. And Everything is going to be OK flips the script on the victim narrative in the most delightfully unexpected ways.
"Strength [shouldn't be about] how many people you can hurt, conquer, overcome, but how much of this abuse you can overcome," Lawhead wrote. "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."
From Lawhead's perspective, popular culture and media too often luxuriate in the trauma of a victims. And it almost never offers narratives for moving past survivorship, and onto truly living again.
"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. We teach people to be perpetual survivors. We live with pain, but [have] no way of transcending it."
But Everything is going to be OK does. It transcends pain in the most cathartic, abstract, humorous way imaginable. Whether you've struggled with PTSD, anxiety, mental illness, suicide -- the overwhelming comfort of this weird art game Everything is going to be OK is just 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."
Small cutscenes revolve around Lawhead's personal experiences of trauma, but then often invite the player to create their own bizarre-o world web art like poetry, powerpoint presentations (please find MY_KILLER_TALK.pdf here), games, and friendships.
Every scattered, frazzled, fragmented page of Everything is going to be OK begs to be explored endlessly. You could spend hours uncovering every hidden gem, from the encrypted jokes embedded in the coding to the plethora of countless tiny secret avenues.
Absolutely everything you discover, no matter how freakish or ridiculous, exudes this intimate, grounding kind of humanity. You don't need to understand "what's happening" to see yourself in this bunny who is beaten, torn apart, abandoned, and yet won't stop assuring everyone that it's okay. I'm okay. This is just fine.
While showing scenes of trauma with unflinching honesty, it's the game's hilarity that truly makes you feel understood. Because as survivors of trauma know, you are not only not allowed to talk about your trauma in public (too uncomfortable for others, of course), but you're also definitely not allowed to make jokes about it. But, as Lawhead writes, the humor reflects the true ridiculousness of life, when "it's one damn thing after the other and after a while there's nothing left to do but laugh at it."
Ultimately, Everything is going to be OK is an ode to those who have felt discarded by society, and their scars rejected.
Because, "You should be celebrated simply for being here," Lawhead wrote. "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."