http://www.philome.la/gijeeves/to-eat-or-not-to-eat

http://twinery.org/2/#!/stories/95579397-75f7-4c3a-b0c1-435ed738029a/play

This Twinery story revolves around eating disorders and some of the processes that one may go through when experiencing struggles with eating.  I wanted to keep this particular situation very ambiguous.  I didn't want it focused on one type of eating disorder or another, but wanted to show a realistic struggle that strays away from the typical situation of eating disorders due to poor body image.  Many battle with food not because of poor body image but because of poor self esteem in other aspects of their lives.  For some it is more about control--controlling aspects of their life that they feel have gotten out of hand.  I wanted this story to progress in a way that the choices were pretty subtle at first.  The choices start out with things such as eating a granola bar or a burrito.  Pretty simple and seemingly harmless.  It is, however, the simple thoughts about how eating habits effect your self-worth or self-control that can lead down a path such as the one that is shown in this game.  As the player makes more choices, the player eventually comes to more extreme choices, where seemingly logical choices such as eating healthy and not worrying about it are crossed out.  Instead, more extreme choices such as vomiting and taking a laxative are the only choices provided.  This represents the feeling of the lack of options that the main character feels as she is going through this journey.  Eventually, all options lead to getting help or choosing not to.  Choosing not to send you on a loop where you are right back to feeling out of control.  As the story goes  on, there are even instances where the reader has no choice but to do the things that the narration dictates, such as going to the fridge and eating ice cream.  This gives the player a feeling of a lack of control.  The player does not even have a choice in this--they must eat the ice cream.  This shows the feeling that many feel when dealing with an eating disorder of a lack of control of what their body wants them to do.  The ending is extremely brief.  This is purposeful, as in the Twinery game "Queers in Love at the End of the World."  This game was ambiguous and had a brief ending that said simply that the world was over.  I wanted a brief ending that did not offer a super clear solution.  The reason for this is that there really are no extremely clear solutions to problems such as this that work for everybody, only the desire to reach out to others for help for a recognized problem.