Which war? This was the main question I had, unless of course you count all of the “WTF?” moments on my first time through the text. The credits say “Olia Lialina, 1996” and I’m not too good with dates but if she’s American I guess this could be the Gulf War or perhaps Kuwait?
After the first few clicks I started realizing that the frames were either splitting; branching in to new paths, or advancing those paths forward a step. It’s interesting because in a way you’re controlling the story of how this reunion goes. The most compelling instance for me was the middle-bottom frame that appears to be about someone cheating on the other in the relationship, and it sort of becomes a Choose Your Own Adventure. You can either say, “NO NEVER,” or “he was my neighbour,” and the path advances from there to: “don’t kill” or “forgive” which are both pretty powerful sentiments.
I think this takes a little bit more interpretation than Hegirascope because of the fact that there is less interaction: you have fewer choices and you can exhaust them all in one sitting with MBCBFTW, whereas in Hegirascope it would take much much longer. Also, whereas Hegirascope gives you these events that are potentially several paragraphs of text, MBCBFTW is much more simplistic with black and white images and short phrases at most. All in all the experience is much more finite with requires much more reflection than interaction.