In 2023 I learned the term “girlfailure,” which is apparently the opposite of a “girlboss” who gets shit done and takes no shit. A girlfailure is an absolute loser trainwreck girly, and after I learned this term through descriptions of Jala, she will forever be the face of the concept in my mind. Jala’s story in Thirsty Suitors is—or can be, depending on your choices—all about reconciliation. Jala dares to ask how much of a wrecking ball you can drive through people’s lives before there’s nothing left to repair. She’s gone through life like a bull in a china shop, but she has no place left to go but home; she has to pick up the pieces and put them all back together.
Thirsty Suitors lets you reconnect with Jala’s exes, and if you so choose, you can rekindle long-lost love. But as I played through her story, it felt more fitting for her to fly solo for a while. She spends a lot of time interrogating how she once treated her significant others like they were disposable, and maybe learns after she’s unpacked all that baggage, the next step is to figure out who she is underneath. Jala’s journey is basically going through the reconciliation phase in a theatrical, turn-based fashion, and when you’ve done that, you keep working on yourself before you jump headfirst into a tryst with an old flame. — Kenneth Shepard
