Eight Short Games on Itchio, Part Three
Nov. 1st, 2023 07:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingGirlkiller
https://ellisdex.itch.io/girlkiller
Girlkiller is a Twine game by the same creator who made Please Tell Me You Love Me. It takes about ten minutes to read, and it’s extremely violent. This is straight-up horror fiction about hating a (female) version of yourself so much that you kill her in the most brutal way possible. Or, depending on your choices, she kills you in the most brutal way possible.
The story is written from a transgender perspective, but I think it works from a nonbinary or cisgender female perspective as well. It’s a truly awful thing to be forced into gender stereotypes.
The violence doesn’t work for me personally, though. I don’t find it shocking; I find it tedious. The first three or four minutes of the game are interesting, but the scenes of the player-character beating the shit out of a young woman are unduly prolonged. I’m not saying that it’s not valid; I’m saying that I found myself getting impatient with how literal and repetitive the violence was.
Of course, I am a sicko who loves horror, so I didn’t have much of a reaction. I imagine other people might find the depictions of stalking and assault extremely triggering.
I guess, in the end, art is about self-expression, and Girlkiller is a raw expression of the creator’s specific fantasies and anxieties. This story isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be.
ETA: It seems that most of the games on the list are Twine stories about terrible things happening to transgender people. I understand and respect where this is coming from, but it's not something I can engage with at the moment. I'll write about one more game, but I think it's fair to say that this set of titles isn't for me.
https://ellisdex.itch.io/girlkiller
Girlkiller is a Twine game by the same creator who made Please Tell Me You Love Me. It takes about ten minutes to read, and it’s extremely violent. This is straight-up horror fiction about hating a (female) version of yourself so much that you kill her in the most brutal way possible. Or, depending on your choices, she kills you in the most brutal way possible.
The story is written from a transgender perspective, but I think it works from a nonbinary or cisgender female perspective as well. It’s a truly awful thing to be forced into gender stereotypes.
The violence doesn’t work for me personally, though. I don’t find it shocking; I find it tedious. The first three or four minutes of the game are interesting, but the scenes of the player-character beating the shit out of a young woman are unduly prolonged. I’m not saying that it’s not valid; I’m saying that I found myself getting impatient with how literal and repetitive the violence was.
Of course, I am a sicko who loves horror, so I didn’t have much of a reaction. I imagine other people might find the depictions of stalking and assault extremely triggering.
I guess, in the end, art is about self-expression, and Girlkiller is a raw expression of the creator’s specific fantasies and anxieties. This story isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be.
ETA: It seems that most of the games on the list are Twine stories about terrible things happening to transgender people. I understand and respect where this is coming from, but it's not something I can engage with at the moment. I'll write about one more game, but I think it's fair to say that this set of titles isn't for me.
