#lmfao <- throwing that in to make this less serious teehee

[kithj]

decent video covering the work of kitty horrorshow. for the most part he just goes through each game and relays the plot, but it is interesting to see them all laid out together, how they are similar and how her work has evolved and the common themes that she keeps revisiting in each one. his analysis mainly focuses on the Places that she explores in her games; the environments, the haunted houses, and how they are all "built wrong." he talks about haunting of hill house, house of leaves, myhouse.wad, vivarium, and a few other movies towards the end.

my own ramblings about some of the games under the cut :-)

one thing i've always projected onto haunted houses, and especially some of the hostile, haunted places prevalent in kitty horrorshow's work, is a trans narrative *everyone pretends to be shocked*

sagan does mention this briefly in the video, and he admits that it's not his personal interpretation that he plans to talk about (which is totally fine) but that is very obviously there, these themes of autonomy and transformation in these works all go hand in hand with gender identity, with the trans/nb experience.

so when people talk about a house being "built wrong" it always reminds me of the trans narrative of "born in the wrong body." i know this isn't necessarily a mindset a lot of people still agree with anymore now that our language around being trans has evolved, but i also know there are some people that do still feel this way regardless, and even if we don't completely consider ourselves "born in the wrong body" i think the majority of us do have a very... contentious relationship with our bodies.

i always see a house that is intent on haunting you as a body that is inhospitable.

we see people in kitty horrorshow's work that try and change the world around them, or failing that, that literally change themselves. in rain, house, eternity, the structure we've been traversing is someone who has broken free of her physical form and been reborn into something that she chose for herself, after her community forced her down a path that she did not want. sagan brings this up again at the end of his analysis, where he talks about the way the environment is molded by the player as well as the way the player is molded by the environment. he mentions the movie vivarium, and how people are forced into these littles boxes (ie the nuclear family, gender roles, preconceived stereotypes, etc), whether they want it or not, by their environment and the societal expectations that are a part of that.

but again, the environment can also be molded by the player; it is influenced by the characters within the narrative. the environment grows flesh and teeth and has a heartbeat and i like this idea that our environment is alive and is also flesh and blood that can be reflected back at us. it could be cathartic or horrifying depending on how you feel about your body, about your experiences, about how society perceives you. in the end we can become the structure, we can change ourselves and become our environment, undefinable and infinite, or we can be restricted by it, and forced into something we don't want-- made inhospitable.

there is both a lack of agency in the house being built, but a reclamation in the haunting as someone or something transitions and fills the empty rooms with a new form. stone to flesh or flesh to stone as it is in rain, house, eternity, or drywall to glitches and blood like in anatomy. inhospitable but at least it's mine.

in 000000FF0000, the game itself doesn't even want to be found. it's a living thing that's hidden itself away and is in great pain. it's restricted by its own code, it longs for the seasons and the sea but it can only think about the cages it's been locked in. the only agency it finds is in shutting itself down after the player reaches a certain point. we are forced to be perceived by others, by society, even when we are in pain, even when we aren't really ourselves, due to how we look, how we were born, or whatever other cages society has put us in. the lack of autonomy, the lack of control in our own creation... this game is actually one of the ones that have stuck with me the most, i think it's extremely well executed and impactful and is possibly her second best behind anatomy.

and then there's circadia-- the girl returning to her childhood home, seeing her childhood and memories and her body reflected back at her in this house. wanting to hurt it, feeling trapped by it and how she used to be. the people there that don't really see her as she is now, the trauma literally in the walls. she laments her apartment, missing it "like a lover" because that's the place she carved out for herself versus this house she was forced into, this house that's always there and always waiting for her to come back even though she clearly never wants to come back.

when you're trans, there are always people trying to get you to "come back," to be like you used to be. looking back at yourself, childhood photos and old memories of when people treated you differently. your body a new space now but there are still the bones of that old house you left behind. the world trying to force you back into the house even if it doesn't fit anymore, even if it's painful, even if all you can do is haunt it.... the code in 000000FF0000 confining the game to exist in one way even though it hurts them, no other option but to bury themselves deep in various folders within your computer and hoping to never be found. hiding from the world because there are people that insist these things are hardcoded into your biology, that predetermine how you have to live and there is no other way for you to live. and if you go against that code it breaks the game for them... does that make sense?

and in rain, house, eternity, she demolishes the house and turns herself into stone, she finds autonomy despite what the game wants and what the world wants. indefinable and infinite because there is no binary and the walls of this house are your house to destroy and rebuild as many times as you want in any way that you want.

i definitely recommend kitty horrorshow's work if you've never played any of her games before. she's most well known for anatomy, which i didn't really touch on because it's so popular (for good reason) she does have a few twine games, hornets and wolfgirls in love, and then circadia is just a 5 page flash-fiction. and of course i also super recommend rain, house, eternity, and 000000FF0000. i already linked her itch page up there but here it is again! check her out.

#fellow kitty h. o7 #wow sorry i got annoying under the cut lmfao #stopped abt halfway cus anatomy is pretty well covered at this point and with the haunted cities collections #i'd like to play more of them myself #anyways im sure someone has made this analysis before but its not something ive seen myself #idk the idea of a house being alive and trapped and unable to change and haunting its occupants.... #it feels. familiar. sometimes i feel like im haunting myself #this problem i have where my body is not me #maybe houses feel like that too. you know? #lmfao <- throwing that in to make this less serious teehee #video #dare i put this in the IF tag? sure why not #interactive fiction #games