Writing New Bodies in Digital Fiction

A significant scholarly and popular media criticism of bodily-focused video games is that they perpetuate harmful body image (Barlett and Harris; Sarkeesian). Yet, game scholars such as Kafai, as well as significant subsets of gaming communities, have argued that the medium can act as a resistance mechanism for heteronormative, racist, and anti-queer sociopolitical influence. In a Western context, gendered notions of appearance in media work to affirm an idealized body image for women, communicating that a body that is not white, able-bodied, thin, toned, and feminine, is, in fact, inferior. Continue Reading

Nonbinary

A Choose-Your-Own Adventure

Follow the thread / of twine / to find / your way home / if home ever existed in the first place / We make space / for our breath / for our spines / that are bending / Breaking / the binary / of a binary culture / built on binary code and passcodes / passwords we are hacking / with our
Living, loving bodies Continue Reading

Interview with Chris Klimas

Interactive Fiction, FMV games, and Hypertext

Chris Klimas is the creator of Twine, the extremely popular and accessible interactive fiction development platform. Klimas is involved with the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, as well as Unmapped Path, a company that builds narrative experiences for mobile and desktop. We’re extremely grateful that Chris was able to spare some time to chat with us in January 2018. Continue Reading