LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST by THE BODY & THE BLOOD
In the past, erotic games have left me cold. I had concluded that one element of this was the broad nature of human sexuality, whose specifics are famously personal across a spectrum that runs from ‘Oh God, safewordSafewordSAFEWORD’ to ‘I’ll be in my bunk.’ I had speculated that these variations were SO broad, an author had no hope of appealing to an audience pool they knew nothing about, and was forever going to self-select an audience of like-minded preoccupations. Where games succeeded, according to my prior analysis, is when they tied into more universal elements like humor, and captured the playfulness of healthy sexuality. That was a more all-encompassing hook to hang a work on.
Here’s something I didn’t get until this work. The OTHER common thread one might tug is the ramp from arousal to joyous sexual delight. Regardless the combination of equipment and partners that gets you there, that FEELING is near universal. At least for those to whom it is an option at all.
If you had told me a work that leaned on sexual identity and fetishes that held no sway over me would so resoundingly accomplish its erotic intent, I would not have believed you. The keys, as they so often are, are specificity and DYNAMITE writing, augmented here by limited but effective use of interactivity. I was tempted to rank these aspects in order of contribution to the success of the work, but quickly realized all three are necessary to the work’s impact, so we’ll tackle them in an arbitrary order.
Specificity: the protagonist’s character is deeply conflicted about their identity and sexuality. The details here are astoundingly fine grained, and expressed so openly that not only are the facts of them relatable, the protagonist’s mindset is transmitted clearly every step of the way. The protagonist’s journey is not my journey, but the details are so bright and clear their journey is an open book to me and I can crisply translate my personal experiences to theirs. Not just the facts of their sexual makeup: their insecurities, troubled friendships, deep loneliness… all these are similarly painted with sharply defined anecdotes and events, and an internal monologue that rings true. I should emphasize that. The graphically cued internal monologue is used sparingly enough, but when it shows up it perfectly conveys the protagonist’s entire psyche in the moment. It is never a great thing to attribute auto-biography to an author you know nothing about, but I mean it as a compliment when I say the external and internal details are almost too REAL to be fiction.
Interactivity: this is not a deeply interactive work, far more F than I. Where it is used, it is used precisely and effectively to align the player/reader with the protagonist. You are given just enough control over responses to fine tune protagonist reactions in a way that cements whatever empathy gaps specificity could not close. The two in combination, specificity and interactivity, conspire most successfully to bridge any gap in experience or psyche to firmly bond the player. It is admirable and kind of wondrous how powerfully this is accomplished, seemingly without effort and with such infrequent use. It is so powerfully realized that even when the protagonist is making choices that are dangerous and rash, I was never at sea over ‘why, protag, why why?’ I UNDERSTOOD and was along for the ride, however ill-conceived.
Writing: while I have divorced this as somehow a third facet, it is certainly true that both the specificity and interactivity rest on a bedrock of confident, clear, impactful writing. It is simultaneously uniquely voiced, compellingly phrased, and deeply insightful. I captured SO many snippets, it was a minor crisis to decide which ones to showcase. Here is where I landed at publication time, though could easily shift multiple times before IFDB upload:
“not woman enough to be an object, not man enough to be a threat”
“you walked into a lamppost and apologized to it”
“if I were to rip out my spine and use it against my own eyeballs”
Concise, evocative, conveying so much more than their raw wordcount might suggest. This work’s prose stands among the most effective I’ve experienced in ALL mediums, not just IF. I have been characterizing it as erotica because 1) it is prominent among its early preoccupations and 2) it amazed me with its accomplishments in that arena. But this is not a purely titillating work, it is a character study where sexuality is a primary concern, including in ways that are troubling, inconvenient and tragic. The titillation is only one part of it. That the writing can so easily accomplish eroticism AND personal drama is downright glorious.
If it’s not clear, the writing alone presented a Transcendent experience for the first hour and a half. It’s almost unfair that the graphical presentation is ALSO so accomplished. Fuzzy background images whose focus sharpens or flares with color that reinforce the protagonist’s mindset every step of the way… I could write an entire review just highlighting how tremendously engineered this was. The graphical flourishes demarking various online forums - simultaneously mood setting and deeply concrete and recognizable. I am tempted to claim, as I sometimes do, that the graphic work was a full partner. Here, graphical work that could be the most notable achievement in another work is still, appropriately, subordinate to the prose and story being told. The entire package is an empathy machine that achieves what I had considered impossible in erotica, but ALSO telling a deeply affecting personal story.
Ok, you see what I did there. I dropped that ‘hour and a half’ on you almost by the way, in the full knowledge that you would identify it as the Chekov’s Caveat it is. The narrative makes a choice at the hour and a half mark. Until that time, there had been a low key (and very affecting!) narrative thread of the limits of online support systems, where personal preoccupations can reinforce themselves until they curdle into self-righteous toxicity and undermine whatever safeness the space tried to establish. In the first hour and a half, this had been sprinkled in like seasoning, highlighting the protagonist’s alienation. Narratively, at the hour and a half mark, the protagonist enters a deeply affecting medical crisis (at least in part brought on by tragic sexual frenzy). While they wait for maddeningly delayed succor, they peruse social media, and the toxicity of the forums jumps to the fore.
To the fore of the narrative. Looming between reader and work like a clumsy behemoth at the opera. Eclipsing the protagonist we had so deliberately and masterfully been aligned to who was HAVING A MEDICAL CRISIS. Instead we spend page after page after page of escalating toxicity whose escalation was well established, uninteresting and tiresome. Thematically it was of course underlining the idea that these forums’ ability to provide safe space was always at the mercy of its most troubled members, and that even real crises are insufficient to derail that. More, that insular echo chambers of parasocial connection are ultimately INCAPABLE of being relied on when truly needed. Thing is, that theme was ALREADY clear, and here it just goes on and on and on, building in heat but paradoxically lessening in dramatic impact. It is a baffling choice to me. I NEEDED to be with the protagonist here, yet I was reading and reading and reading self-righteous navel-gazers whose lack of empathy was blindingly clear. Then, reading it some more. And more. Until my timer ran out.
What do I do with that, work?? Part of me assumes there was a point to all that that would become clear… eventually. Certainly the narrative was self-assured enough prior to that. But not just the fact of the online discourse, the sheer LENGTH of what the work asked me to consume, WHILE THE PROTAGONIST I WAS INVESTED IN SUFFERED, was… repellant. It pushed me back from the work that had so effectively conquered emotional, sexual, and psychic gaps. It made me angry at it for being SO GOOD then deliberately slapping my face. If that was in fact the point of the sequence, let me just say I GOT IT. The sledgehammer was not required. I will generously say the last half hour was mechanical. There is a case to be made for Bouncy, though that assessment might be my own spitefulness at the sense of betrayal.
It leaves me in a weird place, review wise. Prior to that social media hell, the work was full on Transcendent. MAYBE that narrative choice will later be somehow redeemed. I am at a loss to see how, but prior to this work I was at a loss to see how I could respond to erotica so far removed from my own proclivities. The work has earned some cred here. But when the timer expires and its subtle, nuanced flavors are so completely overrun by a baffling, stinging one-note bitterness… how do I not report that experience?
Played: 10/1/24
Playtime: 2hr, act iii Lipstick, in social media hell
Score: 7 (Transcendent ->Mechanical/mostly seamless )
Would Play After Comp?: I kind of have to, to see if that choice redeems itself, but I am suddenly full of dread that it might not
PS - didn’t really fit in my diatribe, above, but do treat yourself to a peek at the walkthrough. It is not needed for the work per se, but a lovely little twist of the knife it is.
