3XXX: NAKED HUMAN BOMBS (Kastel)
Played on: 3rd September
How I played it: Online via the IFComp ballot, using Firefox
How long I spent: 40 mins for one complete playthrough
You know that Garth Marenghi bit that does the rounds every so often? “I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards”? It’s kind of an insulting bit, isn’t it, when it’s posted as a response to other people’s works. But the more I learn about writing and about criticism, the more I think Marenghi was onto something. We’re seeing a discussion touching on this over in the thread about Drew Cook’s essay on The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode, the general consensus being that the game has layers of text and subtext and what you get out of it depends on how deep you’re willing to read and reflect. An author can take a lot of pride in writing a multilayered metatext or a beautifully constructed metaphor or a complex three-dimensional character, but if you have a message and you don’t want it to get lost, maybe sometimes it’s best to scream what you mean.
Anyway, as we live through the strongest attack on sexuality and freedom of expression in Anglophone countries in living memory, as payment processors and governments lock down the availability of information on gender and sex and destroy any erotica producer’s ability to make a living, here’s 3XXX: NAKED HUMAN BODIES, a game where people explode if they see a nipple. As a fun little kicker, this game is geoblocked in the UK. (Er, not that I would know, here in good ol’ Sweden.)
3XXX is not hiding any feelings about the repression of sex and the absurd lengths to which people will go to censor the body. Before we get into how it tackles body-politics with this full-on approach, I feel the need to say that this allows 3XXX to be an extremely funny game. I spent 40 minutes on my playthrough, and a good ten of those were spent copy-pasting lines that made me chuckle. Without making this review into just a list of good jokes, I really enjoy the constant censoring of any remotely anatomical word such as “lwd” and “msculature”, capped off by the schoolroom scene which implies that people are somehow pronouncing the asterisk like a Discworld character. The passing reference to a café called “Wholesome Coffee and Donuts” left me reeling while I considered what the alternative could possibly be. And I love the passive voice in the opening line that establishes you’re playing as a cop: “Your toothbrush hasn’t finished brushing your teeth when your eyeballs register a new message from NTPD.” The New York Times would be proud.
Following this officer-involved dental hygiene incident, we establish the game’s setting and its heightened socio-politics with an investigation of a bombing incident caused by a guy masturbating irresponsibly, before we reach the call to adventure in Act I. Our player character discovers his body has transformed overnight into that of a beautiful woman, and her eggshell is not so much cracked as obliterated. As a newly-minted trans woman our former officer understands both the enforcement of and the resistance against the nation’s regressive policies, so is in a unique position to fight against them. This fight, as in real life, is fought both within and without; the enemy is not just political power, but also the power of our own minds to internalise the messages we receive and transform them into self-denial and self-loathing.
The primary focus here is on state control of the body and how it infects self-perception, but 3XXX shows understanding of the issue on multiple levels, including as a function of state surveillance and as a political tool. It also shows as much nuance as it can for a game where people explode from jacking off. The character of Ollie serves a few narrative purposes but I’m especially struck by his characterisation as member of the intimacy revolution who deeply fears intimacy for his own personal reasons. For me, this acts as both an olive branch and a call-to-arms for the sex-repulsed among us; nobody’s saying you have to like sex now, but denying it doesn’t help.
If I’m doing my best to poke holes in 3XXX, I might say that there are spots where the dialogue becomes slightly dry – characters say exactly what 3XXX means to say, and at times it feels a little like reading an excerpt from an essay. This is especially prevalent in Act III, in which characters reflect on the politics of the past (i.e. our present day) and how the slope to the game’s setting became so slippery. In 3XXX’s defense, though, there are good reasons why at least one of the characters in that conversation is speaking that way, and it’s not every political-philosophical argument that ends the same way that Act III does.
And then the epilogue. I’ve been attributing opinions to the game 3XXX instead of the author Kastel because I don’t feel comfortable speaking for Kastel on such a personal subject, but here they overtly addresses the audience with a reflection on their own day-to-day life, their experience of gender in a society where they aren’t comfortable expressing it, and their reflection on 3XXX’s function as wish fulfilment. It’s a reminder to anyone who may have forgotten that 3XXX is an allegory, not just an absurdist cyberpunk erotic thriller. The discomfort and pain and yearning felt by the characters of 3XXX is just a heightened version of the yearning many of us experience, and the alien policies of 3XXX’s government are ultimately no more alien than the policies and laws we must navigate now.
As an example of that, there’s a running gag from the blurb onwards about how childhood is now conceptualised as lasting until at least 40, in order to protect as many young minds as possible. It’s an exaggeration, but as anyone with any knowledge about the social history of childhood can tell you, it’s not much of an exaggeration. You can probably think of a dozen examples where lies and distortions have been piled onto the rhetorical device of childhood in order to draw a wiggly line around some cultural cause. Here’s one: In England, a child of 10 is considered too young and underdeveloped to make decisions about their sexuality and gender, but old enough to be criminally responsible and incarcerated. There’s obviously something wrong here.
And now we’re floating around an idea that’s present throughout 3XXX. The attack on sexual expression and information hurts everybody, not just adult content producers. 3XXX literalises this with its naked human bombs, but the actual harm is ever-present. Kastel’s epilogue embeds this in their own experiences, and in so doing invites the reader to consider their own position. How many people are hurt every day, feel like they’re about to explode every day, because it’s become too personally and politically difficult to accept themselves? It took me a long-ass time to figure out I’m nonbinary, and some people will never be allowed to figure that out about themselves, because the opportunities to do so have been hidden from them.
I’m not awfully good at analysing this kind of thing. As I’ve mentioned before I tend to shy away from the sexually explicit, so this was a little challenging in places. Maybe that makes me the target audience? As Ollie demonstrates, I don’t have to become an exhibitionist to recognise that the suppression of sex harms everyone. Still, I’m a little mindful of that thread about Hidden Nazi Mode, and the refrain in both the essay and its responses that anyone who doesn’t dig past the main text to find the symbolic subtext is getting a lesser experience, and not truly understanding the artwork. 3XXX is a brilliant game and I feel that what I got out of it is useful, but I’m not really the right person to analyse the use of sex as a tool of resistance. As Garth Marenghi once wrote, “I’m not Jesus. I’ve come to accept that now.”