CURTAIN is an interactive first-person narrative about Kaci & Ally, two queer women in a Glasgow punk band, which gives you a first hand experience of their destructive relationship. Players embody Ally coming home to their apartment after a successful gig as Kaci, your partner, watches and comments on every thought and action, creating an overwhelming, stifling atmosphere It takes about half an hour to finish, the game will exit itself.
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I've never really understood the 320x240 obsession that has struck a lot of indie devs in the past few years. idk i just think it's tacky. But i really love how this looks.
There are more detail to these 3d models that you just aren't allowed to see.
Feels like a half remembered memory.
There are more detail to these 3d models that you just aren't allowed to see.
Feels like a half remembered memory.
cried wailed screamed actually had to leave my room to vomit what was once a beef and tomato pot noodle into the sink. this game was such an Experiece & it helped me process some of my worst life moments.
CW: Semi-Formal Discussion the Mechanics of Domestic Abuse, Queerphobia
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This is very similar to a game that I don't like, Answer these 10 Questions. To name just a few similarities: both feature a breakup narrative, have the events narrated over by the other partner who feels 'wronged', and feature an obsession with the past with a very similar thematic conclusion. How can I express my bitterness about romantic reflections and then cling so heavily to this version? Is the difference just that this is a queer narrative about 2 transgirls in a band? Am I really that shallow?
Perhaps I am, but let me offer one counterargument. The difference that separates the 2 for me is that Curtain is a masterful reflection on the subject of trauma. When you boot Curtain you're greeted with a walking simulator so pixelated and hazy that you have to spend a few seconds even making out what's going on. Curtain spends its duration going over a story of intimate domestic abuse, by bringing us into the shared apartment of the abuser and making us victim to Kaci's constant put downs and destructive criticisms narrated at us when we interact with objects. The whole point is to show the desperate obsession that abusers have with controlling narrative flow and how both suffocating and yet unrealistic it is.
Everything you look at is controlled by a paragraph of postulation from the abusing party explaining the importance of it within specifically their framework of understanding. There's a forcefulness there, and most verbal domestic exploitation happens through this type of psychological tactic. You can be numb and realize that it's happening and yet still feel the effects of it on you as one of the primary issues that arise from being around somebody is aural. If somebody wanted to keep making noise they can, and your only way of halting that noise is either by plugging your ears or by leaving, both reactions that are too dramatic too do suddenly, so instead you are contained with the noise machines surrounding you, human or otherwise.
The digital space has allowed for a much better respect and appreciation of noise aversion and thus has helped mitigate this factor, but the reality is people will often play into it too much or even compensate with that by speaking more in physical space than they otherwise would. Perhaps you've noticed this effect from quarantine, everyone is suddenly more talkative because they have to make up for that period of isolation.
Abusers take the normality of chattiness and infect their personal relationships with it using it as a tool of control. Whereas in the quiz game this narrative tactic was being used by a mutual of victim party, here this narrative tactic is shown in itself as a vector of control, when combined with the hazy and abstracted visual form the overall experience works to create a trauma-environment. As somebody who has also suffered domestic abuse for prolonged periods of time before that specific mental haziness and lack of voice actually connects quite well with my own experiences.
The other thing I appreciate a lot is that it actually counters my weakest point from discussion on the previous game, that because I'm trans anything that I do wrong is the result of a system that refuses to look at me and perceive me as a woman. While this may be on the most functional level true, it avoids accountability and personal control entirely. Kaci and Ally openly make queer anticapitalist music as conveyed through the various excerpts. Yet, Kaci is still a deeply controlling over her own personal life and partner. Instead of seeing it as a contradiction it's a tacit warning sign. No amount of economic or queer theory can decongest relationship issues or disconnect someone from the pratfalls of fucking up. I realize that this entire write up sounds deeply cold and analytical but if it is, it's for a reason: We don't have a way to discuss how this stuff happens.
Do we honestly think all verbal exploitation comes out of bad actors? Of course not. Not all relationships are built on the same external function of power, while the abuse a man has towards a woman can be explained as financially beneficial to the man. Relationships outside of heteronormativity can't be rationalized so easily through feminism without falling into the trap of calling it 'manish' behavior. In order to actually combat domestic abuse there needs to be guidelines and information about the psychological mechanisms that pervade it and lead into it. Things like clinginess, inability to self isolate from other people for long periods of time, aural control, etc.
The reason why is because until there's a systematic analysis on relationship theories and patterns of control we are going to fall into the same epistemological traps over and over. It needs to go beyond the level of a simple pamphlet and hotline, and generic valourization of consent (which is important of course). Until then, two mechanisms of hate will continue to intensify:
1. External hate: Games/Art like this will be utilized as some strange anecdotal evidence that queer people are serpents and that you (the cis-heteronormative class) should be paranoid of them. Queerphobia can lurk between the arguments that queer people are openly violent or more psychologically abusive at ease. Note right now we are being called 'groomers' whereas before it was imagery of outright violence and tantrums, its now moved to this idea of insidious action. In time after using this trope out enough (and probably in response to a queer riot at their injustice) they will move back to the physical violence narrative. The only way to stop this interchange of narrative hate is through being able to take power out of the predation narrative through public awareness and learning.
2. Self hate: We should adopt these preventative measures for our own sake and safety. Even if the cismenance wont adopt this, being able to build genuine relationship theory would aid as one more proactive tool to combat this perception. I can't tell you the number of online relationships and polycules I've seen fall apart due to abuse and mistreatment and turn into public google doc accustions. We need to be more aware of these practices and protect each other from falling into these patterns. If not out of self preservation than at least out of compassion for each other.
This is my takeaway from Curtain, and the fact its such a polemical one speaks to the games strength as a powerful trauma narrative. The best trauma narratives perform a sense of intervention on the receiver and for imbuing that in me at least its worth full marks.
-----------------------------------------------------------
This is very similar to a game that I don't like, Answer these 10 Questions. To name just a few similarities: both feature a breakup narrative, have the events narrated over by the other partner who feels 'wronged', and feature an obsession with the past with a very similar thematic conclusion. How can I express my bitterness about romantic reflections and then cling so heavily to this version? Is the difference just that this is a queer narrative about 2 transgirls in a band? Am I really that shallow?
Perhaps I am, but let me offer one counterargument. The difference that separates the 2 for me is that Curtain is a masterful reflection on the subject of trauma. When you boot Curtain you're greeted with a walking simulator so pixelated and hazy that you have to spend a few seconds even making out what's going on. Curtain spends its duration going over a story of intimate domestic abuse, by bringing us into the shared apartment of the abuser and making us victim to Kaci's constant put downs and destructive criticisms narrated at us when we interact with objects. The whole point is to show the desperate obsession that abusers have with controlling narrative flow and how both suffocating and yet unrealistic it is.
Everything you look at is controlled by a paragraph of postulation from the abusing party explaining the importance of it within specifically their framework of understanding. There's a forcefulness there, and most verbal domestic exploitation happens through this type of psychological tactic. You can be numb and realize that it's happening and yet still feel the effects of it on you as one of the primary issues that arise from being around somebody is aural. If somebody wanted to keep making noise they can, and your only way of halting that noise is either by plugging your ears or by leaving, both reactions that are too dramatic too do suddenly, so instead you are contained with the noise machines surrounding you, human or otherwise.
The digital space has allowed for a much better respect and appreciation of noise aversion and thus has helped mitigate this factor, but the reality is people will often play into it too much or even compensate with that by speaking more in physical space than they otherwise would. Perhaps you've noticed this effect from quarantine, everyone is suddenly more talkative because they have to make up for that period of isolation.
Abusers take the normality of chattiness and infect their personal relationships with it using it as a tool of control. Whereas in the quiz game this narrative tactic was being used by a mutual of victim party, here this narrative tactic is shown in itself as a vector of control, when combined with the hazy and abstracted visual form the overall experience works to create a trauma-environment. As somebody who has also suffered domestic abuse for prolonged periods of time before that specific mental haziness and lack of voice actually connects quite well with my own experiences.
The other thing I appreciate a lot is that it actually counters my weakest point from discussion on the previous game, that because I'm trans anything that I do wrong is the result of a system that refuses to look at me and perceive me as a woman. While this may be on the most functional level true, it avoids accountability and personal control entirely. Kaci and Ally openly make queer anticapitalist music as conveyed through the various excerpts. Yet, Kaci is still a deeply controlling over her own personal life and partner. Instead of seeing it as a contradiction it's a tacit warning sign. No amount of economic or queer theory can decongest relationship issues or disconnect someone from the pratfalls of fucking up. I realize that this entire write up sounds deeply cold and analytical but if it is, it's for a reason: We don't have a way to discuss how this stuff happens.
Do we honestly think all verbal exploitation comes out of bad actors? Of course not. Not all relationships are built on the same external function of power, while the abuse a man has towards a woman can be explained as financially beneficial to the man. Relationships outside of heteronormativity can't be rationalized so easily through feminism without falling into the trap of calling it 'manish' behavior. In order to actually combat domestic abuse there needs to be guidelines and information about the psychological mechanisms that pervade it and lead into it. Things like clinginess, inability to self isolate from other people for long periods of time, aural control, etc.
The reason why is because until there's a systematic analysis on relationship theories and patterns of control we are going to fall into the same epistemological traps over and over. It needs to go beyond the level of a simple pamphlet and hotline, and generic valourization of consent (which is important of course). Until then, two mechanisms of hate will continue to intensify:
1. External hate: Games/Art like this will be utilized as some strange anecdotal evidence that queer people are serpents and that you (the cis-heteronormative class) should be paranoid of them. Queerphobia can lurk between the arguments that queer people are openly violent or more psychologically abusive at ease. Note right now we are being called 'groomers' whereas before it was imagery of outright violence and tantrums, its now moved to this idea of insidious action. In time after using this trope out enough (and probably in response to a queer riot at their injustice) they will move back to the physical violence narrative. The only way to stop this interchange of narrative hate is through being able to take power out of the predation narrative through public awareness and learning.
2. Self hate: We should adopt these preventative measures for our own sake and safety. Even if the cismenance wont adopt this, being able to build genuine relationship theory would aid as one more proactive tool to combat this perception. I can't tell you the number of online relationships and polycules I've seen fall apart due to abuse and mistreatment and turn into public google doc accustions. We need to be more aware of these practices and protect each other from falling into these patterns. If not out of self preservation than at least out of compassion for each other.
This is my takeaway from Curtain, and the fact its such a polemical one speaks to the games strength as a powerful trauma narrative. The best trauma narratives perform a sense of intervention on the receiver and for imbuing that in me at least its worth full marks.