Figuera: Traversals of Gender in Interactive Fiction

Abstract

Figuera, a speculative interactive fiction game, uses the digital authoring system Twine to build a multilinear narrative. This work emerges from a tradition of feminist and queer authors, including New Wave science fiction writers Samuel Delany and Ursula K. Le Guin, and Twine digital game creators Anna Anthropy and Porpentine. Figuera acts as a critical fiction by joining what bell hooks terms a community of resistance: the Twine revolution, a school of queer and trans digital game creators who express their lived experiences of marginalization through digital games. Playfully transgressing the connection between the material body and gender identity/expression, I work to decenter dominant narratives by disrupting default novel-reading strategies. My game depicts a secondary world in which families assign their children’s gender at age fifteen, a world inspired by Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity. Three narrative strands follow young people whose queered gender expression clashes with their families’ wishes. In contrast with the non-linearity of postmodern hypertext fiction, Figuera uses digital constraints to maintain continuity and promote narrative closure. Unlike traditional interactive fiction, Figuera guides readers with links rather than text input. The work’s visual design echoes the aesthetic of the Twine revolution, while my invitation to readers to intervene creatively with the text matches the Twine revolution’s goals of accessibility and open expression. Readers may perform multiple traversals of the text; the different narrative strands act as motifs for the work’s themes. The text offers the reader meaningful choices: the reader can navigate to discrete endings. Each narrative line contains deliberate gaps, such that multiple readings are required for a richer understanding of the characters and the world; the game’s structure rewards playful, explorative, and repeated readings. In form and content, Figuera expresses a feminist and queer politics through creative intervention.