One Thought On Porpentine’s Revisions to “7 Thoughts on Women in Games”

Ah, Porpentine, the little scamp. Destroy everything. Logic is bullshit. Fuck you, don’t speak for me. Ah, re/Action Zine, where you’re gonna go if you want to listen to a few Zinesters attempting to make us give a shit about their Problems.

We’re in the early stages of the Criticism Wars being open now, and I love that Porpentine is being called on her shit.

Here’s the story:

Mattie Brice’s latest endeavor–apparently her dream of making videos hasn’t been profitable either, somehow?–has been creating re/Action Zine–a reappropriation as clever and as witty as her infamous Livejournal Edition of Critical Distance. One of the first pieces was Porpentine’s “7 Thoughts On Women in Games“. As usual, it’s Porpentine’s usual exhausting persona shit–that she does not live in Williamsburg is possibly the only reason we’re not calling her a fucking hipster dipshit. Kathy Acker filtered through freshman year. Among other bits was one talking about her experience submitting howling dogs to the Interactive Fiction community. She tells us about all of the harrassing emails she received, calling her submission a “crime”. If Porpentine had a sense of history, she might have noticed that the community, particularly in competitions, is extremely hostile towards non-parser IF. It has nothing to do with being a woman–hell, “Porpentine” is an ambiguous enough name, after all. It’s a definitional argument. Whether that argument is right or not is another story–but as always, Porpentine frames it as an act of hatred because she’s a woman.

In her original formulation, Porpentine takes credit for integrating the IF community which has existed since she was a child:

It was natural for me to approach the circle of interactive fiction. I made games with words in them. But there was nothing for me. I was poor, not middle class. I was queer, not straight. I wrote experimental hypertext, not traditional parser. I was a woman, not a man, and there were many of them, and one of me.

It was intimidating.

Once I did participate, by submitting my Twine game howling dogs, I got harassing emails saying making howling dogs was a “crime”. The public reviews were often angry, condemning, moralistic, censuring.

So I covered Twine games on freeindiegames. I covered them on Rock Paper Shotgun. Others started covering them, making them, talking about them. We kept it up until it became normal to play, design, and enjoy Twine games.

Now interactive fiction is more welcoming to everyone, not just straight white men.

 

Emily Short is about as legendary a figure as you can get in the IF community. She has been making nontraditional works of IF for many years–one of her most famous works, Galatea, is essentially a long conversation with a living statue, and in fact that period of Short’s career features several “conversation games” which were unlike nothing IF had seen. The raw calibre of her work has led her to be one of its luminaries–she’s much loved for her technical innovations, the quality of her prose, and her personality within the community itself. When Emily Short talks, you listen.

And Emily Short, in a long post which is about the most dignified, elegant, and authoratative demolition of Porpentine’s persona that one could ever possibly read, wrote the following:

First, I do see participation from female and queer authors and from people of color, and not just because I am female myself. Though Porpentine’s perspective was that it was hard to see material by authors other than straight white men, I see work by Jenni Polodna, Lea Albaugh, Carolyn VanEseltine, Katherine Morayati, Emily Boegheim, and Deirdra Kiai, among others; I see Meg Jayanth and Yasmeen Khan writing for StoryNexus and Echo Bazaar/Fallen London, and Heather Albano and others for Choice of Games. I see Aaron Reed’s games, where gender and sexuality are often made a matter of player choice. I see Antifascista.

I remember that when I joined the community back in the late 90s, Suzanne Britton, Kathleen Fischer, Eileen Mullin, Papillon and other women were already prominent members of the community and already writing about female sexuality, self-image, and experiences of power, and that Ian Finley was already writing about gay relationships. Several of them reached out to me and made me feel welcome in the community.

 

Short was extremely careful not to dismiss Porpentine’s particular experience–and yet, Porpentine is attacking a community that Short has helped to create, and for Porpentine to mischaracterize the nature of that community does merit a response. In response to this, Porpentine significantly changed her article, one which wasn’t a complete, ungrateful slap in the face to Short and any of the many members of the community who loved Porpentine’s work and welcomed her:

It was natural for me to approach the circle of interactive fiction. I made games with words in them. But there was nothing for me. I was poor, not middle class. I was queer, not straight. I wrote experimental hypertext, not traditional parser. I was a woman, not a man, and there were many of them, and one of me.

It was intimidating.

Once I did participate, by submitting my Twine game howling dogs, I got harassing emails saying making howling dogs was a “crime”. Some public reviews were angry, condemning, moralistic, censuring. At the same time, people like Emily Short reached out to me, talked about my work in a different light. I found other reviews that left me teary-eyed, in a good way.

The reality was more complex, both negatively and positively, than my fears.

The point is that I almost didn’t participate at all.

We should think about how permeable we are to outsiders, not just physically but emotionally.

 It’s wonderful that, in the face of inescapable criticism, one that she could not fall back on her usual gender card to respond to, Porpentine revised her thoughts–and yet I have one massive, massive problem with this.

Other than a mention in the comments of Short’s blog, there is no notice that there has been a revision–no disclaimer. This is not a simple rephrase, a fixing of a link, or correction of a typo. This is a significant, significant change, one which takes Porpentine’s original offensively-self-aggrandizing (although what else are we to expect from a woman so interested in herself?) tone and whitewashes it.

If the New York Times were to make a similar change without letting us know, we would immediately be calling for the editor’s head. This is a massive breach of journalistic ethics, and much as Mattie Brice doesn’t want to follow rules, for her to not is to damn her little site from the beginning.

The Zinesters are very good at crying Privilege. They are very good at crying Misogyny, and Transphobia. A word that does not seem to be in their vocabulary is Responsibility. The Zinesters must not expect to be listened to if they’re so unwilling to tell the truth. Logic may be bullshit, but doesn’t it begin to seem that every word out of Porpentine’s mouth is as well?

Special thanks to Konstantinos Dimopoulos for his assistance with finding the cached version of the original article. Disclaimer: This link was added after the fact.

Filed Under: Blog

Tags: criticism wars, emily short, galatea, howling dogs, mattie brice, porpentine