VIRTuE
Date
2023-09-13
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Abstract
VIRTuE is a visual novel developed in the software Ren’Py, the plot of which follows Vi, a “twenty-something” lesbian who has recently graduated from college, but who has now found herself unemployed, directionless, and facing mounting pressure from her parents to actually do something with her life. The story escalates, however, when a love poem Vi writes gains public attention after becoming a runner-up in a queer writing contest, and this newfound “success” leads her into a downward spiral of stress and anxiety. At its core, VIRTuE explores the pressures placed upon queer people by various “normativities” within our lives — from heteronormativity, to homonormativity, to chrononormativity — and the ways that attempting to mold oneself to fit into these normativities is inevitably a process of compromising one’s own queer identity. Throughout the game, Vi faces pressures to alter both herself and her work to avoid (both real and perceived) social rejection in a heteronormative world, illustrating the realities of life as a queer artist, but also simply as a young queer adult attempting to find one’s way in the world. As a protagonist, however, Vi also serves the purpose of challenging homonormativity, as she is intentionally written to be awkward, frustrating, and only dubiously likeable, thus deviating from media depictions of queer characters which may be “sanitized” for straight audiences and thus deprived of the opportunity to be controversial, messy, or otherwise truly queer. VIRTuE is also accompanied by a critical exegesis, “Boring Gay People: Homonormativity vs. the Queer Games Avant-Garde,” which further expands on the exploration of homonormativity in the game, and also details the significance of the project being specifically a video game. Toward the latter, the exegesis highlights the growing community of queer game developers within the “queer games avant-garde” who are changing the face of both art and gaming, and explores the unique potential held by games as a storytelling medium, including the ways that VIRTuE’s story is enhanced by being told through a game.
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Keywords
homonormativity, game studies, queergaming, queer games avant-garde
Citation
Williamson, E. V. (2023). VIRTuE Title (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.