Scarlet Hollow (2021)

Given the chance, I will turn every game into a lesbian romance

Scarlet Hollow
by Black Tabby Games
Release on Steam in June 2021

We all doubt ourselves sometimes. Two poems I wrote a few years ago were finally published (you can read them here and here). When I got the acceptance letter several months back, I was ecstatic, confident. While I’m still proud of them, I feel conflicted about how insular these poems are, how small they feel, how much they center the personal without acknowledging the endless maelstrom of shit that we’re all living in (and thousands upon thousands are dying in) today.

I’m looking forward to the publication of a more recent poem that’s slated to come out in June, about how I retreat into nostalgia when confronted with white people nonsense, or when I panic about anti-trans legislation and start to ration my HRT. It might not be revolutionary, but at least it exists in the real world.

I don’t think there’s anything revolutionary about me playing video games. There’s something to be said about resisting capitalist notions of productivity with rest and leisure, I guess? I write that as someone who constantly monitors my time, tallying the hours at the end of the day to make sure I did enough to justify my choice to not have steady employment.

I’m still trying to suss out what kind of cultural space I want my creative output to inhabit, or even what kinds of spaces I gravitate towards naturally. I describe the theme of this project as “middle-aged bewilderment from a trans/POC perspective.” That holds true, but upon further reflection, it might be just as much about pleasure.

It’s hard to really enjoy a video game if I don’t have the option to choose my gender—even if that choice is largely ceremonial. I played eighty hours of Elden Ring with a woman avatar, and it had no bearing on the plot or gameplay. I’m not saying that having my in-fiction gender match my real life one was necessarily empowering or affirming. But having the ability to opt out of compulsory manhood removed an obstacle that would have kept me from diving in. I spent most of my adult life pretending to be a man. I know how that story goes. 

But it goes beyond gender. Given the chance, I will turn every game into a lesbian romance. 

I’ve written a little about relationship simulator mechanics before, and how more than anything they hew closely to a transactional, gift-giving love language model. By contrast, in Scarlet Hollow, you cultivate romance first through engagement and empathy, and then through shameless flirting. 

Jess and I each had separate play-throughs, and she was aghast to hear who my character had hooked up with. How could I steal my cousin’s ex-girlfriend? Jess saw a vestigial spark that she didn’t dare extinguish. From my perspective, their relationship was ancient history. Then again, I don’t think Jess pursued any of the romantic options in the game. God bless her demisexual heart.

The dating sim elements are largely flavor, a nod to visual novel genre conventions rather than a primary focus of the narrative. They raise the stakes amid the eldritch horror plaguing the game’s eponymous southern town. They add tension. They make you care if someone lives or dies. 

I haven’t really had a taste for horror since I was nineteen (twenty-two year ago!). I still have nightmares about execution and torture scenes I’ve seen or read, my stomach churning at their brutality, with the palpable understanding that horror is real when the police or state or colonizer deems your existence inconvenient. But I like Scarlet Hollow, with all its branching tales of supernatural violence and body horror. I like a good story.