Oh! I thought you were making a joke!

The controversy is around Eric's entry Saturday Night which includes a couple of "adult images". This was something we discussed a lot while he was creating his Twine--and yes, we enjoyed the crude humor and shock value of it, I won't lie, but in all seriousness, Eric's piece is one that I find to be very poignant and sad. The overall effect is, for me, of someone looking for a romantic connection and, essentially, being assaulted by pictures of cocks--the implication that, okay, here's your Saturday night--and, by extension, here's an entire world of shitty guys who are unable to connect with each other. So the cocks stayed.

We did talk about the presentation of this, because I did feel there needed to be some sort of warning, and we felt that the "not safe for work" disclaimer was enough. We have had a few friends--and Joel, right?--who have said, "yeah, I was at work and I ignored the warning," and I, frankly, think it's hilarious, because, I mean...we told you not to play this at work. It's like telling a kid not to touch the stove because it's hot and he touches the fucking stove.

Speaking of kids, this whole, "what if a kid were to play this"--look, I'm on record as a person who dislikes children and doesn't understand them at all, but that doesn't seem at all like my problem. I am in no way pitching this event towards children, and in fact I think I did tweet at a teacher who'd been sharing the exhibition link with a few friends and said, hey, just so you know there's some adult content here so screen it carefully--although now that I'm thinking about it, I might not have actually done that.

I guess, for me, there's a degree to which I think it's stupid to put "caution: hot" on the lid of a coffee cup because you know it's hot. This is an avant-garde art exhibition put together in a fairly niche corner of the internet. By the time you even get to Eric's piece, if you've been playing things in order, you've got a shooty action sequence, a vulgar and hilarious murder simulator, an examination of kink, a fairy tale which admittedly the whole family can enjoy, a violent horror story, and a convoluted political simulator from a Marxist perspective.

If you've gone that far and you think that this is for children, then I would think you're the sort of person who probably would understand that any child old enough to navigate to fear of twine and fine the cock pics is probably old enough to understand the basics of humanity; no matter what sex or gender the child is, they're going to see an image of an erect human penis at some point. The images in question and in context are not hardcore pornographic images; they were purposely chosen for being almost anti-erotic, they're literally closeup cock shots--and you know what? Twine is, uh, known for its share of pornographic and erotic games, and while they ain't my bag to play and I'm fond of making fun of them, you know, I may not agree with what you twine but I will defend to the death your right to twine it.

So I guess my joke was related to the fact that I felt like everyone was talking nonsense and I wanted to talk nonsense too.

I don't understand what the fuss is about, but I'm not surprised. I think Saturday Night is excellent, because it actually works on a surprising number of levels (satirical, sad, funny, shocking people with something completely mundane).

Actually I was flummoxed by the "Grab my phone" command at the beginning of the game because all my phone does is call people.

I just bang my head against my desk in Morse code.

So completely derailing that intfiction.org thread into a discussion of duck penis was my main accomplishment of the day.

That's a pretty good day, really.

I approve massively. The only problem is that in the still-unfinished exhibition guide, I have a bit talking about how that thread went from attempting to talk about the works to talking about WHAT IS GAME, and there's a bit to the effect of, "Last time I checked, they were talking about Dear Esther. Dear motherfucking Esther, for chrissakes." Which isn't true anymore, and the duck penis stuff isn't as impactful :)

Good. There's no settling the matter in some people's minds. What is a game? Duck penis.

It's our "42".

I just tweeted it.

I have just been informed that the duck penis image is actually a snuff photograph.

Here is a video about Isabella Rossellini.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NBDNirNI2Iw

The IF community is a very strange beast. I find curious the people who are bashing Debt for being a poor "cyoa IF game", which...it's not a game. It's not a cyoa and I don't even think it's IF. What it is...I guess it's a duck penis.