Month: March 2023

Gone Home

I wasn’t able to play the game myself so I decided to watch a few YouTube videos. Before I watched the video I honestly thought it would be a creepy game it wasn’t though. Katie had arrived back at her parents house on June 7th,1995.When she got there no one was there to open the door but there was a note from her sister. Her sister had ran away and her parents were MIA so she had to go search for clues and find out why and how everything happened . I did like watching the game I feel like I would probably have to download it soon .

” Riot Grrrl Manifesto “

This movement started in the early 1990’s by Washington State band Bikini Kill and Lead singer Kathleen Hanna. I supported everything addressed in this . “BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak. ” (Kathleen Hanna, ” Riot Grrrl Manifesto”)This is definitely something that happens on a daily and its so disturbing to think people really underestimate. People think women aren’t built to do it all and that’s where their wrong. ” “BECAUSE we don’t wanna assimilate to someone else’s (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.” (Kathleen Hanna, ” Riot Grrrl Manifesto”) I agree 100%! Earlier today I saw a post about that dealing with some famous people this man was saying how he couldn’t be with a woman that don’t act like a woman . I’ll never understand why they think it’s them that has to have complete control. ” People are so uncomfortable when empowered fem ” ( Femme Power Make-Up Tutorial by Ariana Rodriquez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Qvooc91eQ) , I definitely agree and think that goes in hand with this .

Some video games I enjoy playing would be Sims 4 pc version , Warzone and Mortal Kombat. A few things I do to bring me joy would be play my game , make Tik Tok’s or go enjoy some fresh air.

Research Essay

I had to really think on it but the two things I thought about writing about were the fact that men feel comfortable telling a woman what she should and shouldn’t wear , the second one is the weight differences female go through and what they have to deal with once any one else realizes. I believe it has a lot to due with gender studies its something females deal with on a daily and its been like that.

The Riot Grrrl movement was a wave of feminism with an essence of punk-rock. In Gone Home, we can get a feel of the riot grrl essence through Katie’s sister, Samantha. She had “zine” style posters in her room and listened to female punk rock music. In the Riot Grrrl Manifesto by Kathleen Hanna, we learn that this movement was unapologetically by women and for women, that is, women who wanted to make a stand against the status quo. Hanna wrote about these status quos by saying that they are “meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams” (Hanna, 1991). Hanna and other riot grrrl participants, led by example in inspiring girls to follow their passions, be unafraid to take up space, and to use their voice. In Transformation of Silence into Language, Audre Lorde backed this message when she wrote, “And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives” (p.43). Lorde is telling us that we will never overcome those status quos and social norms that keep girls in an inferior position until we fully realize our responsibility in the fight and take action. Gone Home fights against the overly common “damsel in distress” troupe that Anita Sarkeesian discussed on her youtube channel. Instead of the typical male lead, we played from the perspective of Katie and the game centered around female-narratives. Even though I don’t really play video games, it was really refreshing to see a change from the typical plot of men being the hero’s and saving the helpless females.

In the Riot Grrl Manifesto, Kathleen Hanna expressed that riot grrrls are “unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary ‘reverse sexists'” (Hanna, 1991). In other words, this movement rejects the idea that all feminist hate men or that feminist ideas are anti-male. This harmful and inaccurate assumption has commonly been made to weaken the impact of feminist movements and to skew the real messages they are sharing. For example, in Feminism is for Everyone by Audre Lorde, the author discusses how the real “enemy” of feminist movements is sexism, not men. She wrote, “the movement is not about being anti-male. It makes it clear that the problem is sexism. And that clarity helps us remember that all of us, female and male, have been socialized from birth on to accept sexist thought and action” (p. viii). Hanna and Lorde both share how society has shaped gender in a way that has aligned women with inferiority and encourage us to abandon patriarchal ways of thinking in order to foster equality and empowerment for all.

---

Research Essay Ideas:

For my research essay, I am interested in writing about how gender shapes childhood development. Or more specifically, the initial agents of gender socialization: family and school. I think that this would be a good topics for my essay because this course has already given us a glimpse what of gender socialization looks like in the United States and I think it will be interesting to explore the effects it has on individuals and our society at large. For my cultural artifact, I could use a children’s book that reflects how children in the U.S learn about gender.

Another topic that seems interesting to me is how gender shapes the criminal justice system. I think this would be a good topic for this essay because it would involve many themes and issues that we have covered in this course like intersectionality and toxic masculinity. For my cultural artifact, I could use the movie “Crash”.

---

Part One: Gone Home | Riot Grrrl | Audre Lorde

So this week I learned I’m not much of a gamer. I downloaded and attempted to play Gone Home much to the protests of my apparently ancient Macbook and in spite of my inability to swiftly and competently learn how to literally move about (those keys are awkward, and I moved so slooooow!) and operate a video game (What am I doing? Where am I going? Am I doing this right?).

While I was able to pick up on some of the themes on my own, I’ll admit I had to turn to the internet to see how the game ended and uncover all the Greenbriar family secrets. I called it quits after about an hour and a half — never unlocking the basement or other hidden rooms and definitely not gaining entry into the attic. 

What I was able to discover and understand, was that each person who lived in the house (Sam, Janice, Terry) was wrestling with change, experiencing internal conflicts, and had uncertainty about the world around them. 

By exploring artifacts throughout the house, each player’s stories were revealed.

Sam, a teenager who just moved to a new house and started a new school, was beginning to develop new interests in movies, music, art, and pop culture, thanks in part to a new friend named Lonnie. Slowly we learn that Lonnie becomes much more than a friend and is actually romantically involved with Sam.

Mother Janice, unhappy with her marriage, struggles to find ways to connect with her husband. She fills her calendar with couples activities, reads self-help, and turns to an old friend for advice. We also learn this discontent in her marriage may be leading to feelings toward a work colleague. The father, Terry, is a published writer going through a writing slump and is currently (and not so well) writing technology reviews. While the letter Katie found in her father’s desk from his dead uncle Oscar roused suspicions and gave me pause about their relationship (I had a hunch something indecent happened), I was unable to substantiate anything because I wasn’t able to make it far enough into the game (apparently the clues to that storyline live in the basement). Luckily for me, and courtesy of other gamers, there’s lots of speculation about the father’s past and possible sexual abuse at the hands of the uncle to be found on the web. 

I provide this background so that the connections I make to works and themes we’ve explored in the class are more clear. 

Gender Readings | Riot Grrrl | Audre Lorde

Most notably, Sam chooses to express her changing personality through the embrace of the 1990s Riot Grrrl movement, which used music and art to challenge social norms about gender roles, identity, beauty, and sexuality. Throughout the house, you find mix tapes featuring 90s bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and see posters and magazines featuring artists like Black Francis, Lisa Loeb, Kurt Cobain, and others.

You find out that Sam’s parents feel like they don’t understand her anymore and you discover evidence of her changing — her storytelling (in her long-running story, the first mate is written first as male than female), her appearance (red hair dye in the bathroom), her friends (Daniel is a “weirdo”), her interests (playing video games with Daniel). 

Authors Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele tell us in Queer: A Graphic History that we “Queer things when we resist ‘regimes of normal’: The ‘normative’ ideals of aspiring to be normal in identity, behaviour, appearance, relationships, etc.” (13). Not only was Sam affirming her sexuality, but she was also queering her place in the world and exploring her identity on multiple fronts. 

These changes are a reflection of what Catherine Valentine writes about in “The Prism of Gender.” She says, “Research shows that the behavior of people, no matter who they are, depends on time and place, context and situation — not on fixed sex/gender/sexuality differences” (5). The time, place, and situation Sam was placed in and created shaped and formed her behavior. 

I think Sam would very much identify with something Ijeoma Olua said in “So You Want to Talk About Race.” Olua spoke about experiencing an internal shift in thought and action — something inside her changed and that change meant she could no longer quiet her inner voice and remain silent about slights and injustices. She said, “I had started to see myself, and once you start to see yourself, you cannot pretend anymore.” Through Lonnie, Sam began to see herself and that truth then also poured into the many aspects of her life. 

This speaking your personal truth, regardless of discomfort or even consequence, is what Audre Lorde writes about in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” In this essay, Lorde writes: “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect” (40).

I think some of what Lorde writes about can also be applied to the father’s internal struggle. There is speculation on the web that his preoccupation with JFK and 1963 is connected to his possible abuse, that 1963 was the year something happened to him. That these books were a way he was trying to cope and work through his personal issues. In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Lorde encourages us to consider all the words we have yet to find all the things we have left unsaid —  “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” (41).

Part Two

---

Topic Idea #1:

• Gender and social media use: Does gender influence how and why people use and interact with social media?
  • Explore differences in how male and female-identified users choose and use different social media platforms. 
  • Examine the differences and similarities and see if they tie back to normalized ideas about gender and gender expectations. 
  • Explore whether social media disrupts or reinforces social norms and gender expectations. 
• Artifacts: Contrast and compare social media accounts of individuals who identify as male/female/nonbinary [Instagram and TikTok might be good visual examples]. Look for and examine first-person accounts of social media experiences from people who identify as male/female/nonbinary through blog posts, song, poetry, articles, etc. 

Topic Idea #2:

• Gender and social media effects: Does social media use impact people differently based on their gender?
  • Does gender play a role in people’s online experiences — are there negative or positive outcomes based on gender? 
• Artifacts: Look for and examine first-person accounts of social media experiences from people who identify as male/female/nonbinary through blog posts, songs, poetry, articles, etc.  

Topic Idea #3:

• The impact of gender roles and expectations on mental health and well-being: How do gender roles and expectations impact mental health?
  • How does the pressure to conform impact one’s mental and emotional health?
  • What role do gender-specific trauma and violence play? 
  • Is access to mental health care impacted by gender?
• Look for and examine first-person accounts of mental health experiences written by people who identify as male/female/nonbinary through blog posts, songs, poetry, articles, art, etc. 

GONE HOME

Even though I didn’t get a chance to really play the game and get the feel of the whole story line, from the video that was shared on YouTube with someone playing the game, I took away so much from just a hour video.  There is a girl name Katie who had returned from overseas. She was so excited to see and spend so much time with her father, mother, and teenage sister Sam. She gets home to discover that they aren’t nowhere to be found, and she finds a letter on the front door from Sam. Sam wrote about how she went away and to not come looking for her. So, throughout the game Katie has to find little clues around the house to help her understand what happen to her family since she was away. My first reaction to the video game, was suspense. I wanted to know more just like Katie did. I was very concern about what happened to the family, and I felt like I was in the video games with her discovering so many different clues. I would honesty get the game,  and would play it to discover all of the hidden secrets.

Kathleen Hanna (1991), “Riot Grrrl Manifesto”

I feel that The Riot Grrrl Manifesto was a movement that Washington State band Bikini Kill and lead singer Kathleen Hanna that voiced how many women wanted to just be free to express themselves through music. Whether it was with anger, rage, or just being loud. I feel that they wanted to speak up for many girls around who were afraid of jumping out of the norm society has given girls. When society sometimes think about rock music, people tend to just think about predominantly male bands. It was very closed off to females. When you really think about punk rock music, we tend to think about a very loud deep, dark voice, with these large guitars and these crazy movements on stage. A lot of people don’t really see women going these things, because they always wanted to put us into a box and keep us controlled. Even in history women were looked down upon if they didn’t act a certain way.

 I feel like for the past few weeks we have been focusing on the many ways society puts us in these categories and how we have over come these standards. Like with the Feminist movement, women fought to have the same rights as men. The Combahee River Collective Statement, Women of color and women of lesbian came together to fight the fact that even though the women rights movement was a success, they still didn’t include all women of color and sexuality. The Queer theory! Queer was once a negative term, and the LGBT community took the word and made it something positive. All these different moments in history can really connect with the Riot Grrl movement. The fight to just be themselves without being criticized and judged. For acceptance.

Research Assignment!

“Gone Home”

I didn’t get a chance to play Gone Home but I was able to view someone playing the game. I must say my first look at the game it was almost giving a horror theme/concept to it. Well not so much as horror but thriller. By the end of the game, I was able to understand what was fully going on. So, to my understanding Kate is telling the story from her perspective but the game is about Sam and Lonnie expressing their love for each other and Kate’s parents were not so supportive. So that caused Sam and Lonnie to run away together and Kate’s parents disappearing as well. It’s a bit surreal so I think. I mean I have never been in this situation, but it sounds a bit fiction that the parents will disappear due to their child running away to be with her girlfriend. Maybe I missed a part of it. Or didn’t quite understand the reason her parents left. But when I get a chance, I will play it myself so I can get a better understanding.

“Gone Home Similarities”

This game reminds me of earlier texts such as: Coming Out game, and the situation of how coming out to your parents can be scary and lead to different outcomes. Also, they relate in how you can’t help how nor who you love.

“Riot Grrrl Manifesto”

This text speaks volume when talking about sexism in this society. The GRRRL movement questions society and their gender norms and gives society statements to really think about how we as a whole have no idea how sexism and masculinity affects the women in this life. “we hate capitalism in all its forms and see our main goal as sharing information and staying alive, instead of making profits of being cool according to traditional standards.” I feel as though Hanna was basically saying in this text that this is not a trend you just participate in because you think it’s cool and that this is serious injustice.

Research Essay

I think with the essay, I want to research more on history of LGBT and how far it goes back and dates and timelines. Just so I can see the history of coming out and how it has differed from society of today. I want to know how it is also similar to society now. I feel if we look at the history and different scholars aspects and perspectives of history maybe it would be an eye opener for people who have a hard time understanding it because of gender norms and society norms.

I did not find the video game “Gone Home” very interesting. I am not that much of a gamer so It was very hard for me to be entertained by it. For the most part, I thought it was going to be a game of horror because of how the scene was darkened. I was anticipating a jump scare. Most video games that I have seen people play have been more of action, but the Gone Home video game was more calm and detailed with the letters.

In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” Audre Lorde speaks about how she had to have surgery and how the silence in her waiting period was strenuous for her. She further elucidates how her team of nurses and doctors were encouraging her and rooting for her. It made her feel better and broke the ice a bit. The silence was turned into a good thing in the end.

A song that truly cheers me up is “All in His Plan” by P.J. Morton. I suggest everyone listen to it. It is a very calming tune.

Gone home was a really interesting game that I don’t usually play. I enjoyed the game though because it was something different that I don’t usually play, going around the house opening different drawers and other things to find out what happened about the family that lived in the house. It kind of felt like a horror game at first but it’s not a horror, you’re just trying to open the truth about the queer teenager and how he and his family’s drama. The Riot Grrrl Movement was a good thing because it brought females together to make more punk music, art, etc. I love punk music and love that type of style, so I love it all and love the fact that women came together and got stronger by making new things. What Lorde was trying to say is that we need to break the silence and speak what’s in your heart, playing the game the teenager needed to tell his family what he’s been going through and what’s within his heart and not hold it back or hide it from everyone.

“Discussions of class differences occurred early on in contemporary feminism, preceding discussions of race. Diana Press published revolutionary insights about class divisions between women as early as the mid-’70s in their collection of essays Class and Feminism. These discussions did not trivialize the feminist insistence that “sisterhood is powerful,” they simply emphasized that we could only become sisters in struggle by confronting the ways women – through sex, class, and race – dominated and exploited other women, and created a political plat- form that would address these differences” – hooks. Through differences and through pain women can come together and face anything. In Riot grrrl women all across America came together and worked their differences to create something beautiful and to create a movement that other women can come together and be a part of. I love playing video games and the only video game that makes me think of this class is Cyber punk, cyber punk is a futuristic video game with people who are half robots. There are females, males, and other sexes and intersexes in the game as well and the main character doesn’t look at anyone any different than everyone else.

Education and friendships are two topics I want to talk about. Education for younger children for different genders and stuff like that is needed because they will meet people and see people or even themselves that aren’t what they are. They need to be taught that there’s nothing bad about anyone that’s a different gender from them and not to be afraid or treat anyone differently that isn’t their gender. That is where the second topic comes into play. Kids and people in general need to make bridges and friendships with anyone instead of hating and discriminating against people who are different from them. I think these topics are a good fit because these are two important topics that need to heard and taught when talking about gender studies.

The video game Gone Home was a very interesting game. It was a very slow game, but it did hold a lot of emotions. I rarely see video games like this one, so it was interesting to see. I was happy at the end that Katie’s sister was able to go with her girlfriend and be happy.

I had no idea what the Riot Grrrl movement was until this assignment. Learning about them was fun. I enjoyed how they let their true feelings out and their personality felt like it was radiating out of the text as I read the text.

Audre Lorde (1977), “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”

Keywords: Silence, Language, Difference(s)

Lorde argues that silence brings about more harm than good. They state how speaking out. The statement that “language has been made to work against us” stood out to me the most as today’s society, people believe it is best to stay silent about certain things despite it desperately needing to be talked about as there are “many silences” that need to be broken (Lorde, Page 43). Language has become something to be feared though it helps set people free.

Kathleen Hanna (1991), “Riot Grrrl Manifesto”

Keywords: Sexism, Girl(s), Revolution

The silencing of voices can be found in both Gone Home, The Grrrls, and the work by Lorde. The way the silencing occurs in the game is from the homophobia that is riddled through it because two of the characters are gay. There are many connections to be found between the two, but these stood out the most to me. In the game, the mother tried to brush off the sister’s sexuality as only a phase. There are many more examples of this throughout the game that is not only from the parents but at school as well. They try to silence her and her girlfriend as they don’t want to accept them for who they are. Language and actions combined were used as a weapon to try to repress the girls and make them conform to what is considered acceptable. In Riot Grrrl, this is also the case. One quote that supports this is, “we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused or turned against us via the internalization of sexism” (Riot Grrrls). Their voices are being repressed due to the sexism that plagues society and the gender norms that try to constrain them from being who they are and want to be.

Some quotes that connect to this as well:

1. “Masculinity and heterosexuality are privileged, while femininity and homosexuality are denigrated.” (Valentine 2020, Page 6)
2. “Seven norms of the Western masculinity ideology: Avoidance of Femininity, Fear and Hatred of Homosexuals, Self-Reliance, Aggression, Achievement/Status, Non-Relational Attitudes Toward Sex, and Restrictive Emotionality.” (Yogachandra 2014, Page 4)

Research Essay

1. Found Family
2. Fandom/Fan Culture

For my research essay, I would like to explore mainly found family dynamics within the LGBTQ community. I like found families as it is a great way to show how anyone can be your family, even if they aren’t related to you by blood. I see gender roles may affect how families function or how they are made. I believe it would be a good fit for the research essay assignment because family is an incredibly important thing. Humans require communities to thrive, and this topic fits that perfectly. Having a family can aid you even in the worst of your days. I am unsure what cultural artifact I would use for it, but I may end up using a documentary, movie, or video game. If I don’t do found family, I will go with fan culture. I am in a lot of fandoms and see various takes on gender in each of them. The culture around fandoms has been built around the shared ideas of people within the fandoms, so it would be a great insight into what people think about gender and things like it. I would use various games and series that have large or small fandoms as my cultural artifact for this.

______________________________________________________________

—– Riot Grrrl Movement —–

This movement was started in the early 1990s by a band and the lead singer Kathleen Hanna. This movement was started because they were tired of the constant sexism in society so they wanted to be heard. There was one line that I really think is fitting for what they wanted to start this movement and it was ” BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl=Dumb, Girl= Bad, Girl=Weak.“( Kathleen Hanna (1991), “Riot Grrrl Manifesto”). This goes on to show how woman are constantly seen as this fragile thing that has to be protected but also a group who “don’t know” what they are talking about or are doing. Which is how the people who started this movement were feeling in society and had enough of it.

“When we analyze the power relations constituting all social arrangements and shaping woman’s lives in distinctive ways, we can begin to grapple with core feminist issues about how genders are socially constructed and constructed differently.”(Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill (1996), “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism”). Feel like with this from Maxine and Bonnie can also sum up how it all can go back to it just being about gender and how we as a society are split in two between men and women and have different “roles” just because of what our gender is when like we have talked about before gender is a phenomenon created by society to keep it organized. With that movements like the Riot Grrrl start because one can start being more oppressed than the other.

______________________________________________________________

—— Gone Home ——

So I watched a YouTube video of someone else playing it with no commentary in the video which was nice but also with how silent it was it was very eerie feeling that the first 30 mins of the video I had my face covered because I was expecting some type of jump scare. I went into this video not knowing at all of what it was about until I read some of the comments then I saw where the game was going but I still had my guard up incase something would happen. The look of the game very much gave me that impression of “scary” and “spooky” with how dark everything was even if I had my brightness up all the way on my iPad.

Anyways moving on to how I felt about the overall game. I liked it for sure! I was kind of lost at the beginning of the game just because we were going through everything in the house to find out why Katie’s family wasn’t there. She later starts finding clues, mixed tapes her sister Sam had left behind and just notes to hint as to where she was and her parents. I know there was two stories to this game which was Sam’s and Lonnie’s and then both Sam and Katie’s parents with their troubled marriage. Not gonna lie I watch an extra video that explained the whole story of the game after I watched the play through of it. So I didn’t really see carefully about her parents going to a couples retreat even though it was shown many times I just personally was so focused on Sam and how it ended for her. I really thought something bad had happened to her but then later finding out she ran away basically with Lonnie I was glad since her parents did not really agree with how she was feeling towards Lonnie. At the same time I also felt kind of sad for Katie. She was excited to come home after being away for a year I believe, so having to come home and find out that your little sister has ran off and your parents being gone either still at that couples retreat or out looking for her is a lot.

______________________________________________________________

— The Transformation of Silence into —Language and Action

After seeing her life on the line Lorde began to reflect on many things in her life and started to change some, one being more vocal and how much power it holds compared to being silent all the time. Reading this was very much “speak out now or forever hold your peace” type thing in my mind(if that even makes any sense) but all Lorde wanted to get across is how speaking up and breaking the silence of many women out there can do so much as a whole and better the community we live in. “And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own.” (Audre Lorde (1977), “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”). Think this quote from her reading can help you understand what I’m trying to get across here about what she talked about with just breaking the silence and getting out of that safe corner she mentioned.

— Ideas I want to explore for the research essay —

So far the one topic that comes to my mind that I would like to learn more about is the gender stereotypes in hispanic/latin cultures. A lot which I wanna focus on is with machismo(which is just the masculine aggressive pride in some men) and how some families still go off with the tradition way of catering to the “man of the house” and do everything for them basically. (Calling my own family out but mind you I appreciate both of my parents but I definitely don’t agree with how they run things you know) For example in my house my mom tends to always cater to my dad and does so many things for him because he’s the only man in our house and is the one who makes the most money etc. Never do I really see my dad cater for my mom when he has a day off work and she’s the one out working. Sometimes she tells me how she wishes she would come home one day to see the house tidy with food already made for her so she can just sit down and eat. While if the roles were reversed and my mom didn’t cook dinner after my dad is off work then it’s the end of the world. I feel like this is how it is in most hispanic/latin families where the woman is catering for any of the men in the house. I believe it should be equality expected from both sides of the partnership. So this is my one and only idea I have so far and will most likely end up doing it for my paper.

— Things I do to help my stress —

Being 110% crying honestly helps me so much. Not sure if that’s even healthy or okay to do but I really do enjoy having a crying session because of how much stress/emotions I have built up because I just don’t have anyone I can really trust to talk to other than my friends from back home who generally talk me through everything and anything. Another thing I do is sometimes just sit down and breathe for a min and walk around in whatever space I’m in because I start to feel antsy if I’m just sitting down for so long. These last couple of days have been something for me just because of my car situation and it going out on me when I needed it to move around for the job I have at a school with one of my professor so it was just a lot for me to deal with on my own without having someone I trust who can like help me out with car stuff like my dad does. With all of that happening and more it also made me realize how much I miss my family and with my car being messed up in the moment I couldn’t drive the 3 hours to go see them and get help. Thankfully I did have my partner who came and helped me and was there when the mechanics came to fixed my car so it’s all good now. Just waiting for spring break to come and be on the little trip me and my partner have and celebrate her birthday as well.

Gone Home

The Gone Home game was interesting to me, it’s not a game that I would typically play. It is a lot more relaxed than anything else I have ever played. I was expecting it to be a horror game because of the overall look and vibe of the game. It was surprising to find no horror elements when finally playing the game. I like the purpose of the game and the overall goal, but the actual gameplay isn’t something I am used to. The entire game is typically a small part of other games. In other games, searching around and reading through material takes up only a small portion of the game. However, Gone Home takes that same concept and makes it into an entire game.

This game reminds me a lot of Life is Strange, especially with Sam’s notes to Lonnie with the doodling included. It reminds me a lot of Max’s journals and the different doodles by a character named Kate that are seen throughout the game. Lonnie and Sam’s relationship also reminded my of the friendship/relationship of the main characters of Life is Strange.

Making Connections

In terms of connections to other material we’ve seen in this class. Sam and Lonnie’s situation reminds me of the coming out game. Sam mentioned wanting to go out with Lonnie to go to a concert. There is also a magazine or comic book titled, “Women outlaws.” One man is seen saying “no female is gonna tell me..” before being cut off by the main woman pictured kicking him. The comic is clearly all about empowering women and showing that they are just as capable as men despite the criticism from the other side. “To end patriarchy (another way of naming the institutionalized sexism) we need to be clear that we are all participants in perpetuating sexism until we change our minds and hearts, until we let go of sexist thought and action and replace it with feminist thought and action” (Hooks ix). This quote connects to the cover of the comic well. 

RIOT GRRRL

Riot Grrrl deals with several topics like seeking inclusion, patriarchy, empowerment, and a number of other things. The very beginning part says, “BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.” This is related to concepts of women of color in feminist spaces even though it was originally targeted towards women in general. A lot of women of color tend to seek others like them because there are experiences regarding feminism that are unique to them. “It is the centrality of race, of institutionalized racism, and of struggles against racial oppression that link the various feminist perspectives within this framework. Together, they demonstrate that racial meanings offer new theoretical directions for feminist thought” (Zinn and Dill 321).

Research Essay Exploration

I potentially want to explore queer representation in video games or inclusion in the beauty/makeup communities. The topic of queerness in video games interests me because there are a lot of video games that I like that explore the topic of sexuality and I think it could be fun to possibly explore the topic. Games like Life is Strange and The last of us are games that I would be interested in focusing on. I would specifically want to look at how the games go about providing representation. The cultural artifact I could use is either a painting or a movie. For inclusion in the makeup community, I really enjoy makeup even though I struggle with perfecting it myself. I think it would be interesting to see what makeup has done for people with varying gender identities. For this topic, the cultural artifact I would want to include photographs of different makeup styles throughout history.