- Nov 19, 2017
- 261
- 344
Not to detract from the very worrying news, but If I can add to this a second.
I obviously do not know the author and won't presume shit about him, nor put thoughts in his head or anything, but from how I, personally, myself, again this is all me I might be high on black mold and gas leaks or something for all I know, read it:
I don't think we should read Power Vacuum very... utilitarian messaging, so to speak, about relationships as genuine. I think this is, again, probably satire. I do think multiple house games follow, if subconsciously, that same message, and this game is simply putting into words that very recurring theme, exposing the Metanarrative of these sort of games, and the inherent societal desires and hang-ups they come from.
Let's put it this way:
Stop me if you heard this one before: Once upon a time, there is an American Nuclear Family, one of the pillars of American Society, with ONE Hard Working, Bread Winning Father, his devout and nurturing and a lot of other motherly adjective wife who does not work, and their 2-3 children, the classic number to go for, an older sister, a middle brother, and a younger sister.
The details of the family might change, some masks might be missing, others might be present, but this is the gist of it: Something happens. Maybe the father is dead, or maybe he had to leave for a business trip, or maybe he's in prison, be as it may, the family is left with a vacuum in the main father figure, a vacuum the Middle Brother will have to fulfil, to protect his family from external threats, thus assuming, again, the role of Patriarchal Protector and Breadwinner of the family.
The threat is usually economic in nature, and the Middle Brother always resolves it by pulling himself up by his bootstraps and becoming a entrepreneur, usually by selling the sexual labour of his families. He is the Pater Familias of Latin Time, who has right of life and death onto the members of the household in a way. Its his choice who can lead the people under his care to either thrive or lose everything, and he must be worthy of it, always tested at every angle to stop, again, the external threats from winning.
He has to win every single battle, while his enemies only need to win once.
Again, by its very nature the House Game Genre is rife with "problematic" content even if you take away the hidden cameras or the drugs. Hunter, even without all of that, still presents a very patriarchal, very Misogynistic view of the family and of society, with "predator-men" and "prey-women," and while the game doesn't really challenge that world view you can also say that the only reason why that world view isn't challenged is because Sterling is directly benefiting from it, and so are Drew and Futa Ophelia in What If 8 for that matter.
Like, the game having a villain with a gender essentialist view of the world while also having a major trans woman character is obviously trying to say SOMETHING. The way one of the ways for Hunter to defeat Sterling was by turning him into a Woman, the way AGAIN this story can be read as a perfect condensation of every single house game that came before it, a Commedia Dell'Arte- Commedia Del Porno I guess? A Commedia Del Porno with different actors who all wear all the same masks, and different stories that all follow the same Canovaccio...
Again, maybe I am reading too much into it, but I feel the disingenuous and again wrong messaging about the American nuclear family is, in a way, done on purpose, because a villain is professing these views, because he is literally mass drugging everyone to make these views real, and most importantly, because it's taking the piss to when other games also do it but from the protagonist.
Remember, one of the first meta gags you can do in the game is have Sterling call you a fucking psychopath for even suggesting he did anything to his sleeping mom.
