it's just a body: let the lights bleed ramble

Hi! Your favorite Little Guy, Naarel here! First of all, happy Pride Month! Now that this is out of the way, I guess I'll ramble a little about let the lights bleed. Oh boy. This will be less structured than the usual post-release rambles I do. Obviously, all trigger warnings that apply to the game apply to the devlog. Also, heads up for some transphobia.

The whole damn background

Let me get something out of the way first: let the lights bleed isn't something I went through. Not physically, at least. I live in the middle of nowhere and that means that many of the relationships I had over the course of several years were mostly long distance - sometimes in other towns, sometimes in whole other country or on a different damn continent. Growing up queer in isolation, you just tend to drift towards people who'll accept you as you are, and there's far more of those people online than anywhere else.

Now, I won't be going into the extremely uncomfortable details of my cybersexual past because nobody wants that, but there is one experience I need to talk about, and it's the expectation of performance. Sometimes, I felt like I was expected to be sexual - otherwise, I haven't received much interest from the other party. It felt like I couldn't say "no" to an advance, otherwise I'd be treated with "mhm"s and "okay"s and "cool"s tinged with passive-aggressive energy. If I couldn't give them what they wanted, if I couldn't fulfill their fantasies, I was basically useless; while I was told that it's okay to say "no", it didn't feel like it at all.

It does a number on you. It really does. Sooner or later you find yourself measuring your own worth by how you can satisfy others. Even though it wasn't physical, I still felt like just a body on autopilot, mechanically typing away whatever the other party wanted to read. I'm not trying to compare my experience to people who experienced it physically because it's a whole another brand of terror, but I feel like this isn't something people talk about a lot. You can still be just a body when there's no actual body involved; the idealized virtual body I created for myself was, still, an object.

Being trans is, whether you want it or not, a very physical experience. If you're dysphoric, you have the hyperawareness of your own body. If you're not dysphoric, you're told that you should be hyperaware of your own body. The things you do with your body, or the things that you don't do with your body, all is going to be scrutinized. If you don't pursue medical transition, you're faking it. If you pursue medical transition, you're ruining your body. If you're asexual, it's clearly your transness destroying your nature. If you seek sex, you're clearly a pervert. We're seen through the lens of our bodies, over and over again. Transphobes mourn "mutilated female bodies" under pictures of trans men after top surgery while searching up trans women porn at the same time.

There's a lot to be said about the objectification of trans people. I mean. A lot. But I think it's morbidly fascinating since it comes in so many disgusting flavors. And the unfortunate truth is that many of us struggle with feeling attractive. Many of us will settle for scraps because otherwise, we'd go hungry. I remember being on reddit, reading all the posts from fellow transmascs that always went along the same lines: "my girlfriend called me a girl during sex", "my boyfriend touches my chest while we fuck", "is it normal that my partner doesn't want me to take testosterone?". And some things kept repeating. The "they apologized, but did it again anyway", the "but they're not transphobic, they treat me properly otherwise", the "I don't want to break up with them", the "if they leave me, I'll be left alone". So many of us feel like we have to settle for people who want our bodies instead of us, for people who don't particularly care, or even for people who think that sex can "fix us", or make us "cis again". Our vulnerability is being exploited for sexual gratification.

I started wondering about it all. About the need to be wanted and how it can bring you to a point of desperation you'd never be in otherwise. About the way it feels to be seen as your body, the way being wanted for your body instead of who you are affects you, the things you can forgive in order to have some temporary peace. I started wondering if I'd be the same if my relationships were all in the physical realm of things, and realized that I probably would. And so, I started writing a lot of poetry to cope with this feeling.

But the idea for let the lights bleed didn't come to me until one particular night, when I was listening to Gibson Girl by Ethel Cain.

Now, if you don't know Preacher's Daughter by Ethel Cain (whose actual name is Hayden Silas Anhedönia), you must know that this is one of my favorite albums of all time, unironically. It tells this whole elaborate story of Ethel Cain (the character, not Hayden), the titular preacher's daughter. And Ethel's story is horrific, filled with abuse and violence, and eventually ending with her tragic death. Gibson Girl is a really dark track which has the sexual objectification and abuse at its center... but fuck, it's hypnotizing, it's catchy, and I can't help but come back to it. And... and there's a line here that stuck with me ever since I listened to it for the first time.

And if you hate me/Please don't tell me/Just let the lights bleed/All over me

Wow, title drop! Time to wrap this up!

Now, I need to explain one thing. Hayden said that Ethel can be either cis or trans, depending on what resonates with you. I listened to this album with the trans Ethel in mind. And this is why this line hit me: because through the trans lens, it highlights the way some people hate us, but still want us. I'm aphantasiac, but I could almost see it in my head: the red lights falling onto someone's body, the absolute horror of giving up and letting people who hate you do things to you. It all started clicking together, in a way, like puzzles snapping into place. The imagery started haunting me. I switched the color of my LED lights to red and stared at them. At my hands. At my body. I just had to do something with it; the story formed itself in my head and it begged to be let out.

The game itself

So, now, onto the game proper. I won't lie, I was a little scared of writing and making this one, after all, I never really published anything NSFW publicly, as a VN dev, so it is a thing that is out of my usual... scope. I asked myself: is this too much? Will I make people uncomfortable? And then I realized that I wouldn't feel this way if I were writing about murder or gore, or extreme violence: the only reason why I was so hesitant was because this story treats about sexual experiences. I'm ex-Catholic, so there's a lot of shame around it that I still need to unlearn, and this is a part of the unlearning, I suppose. i won't finish this game also opened my eyes to the possibility of writing things that are, for the lack of a better word, brutal. I could do it. I did it. Sometimes, art is uncomfortable because it's meant to be.

The concept was very straightforward. You have someone (we'll call them Narrator) who's dissociating during sex with someone (we'll call them Partner) who clearly doesn't give a fuck about them, and it's all bathed in the red light.
I need to say: at first, the Partner was referred to in third person as "he". This, however, got changed as I started questioning myself. Why is this a man? Does it have to be a man? Could it be a woman? Could it be a nonbinary person? It could be anyone; perpetuating the "it's always a cis man" thing does, in the end, more harm than good. Besides, there's nothing inherently masculine about being the "penetrator" in the whole deal, I mean, it's the year of our lady 2024, come on. I'll talk more about why I chose second person ("you") later.

Red is my favorite color: a color of love and passion, but also a color of blood and violence. It's this duality: for Partner, it's the first pair. For Narrator, it's the second. And we all know what red lights mean: you're meant to stop when you see them. And they're shining bright through the whole thing. Now, I hate to tell others how to interpret things, but I think that when Narrator stares at the red lights, it's their little wish for it all to stop.
To touch upon the technical side: the background is a picture of the lights I have in my room, naturally heavily processed. I can change the colors and all, so don't worry, I don't live in a red hellscape unless I want to.

Now, really briefly about the music. It's 69 BPM because I'm mature like that. I think this is how this particular type of... sexual dissociation sounds like, for me at least. Like an alarm. Like sighs that don't belong to you. Slow. Sliding notes like sliding into nothingness. I was told it's unnerving or disturbing, and it's meant to be. 

Onto the interactive part, because I find it interesting in a way. The only way you interact with the story is by choosing the same option over and over. "It's just a body", over and over, until it's just "it's just...". Well... that's if you don't count the start button, called "Turn the lights on".
There is a reason why the Narrator talks to "you". 
There is a reason why you click the "turn the lights on", and they turn on.
This is, obviously, because all the "choices" belong to Partner.
Now, if you read the whole thing - as you should, I mean, why else would you read this? - you might get a bit confused. Narrator says that "it's just a body" is something they repeat to themselves to get them through the whole ordeal. But you need to ask yourself: where does this come from? Partner keeps reinforcing that belief, of course. It's in their interest to keep Narrator believing that all of this is okay. When you click on "turn the lights on", it's the Partner's choice to do so. When a "menu" with this one option comes up and you click on it, it's the Partner's belief echoing in Narrator's head. And since Partner never turns the lights off, this isn't a choice you can make.

I won't be going "ooh, you are a bad person, actually! You are playing a bad person!" because we spend the whole time in Narrator's head, seeing what they see. What I wanted to show here is that in such situation, you might think some beliefs and choices are yours, while they're... not. In a situation where you're an object, you're never in control. Choices are being made for you. Your own relationship with yourself is remade. 

Are you tired of my talking yet?

If you are, I have good news for you! I am done. If you're not, then... well... I'm done anyway.

I don't know where I'll go from here or whatever. I consider this game done. How will this story end? I don't know. Do you think Narrator makes it out of this relationship? Do you think Partner grinds them down until there's nothing left? I don't know. I really don't know. What I know is that this story is out of my head now, and that it received a whole lot of traction. I'm happy that I could break through my internal shame and publish this.

Thank you to everyone who played it. Remember that you're more than just your body. Remember that nobody who loves you would hurt you like this, nobody who loves you would simply use you. And I know it feels wrong sometimes, but it's okay to say no. If they get weird about it, it's not a person you want to be around.

Either way. It's getting late, I just came back from dentist, I had to socialize, I am TIRED. I'm going to rest now. Take care.

Yours, Naarel