This is thirteenth of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!
Written By: Lindsay Ishihiro
LEMON ALERT: this fic features hot! smexy! boys! kissing! don’t like, don’t read! you’ve been warned!
My eyes were tender and pure on the fateful day I first beheld a content warning on the internet. It was for a Sailor Moon fanfic, or possibly Pokemon; the actual story probably lives somewhere on the internet still, a text file in an archive that hasn’t seen the touch of its webmaster’s hand since before Y2K. Its warning stands like two trunk-like legs in the shifting sand: don’t like, don’t read.
It was a simpler time.
In games, the subject of content warnings has a tendency to spark debate. It brings to mind tedious arguments that video games cause harm (they don’t) or that they cause others to do harm (correlation is not causation), that they’re brainrot unworthy of being called art (insulting) and adult games are especially so. The thing is, I care about content warnings. From the first fanfic I read where Tuxedo Mask accidentally impregnated Zoisite with his magic rose — not a euphemism — my home has been in fandom communities where strange content is the norm and content warning is the law of the land, both as courtesy to some and an enticement to others.
Adult games have a lot in common with the playful spaces of fandom communities. They can both be places of great vulnerability, not just for the creator but for those consuming it. Both encourage the player or reader to be fully embodied in the text, to see themselves within it. This agency, and the raw desires and discomforts that arise from it, are encased in a frequently upsetting stew of sexual baggage, assumptions, intimate memories and, sometimes, trauma. Adult content can turn you inside out, and just like in real sex, that can be welcome or disgusting… or both.
Continue reading “I Am The Trigger: What Adult Games Can Learn From Fandom”