Trans-forming Videogames with Dr. Madison Schmalzer
*transcript cleaned by Kaitlyn Gastineau


00:00:04:11 - 00:00:08:07
As Aaron said, I met his father.


00:00:08:09 - 00:00:10:07
I'm going to be talking about


00:00:10:07 - 00:00:13:02
gender and video games here.


00:00:13:02 - 00:00:15:24
My socials are there
if you'd like to follow me.


00:00:15:24 - 00:00:21:20
While Twitter continues to exist for
for maybe a brief amount of time,


00:00:21:22 - 00:00:25:09
you can find me there or email me.


00:00:25:11 - 00:00:28:02
And I guess before I even get into this,


00:00:28:02 - 00:00:31:06
I kind of want to acknowledge something.


00:00:31:08 - 00:00:34:08
I'm going to be talking about


00:00:34:11 - 00:00:38:14
transness, trans
subjectivity in relation to video games.


00:00:38:14 - 00:00:40:23
And a part of me


00:00:40:23 - 00:00:43:11
in light of, I guess, horrific


00:00:43:11 - 00:00:46:17
kind of anti-trans violence
that's been happening


00:00:46:19 - 00:00:51:15
over a large course of time,
but especially in the past few days.


00:00:51:17 - 00:00:52:15
I don't know.


00:00:52:15 - 00:00:55:06
Feels kind of uncomfortable
sometimes to talk about videogames


00:00:55:06 - 00:00:59:00
at a time like this, but I'm hoping that
some of the things that I talk about here


00:00:59:00 - 00:01:03:02
are linked back to some of these larger
political societal issues


00:01:03:04 - 00:01:05:08
in a more serious way as well.


00:01:05:08 - 00:01:08:07
So this is just acknowledgment
that I'm giving this talk


00:01:08:07 - 00:01:12:05
and I'm kind of aware of these things,
and I'm sad and angry about them


00:01:12:05 - 00:01:13:06
as as it's happening.


00:01:13:06 - 00:01:14:13
And I'm trying to sit with that and work


00:01:14:13 - 00:01:19:22
and figure out ways
to to work with them through this. So


00:01:19:24 - 00:01:21:18
with that out of the way,


00:01:21:18 - 00:01:24:24
let me talk get into the actual talk.


00:01:25:01 - 00:01:28:15
So what I'm going to be presenting
today is kind of a collection of ideas


00:01:28:17 - 00:01:31:07
that is kind of
from a few different projects.


00:01:31:07 - 00:01:33:01
They're going to partially


00:01:33:01 - 00:01:36:06
be derived from stuff I've been working on
through my time at North Carolina State


00:01:36:06 - 00:01:41:16
University's Communication Rhetoric
and Digital Media program that ended up


00:01:41:18 - 00:01:44:00
being my dis [dissertation] Transition Game.


00:01:44:00 - 00:01:45:17
Speedrunning Gender.


00:01:45:17 - 00:01:46:15
So I'm going to be


00:01:46:15 - 00:01:50:03
talking a little bit about that
in the routing the run section here,


00:01:50:05 - 00:01:52:20
but I'm going to be shifting
into some other ideas surrounding


00:01:52:20 - 00:01:56:17
the kind of societal rules
that go into videogame play.


00:01:56:19 - 00:01:59:19
The temporalities then of trans


00:01:59:22 - 00:02:02:20
identities and video games
and how they inflect on one another.


00:02:02:20 - 00:02:08:21
And I'm going to end off on some ideas
surrounding glitch later.


00:02:08:23 - 00:02:11:23
And I first want to


00:02:12:04 - 00:02:15:17
mention that dissertation
that this will be partially


00:02:15:19 - 00:02:20:19
be derived from
and as the title of that work suggested,


00:02:20:21 - 00:02:24:02
that was about gender transition
as well as games was a call


00:02:24:02 - 00:02:27:16
to transition games
that is to change them, to take the rules,


00:02:27:18 - 00:02:33:04
to make them something else, which is
something I find inherent to speedrunning


00:02:33:06 - 00:02:34:08
in changing the rules.


00:02:34:08 - 00:02:37:14
The hardware, software and embodied
relationships to games are altered


00:02:37:17 - 00:02:38:09
as well.


00:02:38:09 - 00:02:41:09
Orientation
towards play become transformative.


00:02:41:11 - 00:02:44:08
At the same time,
the subtitle is Speedrunning Gender,


00:02:44:08 - 00:02:46:05
and that allowed me
to take the critical lens


00:02:46:05 - 00:02:48:06
that Speedrunning
afforded me to rethink games


00:02:48:06 - 00:02:51:06
and turn it back on other systems of roles
like gender.


00:02:51:09 - 00:02:54:03
How do we speedrun gender?


00:02:54:03 - 00:02:56:20
This has little to do with going fast.


00:02:56:22 - 00:02:59:05
Speedrunning, after all, is a long, slow
process.


00:02:59:05 - 00:03:02:05
Instead, as how speedrunning as a process
and collection of practices


00:03:02:05 - 00:03:06:04
that transforms games
can become an orientation towards gender.


00:03:06:09 - 00:03:09:05
How do we take gender's rules
and warp them to our desires?


00:03:09:05 - 00:03:12:03
And in doing so, how do we alter
the metaphorical hardware and software


00:03:12:03 - 00:03:16:18
gender operates on as well as our embodied
relationships to gender?


00:03:16:20 - 00:03:19:02
That project was in part
an auto ethnographic account


00:03:19:02 - 00:03:20:21
into my time
speedrunning and transitioning.


00:03:20:21 - 00:03:23:22
It was a grappling with my own gender
as well as an investigation into


00:03:23:22 - 00:03:26:22
how gendered subjectivity
becomes entangled with technology


00:03:27:00 - 00:03:30:09
on a personal level. Specifically,


00:03:30:11 - 00:03:33:11
that technology being video games
and even more specifically


00:03:33:14 - 00:03:36:14
the particular practices of video games
that constitute speedrunning.


00:03:36:15 - 00:03:40:02
So this is all to say


00:03:40:04 - 00:03:41:16
that I actively speedrun


00:03:41:16 - 00:03:45:17
whenever I'm afforded the time
and I'm using my streaming layout here.


00:03:45:18 - 00:03:46:21
That's what this purple and pink


00:03:46:21 - 00:03:50:22
is that to block that box on the left
is generally dedicated to my splits


00:03:51:02 - 00:03:53:19
that you kind of see how that works
in a little bit


00:03:53:19 - 00:03:56:18
and I view playing video games
and taking part in community,


00:03:56:18 - 00:04:00:02
surrounding them to be a kind of method
in and of itself in a similar way


00:04:00:02 - 00:04:01:11
as I view the alterations


00:04:01:11 - 00:04:04:11
to my body and presentations
to be a research method as well.


00:04:04:14 - 00:04:07:15
So that project was really a merging
of those two things


00:04:07:21 - 00:04:11:16
and I'm now removed from that particular
moment, the early days of transitioning


00:04:11:18 - 00:04:12:17
that produce that work.


00:04:12:17 - 00:04:15:01
And my thinking is I'm
pushed in various ways by other projects


00:04:15:01 - 00:04:20:05
I'm working on, such as one of my coauthor
who's on the call here, P.S. Berge


00:04:20:07 - 00:04:22:16
on what we are dubbing Vectors of Desire
that are particular


00:04:22:16 - 00:04:26:12
trans-orientation towards
play that unmakes game worlds also been moving


00:04:26:12 - 00:04:29:22
in other directions through engagement
with the work of and conversations


00:04:29:22 - 00:04:33:18
with scholars such as Whit Pao and Arianna
Gass who have been theorizing the glitch


00:04:33:18 - 00:04:35:02
as a trans mode of existence


00:04:35:02 - 00:04:38:17
that has a lot of overlap with the ways
I've been thinking about things.


00:04:38:19 - 00:04:41:21
So I want to mention
upfront that this project


00:04:41:23 - 00:04:42:15
is a part


00:04:42:15 - 00:04:46:09
of what I and a coterie of other scholars
would call trans game studies.


00:04:46:11 - 00:04:49:02
I hesitate to firmly define
trans game studies broadly.


00:04:49:02 - 00:04:51:05
It's clear to me
that many scholars have very different


00:04:51:05 - 00:04:55:01
takes on what it looks like from focuses
on trans representation to the ability


00:04:55:01 - 00:04:58:02
to express the trans rage through play,
to playing with glitches


00:04:58:02 - 00:05:00:12
and undermining firm
ontological conceptions of bodies,


00:05:00:12 - 00:05:02:03
to playing with identity
in digital spaces.


00:05:02:03 - 00:05:03:07
And the list could go on.


00:05:03:07 - 00:05:06:11
The only real unifying feature to trans
game studies is to care for


00:05:06:16 - 00:05:10:00
and centering of transness
in game studies.


00:05:10:02 - 00:05:12:05
It also seems clear to me
that the exigence for this is in


00:05:12:05 - 00:05:14:19
some ways
a reaction to queer game studies.


00:05:14:19 - 00:05:17:22
Even if trans game studies is indebted to
and tightly entangled with queer


00:05:17:22 - 00:05:21:23
game studies, which I'll talk about
in more detail later,


00:05:22:00 - 00:05:24:24
but it's a recentering of transness
in these discussions.


00:05:24:24 - 00:05:29:16
So with all that preamble out of the way,


00:05:29:18 - 00:05:30:02
I want to


00:05:30:02 - 00:05:34:00
start with how am I thinking about
Speedrunning in relation to transness?


00:05:34:02 - 00:05:36:15
And I'm thinking of it
through two different ways.


00:05:36:15 - 00:05:39:22
One is on the layer of metaphor.


00:05:39:24 - 00:05:43:05
I argue that the practices of speedrunning
become a metaphor for the practices


00:05:43:05 - 00:05:44:13
of trans subjectivity.


00:05:44:13 - 00:05:46:16
Speedrunning
and play more generally becomes


00:05:46:16 - 00:05:50:11
a way to understand, articulate
and imagine transness.


00:05:50:13 - 00:05:53:06
But over the course of this talk,
I also want to think about how video game


00:05:53:06 - 00:05:57:04
play practice has become a kind of trans
embodiment themselves.


00:05:57:06 - 00:05:59:22
It's not just a way to imagine


00:05:59:22 - 00:06:02:22
and think about gender or transition.


00:06:03:02 - 00:06:08:10
It's a way to actually do it to produce
new bodies and new subjectivities.


00:06:08:12 - 00:06:10:15
And we need to talk a little bit


00:06:10:15 - 00:06:13:21
about what Speedrunning is, though.


00:06:13:23 - 00:06:15:20
There's cultural conceptions of it.


00:06:15:20 - 00:06:19:19
And you might be familiar with it from
just being in video gaming communities.


00:06:19:19 - 00:06:22:17
But I want to drill down into it
a little bit before we get into this


00:06:22:17 - 00:06:25:06
and a kind of a radically incomplete


00:06:25:06 - 00:06:28:13
definition of Speedrunning
comes from SpeedRunsLive.


00:06:28:15 - 00:06:31:23
Being playing a game with the intent
of completing a goal as fast as possible.


00:06:31:23 - 00:06:35:08
And as far as definitions
go, that's an okay one.


00:06:35:10 - 00:06:36:17
It tells us what it is.


00:06:36:17 - 00:06:39:17
It gestures at some larger concepts.


00:06:39:18 - 00:06:41:21
For example, the goal.


00:06:41:21 - 00:06:43:15
What is the goal?


00:06:43:15 - 00:06:47:17
We need to set goals according to player
desire that we'll talk about a little bit


00:06:47:22 - 00:06:54:17
the fastest possible gestures towards iterative testing and communal practices. But


00:06:54:19 - 00:06:57:18
these things are only gestured
at this definition.


00:06:57:18 - 00:07:02:05
So what I call
speedrunning is a technological practice


00:07:02:07 - 00:07:05:05
that's rooted in communal histories
that emerged from specific


00:07:05:05 - 00:07:08:13
technological configurations,
along with player desire


00:07:08:19 - 00:07:13:14
to create an index orientation
towards game and community formations.


00:07:13:16 - 00:07:16:23
This emphasizes the active labor
that goes into producing speedrunning,


00:07:16:23 - 00:07:20:04
as well as the merging of cultural
and technological practices that gesture


00:07:20:04 - 00:07:24:13
towards communal historical trajectories
and materialist modes of engagement.


00:07:24:15 - 00:07:26:16
What does that look like in practice?


00:07:26:16 - 00:07:30:16
Well, oftentimes it doesn't even look like
playing video games.


00:07:30:18 - 00:07:34:10
It looks like something like this,
like a Discord server


00:07:34:12 - 00:07:37:08
where there's many people have invested,


00:07:37:08 - 00:07:41:01
many invested players coming together
to share strategies, to form community,


00:07:41:01 - 00:07:46:03
to form relationships
and sharing all that information together.


00:07:46:05 - 00:07:46:24
And the moderation


00:07:46:24 - 00:07:50:23
that goes into creating that place
that is safe for them to do so.


00:07:51:00 - 00:07:55:07
It looks like the decentralized
leaderboards that communities operate,


00:07:55:09 - 00:08:00:07
which, while foster competition,
also foster a lot of community formation,


00:08:00:09 - 00:08:04:07
because once you have a leaderboard,
all runs are shared publicly.


00:08:04:12 - 00:08:07:13
I can see everyone else's run
strategies are shared


00:08:07:13 - 00:08:09:09
and mutually talked about.


00:08:09:09 - 00:08:12:06
There's
no hiding anything in these competitions.


00:08:12:06 - 00:08:18:00
There's always a push to drive the time
down and become the best that they can.


00:08:18:02 - 00:08:20:07
It also looks like categories and rules


00:08:20:07 - 00:08:24:06
communally forming the rule sets
for how we play, which are labeled


00:08:24:06 - 00:08:27:10
categories, which can be something
that is very important going forward.


00:08:27:12 - 00:08:30:00
And when we finally get to the games,
they look a little something


00:08:30:00 - 00:08:33:00
like this


00:08:33:03 - 00:08:34:24
where I'm Speedrunning Undertale.


00:08:34:24 - 00:08:37:01
I'm going to skip all this text
that I can't read anyways


00:08:37:01 - 00:08:38:00
because it's in Japanese.


00:08:38:00 - 00:08:40:20
I perform these quick movements


00:08:40:20 - 00:08:42:15
To then skip dialog and narrative


00:08:42:15 - 00:08:46:23
and very often in dramatic fashion,


00:08:47:00 - 00:08:50:24
the entire worlds of games
are completely ignored.


00:08:51:01 - 00:08:55:20
There's an old proverb in Speedrunning
that walls are only suggestions


00:08:55:22 - 00:08:57:24
as I just clip out of bounds here


00:08:57:24 - 00:09:00:24
and glide to the ending of a level.


00:09:01:03 - 00:09:03:12
The entire world of games are reconfigured
through this


00:09:03:12 - 00:09:07:24
orientation towards towards play
where in the narrative's


00:09:08:01 - 00:09:10:19
diegetic structure,
none of it matters anymore.


00:09:10:19 - 00:09:14:08
We have a completely different
understanding what the system itself is.


00:09:14:10 - 00:09:16:12
And finally,


00:09:16:14 - 00:09:19:12
this clip of me running Hades is here
fighting the final boss.


00:09:19:12 - 00:09:23:02
Hades is a notoriously difficult game.


00:09:23:04 - 00:09:25:20
This might look like an impressive feat
to any of you to have played


00:09:25:20 - 00:09:28:20
this and tried to fight the final boss
and failed.


00:09:28:22 - 00:09:31:11
But to me, I watch this


00:09:31:11 - 00:09:34:05
and I see the small 


00:09:34:05 - 00:09:39:00
sub optimizations, particularly


00:09:39:02 - 00:09:40:23
right here where I miss some rockets


00:09:40:23 - 00:09:43:17
you probably can't even notice
there's so much noise on this screen.


00:09:43:17 - 00:09:48:09
But I am concerned with the 5 seconds
or so that I lost on this fight.


00:09:48:14 - 00:09:50:02
I don't care that I'm going to win it.


00:09:50:02 - 00:09:52:17
I care about the optimizations


00:09:52:17 - 00:09:55:07
and this is going to be important
for Speedrunning going forward.


00:09:55:07 - 00:09:58:07
I'll let myself beat the final boss
real quick


00:09:58:08 - 00:10:03:16
as I give up a (inaudible).


00:10:03:18 - 00:10:05:22
And there


00:10:05:22 - 00:10:07:01
It doesn't matter that I won.


00:10:07:01 - 00:10:12:07
It matters that I didn't do it
quite optimally.


00:10:12:09 - 00:10:17:19
So Speedrunning
then understands video games


00:10:17:19 - 00:10:22:09
as raw materials to produce
play that adheres to player's desire.


00:10:22:11 - 00:10:25:11
My desire to go fast, to be optimized


00:10:25:16 - 00:10:28:16
it's similar to Bullock
in the music usage of the term metagating.


00:10:28:20 - 00:10:32:16
Speedrunning is in part a refusal of
prescribed interactions with games.


00:10:32:18 - 00:10:36:12
Instead, new rules are mapped
onto the materials of games, reconfiguring


00:10:36:12 - 00:10:39:24
or reconfiguring orientation towards
hardware and software


00:10:40:05 - 00:10:43:01
and producing new ways to play
that can alter our orientations


00:10:43:01 - 00:10:46:19
towards temporality and even
our understanding of rules themselves.


00:10:46:21 - 00:10:49:06
I make a connection here


00:10:49:06 - 00:10:53:05
in the same way various techno cultural
practices that produce speedrunning.


00:10:53:07 - 00:10:56:11
So too are their litany of material,
historical communal practices


00:10:56:11 - 00:10:59:11
that produce contingent
constructions of transness.


00:10:59:13 - 00:11:03:05
Transness in itself constructed
through the labor of many people, through


00:11:03:05 - 00:11:06:19
technological interventions and through
reconfiguring of societal rules.


00:11:06:21 - 00:11:07:23
I would be remiss


00:11:07:23 - 00:11:09:11
if I didn't mention that this contingent


00:11:09:11 - 00:11:12:17
construction of gendered
subjectivity is not at all unique.


00:11:12:19 - 00:11:16:08
It is the way that gender
and sex both work writ large.


00:11:16:10 - 00:11:17:20
For example,


00:11:17:20 - 00:11:21:24
Susan Stryker in her 1994
essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein


00:11:22:02 - 00:11:25:24
performing Transgender Rage,
She says, hearken


00:11:25:24 - 00:11:30:10
unto me, fellow creatures I who have dwelt
in a form unmatched with my desire.


00:11:30:15 - 00:11:35:02
I whose flesh has become an assemblage
of incongruous and not anatomical parts.


00:11:35:04 - 00:11:40:06
I who achieve the similitude of a natural
body only through an unnatural process.


00:11:40:08 - 00:11:43:22
You are as constructed as me,
the same anarchic womb has burst


00:11:43:22 - 00:11:45:11
us, birthed us both.


00:11:45:11 - 00:11:49:07
I call upon you to investigate
your nature, as I have compelled to do.


00:11:49:09 - 00:11:51:24
Compelled to confront mine. Heed my words.


00:11:51:24 - 00:11:56:01
You may well discover
the seams and sutures and yourself.


00:11:56:03 - 00:12:00:00
I'm fond of the term techno gender that
Paul Preciado uses to describe this.


00:12:00:03 - 00:12:03:00
The ways in which bio political regimes
create subjectivity


00:12:03:00 - 00:12:06:18
through technological interventions
such as pharmaceuticals and pornography.


00:12:06:20 - 00:12:10:08
But I'm less concerned here
with what Stryker


00:12:10:08 - 00:12:14:05
gestures at and Preciado
does the dominance subjectivities.


00:12:14:07 - 00:12:17:07
I'm interested
instead in Stryker's use of desire


00:12:17:09 - 00:12:20:20
and assemblage of incongruous
anatomical parts.


00:12:20:22 - 00:12:23:14
Historically, the production of transness
has been a project of working


00:12:23:14 - 00:12:27:09
against hegemonic structures that don't
allow for our desires to unfold.


00:12:27:11 - 00:12:30:21
So we must take it upon ourselves to
stitch ourselves together, so to speak.


00:12:30:23 - 00:12:32:04
This is a refusal,


00:12:32:04 - 00:12:35:17
even when we alter beholden
to normative society in so many ways,


00:12:35:19 - 00:12:38:04
from having to conform
to cisconceptions beauty


00:12:38:04 - 00:12:39:18
so that we can move through the world
safely


00:12:39:18 - 00:12:41:16
to navigating
bureaucratic and medical systems


00:12:41:16 - 00:12:44:17
that don't take us into account
to the mundane act of interfacing


00:12:44:17 - 00:12:47:18
with technologies like the TSA,
full body scanners that can't account


00:12:47:18 - 00:12:51:02
for trans bodies
we're all too aware of in Whit Pao's words 


00:12:51:02 - 00:12:54:12
The mediation by cis normative societal
norms.


00:12:54:14 - 00:13:01:09
Speedrunning is one way to perform
unmediation through video games,


00:13:01:11 - 00:13:03:13
and I want to quickly mention


00:13:03:13 - 00:13:07:01
here as well that Speedrunning
has been analyzed by queer game scholars


00:13:07:01 - 00:13:10:01
already and connections
have been made between the two.


00:13:10:05 - 00:13:12:10
I draw from P.S. Berge


00:13:12:10 - 00:13:16:21
and my draft here of some some other work


00:13:16:23 - 00:13:20:12
discussing Bo Ruberg's
analysis of Godhome,


00:13:20:14 - 00:13:22:24
which speedrunning Godhome,
I should say which


00:13:22:24 - 00:13:26:06
illustrates some shortcomings of queer
orientation toward Speedrunning.


00:13:26:08 - 00:13:29:19
Ruberg argues that Speedrun hours
of the game gone home straight in the game


00:13:29:19 - 00:13:33:03
by refusing to slow or wander or engage
the game's queer narrative,


00:13:33:05 - 00:13:35:21
but acknowledged that there is something
queer to speedrunning routes


00:13:35:21 - 00:13:39:23
and that they resist normative
pre-designated paths to the game.


00:13:40:00 - 00:13:43:11
Ruberg's frustrated analysis
emerges in part because taking the optimal


00:13:43:11 - 00:13:46:11
or fastest route through a game suggests
normativity as well.


00:13:46:12 - 00:13:49:09
Speedrun hours hone a particular path
or game to shave off fraction


00:13:49:09 - 00:13:50:11
of a second on their runs.


00:13:50:11 - 00:13:51:15
Locating queerness


00:13:51:15 - 00:13:56:14
then becomes an exercise in determining
what path is more normative than another.


00:13:56:16 - 00:13:58:18
There's a focus on normativity
and nonnormativity.


00:13:58:18 - 00:14:00:12
Here one becomes a radical,


00:14:00:12 - 00:14:02:22
more radical than the other,
which does not really take into account


00:14:02:22 - 00:14:06:10
a trans perspective and is difficult
to even map on to speedrunning.


00:14:06:12 - 00:14:09:18
Normativity is a fraught term for trans
people that are mediated by so many


00:14:09:18 - 00:14:13:10
systems that are out of our control
and that we exist in uneasy tension with.


00:14:13:12 - 00:14:16:17
To me, while there is some power
to rethinking, through thinking


00:14:16:17 - 00:14:20:04
through the ways that game spaces in play
become altered so as to imagine new ways


00:14:20:04 - 00:14:24:04
of being it also misses much of both
the act of speedrunning and transitioning.


00:14:24:06 - 00:14:27:02
So with that, going forward,
I'll be focusing on trans desire


00:14:27:02 - 00:14:28:15
and the ways that it becomes mediated.


00:14:28:15 - 00:14:30:20
In other words, to use Pao's terms


00:14:30:20 - 00:14:33:13
how something like Speedrunning
is a process of unmediation,


00:14:33:13 - 00:14:35:13
and in doing so I'll attempt to uncover


00:14:35:13 - 00:14:38:13
trans temporalities
through play in an effort to trans games.


00:14:38:16 - 00:14:42:06
And with that, let's take a let's talk
a little bit about one form of mediation


00:14:42:06 - 00:14:45:04
that becomes important for trans lives


00:14:45:06 - 00:14:49:06
rules.


00:14:49:08 - 00:14:50:19
Rules are obviously essential to games.


00:14:50:19 - 00:14:51:11
A whole host of game


00:14:51:11 - 00:14:54:08
scholars have conceived of rules
as almost definitional games.


00:14:54:08 - 00:14:56:08
Additionally,
at a larger scale for code demonstrates


00:14:56:08 - 00:14:59:07
the ways that rules become categories
by grouping like things.


00:14:59:07 - 00:15:00:20
They also govern the internal structures


00:15:00:20 - 00:15:03:03
of those categories
describing the behavior.


00:15:03:03 - 00:15:05:14
Crucially,
there's what Foucault calls a hidden network


00:15:05:14 - 00:15:06:22
that forms these categories.


00:15:06:22 - 00:15:07:23
Gender, woman, sex,


00:15:07:23 - 00:15:11:01
normal of these categories is a more
organized and subsequently controlled


00:15:11:01 - 00:15:14:01
by rule sets that by and large are left
unexamined by most.


00:15:14:01 - 00:15:17:20
Keeping them
unexamined maintains their power.


00:15:17:22 - 00:15:19:17
However, these invisible


00:15:19:17 - 00:15:22:17
rules become very important to those
that don't want to or can't play them.


00:15:22:18 - 00:15:23:16
An example


00:15:23:16 - 00:15:27:12
Mackenzie Wark opens Gamer Theory with
this set of questions that reads in part,


00:15:27:14 - 00:15:29:23
Ever get the feeling
you're playing some vast and useless game


00:15:29:23 - 00:15:32:12
whose goal you don't know
and whose rules you can't remember?


00:15:32:12 - 00:15:35:13
Ever get the vague dread that while
you have no choice but to play the game,


00:15:35:13 - 00:15:38:17
you can't win
it can't know the score or who keeps it.


00:15:38:19 - 00:15:43:00
Warks calls Wark calls the world
as seen by the gamer a matrix of endlessly


00:15:43:00 - 00:15:46:20
varying games and the use of the term
matrix is a direct reference to the movie.


00:15:47:01 - 00:15:48:13
The very same name


00:15:48:13 - 00:15:53:12
which the character Morpheus gives Neo
a speech very similar to Wark's questions.


00:15:53:14 - 00:15:55:14
Gamer Theory
and the Matrix are written by trans woman,


00:15:55:14 - 00:15:58:14
and there is something particularly trans
in the persistent nagging feeling


00:15:58:20 - 00:16:02:06
that we're playing by rules that don't
quite fit how we want to play.


00:16:02:07 - 00:16:04:12
It's hard to put a finger on what this is
if we aren't fully aware


00:16:04:12 - 00:16:07:08
that there are rules at all, it's
hard to directly see standard rules


00:16:07:08 - 00:16:10:03
for what they are and is impossible
to critically reflect on our desires


00:16:10:03 - 00:16:13:03
for new futures when we don't understand
we're playing a game.


00:16:13:09 - 00:16:19:12
But what is the game we're playing?


00:16:19:14 - 00:16:22:09
One of these invisible games
is a struggle over the rules themselves.


00:16:22:09 - 00:16:24:16
So let's shift to the morning,


00:16:24:16 - 00:16:27:15
October 16th, 2021,
when the Twitter timeline was blessed


00:16:27:15 - 00:16:31:07
or cursed, depending on your perspective
with a thread that


00:16:31:09 - 00:16:34:15
I'll let Shadow
the hedgehog recite the beginning of here.


00:16:34:17 - 00:16:35:09
So take it away.


00:16:35:09 - 00:16:36:24
Shadow.


00:16:36:24 - 00:16:38:02
You can't catch me.


00:16:38:02 - 00:16:40:09
I'm the fastest thing alive.


00:16:40:09 - 00:16:44:09
I was thinking about why
so many in the radical left participate


00:16:44:13 - 00:16:46:13
in speed running. Huh?


00:16:46:13 - 00:16:49:03
The reason is the left's
lack of work ethic.


00:16:49:03 - 00:16:52:02
Why go fast rather than do it right?


00:16:52:02 - 00:16:55:17
And in a Petersonian sense, Petersonian, to elevate


00:16:55:17 - 00:16:59:00
alternative sexual archetypes
in the marketplace.


00:16:59:02 - 00:17:01:04
Fastest hedgehog Shadow.


00:17:01:04 - 00:17:02:22
What the fuck are you talking about?


00:17:02:22 - 00:17:06:06
You're a beta male Sonic. Excellent.


00:17:06:08 - 00:17:08:17
That was likely very confusing for most


00:17:08:17 - 00:17:11:12
for more than one reason, one of them


00:17:11:12 - 00:17:13:23
being connecting leftist politics
to Speedrunning.


00:17:13:23 - 00:17:15:09
And I will assure you reading


00:17:15:09 - 00:17:19:04
the entirety of this Twitter thread
won't clear much up for you.


00:17:19:06 - 00:17:22:05
Although it did coin
the delightfully nonsensical term, fully


00:17:22:05 - 00:17:26:14
automated luxury communism
that I now use in my day to day speech.


00:17:26:16 - 00:17:30:06
What this is, is a thread
by a self-described anti-feminism/SJW


00:17:30:08 - 00:17:33:21
member of the Manosphere
over the course of 16 tweets


00:17:33:21 - 00:17:38:03
in which they liberally cite transphobic
Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson


00:17:38:05 - 00:17:41:24
links playing video games fast to wokeness
the radical left and Communism.


00:17:42:01 - 00:17:43:17
But I suspect these typical Far-Right
punching


00:17:43:17 - 00:17:45:12
bags aren't really
what are at stake from this person


00:17:45:12 - 00:17:49:00
nor many other people
who make similar claims.


00:17:49:01 - 00:17:50:16
This thread is turned into meme


00:17:50:16 - 00:17:54:09
videos, in part because of the ubiquity
of these kinds of arguments.


00:17:54:11 - 00:17:55:08
Yeah, sure, dude.


00:17:55:08 - 00:17:58:05
Speedrunning is for woke, beta cucks,
whatever.


00:17:58:05 - 00:17:59:19
We've heard it a million times before.


00:17:59:19 - 00:18:03:15
So I take this thread as emblematic
of many attitudes in gaming communities


00:18:03:15 - 00:18:07:07
that attempt to circumscribe correct
and incorrect modes of play.


00:18:07:09 - 00:18:09:17
The actual genesis
of these common attacks lies


00:18:09:17 - 00:18:12:19
in the fact that Speedrunning undermines
the ontology of video games.


00:18:12:24 - 00:18:15:20
The current standard ruleset for beginning
video game culture


00:18:15:20 - 00:18:20:05
is actively hostile
to a wide swath of people


00:18:20:07 - 00:18:23:23
and ensures the place of privilege
for white, cis, hetero, able bodied men.


00:18:24:00 - 00:18:27:00
Policing the rules of interaction
with the video games in turn maintains


00:18:27:00 - 00:18:30:00
the stability of the rulesets
that surround video game culture.


00:18:30:01 - 00:18:32:20
There's a large scale game
being played out over the past few decades


00:18:32:20 - 00:18:35:20
where many players are attempting
to define the rules of certain categories,


00:18:36:01 - 00:18:39:13
to define video games, video game
play and video game players.


00:18:39:15 - 00:18:42:22
Something that the depressingly relevant


00:18:42:24 - 00:18:46:09
history of Gamergate attests to.


00:18:46:11 - 00:18:49:05
These kinds of policing of boundaries
as seen from terfs that is trans


00:18:49:05 - 00:18:50:10
exclusionary, radical feminist


00:18:50:10 - 00:18:53:10
who use the same tactics of harassment
as we see in gaming communities


00:18:53:13 - 00:18:57:11
as some similar rhetorical moves to
violently police the boundaries of gender.


00:18:57:17 - 00:18:58:14
For example, J.K.


00:18:58:14 - 00:19:00:09
Rowling's infamous terf wars blog post


00:19:00:09 - 00:19:03:16
where she lays out her case for why
the trans rights movement is dangerous.


00:19:03:18 - 00:19:06:08
But we can use her pun
as illustrative here.


00:19:06:08 - 00:19:09:00
The case against trans rights for Rowling
and others like her,


00:19:09:00 - 00:19:12:00
including the fascists
she and others like her are in bed with,


00:19:12:00 - 00:19:15:17
such as Daily Wire commentary Matt
Walsh and Chaia Recheck, a.k.a.


00:19:15:17 - 00:19:18:17
Libs of TikTok, who openly call
for violence against trans people.


00:19:18:21 - 00:19:20:19
Is the redefinition of boundaries


00:19:20:19 - 00:19:23:22
one of their core strategies to dig
in their heels into the standard rules,


00:19:24:02 - 00:19:27:00
and in doing so,
take part in similar moves of harassment


00:19:27:00 - 00:19:31:23
we've already seen in game communities
and amongst the far right.


00:19:32:00 - 00:19:33:09
But let's take a step back


00:19:33:09 - 00:19:37:14
and think about the generation of rules
and speedrunning communities.


00:19:37:16 - 00:19:40:11
Firmly defined
rules are essential to speedrunning.


00:19:40:11 - 00:19:41:04
We don't.


00:19:41:04 - 00:19:44:04
We don't have runs
unless we form categories.


00:19:44:04 - 00:19:46:13
But we notice something peculiar
about the rules.


00:19:46:13 - 00:19:47:07
Speedrunning.


00:19:47:07 - 00:19:49:22
They're malleable and open to change.


00:19:49:22 - 00:19:54:10
What speedrunning categories really are is
an indexing into the desires of players.


00:19:54:12 - 00:19:56:19
They're arbitrary.


00:19:56:19 - 00:20:01:17
This picture I have here is from the Hades
Speedrunning leaderboard.


00:20:01:20 - 00:20:04:05
And you'll notice across the top
there's many categories


00:20:04:05 - 00:20:07:14
that have proliferated over time
any 32 heat, 40 heat, etc.


00:20:07:14 - 00:20:10:11
on down the line,
three weapons, all weapons.


00:20:10:11 - 00:20:12:17
But I want to notice you to notice


00:20:12:17 - 00:20:16:19
the unmodded and modded categories here.


00:20:16:21 - 00:20:18:21
Players took it upon themselves


00:20:18:21 - 00:20:22:02
to say that the game did not meet
their needs and their desires.


00:20:22:02 - 00:20:25:02
For Speedrunning the game was altered,
it was modded


00:20:25:07 - 00:20:29:05
and those modifications came
from much debate, much discussion


00:20:29:09 - 00:20:34:05
and much care that went into ensuring
that there was a ruleset


00:20:34:05 - 00:20:37:05
that was fair and allowed
for many people to participate.


00:20:37:08 - 00:20:41:08
What I find that's really interesting
is after these mods have been produced


00:20:41:10 - 00:20:44:20
just a few days ago,
another conversation has started


00:20:45:01 - 00:20:48:05
how there's still shortcomings
in other ways that people want to play.


00:20:48:11 - 00:20:52:24
The formation of a hyper-modded category
is currently underway with a much debate,


00:20:53:01 - 00:20:57:04
many polls and a lot of discussion
amongst the community.


00:20:57:06 - 00:21:00:06
Just because there's a category
in Speedrunning does not foreclose


00:21:00:10 - 00:21:03:13
the creation of more categories
or the changing of existing ones.


00:21:03:16 - 00:21:08:18
And that's a very important


00:21:08:20 - 00:21:12:10
I want to that to illustrate this
and to connect it


00:21:12:10 - 00:21:15:15
back to transness specifically
and the creation of rules behind it.


00:21:15:19 - 00:21:17:20
I want to play this


00:21:17:20 - 00:21:20:07
poem by Narcissa Wright


00:21:20:07 - 00:21:23:13
She is Speedrun of


00:21:23:15 - 00:21:27:04
Legend of Zelda, 3D Legend Zelda games,
particularly Ocarina of Time,


00:21:27:06 - 00:21:30:00
and this poem
that she recites over one of her.


00:21:30:00 - 00:21:33:04
The ending of one of her runs of the game,


00:21:33:06 - 00:21:36:10
as you'll see, connects
a lot of the ideas around


00:21:36:14 - 00:21:38:10
how we create rules and categories


00:21:38:10 - 00:21:42:01
and how we can shift our orientation
towards them to be more liberatory.


00:21:42:03 - 00:21:45:08
Specifically through using


00:21:45:10 - 00:21:46:21
Speedrunning as a metaphor.


00:21:46:21 - 00:21:47:22
So I'm going to play this.


00:21:47:22 - 00:21:52:18
It's about two and a half minutes
as [inaudible] shifts back to the ECJ.


00:21:52:20 - 00:21:56:20
My mind wanders to the S adapters
and to the Virtual Console


00:21:56:20 - 00:22:00:18
that doesn't crash when game is performed
And to the old Kakariko route.


00:22:00:18 - 00:22:05:21
resetting the console to save time
and to the timing method.


00:22:05:23 - 00:22:08:12
The arbitrary start and end points.


00:22:08:12 - 00:22:10:21
My mind wanders


00:22:10:23 - 00:22:11:05
to the


00:22:11:05 - 00:22:15:16
Homebrewed Wii the region free
(inaudible) to the replacement joystick


00:22:15:16 - 00:22:20:07
to the Hori mini pad, to the rubber band
tape and grease.


00:22:20:09 - 00:22:26:00
My mind wanders to the practice,
the process, the save state to the game


00:22:26:00 - 00:22:29:06
shark, the game
saver, the gecko code to the cheating,


00:22:29:06 - 00:22:33:02
the splicing, the policing,
the audio waveform.


00:22:33:04 - 00:22:35:16
My mind wanders


00:22:35:16 - 00:22:39:08
to the timer, the inconsistency,
the dropped frames to the bitrate,


00:22:39:08 - 00:22:43:05
the capture card, the interlacing
to the emulator, the graphics plugin,


00:22:43:05 - 00:22:46:10
the dead zone, the dead zone.


00:22:46:12 - 00:22:50:02
The S adapters are subtle, invisible
already in use.


00:22:50:04 - 00:22:53:01
I see the grand
decentralization of it all.


00:22:53:01 - 00:22:55:22
My mind wanders


00:22:55:22 - 00:22:58:16
to the IQ player, the fast memory card,


00:22:58:16 - 00:23:01:21
the old GameCube laser to the PS2 disk


00:23:01:21 - 00:23:06:04
speed, the sloppy port, the HD remaster


00:23:06:06 - 00:23:08:16
to the PAL cartridge, the patch to glitch


00:23:08:16 - 00:23:12:08
the Japanese text
speed to the turbo controller.


00:23:12:09 - 00:23:15:06
The rules The rules.


00:23:15:06 - 00:23:17:21
All the categories are arbitrary.


00:23:17:21 - 00:23:20:09
Perhaps (inaudible) said it best.


00:23:20:09 - 00:23:21:09
Do whatever you want.


00:23:21:09 - 00:23:23:21
There are literally no rules.


00:23:23:21 - 00:23:25:04
The futility of it all.


00:23:25:04 - 00:23:27:12
The statistical waiting game grinding.


00:23:27:12 - 00:23:30:00
endless attempts.
Waiting for the outlier.


00:23:30:00 - 00:23:33:00
Never enough. Suboptimal, improvable.


00:23:33:01 - 00:23:36:06
My mind wanders


00:23:36:08 - 00:23:37:12
to the R&G.


00:23:37:12 - 00:23:40:05
The frame. Perfect timing.
The human error.


00:23:40:05 - 00:23:41:06
To the attempts.


00:23:41:06 - 00:23:42:08
The streams.


00:23:42:08 - 00:23:45:14
The splits to the audience.
The shittalk.


00:23:45:16 - 00:23:46:23
The clicks.


00:23:46:23 - 00:23:48:12
The fame.


00:23:48:12 - 00:23:51:06
My mind wanders


00:23:51:06 - 00:23:53:09
to the traveling. The marathons.


00:23:53:09 - 00:23:55:07
Sexually harassed. Fleeing. Hiding.


00:23:55:07 - 00:23:59:12
Reclusive paranoia to getting
high, playing smash, destroying my wrists.


00:23:59:14 - 00:24:02:12
My mind wanders.


00:24:02:12 - 00:24:05:04
The life I poured into it
all, working in a frenzy.


00:24:05:04 - 00:24:06:20
Managing a community.


00:24:06:20 - 00:24:09:05
Disrupting speedrunning.


00:24:09:05 - 00:24:12:22
Building upon it something new and greater
than it fell in upon itself.


00:24:12:22 - 00:24:14:14
Giana saw it first I was foolish.


00:24:14:14 - 00:24:16:02
It couldn't be unified.


00:24:16:02 - 00:24:19:01
All the categories are arbitrary.


00:24:19:03 - 00:24:20:16
Finished painting my nails, doing


00:24:20:16 - 00:24:24:09
my makeup, put on some mascara,
roll up my thigh highs.


00:24:24:11 - 00:24:26:21
All the categories are arbitrary.


00:24:26:21 - 00:24:28:22
Slip on a skirt, buy a new dress.


00:24:28:22 - 00:24:31:00
Feel the pain from the laser.


00:24:31:00 - 00:24:33:13
All the categories are arbitrary.


00:24:33:13 - 00:24:35:18
Leaving the clinic bottles in my hand.


00:24:35:18 - 00:24:38:10
Spironolactone estradiol.


00:24:38:10 - 00:24:43:18
All the categories are arbitrary.


00:24:43:20 - 00:24:47:00
So I want to dwell on that poem
for a second.


00:24:47:02 - 00:24:48:00
My mind wanders.


00:24:48:00 - 00:24:49:20
Serves as a kind of a refrain.


00:24:49:20 - 00:24:53:12
The poem is a reflection on Speedrunning
as a large community Speedrunning


00:24:53:12 - 00:24:56:23
as a personal practice
Wright's role in speedrunning communities


00:24:57:03 - 00:24:59:16
and how her personal transition
fits into all of it,


00:24:59:16 - 00:25:02:20
and how transness and Speedrunning
reflect one another.


00:25:02:22 - 00:25:05:19
Her mind first wanders
to a detailed accounting of the hardware,


00:25:05:19 - 00:25:08:13
software and glitches
that go into creating an Ocarina of Time.


00:25:08:13 - 00:25:10:10
Any percent speedrun.


00:25:10:10 - 00:25:12:06
The listing highlights
the ways that the run shifted


00:25:12:06 - 00:25:14:09
over the years,
incorporating new discoveries and tricks


00:25:14:09 - 00:25:17:09
that require different hardware
and orientations towards the game.


00:25:17:09 - 00:25:20:04
Through these shifts, language develops,
such as abbreviations


00:25:20:04 - 00:25:23:04
like GIM, which stands for
get item manipulation.


00:25:23:04 - 00:25:25:23
This term takes on meeting
within a particular community of practice


00:25:25:23 - 00:25:28:23
where an index is
not only a technological configuration or


00:25:28:23 - 00:25:32:02
manipulation of software and hardware,
but also a shared history.


00:25:32:02 - 00:25:33:07
That Wright traces.


00:25:33:07 - 00:25:34:10
The language of Speedrunning


00:25:34:10 - 00:25:37:24
is not just the abbreviations
or indeed the words themselves.


00:25:38:01 - 00:25:39:06
The development and 


00:25:39:06 - 00:25:41:19
implementation of GIM
as well as the development of rules


00:25:41:19 - 00:25:44:07
surrounding it,
are contained within this acronym.


00:25:44:07 - 00:25:48:16
Similarly, the old Kakariko route,
the Homebrewed Wii or the fast memory card


00:25:48:16 - 00:25:52:11
take on historical, emotional
and strategic significance for runners.


00:25:52:13 - 00:25:55:24
The communal history and language
comes about because of the category


00:25:56:01 - 00:25:58:11
Ocarina of Time Any%.


00:25:58:11 - 00:26:03:01
It is the category the ruleset that gives
meaning to this collection of objects.


00:26:03:03 - 00:26:05:21
Illegibility 
comes from shared rules and categories.


00:26:05:21 - 00:26:09:08
The rubber bands used to lock a joystick
into a precise opposite position.


00:26:09:10 - 00:26:13:19
The minute dropped frames the rate
that a PlayStation2 disc spins.


00:26:13:21 - 00:26:14:16
The speed at which


00:26:14:16 - 00:26:17:20
Japanese text is written to a screen
all become meaningful and legible


00:26:17:24 - 00:26:19:18
within the history of Ocarina of Time.


00:26:19:18 - 00:26:21:09
Any% Speedrunning.


00:26:21:09 - 00:26:24:00
But about halfway through the poem,
there's a change.


00:26:24:00 - 00:26:27:00
She abruptly exclaims, The rules.
The rules.


00:26:27:03 - 00:26:29:16
Her mind wanders to the rules,
as inevitably does


00:26:29:16 - 00:26:32:16
for any Speedrun her and trans person.


00:26:32:19 - 00:26:36:01
Once Speedrunning understands
rules as arbitrary, it can shift.


00:26:36:03 - 00:26:39:22
As she muses, I see the grand
decentralization of it all.


00:26:39:24 - 00:26:41:04
There may be disagreements.


00:26:41:04 - 00:26:43:06
There may be dangerous
factions that need to be guarded against.


00:26:43:06 - 00:26:45:15
To there may be fracturing and multiplicity.


00:26:45:15 - 00:26:48:10
There may be violence.
There may be personal risk and pain.


00:26:48:10 - 00:26:50:22
And as Wright mentions,
there is immense harm


00:26:50:22 - 00:26:52:21
that she sustained over her years
in Speedrunning scenes.


00:26:52:21 - 00:26:57:05
Since the arbitrary categories
are not inherently liberatory or freeing,


00:26:57:07 - 00:27:00:14
there are rules and cultural practices
that are outside of our control.


00:27:00:15 - 00:27:02:07
We are mediated, after all,


00:27:02:07 - 00:27:05:17
and it takes an immense amount of labor
and care to create, manage and maintain


00:27:05:17 - 00:27:10:09
any one category and keep those within it
safe, at least as best we can.


00:27:10:11 - 00:27:13:05
A tremendous amount of work
goes into establishing categories


00:27:13:05 - 00:27:16:04
containing rules that serve
those that are interpolated into them,


00:27:16:04 - 00:27:20:05
as well as forming a space of legibility
for players to come together.


00:27:20:07 - 00:27:24:02
But that work is how we develop
some kind of productive counter power.


00:27:24:04 - 00:27:26:24
She ends her poem, shifting away
from speaking about Speedrunning


00:27:26:24 - 00:27:28:10
to her own transition.


00:27:28:10 - 00:27:30:09
Her mind no longer wanders.


00:27:30:09 - 00:27:31:23
This last part is spoken in the moment


00:27:31:23 - 00:27:34:23
and seems to be built from reflections
she has had on Speedrunning.


00:27:35:00 - 00:27:36:22
She connects the work dangerous hardware,


00:27:36:22 - 00:27:39:22
software and rules of Speedrunning
directly to her own trans identity


00:27:40:02 - 00:27:42:21
and the technologies and pharmaceuticals
that produce it,


00:27:42:21 - 00:27:46:13
while also making a parallel between
the two via the repeated invocation


00:27:46:13 - 00:27:48:02
of arbitrary categories.


00:27:48:02 - 00:27:51:18
Speedrunning for Wright becomes a glitch
in the categorical rules of video games


00:27:51:23 - 00:27:52:11
in the same way


00:27:52:11 - 00:27:55:24
that her transition glitches and plays
with arbitrary categories of gender


00:27:56:01 - 00:27:59:10
speedrunning and the glitches inherent to
it becomes a language


00:27:59:10 - 00:28:02:22
to understand transness through and a means
to create new modes of relationality.


00:28:03:00 - 00:28:06:07
No matter how tenuous and costly
those relations may be.


00:28:06:09 - 00:28:08:14
And transness
becomes a new kind of language and means


00:28:08:14 - 00:28:09:15
to make herself legible.


00:28:09:15 - 00:28:12:14
Just as Ocarina of Time Any% is.


00:28:12:14 - 00:28:16:02
So Speedrunning is often characterized
as a kind of violence wherein the worlds


00:28:16:02 - 00:28:18:14
narratives and scripted
sequences are destroyed, torn apart,


00:28:18:14 - 00:28:21:14
or done away with via the use of glitches
and obsession with speed.


00:28:21:15 - 00:28:24:20
And this is not dissimilar
to how transness can be become deployed


00:28:24:20 - 00:28:26:04
in some feminist and queer theory,


00:28:26:04 - 00:28:29:20
as well as more nefarious circles
as a tool that dismantles gender.


00:28:29:22 - 00:28:32:14
And I want to push back
on these conceptions.


00:28:32:14 - 00:28:35:03
There may be some destruction,
but first and foremost,


00:28:35:03 - 00:28:38:17
from the raw materials of a video game,
the hardware and software primarily,


00:28:38:19 - 00:28:41:16
a new way to play is created
in the same way that the materials


00:28:41:16 - 00:28:45:12
of gender bodies, clothing, mannerisms,
relationships, laws, cultural assumptions


00:28:45:12 - 00:28:49:20
and so on come to be reconfigured
to create new gendered subjectivities.


00:28:49:22 - 00:28:52:14
Sure, we may smash things
over our metaphorical knees,


00:28:52:14 - 00:28:56:02
but we create something
new from the fractured pieces as well.


00:28:56:04 - 00:28:57:09
So I understand


00:28:57:09 - 00:29:00:09
Speedrunning
then to be a way to unmediate video games


00:29:00:09 - 00:29:04:21
to take the mediating rules of capital
G Gaming and undergo the labor to produce


00:29:04:21 - 00:29:10:11
alternative ways of play that adhere
to the desires of those that are playing


00:29:10:13 - 00:29:12:06
and I've gestured towards
the ways that these rules produce


00:29:12:06 - 00:29:14:19
alternative ways to engage
with the material of video games,


00:29:14:19 - 00:29:15:15
offering us glimpses


00:29:15:15 - 00:29:18:15
into the ways that trans subjectivity
can be produced through play.


00:29:18:18 - 00:29:23:06
But I want to shift
talking about temporalities here.


00:29:23:08 - 00:29:24:23
Speedrunning is all about speed, right?


00:29:24:23 - 00:29:27:23
Going fast and optimizing movement?


00:29:27:24 - 00:29:29:08
Yes and no.


00:29:29:08 - 00:29:31:05
This conception of Speedrunning
is based on the fact


00:29:31:05 - 00:29:32:21
that most people's engagement
with the practice


00:29:32:21 - 00:29:36:24
comes from seeing fantastic feats
that they're the top of leaderboards.


00:29:37:01 - 00:29:40:19
The first, second, third places
that we see


00:29:40:21 - 00:29:44:16
and featured at major events
like Games Done Quick.


00:29:44:18 - 00:29:47:22
This to me is not dissimilar
to conceptions of transness, transness


00:29:47:22 - 00:29:55:08
that are reinforced with media artifacts
like before and after and trans timelines.


00:29:55:10 - 00:29:57:02
They show us starting in one place


00:29:57:02 - 00:30:00:02
and ending up fully realized
at a stable identity elsewhere.


00:30:00:04 - 00:30:02:02
But this is all kind of bullshit.


00:30:02:02 - 00:30:05:17
We never end up stably anywhere
and there is a lot of work


00:30:05:17 - 00:30:09:09
and time
that goes into producing those images.


00:30:09:11 - 00:30:11:08
Nothing could be that simple.


00:30:11:08 - 00:30:15:21
And I want to focus on the reset.


00:30:15:23 - 00:30:18:10
What's pictured here are my splits
for Hades


00:30:18:10 - 00:30:20:07
Modded 3 weapons.


00:30:20:07 - 00:30:23:01
That is the times of my previous runs.


00:30:23:01 - 00:30:27:22
This being my personal best times. And


00:30:27:24 - 00:30:31:10
And you compare yourself against these
as you play.


00:30:31:12 - 00:30:33:12
You'll notice, though,


00:30:33:12 - 00:30:35:22
that up in this top corner,
I keep track of


00:30:35:22 - 00:30:39:14
how many times
I've attempted this category


00:30:39:16 - 00:30:43:00
at this current moment,
as in this morning,


00:30:43:02 - 00:30:46:13
I am at 838 attempts.


00:30:46:15 - 00:30:49:16
I've ran this category 838


00:30:49:16 - 00:30:53:05
times to try to improve it and get better.


00:30:53:07 - 00:30:59:23
I've only completed 85 of them.


00:31:00:00 - 00:31:01:20
This is what we call a reset.


00:31:01:20 - 00:31:04:18
We start over with the run.


00:31:04:18 - 00:31:07:19
If you're if you aren't on pace
for any number of reasons, bad luck,


00:31:07:24 - 00:31:13:11
poor play, whatever the case may be,
you start over from the top, you reset.


00:31:13:13 - 00:31:15:13
It's because I'm interested
in optimizing my play.


00:31:15:13 - 00:31:18:07
If I'm behind pace,
I terminate the run and try again.


00:31:18:07 - 00:31:21:06
It's extremely common and Speedrunning
runs are lost all the time.


00:31:21:06 - 00:31:22:23
We start over again and again and again.


00:31:22:23 - 00:31:23:08
And again.


00:31:23:08 - 00:31:24:13
Again. It's a slog.


00:31:24:13 - 00:31:27:00
It is slow. It's incremental.


00:31:27:00 - 00:31:29:07
But each cycle promises a new outcome.


00:31:29:07 - 00:31:32:15
We have hope for every new beginning,
but there is no perfect run.


00:31:32:15 - 00:31:34:21
And we know this. It never happens.


00:31:34:21 - 00:31:38:07
We can only strive towards
something always changing.


00:31:38:09 - 00:31:42:22
And a part of this cycle
is documented runs and strats for others.


00:31:42:24 - 00:31:43:21
Like these two


00:31:43:21 - 00:31:46:21
guides that I just pulled some
some images from.


00:31:47:02 - 00:31:49:00
We share our journeys
and hope that other people


00:31:49:00 - 00:31:52:00
join our community of people
that are dedicated to continually failing,


00:31:52:03 - 00:31:53:06
yet finding hope and joy


00:31:53:06 - 00:31:56:12
and striving for an ever deferred
and always shifting goal.


00:31:56:14 - 00:32:01:00
This is, I argue, a particularly trans
orientation towards temporality.


00:32:01:02 - 00:32:02:09
To reset is to start over.


00:32:02:09 - 00:32:04:06
And isn't that what a transition is?


00:32:04:06 - 00:32:05:22
But we don't wipe the slate clean.


00:32:05:22 - 00:32:08:22
We build from where we've been
and we also build off of others' work.


00:32:09:01 - 00:32:12:18
We break out of, in Elizabeth Friedman's
terms, Chrononormative temporalities


00:32:12:18 - 00:32:17:14
through both our own and others labor,
and we often fail at this a lot.


00:32:17:16 - 00:32:19:13
My transition is a story
of a lot of failures


00:32:19:13 - 00:32:21:17
to move, speak, interact
in the ways that I want to.


00:32:21:17 - 00:32:24:03
But these cycles of failure
are always moving towards a goal.


00:32:24:03 - 00:32:25:21
The proverbial PB.


00:32:25:21 - 00:32:28:13
The ever deferred gendered presentation
on the horizon


00:32:28:13 - 00:32:31:21
that promises that I personally
and more broadly as a group of people


00:32:31:23 - 00:32:37:22
share similar desire
for a liberation move towards.


00:32:37:24 - 00:32:40:09
And this image right here on the screen
I put because it's


00:32:40:09 - 00:32:43:21
a familiar one, that becomes emblematic
of some of the things I'm talking about.


00:32:43:23 - 00:32:48:00
This is my hormone levels from,
I don't know, a few years ago.


00:32:48:01 - 00:32:48:19
I don't actually know.


00:32:48:19 - 00:32:52:10
And this is from
I chose this one at random


00:32:52:12 - 00:32:54:17
because it happens a lot.


00:32:54:17 - 00:32:57:02
I get my blood
drawn over and over and over and over


00:32:57:02 - 00:33:00:13
in the same way that I get my face zapped
over and over and over in the same way.


00:33:00:13 - 00:33:03:20
I have to come out to people over and over
and over and over


00:33:03:22 - 00:33:07:03
small resets that are part of the larger
reset of transition.


00:33:07:05 - 00:33:10:17
But this image specifically shows
the optimization in the same way


00:33:10:17 - 00:33:12:03
that my runs are oriented towards


00:33:12:03 - 00:33:14:19
microscopic movements
that lead into a successful run.


00:33:14:19 - 00:33:19:01
So too am I interested in optimizing
my body of iteratively testing


00:33:19:01 - 00:33:23:02
and changing the smallest of details
of tracking them over time


00:33:23:02 - 00:33:25:20
and mastering this physical form
that I'll never be perfect


00:33:25:20 - 00:33:27:12
And sharing that information


00:33:27:12 - 00:33:30:19
with other people of asking for advice
online from other trans people.


00:33:30:19 - 00:33:33:07
When a medical establishment


00:33:33:09 - 00:33:39:16
doesn't give us the advice that we need.


00:33:39:18 - 00:33:40:08
But let's put this


00:33:40:08 - 00:33:43:24
more concretely into an actual speedrun.


00:33:44:01 - 00:33:47:05
This is footage from an old run of Spyro


00:33:47:05 - 00:33:51:03
Reignited 2 Any% from a few years
ago, where everything comes together


00:33:51:03 - 00:33:55:21
for me and I reach my, my, my goal time.


00:33:55:23 - 00:33:58:23
And this part in particular


00:33:59:01 - 00:34:03:18
is the hardest part of this run.


00:34:03:20 - 00:34:07:04
I enter this level and I paused.


00:34:07:06 - 00:34:11:12
I confused the game to send me
on a very specific frame somewhere else.


00:34:11:13 - 00:34:15:11
I'm controlling Spyro
behind this cut scene


00:34:15:13 - 00:34:19:12
to enter another level blindly navigating.


00:34:19:14 - 00:34:20:21
Soon I'm going to pause.


00:34:20:21 - 00:34:25:03
You'll hear it.


00:34:25:05 - 00:34:30:09
And I'm navigating a menu.


00:34:30:11 - 00:34:32:21
And I sigh


00:34:32:21 - 00:34:34:23
what I just did was, as you'll see


00:34:34:23 - 00:34:37:23
after Spyro dies here in a moment,


00:34:38:01 - 00:34:41:16
is I trick the game into thinking I'm in
a different level where there's power ups


00:34:41:22 - 00:34:46:06
so that I can use those power ups here
to dispatch this boss very quickly.


00:34:46:08 - 00:34:49:21
I then will use that to glitch
into the final boss and defeat him


00:34:49:21 - 00:34:53:09
shaving off a
whole like third of the game.


00:34:53:11 - 00:34:55:23
Now, the


00:34:55:23 - 00:35:00:01
sigh back there after I finally did it,
I think is illustrative.


00:35:00:03 - 00:35:03:04
It's hard to see,
but my splits say that this is attempt 212.


00:35:03:05 - 00:35:03:22
I've already set up


00:35:03:22 - 00:35:09:05
this extremely precise series of tricks
211 times to reach this point


00:35:09:07 - 00:35:12:02
in Speedrunning, the vast
majority of runs a reset because poor R&G


00:35:12:02 - 00:35:14:07
bad decision making, mechanical errors


00:35:14:07 - 00:35:17:10
and that accumulation of failure
of starting over again and again and again


00:35:17:15 - 00:35:20:10
helps reshapes orientation towards play


00:35:20:10 - 00:35:23:20
and they can shape our orientation
towards other temporalities.


00:35:23:22 - 00:35:26:22
And like I said, transition
could be felt as a kind of a reset to


00:35:27:03 - 00:35:30:04
I really do get kind of emotional
seeing myself in this video.


00:35:30:04 - 00:35:33:13
I'm just beginning to grow my hair out
just less than a year on hormones.


00:35:33:15 - 00:35:35:10
I'm just beginning to start over
to cut through.


00:35:35:10 - 00:35:38:05
That association has maintained me
through nothing but inertia


00:35:38:05 - 00:35:40:06
to do the work of trying again.


00:35:40:06 - 00:35:42:20
And I don't know where any of
the practices of transition will lead me.


00:35:42:20 - 00:35:45:09
Just like Speedrunning,
there's so much R&G.


00:35:45:09 - 00:35:46:11
What will I look like?


00:35:46:11 - 00:35:47:15
How will my family react?


00:35:47:15 - 00:35:49:11
How will this affect employment?


00:35:49:11 - 00:35:51:20
And it's scary
attempting to move on from the past.


00:35:51:20 - 00:35:55:03
But practices of a videogames
like Speedrunning can allow us to embody


00:35:55:08 - 00:35:57:01
alternative temporalities.


00:35:57:01 - 00:35:59:19
The reset has changed
the game and has changed me.


00:35:59:19 - 00:36:02:07
On a physical level,
I become attuned to the run.


00:36:02:07 - 00:36:06:00
The run's temporalities are
ingrained in my fingers and joints.


00:36:06:02 - 00:36:10:11
A trans understanding of our bodies is one
that recognizes them to be malleable.


00:36:10:13 - 00:36:13:11
And I'm going to pause him while I get to.


00:36:13:11 - 00:36:15:21
I'm at the final boss.


00:36:15:21 - 00:36:18:13
They're constructed technologies
that connect with and incorporate


00:36:18:13 - 00:36:20:09
other technologies into them.


00:36:20:09 - 00:36:22:21
Speedrunning
is one of those technologies for me.


00:36:22:21 - 00:36:25:16
So as I change my body through
pharmaceuticals and a whole host of gender


00:36:25:16 - 00:36:29:16
technology, speedrunning also changes me,
but just not not just in physical ways.


00:36:29:18 - 00:36:32:10
Video game temporalities
like all media, come to bear on the ways


00:36:32:10 - 00:36:34:06
we engage with the world
and understand it.


00:36:34:06 - 00:36:37:06
For me, Speedrunning
is a particularly trans temporal mode.


00:36:37:10 - 00:36:39:17
The temporalities of the reset
that are so central


00:36:39:17 - 00:36:42:22
to Speedrunning have helped me reflect
on the temporalities in my own life.


00:36:42:24 - 00:36:46:21
On another level, transitioning changes
my relationship to gender technologies


00:36:46:23 - 00:36:50:08
while speedrunning changes my relationship
to video game technologies.


00:36:50:10 - 00:36:52:08
But really, it's even more complicated
than that.


00:36:52:08 - 00:36:55:08
Speed running and transition are part of
the same assemblage that make up my life.


00:36:55:14 - 00:36:58:14
I cannot neatly segment
elements of myself,


00:36:58:14 - 00:37:01:10
so Speedrunning
can alter connection with a gender.


00:37:01:10 - 00:37:08:09
And so too can
transition inflect on video games.


00:37:08:11 - 00:37:10:03
And this last section is short.


00:37:10:03 - 00:37:13:12
I want to gesture towards
some ideas that I'm working with right now


00:37:13:14 - 00:37:17:14
that build off of what Pao's


00:37:17:16 - 00:37:20:02
argumentation with media


00:37:20:02 - 00:37:24:04
glitches as on mediation.


00:37:24:06 - 00:37:26:10
So I ask


00:37:26:10 - 00:37:29:10
how do trans people desync


00:37:29:11 - 00:37:31:05
with the media that has their own bodies


00:37:31:05 - 00:37:35:08
forming some kind of stable or flickering
subjectivity?


00:37:35:10 - 00:37:37:10
Speedrunning and transness
have been conceived


00:37:37:10 - 00:37:40:19
of glitches and gendered subjectivity
we're mediated by the world around us.


00:37:40:19 - 00:37:42:07
We don't quite fit into the systems


00:37:42:07 - 00:37:44:14
we are interpolated into.


00:37:44:14 - 00:37:48:08
We don't sync with the world
or our own bodies and we become glitches.


00:37:48:10 - 00:37:51:02
How do these subjectivities
then synchronize


00:37:51:02 - 00:37:53:05
or not with the other media forms
we interact with?


00:37:53:05 - 00:38:02:05
Or in other words, how do we become cyborgs or how do we become glitched cyborgs?


00:38:02:07 - 00:38:03:21
I use the concept of synchronization to 


00:38:03:21 - 00:38:07:08
describe how we come to control our bodies
that lag. How the immaterial


00:38:07:08 - 00:38:10:08
and material merged to 
create subjectivities through media.


00:38:10:10 - 00:38:13:05
I find identification as it is
used in video game studies


00:38:13:05 - 00:38:16:00
to be a particularly powerful concept
to interrogate,


00:38:16:00 - 00:38:18:05
identifying with the character
in the game to be powerful,


00:38:18:05 - 00:38:20:03
and that allows for acting on our desires
to be other.


00:38:20:03 - 00:38:24:18
Interfaces presumably fall away
and we are unaware of bodies at screens


00:38:24:20 - 00:38:31:02
or hands on controllers.


00:38:31:04 - 00:38:34:04
We are transported,
immersed in virtual worlds.


00:38:34:05 - 00:38:36:21
But what about when we speedrun?


00:38:36:21 - 00:38:39:18
There's a kind of telepresence, sure,
but identification does not work


00:38:39:18 - 00:38:43:05
in the same way as when we understand
video games to be manipulable software.


00:38:43:07 - 00:38:45:07
The representational space of player
characters


00:38:45:07 - 00:38:47:05
and narrative is heavily decentralized.


00:38:47:05 - 00:38:49:10
Instead, we are interfacing
with software and hardware.


00:38:49:10 - 00:38:51:19
But even before that,
we must interface with ourselves.


00:38:51:19 - 00:38:53:12
Our own bodies become a piece of media


00:38:53:12 - 00:39:01:12
we must interface with so that it can
become an extension of our desire.


00:39:01:14 - 00:39:04:05
And that synchronization is never perfect.


00:39:04:05 - 00:39:07:20
Otherwise we wouldn't have speedrunning
the errors in the RNG are what


00:39:07:20 - 00:39:09:05
makes speedrunning what it is.


00:39:09:05 - 00:39:12:24
If everyone was perfect, we wouldn't
need to have the practice of speedrunning.


00:39:13:01 - 00:39:15:21
So, to transition is to grapple
with uneasy synchronizations,


00:39:15:21 - 00:39:18:00
to bring our bodies into sync
with our desires.


00:39:18:00 - 00:39:20:07
And extending that synchronization over
time is difficult.


00:39:20:07 - 00:39:22:03
There are glitches in the matrix.


00:39:22:03 - 00:39:23:21
The difficulty is not the same
for everyone,


00:39:23:21 - 00:39:27:04
and often the difficulty stems
from the matrices of gender, race, class


00:39:27:04 - 00:39:31:02
ability and other forces
outside of our direct control.


00:39:31:04 - 00:39:33:12
However,
by incorporating and synchronizing virtual


00:39:33:12 - 00:39:36:12
and physical technologies with our bodies,
that is, becoming imperfect,


00:39:36:12 - 00:39:37:17
glitched, cyborgs.


00:39:37:17 - 00:39:38:22
We come to produce new kinds


00:39:38:22 - 00:39:42:17
of subjectivities, new bodies
and new modes of living our lives.


00:39:42:19 - 00:39:46:07
And I want to note that I'm still grappling
with many issues surrounding these ideas.


00:39:46:09 - 00:39:48:00
While I'm hopeful for the glitch
as a means


00:39:48:00 - 00:39:51:19
to create liberatory subjectivities,
glitches are always indexed, fixed,


00:39:51:21 - 00:39:55:11
eradicated or rolled into existing systems
as functions.


00:39:55:13 - 00:39:59:00
And I would've loved to talk about that
more in the Q&A, but I'll leave off with


00:39:59:00 - 00:40:02:04
that here. Leave off with this.


00:40:02:06 - 00:40:05:01
The technologies of video games
and the games we play with them,


00:40:05:01 - 00:40:08:04
like Speedrunning,
are one of many technologies of gender,


00:40:08:04 - 00:40:09:16
and because of video games' engagement


00:40:09:16 - 00:40:12:16
with synchronized cyborg constructions,
they become a tool to enunciate,


00:40:12:22 - 00:40:16:07
imagine, play
with, and embody, new forms of subjectivity.


00:40:16:09 - 00:40:19:04
So, I said a lot of words.


00:40:19:04 - 00:40:21:09
I'm going to I'm going to


00:40:21:09 - 00:40:25:12
take a break and stop talking and ask


00:40:25:14 - 00:40:33:22
of any questions.


00:40:33:24 - 00:40:34:22
Thank you so much.


00:40:34:22 - 00:40:37:22
Excuse me.
Thanks so much, Madison, for this.


00:40:38:02 - 00:40:40:19
Really, really, really profound.


00:40:40:19 - 00:40:44:20
And thoughtful
and theoretical, theoretically rich


00:40:44:22 - 00:40:45:14
talk.


00:40:45:14 - 00:40:47:13
I see Mar


00:40:47:13 - 00:40:51:13
Has their hand up.


00:40:51:15 - 00:40:52:07
So I will.


00:40:52:07 - 00:40:54:07
I will pass to Mar first but before that.


00:40:54:07 - 00:40:59:12
I should remind everyone, if you have
a question, feel free to raise your hand.


00:40:59:14 - 00:41:02:13
And if you don't feel comfortable
raising your hand,


00:41:02:15 - 00:41:05:09
you can always drop a question


00:41:05:09 - 00:41:07:11
in the chat.


00:41:07:11 - 00:41:09:12
But yeah, so Mar you can go ahead and start


00:41:09:12 - 00:41:13:24
the Q&A session.


00:41:14:01 - 00:41:15:07
Thank you very much.


00:41:15:07 - 00:41:17:17
I don't know if I'm glitching in the video.


00:41:17:17 - 00:41:20:07
Yeah, you're glitching good.


00:41:20:07 - 00:41:22:19
That's fine.


00:41:22:19 - 00:41:27:14
I'm like attuned to the talk.


00:41:27:16 - 00:41:30:02
So thank you so much.


00:41:30:02 - 00:41:33:00
Madison this was fantastic.


00:41:33:00 - 00:41:34:05
Let's be friends.


00:41:34:05 - 00:41:40:03
please and absolutely


00:41:40:05 - 00:41:40:22
I also study.


00:41:40:22 - 00:41:43:22
I am also in video game studies


00:41:43:24 - 00:41:48:24
Glitching temporality but more side on the queer side


00:41:49:01 - 00:41:53:13
so I want to I really want to hear
about glitching that part


00:41:53:13 - 00:41:58:12
that you just kept about glitching
and indexing and please go off.


00:41:58:14 - 00:42:00:11
I want to hear more.


00:42:00:11 - 00:42:02:04
Okay. Yeah.


00:42:02:04 - 00:42:05:13
So as I am


00:42:05:13 - 00:42:09:19
kind of thinking about this,
the really my whole talk here,


00:42:09:24 - 00:42:14:05
even if it wasn't directly referencing it
the whole time,


00:42:14:07 - 00:42:18:08
was in some ways thinking about the ways
in which certain bodies


00:42:18:10 - 00:42:21:10
are glitches in the kind of normal


00:42:21:10 - 00:42:26:04
functioning of society
and how we do or do not slot into that.


00:42:26:06 - 00:42:31:13
And oftentimes what we have in queer
studies, in


00:42:31:15 - 00:42:33:12
particularly in relation to video games,


00:42:33:12 - 00:42:36:12
we think of glitches as this kind of


00:42:36:15 - 00:42:39:06
something that gestures
towards a new liberatory future,


00:42:39:06 - 00:42:44:03
something that can allow us to escape
the mediation of the world around us.


00:42:44:05 - 00:42:48:08
And I just gave a very long talk
that kind of buys into that.


00:42:48:08 - 00:42:52:05
And I really and I really do find
that profound as this kind of way


00:42:52:05 - 00:42:56:24
to at the very imagine ways to be other.


00:42:57:01 - 00:43:00:01
What I was gesturing towards at the end,
though,


00:43:00:06 - 00:43:04:21
is how do we continue to do that
glitches become indexed right


00:43:04:23 - 00:43:09:10
speedrunning in particular my objects
of study, we give names to them.


00:43:09:12 - 00:43:12:08
For example,
in the poem from Narcissa Wright


00:43:12:08 - 00:43:18:01
I talked about the Get Item Manipulation
right now that this glitch


00:43:18:03 - 00:43:20:11
is given a name, we know how to use it.


00:43:20:11 - 00:43:21:16
We know how to initiate it.


00:43:21:16 - 00:43:25:09
We've operationalized it
towards certain goals.


00:43:25:11 - 00:43:27:09
Does it do the same work as


00:43:27:09 - 00:43:30:17
it always did, or do we have to continue
to find new glitches?


00:43:30:19 - 00:43:35:06
I'm curious and this is like an open question
to the world and everyone out there.


00:43:35:10 - 00:43:40:08
If there's always another glitch out there
to find if the work that I am doing


00:43:40:12 - 00:43:45:04
and other speed runners are doing are
foreclosing opportunities for new futures


00:43:45:06 - 00:43:48:23
by writing about these glitches,
once we know about the glitch, does


00:43:48:23 - 00:43:54:00
it cease to become a glitch or does it
need that kind of moment of rupture, that


00:43:54:00 - 00:43:58:04
moment of surprise to do the kind of work
that we often talk about it doing?


00:43:58:06 - 00:44:01:23
And that's where I'm at right now,
putting those kinds of questions


00:44:01:23 - 00:44:04:23
out into the world
and seeing what other people think,


00:44:04:23 - 00:44:08:07
because I'm not sure
and I want to balance balance


00:44:08:07 - 00:44:14:17
both of those kinds of things while still
attending to the care that should go into


00:44:14:19 - 00:44:17:08
I guess the care that should go into


00:44:17:08 - 00:44:21:12
how these glitches actually do
work for people in the world.


00:44:21:14 - 00:44:26:22
If any of that makes some amount of sense.


00:44:26:24 - 00:44:29:24
Yes, it's a great window


00:44:30:00 - 00:44:33:07
Into glitches and you put them[a],
you make them known.


00:44:33:09 - 00:44:36:08
They become, yeah, they become markers


00:44:36:08 - 00:44:40:18
in the trail for other people
so they can use glitches.


00:44:40:20 - 00:44:45:06
But again, it's and also on the other side
they can be abused


00:44:45:12 - 00:44:49:12
and used in ways
that not only are unintended


00:44:49:12 - 00:44:55:08
but can be warped to create more problems
than solutions.


00:44:55:10 - 00:44:56:12
True.


00:44:56:12 - 00:44:56:20
True.


00:44:56:20 - 00:44:58:04
I think it's yeah, I think you're right.


00:44:58:04 - 00:45:00:03
It's very complex.


00:45:00:03 - 00:45:01:00
Oh, no.


00:45:01:00 - 00:45:03:04
I'm just like, thinking about it.


00:45:03:04 - 00:45:06:05
How sometimes our vocabulary is


00:45:06:05 - 00:45:10:11
just appropriated and some forms


00:45:10:11 - 00:45:14:12
and some practices are appropriated
in ways that


00:45:14:14 - 00:45:18:06
actually make the glitch less


00:45:18:08 - 00:45:24:10
effective
in a broader sense than more effective.


00:45:24:12 - 00:45:27:04
As in, when you have
glitches and the glitch becomes very known


00:45:27:04 - 00:45:32:21
in the game
it is fixed or it's used in a way that


00:45:32:23 - 00:45:35:23
that you cannot achieve the same thing
anymore after


00:45:36:02 - 00:45:39:09
The update or a DLC or right? a patch


00:45:39:11 - 00:45:40:22
That's what I said.


00:45:40:22 - 00:45:47:05
Very, very popular with me because yeah,


00:45:47:07 - 00:45:51:01
And I’ll say I see connections to like


00:45:51:03 - 00:45:52:16
I guess


00:45:52:16 - 00:45:55:02
queer and trans politics
more broadly, right?


00:45:55:02 - 00:46:01:10
How we say


00:46:01:12 - 00:46:04:15
how, how we're interpolated
into kind of capitalist system


00:46:04:15 - 00:46:08:17
so that to become a market segment,
for example right no longer a glitch.


00:46:08:17 - 00:46:12:03
This identity has been named
and understood and then operationalized.


00:46:12:03 - 00:46:12:17
Right?


00:46:12:17 - 00:46:15:12
These are the kinds of things
that I'm kind of trying to think about


00:46:15:12 - 00:46:16:08
and make connections to.


00:46:16:08 - 00:46:19:15
But yeah


00:46:19:17 - 00:46:22:08
I guess David


00:46:22:08 - 00:46:23:20
Well, first of all,


00:46:23:20 - 00:46:32:05
thank you very much for a wonderful,
lovely and sort of vivifying talk.


00:46:32:07 - 00:46:35:14
I as I am sitting here and listening


00:46:35:14 - 00:46:40:23
to all of this rich information
that has been given


00:46:41:00 - 00:46:45:10
to us, I'm sort of really curious about


00:46:45:12 - 00:46:49:05
any sort of work that you might have done,
either in your dissertation


00:46:49:07 - 00:46:53:09
or in your own research or elsewhere


00:46:53:11 - 00:46:59:02
about the sort of frictional nature
of our trends


00:46:59:04 - 00:47:03:24
in gaming, particularly in regards
something like disability


00:47:04:02 - 00:47:08:11
or crip theory,
Because the reason that I bring this up,


00:47:08:11 - 00:47:13:17
what happens is that on the one hand
I'm very interested in disability


00:47:13:17 - 00:47:17:11
studies, disability media
studies on the other hand,


00:47:17:13 - 00:47:21:16
there seems to me to be some really rich


00:47:21:18 - 00:47:23:17
connections between these


00:47:23:17 - 00:47:28:02
two corpus of theory and also


00:47:28:02 - 00:47:33:00
because you sort of mentioned
at the end of this


00:47:33:02 - 00:47:36:06
sort of talk about that very nature


00:47:36:11 - 00:47:39:11
of the complicating and problematizing


00:47:39:13 - 00:47:42:01
ideas of certain kinds of subjectivity


00:47:42:01 - 00:47:47:02
including of disability and particularly


00:47:47:04 - 00:47:50:04
I promise to bring it to the end in a moment.


00:47:50:08 - 00:47:55:08
But particularly what's fascinating
about your talk, as I am sort of taking


00:47:55:08 - 00:48:00:22
you in, is this question of temporality
and also this question of


00:48:00:24 - 00:48:04:08
fitness and the idea of the misfit,


00:48:04:10 - 00:48:07:16
all three of
which are really sort of central


00:48:07:16 - 00:48:11:15
to certain brands of disability
studies and disability


00:48:11:15 - 00:48:15:10
media studies
through people like Rosemarie Garland-Thomson


00:48:15:12 - 00:48:20:01
and through the sort of rejection
of normative timescale


00:48:20:05 - 00:48:24:10
through time,
as has written extensively about.


00:48:24:10 - 00:48:29:23
But at the same time right
the idea of the speedrun of


00:48:30:00 - 00:48:34:10
sort of teleological nature
on the one hand,


00:48:34:10 - 00:48:38:04
and also the notion of the reset
on the other, it seems to be


00:48:38:04 - 00:48:43:09
that there's some rich connections
between these two things.


00:48:43:11 - 00:48:44:23
I think you're absolutely correct.


00:48:44:23 - 00:48:50:20
I think trans studies and disability
studies broadly speak to each other


00:48:50:22 - 00:48:53:22
very, very directly in a lot of ways.


00:48:54:02 - 00:48:58:05
And I think back to just the quote
that I pulled from Susan Stryker


00:48:58:07 - 00:49:03:16
about investigating the sutured nature
of your of everyone's subjectivity.


00:49:03:18 - 00:49:04:04
Right.


00:49:04:04 - 00:49:07:22
The ways in which that all bodies
are constructed to fit a particular


00:49:07:22 - 00:49:11:02
norm or a particular kind of


00:49:11:04 - 00:49:14:08
whether it's gendered,
whether it's in grace,


00:49:14:08 - 00:49:17:08
whether it's in relation to ability.
Right.


00:49:17:13 - 00:49:22:07
Revealing that kind of production,
that work that goes into it.


00:49:22:09 - 00:49:24:06
And then


00:49:24:06 - 00:49:27:14
I guess and elsewhere
I've talked about then and I gesture


00:49:27:14 - 00:49:31:17
towards that at the end, like I think
you said the word you used was friction.


00:49:31:17 - 00:49:37:02
And I think that's really great where now
we see the friction or somebody has some


00:49:37:06 - 00:49:40:17
some subjectivities
don't quite fit into that.


00:49:40:17 - 00:49:44:10
That's what the glitches to me
and that's the kind of


00:49:44:12 - 00:49:49:00
difficult space where glitch becomes
a really troubled metaphor too where in


00:49:49:02 - 00:49:51:07
it's something that does a thing


00:49:51:07 - 00:49:56:07
that produces
some sort of new kind of way to exist,


00:49:56:09 - 00:50:00:00
but also often is there's an impulse
to eradicate it.


00:50:00:04 - 00:50:00:22
Right.


00:50:00:22 - 00:50:04:13
And how do we make space for a glitch
and how do we


00:50:04:14 - 00:50:09:20
how do we avoid redefining it as normative
and can but also care for


00:50:09:20 - 00:50:14:02
it is care for the glitch is something
that like I'm kind of concerned with.


00:50:14:02 - 00:50:17:00
I think you're you're really right.


00:50:17:00 - 00:50:18:19
I I've


00:50:18:19 - 00:50:22:19
I talked about this in relation
to what I call janky controls


00:50:22:21 - 00:50:25:16
elsewhere where


00:50:25:16 - 00:50:29:14
there's a kind of on


00:50:29:16 - 00:50:31:14
unspoken rule in game


00:50:31:14 - 00:50:35:08
development that inscribes


00:50:35:08 - 00:50:40:05
how precisely we are supposed to interact
with like physical controllers.


00:50:40:05 - 00:50:41:19
Right?


00:50:41:19 - 00:50:43:18
And some games kind of buck that trend.


00:50:43:18 - 00:50:47:10
They are they're janky
or intentionally or otherwise,


00:50:47:10 - 00:50:51:01
whether it's designed in or it's
just because they don't frickin work.


00:50:51:03 - 00:50:54:00
I'm playing Pokémon Scarlet
and that's the case.


00:50:54:00 - 00:50:56:04
The game doesn't work


00:50:56:06 - 00:50:57:00
in the ways


00:50:57:00 - 00:51:00:24
and I talk about like how that reveals
some of the sutures.


00:51:00:24 - 00:51:05:08
The fact that normally some bodies
can play games


00:51:05:10 - 00:51:08:20
unhindered
is a fact that their subjectivity


00:51:08:20 - 00:51:10:17
has been produced
and games have been produced


00:51:10:17 - 00:51:12:19
for that subjectivity
to allow for that kind of game.


00:51:12:19 - 00:51:15:11
So I'm trying to think about
how we can also operationalize


00:51:15:11 - 00:51:18:11
the glitch to kind of reveal
that and bring that forth as well


00:51:18:11 - 00:51:20:02
to speak to some of that.


00:51:20:02 - 00:51:22:21
So those are some of the ideas
that came to my head as you were talking.


00:51:22:21 - 00:51:24:04
But I think you're.


00:51:24:04 - 00:51:24:24
You're absolutely right.


00:51:24:24 - 00:51:27:11
There's so, so much
that can be crossed over.


00:51:27:11 - 00:51:29:24
And some scholars have done that work.


00:51:29:24 - 00:51:31:23
I think of


00:51:31:23 - 00:51:35:19
Cameron Awkward-Rich who


00:51:35:21 - 00:51:38:13
writes about the bad feelings
of being trans,


00:51:38:13 - 00:51:41:18
and he connects it over
to kind of disability studies


00:51:41:18 - 00:51:44:19
and how to sit with that
and how like to work through and work


00:51:44:19 - 00:51:47:05
with those bad feelings
instead of like dismissing them


00:51:47:05 - 00:51:50:17
or heal them or ignore them
or do some self-care or whatever.


00:51:50:17 - 00:51:50:23
Right.


00:51:50:23 - 00:51:54:08
And how do we how do we work that
so there's this work happening


00:51:54:08 - 00:51:56:01
And I think it's really exciting.


00:51:56:01 - 00:51:57:24
Yes. So thank you.


00:51:57:24 - 00:52:01:20
And just to sort of add a pin
to the end of that,


00:52:01:20 - 00:52:05:12
what's also fascinating to me
is the ways in which


00:52:05:14 - 00:52:09:24
we can sort of
think about the desires to to be different


00:52:10:01 - 00:52:12:24
on a larger infrastructural level
and the ways in which


00:52:12:24 - 00:52:18:08
that that is being embraced
and also commodified at the same time.


00:52:18:10 - 00:52:21:06
So thinking about the ways in which,
for instance,


00:52:21:06 - 00:52:25:13
the Xbox game controller
speaks to subjectivities,


00:52:25:13 - 00:52:29:18
the way that disability has not been addressed
in the past, but at the same time,


00:52:29:20 - 00:52:36:18
it's a commodity that one buys into the
larger capitalist neoliberal


00:52:36:20 - 00:52:40:06
structure of everything and how one cannot


00:52:40:08 - 00:52:45:08
find a way outside one system
anyway, I'm taking up too much time.


00:52:45:10 - 00:52:46:05
No, that's great.


00:52:46:05 - 00:52:46:23
Thank you very much


00:52:46:23 - 00:52:49:18
And yes,


00:52:49:18 - 00:52:51:03
fantastic.


00:52:51:03 - 00:52:51:24
Thank you.


00:52:51:24 - 00:52:54:18
Thank you so much,
David and Mar for those questions.


00:52:54:18 - 00:52:58:01
We have one question in the chat
and so I want to read


00:52:58:01 - 00:53:00:18
that question it is from Brett.


00:53:00:18 - 00:53:02:01
Excuse me.


00:53:02:01 - 00:53:05:23
So they ask I'll just read it is I know


00:53:05:23 - 00:53:09:10
Speedrunning is a very welcoming space
for trans people.


00:53:09:12 - 00:53:12:13
I wonder if you have any thoughts
on the way that speed running


00:53:12:19 - 00:53:17:12
as a literal trans space
relates to your theoretical interventions?


00:53:17:14 - 00:53:18:24
Yes. Thank you so much, Brett.


00:53:18:24 - 00:53:23:11
So you're right to note that


00:53:23:13 - 00:53:26:13
Speedrunning is also located within.


00:53:26:19 - 00:53:28:11
I don't want to like sugarcoat things.


00:53:28:11 - 00:53:35:07
Speedrunning is also located in a larger
games culture, so there are, you know,


00:53:35:09 - 00:53:37:20
pockets of, of


00:53:37:20 - 00:53:41:12
the same old bullshit
that you see everywhere, right?


00:53:41:14 - 00:53:44:23
At the same time, by and large,
it is much more welcoming


00:53:44:23 - 00:53:48:21
because the labor and work
that many people have gone have undergone


00:53:49:01 - 00:53:53:17
to make that space
to actively work against the,


00:53:53:19 - 00:53:57:13
you know, anti-trans
kind of sentiments that that exist.


00:53:57:15 - 00:54:00:07
Places like Games Done Quick
have done an excellent job


00:54:00:07 - 00:54:03:16
in my opinion of producing those spaces.


00:54:03:16 - 00:54:07:05
But in smaller, smaller areas,
the Discord servers and the policies


00:54:07:05 - 00:54:11:02
that that we're in that are put in place


00:54:11:04 - 00:54:15:22
to, you know, boot people
that that are a problem to


00:54:15:23 - 00:54:21:11
to make them safe but to speak to
like your question at the end.


00:54:21:13 - 00:54:25:20
I do think there is something to the fact
that many trans people


00:54:25:20 - 00:54:30:18
are drawn to practices
like Speedrunning of that view


00:54:30:21 - 00:54:36:00
that the game and the game world
as something that is constructed by them


00:54:36:00 - 00:54:38:01
and can be reconstructed
in different ways,


00:54:38:01 - 00:54:40:12
in the same ways
that our bodies can be altered.


00:54:40:12 - 00:54:44:18
And these interventions that 
can that can happen with it,


00:54:44:20 - 00:54:45:06
at least


00:54:45:06 - 00:54:48:17
through discussions,
not formal research discussions,


00:54:48:17 - 00:54:53:18
but kind of talking to other trans Speedrunners
about this.


00:54:53:20 - 00:54:56:10
It has come up more than once.


00:54:56:10 - 00:54:59:20
And outside of Speedrunning specifically


00:54:59:22 - 00:55:03:22
my dissertation,
I kind of note a handful of different ways


00:55:03:24 - 00:55:07:01
where media or other practices


00:55:07:05 - 00:55:12:16
from swinging a hammer and building fences
to riding a bicycle


00:55:12:18 - 00:55:17:10
allows for different kind of meditations
and orientations towards one's own body


00:55:17:10 - 00:55:21:03
that allows them to feel it in
different ways and grapple with transness.


00:55:21:09 - 00:55:24:18
I think Speedrunning specifically allows
for a lot of that.


00:55:24:18 - 00:55:28:24
It's extremely physical
and embodied for video gameplay and also


00:55:28:24 - 00:55:34:03
does that tearing apart and re kind of
structuring of rules at the same time.


00:55:34:05 - 00:55:35:20
But yeah


00:55:35:20 - 00:55:40:09
as a as a whole Speedrunning is
is such a great place and on top


00:55:40:11 - 00:55:44:02
that most of my advice
for for like through my transition


00:55:44:07 - 00:55:47:04
came from fellow
Speedrunners and discord servers


00:55:47:04 - 00:55:51:18
that were set up to allow for spaces
not only talk about speedrunning


00:55:51:18 - 00:55:55:13
but talk about accessing medical care,
going through the bureaucracy


00:55:55:13 - 00:55:57:21
of all the stuff that you have to do.


00:55:57:21 - 00:56:01:09
So yeah, like there are places
where people care for one another


00:56:01:09 - 00:56:05:22
and produce not only video game play,
but this kind of mutual subjectivity.


00:56:05:23 - 00:56:08:23
So thanks for the question, I guess.


00:56:09:00 - 00:56:10:05
Thank you so much for that question


00:56:10:05 - 00:56:11:10
Brent. We have one more


00:56:11:10 - 00:56:15:15
one more question in the chat for Huan
and I'll go ahead and read that.


00:56:15:17 - 00:56:18:10
So Huan says, I'm
wondering if you can say more


00:56:18:10 - 00:56:22:13
about Speedrunning
as a process of unmediating game worlds,


00:56:22:15 - 00:56:27:07
especially in relation
to what seems to also be a hyper-mediated


00:56:27:07 - 00:56:31:19
engagement with games through the process
stream recording run through reporting.


00:56:31:19 - 00:56:36:01
Another way to ask this is
do you see Speedrunning


00:56:36:03 - 00:56:38:20
Speedrunning mediation/unmediation


00:56:38:20 - 00:56:43:24
as also creating trans, also
creating a trans gaming archive of sorts?


00:56:44:01 - 00:56:45:18
Yes, yes.


00:56:45:18 - 00:56:48:03
Thank you so much.


00:56:48:03 - 00:56:49:18
Basically, yes. At the end there.


00:56:49:18 - 00:56:56:12
So you're right, one of the things
that I adore and I've been working with


00:56:56:14 - 00:56:59:17
While PS is on the call here, working


00:56:59:17 - 00:57:05:08
through this kind of idea of mediation,
that Whit Pow in various ways that would


00:57:05:10 - 00:57:08:11
introduces us
to and a hangup that I've always had on it


00:57:08:11 - 00:57:12:24
is like unmediation,
as in deconstructing the norms


00:57:13:02 - 00:57:16:14
and existing outside of them


00:57:16:16 - 00:57:19:14
always runs up against the fact
that we are remediated


00:57:19:14 - 00:57:22:17
in other ways, sort of never
getting outside of mediation writ large.


00:57:22:17 - 00:57:24:18
So you're right to point
put a finger on that.


00:57:24:18 - 00:57:28:02
And that comes down to
some of the problems of having the glitch.


00:57:28:02 - 00:57:28:12
Right.


00:57:28:12 - 00:57:31:11
How glitch becomes re-inscribed
as a norm. Right.


00:57:31:11 - 00:57:34:22
We always just step into
another kind of form of mediation.


00:57:34:24 - 00:57:38:18
But that that is what I was trying to
gesture towards


00:57:38:20 - 00:57:41:13
when I talk about the


00:57:41:13 - 00:57:45:09
the Discord spaces where people
communicate it and should share


00:57:45:12 - 00:57:49:03
share their thoughts when I talk about
the guides that are produced right,


00:57:49:08 - 00:57:52:17
when leaderboards become guides,
they're not just leaderboards.


00:57:52:17 - 00:57:54:06
We think of them
as these competitive spaces,


00:57:54:06 - 00:57:58:01
but they're archives of all the labor
that people have put into to produce


00:57:58:01 - 00:58:01:05
their runs and their speed runs, It's
not about necessarily the top time.


00:58:01:05 - 00:58:04:09
The second time, it's about the work
that a community has done.


00:58:04:11 - 00:58:07:11
And I do view
that as this kind of archive.


00:58:07:11 - 00:58:11:17
Now, whether it's directly trans archive,


00:58:11:19 - 00:58:14:22
I don't know, but it's a trans orientation
towards it of sharing


00:58:14:22 - 00:58:22:15
communally all this research and care
that goes into producing subjectivity


00:58:22:17 - 00:58:23:00
There is


00:58:23:00 - 00:58:26:19
There's something particularly
trans about it, which may also speak to


00:58:27:00 - 00:58:30:00
some of the reason
why there are so many trans runners.


00:58:30:00 - 00:58:32:16
I think actually on basically all of those
leaderboards that I showed you,


00:58:32:16 - 00:58:35:23
it had a trans person
who was both at the top time


00:58:36:00 - 00:58:39:00
and multiple other trans people,
of course, top.


00:58:39:00 - 00:58:42:12
So people are encouraged
to get into this hobby through the years.


00:58:42:16 - 00:58:45:15
And I think it's partially
because that archival work


00:58:45:15 - 00:58:46:14
and it's not just about video games.


00:58:46:14 - 00:58:50:24
Like I said, there
is fountain of knowledge about hormones,


00:58:51:03 - 00:58:54:20
for example, in these spaces of accessing


00:58:54:22 - 00:58:57:06
doctors and surgeries
and things of that nature.


00:58:57:06 - 00:59:01:13
So yeah, I hope that kind of speaks
to some of what you're asking.


00:59:01:15 - 00:59:03:19
So thank you so much,


00:59:03:19 - 00:59:04:18
Madison


00:59:04:18 - 00:59:05:12
If no one else has a question,


00:59:05:12 - 00:59:07:23
right now,
I'd like to ask you a question.


00:59:07:23 - 00:59:09:06
Oh, actually, no.


00:59:09:06 - 00:59:12:04
Rayvon Fouché he raised his hand,
so Ray, I'll.


00:59:12:04 - 00:59:16:10
I'll pass it to you.


00:59:16:12 - 00:59:16:18
Thanks.


00:59:16:18 - 00:59:18:05
Very sorry I jumped in on you.


00:59:18:05 - 00:59:21:16
Are there real quickly No, no, it's.


00:59:21:18 - 00:59:22:00
Yeah.


00:59:22:00 - 00:59:26:04
Thank you, Madison, so
much for participating and giving a talk.


00:59:26:06 - 00:59:28:14
And for the HAT lab I have


00:59:28:14 - 00:59:33:03
so many questions,
but I'll just begin with a couple.


00:59:33:05 - 00:59:36:00
So I guess in your work.


00:59:36:00 - 00:59:39:06
So where does the completionist 
sit in to


00:59:39:08 - 00:59:42:22
your work
and the project that you're doing?


00:59:42:24 - 00:59:48:06
So is it oppositional to Speedrunning
or I mean, what, what is it?


00:59:48:06 - 00:59:53:08
It's just a different space location
of engaging interacting with game play.


00:59:53:10 - 00:59:57:03
Well, that's why I focus on desire right


00:59:57:05 - 00:59:57:13
there.


00:59:57:13 - 01:00:01:20
I don't I'm not too invested in


01:00:01:22 - 01:00:05:00
structures of normativity
or anti normativity necessarily


01:00:05:00 - 01:00:08:17
specifically, it's
another orientation towards play


01:00:08:20 - 01:00:09:10
in the same way


01:00:09:10 - 01:00:13:23
that speedrunning categories proliferate
based on player desire, in the same way


01:00:13:23 - 01:00:17:03
gendered categories and presentations
proliferate in this world.


01:00:17:05 - 01:00:20:16
I want to think about spaces
that allow for desire to both be


01:00:20:17 - 01:00:23:06
unfold and be produced.


01:00:23:08 - 01:00:24:10
So the


01:00:24:10 - 01:00:27:18
completionist is just a different
orientation towards the game, one


01:00:27:18 - 01:00:33:22
that does generally accept
the kind of diegetic and structural


01:00:33:22 - 01:00:37:24
framing of the game
as it is created by a designer.


01:00:38:01 - 01:00:42:06
And I haven't necessary kind of grappled
with all the implications


01:00:42:06 - 01:00:45:17
of completionists,
but I have no truck with with them.


01:00:45:17 - 01:00:48:17
I have no real bones to pick with
basically any way that people play.


01:00:48:18 - 01:00:51:17
I'm interested in proliferating
modes of play rather


01:00:51:17 - 01:00:55:12
than kind of shutting them down
in any capacity.


01:00:55:14 - 01:00:57:09
Yeah, no,
I don't think it was meant that way.


01:00:57:09 - 01:01:01:07
But this is more just think about the way
you're thinking about the interpretive


01:01:01:07 - 01:01:05:04
flexibility of gameplay and yeah,
well the completionist


01:01:05:04 - 01:01:08:24
right, you know, as a, as a person is not,
Who doesn't game very much.


01:01:08:24 - 01:01:12:00
So you're going to I'm going to show my,
my lack of knowledge here.


01:01:12:00 - 01:01:15:09
So let me let me just kind of tiptoe
very gently in that.


01:01:15:11 - 01:01:16:05
Sorry. Right.


01:01:16:05 - 01:01:19:05
The completionist,
is about understanding and


01:01:19:05 - 01:01:22:05
and conforming to, in a sense,
to the rules of the game.


01:01:22:10 - 01:01:24:15
The way in a sense
is generally structured.


01:01:24:15 - 01:01:31:04
But you're talking about a different place
of space where modding freedom,


01:01:31:06 - 01:01:33:04
the the rulemaking is


01:01:33:04 - 01:01:37:10
community based
rather than corporate [inaudible] based.


01:01:37:12 - 01:01:40:09
So I'm intrigued about that as a


01:01:40:09 - 01:01:43:08
as a not as a as another space


01:01:43:08 - 01:01:47:01
to think about this question
that you're raising.


01:01:47:03 - 01:01:50:11
And then I'm curious to
to think about what you


01:01:50:11 - 01:01:55:08
how you distinguish
between these terms like optimization


01:01:55:10 - 01:01:58:10
versus perfection versus glitch


01:01:58:10 - 01:02:01:21
and the context of Speedrunning.


01:02:01:23 - 01:02:02:19
Mm hmm.


01:02:02:19 - 01:02:07:05
And a question from basically no
information, No, no knowledge whatsoever.


01:02:07:05 - 01:02:10:23
But as you were talking,
those are the things that kind of


01:02:11:00 - 01:02:13:05
popping up in my head is like speedrun.


01:02:13:05 - 01:02:18:04
is is it about optimization
or this I


01:02:18:06 - 01:02:22:15
this goal for perfection,
even though I don't know


01:02:22:15 - 01:02:25:23
that's why I'm asking yeah
so starting with perfection that term.


01:02:26:04 - 01:02:30:02
So I think something that comes up
and this is why I say


01:02:30:02 - 01:02:34:06
playing the video
game is like a method of research.


01:02:34:08 - 01:02:34:19
When we


01:02:34:19 - 01:02:37:20
look at Speedrunning,
it seems like it's about perfection


01:02:37:20 - 01:02:42:10
going as fast as possible
was in the literal definition,


01:02:42:12 - 01:02:46:06
but you realized quickly
that perfection will never happen.


01:02:46:12 - 01:02:49:20
You will never be perfect
for a myriad of reasons.


01:02:49:20 - 01:02:54:04
One, because we're people in bodies
with limited time on this earth is one of them.


01:02:54:06 - 01:02:56:21
One of them is games
don't do what we want them to do.


01:02:56:21 - 01:02:57:15
We want that.


01:02:57:15 - 01:03:01:21
We want to wrangle them
into our nice, neat


01:03:01:23 - 01:03:03:06
play playing.


01:03:03:06 - 01:03:04:23
But it won't happen.


01:03:04:23 - 01:03:07:11
It's this quest for perfection
that's always deferred.


01:03:07:11 - 01:03:09:02
It's always on the horizon.


01:03:09:02 - 01:03:11:03
We're pushing towards that and we're going
To it.


01:03:11:03 - 01:03:14:03
And it is our goal, but we know
that we're never going to get there.


01:03:14:07 - 01:03:17:07
So we try to optimize things
to the best of our ability.


01:03:17:13 - 01:03:21:24
So Speedrunning is an optimization problem
at its core, right?


01:03:21:24 - 01:03:25:11
It's what is what is the most optimal


01:03:25:11 - 01:03:29:18
way to to go from one point
to another point to achieve a goal?


01:03:29:20 - 01:03:30:24
But because we know that


01:03:30:24 - 01:03:34:16
there's no perfection, there's also a risk
reward that goes into this too, right?


01:03:34:17 - 01:03:37:05
We we come up against what
we can actually do,


01:03:37:05 - 01:03:41:03
what we can actually perform
in our limited time.


01:03:41:05 - 01:03:44:03
And part of that is the fact


01:03:44:03 - 01:03:48:01
that we're glitched, the game is glitched,
and we need to accept that.


01:03:48:03 - 01:03:51:19
And then we we put the glitches,


01:03:51:21 - 01:03:54:08
we operationalize glitches towards


01:03:54:08 - 01:03:58:14
that kind of goal
and for that optimization.


01:03:58:16 - 01:04:01:16
So I think I think there's that key
distinction between


01:04:01:18 - 01:04:04:17
optimal and perfect,


01:04:04:17 - 01:04:10:05
where perfect is like this platonic ideal
where as optimal is the best


01:04:10:05 - 01:04:14:08
we can do on our physical bodies
in a certain amount of time.


01:04:14:10 - 01:04:17:06
And I think that really speaks
to the things that I'm kind of talking


01:04:17:06 - 01:04:19:05
about related to glitching, right?


01:04:19:05 - 01:04:20:03
The way that we


01:04:20:03 - 01:04:25:14
we accept it, we work with it
and we we find new ways to be glitched


01:04:25:16 - 01:04:26:10
as a community


01:04:26:10 - 01:04:30:05
and off the work and labor
that other people have done.


01:04:30:07 - 01:04:33:01
Does that speak to any
the kind of thoughts you're having?


01:04:33:01 - 01:04:34:24
Yeah, Yeah, not completely and totally.


01:04:34:24 - 01:04:38:10
I mean, I'm
I'm fascinated with the idea of like,


01:04:38:10 - 01:04:43:02
thinking about the…


01:04:43:04 - 01:04:47:00
So does optimization yep


01:04:47:02 - 01:04:49:23
allow for freedom and creativity


01:04:49:23 - 01:04:54:11
or is optimization another set of


01:04:54:13 - 01:04:57:06
rules and routines that


01:04:57:06 - 01:04:59:12
direct play.


01:04:59:12 - 01:05:00:16
That's where the glitch comes in.


01:05:00:16 - 01:05:04:18
There's always a way to be more optimal,
and that's where the creativity comes in


01:05:04:24 - 01:05:07:05
the lateral thinking
the thinking about


01:05:07:05 - 01:05:09:04
what are the other ways
we could approach this,


01:05:09:04 - 01:05:11:00
or what are the other ways that are safer to


01:05:11:00 - 01:05:12:24
approach this there's many things.


01:05:12:24 - 01:05:15:24
Player expression is a term
that yields in speedrunning communities


01:05:16:02 - 01:05:19:02
because it looks like a very rigid kind of


01:05:19:08 - 01:05:22:24
we're going from one point to another
and there's a best way to do it.


01:05:23:01 - 01:05:27:21
But really you'll notice the very fine
tooth differences in players.


01:05:28:02 - 01:05:29:23
When I watch


01:05:30:00 - 01:05:31:20
players of a game that I'm very, very,


01:05:31:20 - 01:05:35:10
very familiar with,
I know who it is, whether I see it or not.


01:05:35:16 - 01:05:39:06
I see the very small differences
in their play


01:05:39:08 - 01:05:44:20
because we can't know what's perfect
and also we're, again, bodies


01:05:44:22 - 01:05:49:08
in a meatspace here
pressing buttons we're gonna have habits.


01:05:49:08 - 01:05:50:14
We're going to have routines.


01:05:50:14 - 01:05:52:14
So I don't think so.


01:05:52:14 - 01:05:56:16
I think I think it's good to hold on
to the fact that optimize doesn't


01:05:56:16 - 01:05:59:17
necessarily negate
these little tiny glitches


01:05:59:17 - 01:06:03:23
that keep cropping up, whether it's small minute
changes and padding


01:06:04:00 - 01:06:08:02
disagreements on what might be the actual
best way to do a thing


01:06:08:04 - 01:06:11:05
and on and on and maybe even
just finding a completely different route.


01:06:11:10 - 01:06:14:16
It's happened so many times
where people will know a route inside out.


01:06:14:16 - 01:06:15:24
They've practiced it for years.


01:06:15:24 - 01:06:18:08
Shit, we found a game breaking glitch.


01:06:18:08 - 01:06:22:09
All of that goes out
the window. Happened with Ocarina of Time,


01:06:22:11 - 01:06:22:17
which


01:06:22:17 - 01:06:25:17
was that the poem was referencing
many, many times.


01:06:25:19 - 01:06:28:08
All the skills that you thought
you had. Goodbye.


01:06:28:08 - 01:06:29:17
Someone found a different way to do it.


01:06:29:17 - 01:06:30:05
So yeah,


01:06:30:05 - 01:06:33:05
I mean, there's a lot of different ways
that these things change over time,


01:06:33:10 - 01:06:38:11
even though optimization might hint
like initially kind of gesture at that.


01:06:38:11 - 01:06:43:03
I think there's a lot
a lot more nuance to it than that.


01:06:43:05 - 01:06:44:10
Thank you.


01:06:44:10 - 01:06:46:13
Yeah, thanks. Thank you.


01:06:46:13 - 01:06:47:01
Thank you so much.


01:06:47:01 - 01:06:48:06
Ray.


01:06:48:06 - 01:06:50:22
Is it if no one else has a question
or wants to jump in real quick,


01:06:50:22 - 01:06:54:07
I'll ask my question, Madison.


01:06:54:09 - 01:06:57:22
So, one, thank you so much for this really,
really awesome talk.


01:06:57:24 - 01:07:01:18
As I said earlier, my question
I think I'd like to just maybe


01:07:01:18 - 01:07:06:14
for a moment sort of move away from sort
of, as you call it, the cultural practice


01:07:06:19 - 01:07:12:22
of Speedrunning, but still thinking about
sort of the intersection between sort of


01:07:12:24 - 01:07:15:05
player desire


01:07:15:05 - 01:07:16:17
and and video games.


01:07:16:17 - 01:07:20:16
I'm curious if you thought any


01:07:20:18 - 01:07:23:10
in your sort of in your work
or if you'd be willing to sort of


01:07:23:10 - 01:07:27:24
think out loud now about the way sort of


01:07:28:01 - 01:07:32:07
and the way in consequences
sort of game developers especially sort of


01:07:32:13 - 01:07:36:16
sort of like game developers and sort of


01:07:36:18 - 01:07:39:00
using now and the and have been


01:07:39:00 - 01:07:42:09
using sort of idea of gender choice


01:07:42:11 - 01:07:46:14
as a sort of gamemaker
mechanic, ludic mechanic for freedom.


01:07:46:14 - 01:07:46:24
Right.


01:07:46:24 - 01:07:49:21
The logic is that
the player has the freedom


01:07:49:21 - 01:07:53:06
to choose
where they are in a very specific binary.


01:07:53:08 - 01:07:53:16
Right.


01:07:53:16 - 01:07:58:11
So and so I'm curious, one, just sort of


01:07:58:13 - 01:08:02:01
in the sort of thinking sort of alongside
sort of the controversies


01:08:02:01 - 01:08:05:01
with like sort of, for example,
like Cyberpunk 2077


01:08:05:04 - 01:08:10:06
or whatever
the number is and their sort of with sort of


01:08:10:08 - 01:08:12:00
transness in their game, right.


01:08:12:00 - 01:08:14:06
Thinking about sort of the,


01:08:14:06 - 01:08:16:17
the, the Conan, I think MMO


01:08:16:17 - 01:08:20:10
that was sort of had sort of spamming


01:08:20:12 - 01:08:24:03
penis and breast size
for their characters, right?


01:08:24:03 - 01:08:26:23
So and so
and I feel like I'm kind of rambling a little bit,


01:08:26:23 - 01:08:29:09
but I'm curious
if you could sort of talk with a more


01:08:29:09 - 01:08:33:13
a little bit more about sort of what
I think the novel thing about your work


01:08:33:13 - 01:08:38:23
is that it sort of undo the,
undo the fallacy that sort of this


01:08:39:00 - 01:08:42:15
that opting into a binary right
is actually freeing.


01:08:42:18 - 01:08:43:20
Right.


01:08:43:20 - 01:08:49:24
But yeah, so
I'll, I'll, I'll leave it at that.


01:08:50:01 - 01:08:51:06
Yeah.


01:08:51:06 - 01:08:54:19
So I guess just your last comment there,


01:08:54:21 - 01:08:57:18
the fact that choice, right.


01:08:57:18 - 01:09:00:19
Oh we're given the choice of gender
but Yeah, but


01:09:00:19 - 01:09:05:08
you're still that is a limiting
feature that limits it to


01:09:05:10 - 01:09:08:08
two options.


01:09:08:08 - 01:09:09:02
Yeah.


01:09:09:02 - 01:09:11:03
Well, hold on.


01:09:11:03 - 01:09:13:03
Cyberpunk 2077


01:09:13:03 - 01:09:16:11
I, maybe shockingly, loved at launch.


01:09:16:16 - 01:09:18:06
Why did I love it?


01:09:18:06 - 01:09:20:06
It was glitchy as all hell.


01:09:20:06 - 01:09:21:15
It didn't work.


01:09:21:15 - 01:09:24:10
So any of these kinds of things
that anyone was talking about


01:09:24:10 - 01:09:28:00
as far as what was inscribed by
the developers,


01:09:28:02 - 01:09:30:21
your choices, because you're like,
your guess is as good as mine.


01:09:30:21 - 01:09:34:09
My character is now at the skybox,
even though I was driving in a car


01:09:34:09 - 01:09:37:10
for some reason and I'm now I'm
falling like, who cares this whole world?


01:09:37:10 - 01:09:39:16
It's like deconstructed in certain ways.


01:09:39:16 - 01:09:43:13
So I think that's like
an interesting example.


01:09:43:15 - 01:09:45:14
At the same time,
there's that, yeah, there's that like


01:09:45:14 - 01:09:49:13
mixing and matching of this different
kind of


01:09:49:15 - 01:09:54:19
sexed and gendered features
that they try to allow.


01:09:54:21 - 01:09:57:18
And like,


01:09:57:18 - 01:10:00:15
I don't know,


01:10:00:15 - 01:10:03:15
I think you're already kind of touched on


01:10:03:15 - 01:10:09:02
what my thinking would be right


01:10:09:04 - 01:10:10:17
regarding kind of player


01:10:10:17 - 01:10:14:19
desire and the limits of


01:10:14:21 - 01:10:18:19
the designed
kind of interaction with this,


01:10:18:21 - 01:10:20:02
because this has to be taken.


01:10:20:02 - 01:10:22:11
Like once you're talking about this,


01:10:22:11 - 01:10:26:07
there's also a critique of kind
of a larger capitalist structure of what


01:10:26:07 - 01:10:29:07
the gaming audience
has been constructed as


01:10:29:13 - 01:10:33:21
who the kind of


01:10:33:23 - 01:10:37:07
consumer because the consume 
consuming audience is constructed


01:10:37:07 - 01:10:41:10
in certain ways that's been historically
constructed to be a particular person.


01:10:41:12 - 01:10:44:03
How like what they're they're able to do


01:10:44:03 - 01:10:47:22
within those constraints.


01:10:47:24 - 01:10:49:09
I guess I don't have too many thoughts.


01:10:49:09 - 01:10:50:24
I think the Conan thing is hilarious.


01:10:50:24 - 01:10:54:03
I love that
they give the option to have these over.


01:10:54:03 - 01:10:57:17
Like if your desire is to have this huge enormous 


01:10:57:19 - 01:11:00:06
breasts or
penis that the game allows you to do that.


01:11:00:06 - 01:11:03:16
And I think really directly
of the McElroy brothers'


01:11:03:21 - 01:11:07:19
Monster Factory, if you're not aware.


01:11:07:21 - 01:11:11:24
Griffin and Justin McElroy,
who were kind of founding, I don't know


01:11:12:04 - 01:11:17:05
they're a major in poly, getting Polygon
off the ground, have a series on


01:11:17:06 - 01:11:20:18
YouTube called Monster Factory,
where they take character creators


01:11:20:18 - 01:11:23:09
and they break them.
They just break them to all hell.


01:11:23:09 - 01:11:27:00
Their motto is "no middle sliders"


01:11:27:02 - 01:11:28:20
and there's exaggerated features.


01:11:28:20 - 01:11:31:06
They're silly bulbous heads.


01:11:31:06 - 01:11:34:12
There's all these things that like
take a body and reveal that even


01:11:34:12 - 01:11:40:03
in these character creators
that maybe they are gendered along a binary.


01:11:40:07 - 01:11:44:09
We can just fuck with that thing to all
hell and back if we want to, and create


01:11:44:09 - 01:11:48:17
whatever want the features
that the character creators are often


01:11:48:17 - 01:11:52:12
extremely powerful and the designers
don't anticipate you to use them all.


01:11:52:14 - 01:11:56:22
That is how I would kind of connect
my research to what you're talking about.


01:11:57:03 - 01:11:59:17
Well, what can we actually do with these?
Who cares what they actually think?


01:11:59:17 - 01:12:00:00
Who cares?


01:12:00:00 - 01:12:02:06
The label
male and female says on the tin?


01:12:02:06 - 01:12:05:01
What can we actually produce
through these character creators?


01:12:05:01 - 01:12:07:17
It would be how I would want to, like,
look into this and analyze.


01:12:07:17 - 01:12:11:00
I super recommend Monster Factory,


01:12:11:02 - 01:12:12:06
check some of those out


01:12:12:06 - 01:12:16:09
and see the kind of wild quote
unquote monsters that they create, which


01:12:16:10 - 01:12:17:22
I love that they use the term monster,


01:12:17:22 - 01:12:20:02
because there's also like a care
and a narrative that they give to


01:12:20:02 - 01:12:22:13
all the characters,
that they're monsters, their glitches


01:12:22:13 - 01:12:23:23
by kind of cultural convention.


01:12:23:23 - 01:12:27:13
But they're they're these, like, endearing
creatures that they play games with.


01:12:27:13 - 01:12:32:13
And that's what pops into my mind.


01:12:32:15 - 01:12:33:18
Thank you so much Madison


01:12:33:18 - 01:12:36:24
for that helpful answer on the fly.


01:12:36:24 - 01:12:37:19
I really appreciate it.