Queer people experience time differently. By this overly simplistic statement I do not mean to apply that queer individuals literally experience each second in a biologically distinct way, but rather to gesture to the extensively-discussed notion that queer timelines are fundamentally different from non-queer ones. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick elaborated on this idea in her 1997 essay, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,” in which she describes how queer temporalities deconstruct the normative cishet progression of childhood to college to career to marriage to children to retirement to death. She points to the AIDS epidemic as intensifying this pattern through “the brutal foreshortening of so many queer lifespans” (148) which has even further disrupted normative expectations of life progression and span.
This queer refusal (both intentional and unintentional) to adhere to heteronormative linearities is a crucial aspect of Queers in Love at the End of the World. Each playthrough of the games lasts exactly 10 seconds, and a timer in the upper right corner of the screen counts down to the game’s end, which signifies the diegetic end of the world. The game’s two queer protagonists seem to be aware that they only have 10 seconds left, as the game starts out in the following way each time:
However, despite having such knowledge, the characters do not always act as if they are approaching death, but often actively resist conforming to the rush of the timer. Many of the endings come before the timer is up, and though there is time left, the extra time is unnecessary. In other endings, the characters continue to show their love in new ways–demonstrated through new text options appearing on screen–seemingly endlessly. In almost all of the endings, the main player’s thoughts and wordier at direct odds with what is happening. The main character will describe how safe, protected, and alive they feel, despite the fact that imminent death and destruction is only seconds away.
One thread connects all of these various endings–the characters’ refusal to conform to the temporal reality set out for them. It is implied in the game that the apocalypse has been brought about by the powerful institutions, institutions that are largely defined by adherence to standards that don’t account for queer lives, realities, or loves. By ignoring this normative timeline, the characters reaffirm their own queer temporalities as well as the overwhelming power of their relationship, even if it cannot be measured by heterosexual time.
In addition, the game also serves as a powerful allegory for the fact that whether because of AIDS, violence, or any other host of tragic conditions, many queer lives are still cut short. However, even when individual lives are cut short, queer love will always live on.
Bibliography:
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2003.
This is a great analysis! I’m under the impression that “the brutal foreshortening of so many queer lifespans” doesn’t only occur as the result of literal lives being cut short too soon as a result of violence, AIDS, etc, but also as a result of delayed milestones on the front-end of life. In a heteronormative society, straight children can develop and indulge crushes early on, while many queer children have had to languish in first wondering why they don’t experience the same attraction as their peers, then parse why the way others perceive their attractions to be wrong, then finally–maybe–being able to properly date someone if they so desire. There are more barriers, and the hope comes from those barriers being torn down legally and socially, lengthening queer lifespans like you discussed and increasing the time spent during those lifespans as their true selves. <3
I hadn’t considered this angle while playing the game for myself, but looking back on my time with it, your framing makes a lot of sense! Your post helped me to understand something that I had been confused about — that the characters don’t seem all that concerned with the approaching end of the world. The concern for that is left up to the player. Your wrote that the characters refuse “to conform to the temporal reality set out for them”, which is an excellent reading of their seeming nonchalance about the events.
The game serves as a teaching tool of sorts, at least that’s how I understood it. Player instinct says to click on things as fast as possible, but in my experience the game encourages you to slow down a bit. You miss a lot of the text if you just try to go quickly, and eventually you will hit a dead end and you have to think about the text on screen. Eventually, the player becomes similarly nonchalant about the end of the world because they get to read the text.
This is a really insightful analysis and helped put a lot of what I was feeling about the game into words. The rushed sense of time and desire for an ending within the limit pushes the player to play faster but if you end up reaching an ending before time runs out it feels unfulfilling/incomplete. Beyond that I was always wishing for more time to truly read the text and narrative, even though the characters and plot already felt very real. This sense of being rushed to conform to the game’s parameters or in the case of the narrative the world’s, speaks to queer narratives and lives in a very emotionally charged way. The sense of panic and longing for more time to love/work through the story is very visceral and is what I think makes this game unique.
This was a great piece! I enjoyed reading it and found your points about connecting the brevity of the game to the often briefness of queer life to be particularly insightful.
Hi Shira,
I really liked the opening line of your piece: “Queer people experience time differently”. I never thought about the timer as being a part of the representation of queer relationship timings, and how it could be interpreted differently from just being the end of the world. It was very powerful to hear your interpretation of the video game being that even though “individuals lives can end, queer love lives on”—especially in the context that the rest of the world is ending with this couple, how the freedom that lies within these 10 seconds from the rest of society contribute to their freedom as a queer couple.
Thanks for sharing!