Play/Fighting: A transfeminine activist memoir from the Digital Walden
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Date
2024-04
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
Play/Fighting: A Transfeminine Activist Memoir from the Digital Walden is a hybrid work of creative non-fiction, poetry, and close reading. Centered around an analysis of Walden, a game, a videogame adaptation of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Play/Fighting uses the story from the game to tell stories from my life as it intersects with videogame culture, activism, and the struggle for transgender rights. Taking inspiration from Ken Baumann’s EarthBound, Play/Fighting structures its telling through the gameplay and level progression from Walden, a game, with chapters named for the game’s levels and chapter content informed by the game’s plot. By incorporating aesthetics from nature writing and New Games Journalism, my thesis tests the “Play Deliberately” tagline from Walden, a game through the cultivation of solitude and the sublime.