Encyclopedia Fuckme and the Case of the Vanishing Entree

Encyclopedia Fuckme is a fast-paced, action-packed lesbian BDSM-themed CYOA game, written in breathless prose that is certainly meant to be hot and sexually arousing. Does that make its purpose "clearly pornographic", as Sam Kabo Ashwell claims in his review? I do not think so. It seems to me that an essential part of pornography is that it gives the reader (or watcher) exactly what he or she desires, which is why (a) most pornography is very formulaic, and (b) it is always clearly classified, so the consumer can choose the exact right product and not be confronted with kinks he or she doesn't like. Wittgenstein famously claimed that there can never be surprises in logic, and the same is true for pornography -- which makes it somewhat surprising that sex is more fun than logic, as John Cleese once proved, or rather, did not.

Anyway, what I want to say is that Encyclopedia Fuckme doesn't spell its specifics kinks out in advance; and that given their bizarre nature, and the way they are played out, it will be the rare reader who finds this game arousing all the way to the end. This is intentional. Encyclopedia Fuckme wants us to explore the weird tensions that arise when sexual arousal meets (Spoiler - click to show)revulsion, revulsion not in the shape of disgust, but in the shape of fear and uncertainty.

As far as I have seen, the game has two endings: a bad ending that you'll probably reach the first time, and a good ending that takes a little thought and exploration (or dumb luck) to find. The good ending is (Spoiler - click to show)hilariously over the top. For me, at least, it provided the catharsis needed after the rest of the story by making me (Spoiler - click to show)laugh out loud in disbelief and delight.

What you get out of Encyclopedia Fuckme is largely going to depend on your reaction to its particular kinks: chacun a son gout. Normally, the polite thing to do here would be to list the particular kinks involved, but this would probably be spoilerish; it's a fundamentally transgressive piece, and the tension of not knowing what shit it's going to pull next is a great deal of the point. Still: this is not one of those Anthropy games in which lesbian BDSM smut is merely a mild aesthetic theme. You have been warned. (As someone who is not all that into most of its kinks, I ultimately found it more charming than offensive or gross, but it is possible that the Internet has jaded me.)

Its purpose is clearly pornographic, in that it appears designed to get someone off. It doesn't take itself very seriously, and it aims to squick you out by running roughshod over your boundaries, but (contrast Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country) these seem in service to its pornographic aims, not a negation of them. It's largely about how being forced outside comfort zones gets people hot. The writing is headlong, hard-breathing and frantic, throughout: a great many of the choices are unpunctuated speech in all-caps, and the protagonist's conflicting motives of horniness and self-preservation are... not exactly understated.

As CYOA goes, it is very linear; up until the end, basically all your options remerge into the same central track. Many of the choices conspicuously make no difference. There's more than one ending, but the mechanics that distinguish them are not conspicuous from play. Its game-like aspects, then, are all about the surface, about employing the promise of interactivity as a tool to foster engagement. There's obviously some content-form relation here, although this is getting to be a rather old saw: yeah, the game is controlling, we get it.

i can understand the desire of art to be transgressive, and that this piece is intended to start as erotica before abruptly diving deep into what is, to me at least, (Spoiler - click to show)serial-killer horror.

i realize that (Spoiler - click to show)vore is a known fetish, it has its adherents, i've had furry friends who were into it, Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is OK As Long As It Only Remains A Fantasy.

but as something to spring on a reader without any warning, in a game presented as ordinary porn, it's a little on the extreme side.

if the (Spoiler - click to show)serial killer stuff had been accurately signposted in advance, i would probably have given this game four stars ... from another room ... using a long pole to click the mouse. it's very well written. but the fact that this incredibly triggering content was provided without warning forces me to reduce the rating considerably.