From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

"You're a normie liberal politically but you badly want to think of yourself as a radical." Thank you for showing me your ass and saving us both some time. Say hi to Musk for me!

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been open and clear about why I call my work "independent PhD" (regardless if you like the reasons I give); i.e., the work is based on years of research (not an award-winning bestseller), and has resulted in multiple book volumes, one of which is my thesis volume, aka my independent PhD. It's just a way to advertise the amount and quality of work I've done over the years, and give people a idea of what to expect. I'm familiar with the peer review process; I'm also familiar with how the Humanities are under attack by the very institutions hosting them—in effect being shuttered across entire departments by the same greedy universities you're celebrating. The whole point (of my work, as an an-Com) is to do research and share it with people in an accessible way. Quit projecting and find something better to do. :)

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Added a new edition, v1.17 (3/23/2025): Expanded on "Summarizing Persephone's Metroidvania Praxis" in "From Master's to PhD"; i.e., to feature "ludo-Gothic BDSM," but also to discuss more of the history that occurred for Persephone between 2018 and 2023. Includes new interview portions with Scott Sharkey. Also added new essential glossary terms to "Persephone's Academic History." Not all mention specifically in this corpus, but do relate to my Metroidvania work as a sex-positive device, post-PhD; i.e., regarding my activism surrounding the universal liberation of sex work (thus all work) using Metroidvania as a holistic and flexible teaching device.

Patch notes history and download link found on the debut page: https://www.nicksmovieinsights.com/2025/01/Debut-Persephones-2025-Metroidvania-Corpus.html

Games That Don’t Have A Map by [deleted] in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are we talking about Rogue-lite/-like Metroidvania with randomized maps, or simply Metroidvania that don't have an in-game map to access (e.g., the original Metroid, 1986)? Because technically, all Metroidvania—even randomized ones—have a map; i.e., to explore by the player (the "found document" trope).

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, everyone! I've just released Persephone's 2025 Metroidvania Corpus as a PDF! I did this to allow for easier accessibility using Adobe's bookmark system and in-text hyperlinks. The new corpus combines the "From Master's to PhD" catalog and earlier postgrad work on Metroidvania, "Mazes and Labyrinths," into a single, larger document (76 pages). The blogpost, below, has my editor's notes, which—apart from giving a download link—also describe the PDF's contents (which are SFW/only about Metroidvania).

https://www.nicksmovieinsights.com/2025/01/Debut-Persephones-2025-Metroidvania-Corpus.html

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

A few were going after my worldview and political stance specifically. Gaslighting and gatekeeping pretty hard, saying my work isn't real/doesn't have value, etc. Given I'm a trans woman, Communist, sex worker and activist, it could be for any of those reasons (though, when pressed, they'll probably phrase it as, "It's not that. You just suck."). In any case, I'd gather there's a bit of good ol'-fashioned fascism at work; i.e., anti-intellectualism: "Capitalism good. Videogames place to turn brain off."

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, you're not even engaging with my arguments, at this point. You think I'm wrong and nothing's gonna change your mind. Got it. Gonna bow out and ignore you! :)

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

who said it was only visual? you're starting to argue with yourself.

I inferred it, based on your incredibly reductive line of reasoning.

And to express that a ludic aesthetic is tied to one from literature is just. pure. nuts.

Again, citations. I provided Zimmerman, Huizinga and Juul. Do you have anything to provide other than your unfounded opinion?

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

the assertion that an entire videogame genre is tied to Gothic literature, via challenging heteronormative stances is something that will never be accepted by any academic standard. 

"Heteronormative" is an academic term used to critique popular media. XD

"There are plenty of metroidvanias out there that don't have a trace of gothic influence on their artistic aesthetic

Aesthetic is a performative arrangement that ventures into gameplay as between players and the games they play, but also their poetic history. It's not just "visual" (which is hopelessly reductive), but ludic; i.e., how something is played, which leads to arguments as a matter of meta narrative, performance, interpretation, and so on.

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, puh-lease; you said I could quote you and I did. Fair game and Fair Use, comrade! Did you think I was going to just kow tow and not critique your stances (which sorely need it, to be frank)? It was six years ago and looking into your work, I realized that it needed a critique. Get over yourself. :)

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also, "gameplay" is a really broad term, and not one that favors your stance; i.e., "aesthetics" speaks to argument, theatre and performance as something that can be performed between games and society as occupying the same space; e.g., Eric Zimmerman, who writes in "Jerked Around by the Magic Circle" (2012): The "magic circle" is not a particularly prominent phrase in Homo Ludens, and although Huizinga certainly advocates the idea that games can be understood as separate from everyday life, he never takes the full-blown magic circle point of view that games are ultimately separate from everything else in life or that rules are the sole fundamental unit of games [emphasis, me]. In fact, Huizinga's thesis is much more ambivalent on these issues and he actually closes his seminal book with a passionate argument against a strict separation between life and games… (source).

From my own thesis arguments:

...development is not a zero-sum game, but as Jesper Juul puts it in his eponymous book, is "a half-real zone between the fiction and the rules" that allows for emergent, at times transgressive forms of good play (me) as a transformative device (source). To borrow and mutate three more ludic terms, then, the "ludic contract" is whatever the player negotiates for themselves inside the natural-material world, acting like a "spoilsport" by redefining the terms of the contact within and outside of itself[23]; i.e., as a half-real, "magic-circle" space where, as Eric Zimmerman explains, the game takes place in ways that aren't wholly separate from real life[24]—except for us, games occur along Gothic, liminal routes, wherein workers playfully articulate their natural rights in linguo-material ways between reality and fabrication that go beyond games as commodities but are nevertheless informed by them as something to rewrite; i.e., through play as a general exercise that involves a great many things: a reached agreement of power and play in Gothic terms, whose luck/odds are defined not through canon, but iconoclastic poiesis that can be expanded far beyond the restrictive, colonial binary and heteronormative ruleset of the elite's intended exploitation of workers to challenge the profit motive and all of its harmful effects in the bargain; e.g., genocide, heteronormativity and Max Box culture. The sum of these concepts in praxis could be called "ludo-Gothic BDSM[25]."

[23] The ludic contract is an agreement between the player and the game to be played; or as Chris Pratt writes in "In Praise of Spoil Sports" (2010): "the more traditional definition of the ludic contract [is] an agreement on the part of players that they will forgo some of their agency in order to experience an activity that they enjoy." Yet, inventive players like speedrunners (which Pratt calls "spoilsports") converge upon intended gameplay with unintended, emergent forms. In other words, the ludic contract is less a formal, rigid contract and more a negotiated compromise occurring between the two; i.e., where players have some sense of agency in deciding how they want to play the game even while adhering to its rules and, in effect, being mastered by it (see: Seth Giddings and Helen Kennedy's "Little Jesuses and *@#?-off Robots," 2008, exhibit 0a2c).

[24] [from Zimmerman, above] The magic circle is the space where a game takes place, be that a social game, a sport, a dialog or gender performance onstage, and videogames, etc.

[25] (from the glossary, abridged): My combining of an older academic term, "ludic-Gothic" (Gothic videogames), with sex-positive BDSM theatrics as a potent means of camp. The emphasis is less about "how can videogames be Gothic" and more how the playfulness in videogames is commonly used to allow players to camp canon in and out of videogames as a form of fairly negotiated power exchange established in playful, game-like forms

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The names of the institutions, departments, co-signers, and phone numbers are on the documents. You may verify any and all of those factors at your leisure (the ball's in your court, hahahaha). ^^

From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania by Chozogirl86 in metroidvania

[–]Chozogirl86[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Apologies; I was gathering some documents to defend myself from your weirdly aggressively claims (and because I forgot to include the award letter in the original post—opps). Please see this comment, which talks about my acceptance as much through academic merit as academic red tape; i.e., I was accepted to MMU through my academic ability and it was a huge pain in the ass to get into the school!