Queers in Love at the End of The World deeply affected me. Maybe it’s because I’m a romantic, or maybe the simplicity and timed window of the game succeeded in making me want to do more, to love more, but either way, the game hit me emotionally almost as hard as Doki Doki Literature Club (albeit in a very different way.) Our class discussions focused a lot on failure as a mechanic, but I’d like to talk a little bit more about the themes of Queers that were tightly interconnected to failure, but that didn’t get discussed at length in class.
Before I start: I think some of these observations might be a little bit obvious, but I think they’re still worth pointing out!
Queers in Love at the End of The World, in a broader sense, says something about love that is amplified by its lens of a Queer romance. The messaging of the game is by no means exclusive to Queer love, but there is something about the LGBT+ experience that seems like it may lend itself a different view of the practice. While recent public narratives surrounding acceptance of LGBT romance and sexual orientation have focused public energy on persuading the general populace that "Love is Love", that same-sex marriage and relationships are the same as straight ones, there is something to be said for the experiences of queer relationships that are different due to our shared history and similar experiences. As Jaire's post noted, perhaps there is an over-romanticization of failure or sadness in queer literature and relationships, but at the same time it seems that the Queer experience sees romance for the tragic aspects of what it is. After all, the challenges that Queer lovers have faced in just the last hundred years a profound history: ranging from facing death or violence for love, having to hide affection, love inexplicably tied with fear, and the HIV/AIDS crisis destroying entire generations of gay men (note: while I'm a bisexual woman and am probably not as deeply affected by this as any gay man, the issue still had deep resounding effects on the community as a whole). While LGBT+ love isn't necessarily inherently different, it seems that the Queer lens is uniquely hyperaware of the fleeting nature, the precarious balance of love. And, again referencing Jaire's post, perhaps that's over-romanticized in a lack of happy narratives.
But, in Queers in Love at the End of The World specifically, the depiction of love simply isn't happy, it is instead acutely aware of the fact that love is dangerous, perhaps pointless. This is inextricable from the queer lens of storytelling - whether from one specific event or romance, or from the long shared experience of the queer community, queer love is love like any other, yes - but it is also love from a perspective that is more aware of, and perhaps more comfortable with, the harsh realization that love will end. Whether from the end of the world, from the tragic crisis of HIV tearing lovers apart, from the deprivation of marriage, the queer perspective is closer to the shadow of the reality that all love runs from, the fact that there will be an end. Queer narratives are closer to this realization than straight ones, although anyone (even one whose kind of love has been upheld for hundreds of years) can feel and understand the reality.
There is a sort of beauty in the option to kiss her slowly. The game is hard-hitting in the discrepancy between the timer counting down and the decision you make to move with patience. The text tells you, in response to the decision, "Why the hell not?". The option makes clear that you feel that you have all the time in the world when you're kissing her, and it doesn't matter if you actually don't. And to an extent, that one choice is the distilled essence of what Queers in Love at the End of the World points to about love. In this way, the game is a Queer narrative telling everyone what the LGBT+ can already be so acutely aware of - that there is a beauty and a kind of sadness in the fact that all love will end. It's guaranteed to end, despite societal reassurances of loves that last more than one lifetime, or notions that love stories written down and shared make someone's love story last. In Queers in Love at the End of the World love, like in real life, is timed and finite, but we still want to do it so desperately. It doesn't matter if it goes away. There is still poeticism and beauty to be found in the finite.
Screenshots taken by me from Queers In Love at the End of the World, by Anna Anthropy. https://w.itch.io/end-of-the-world