Blog Archives
Space-Cast! #45. Kelly House
Molly House! There’s a good chance you’ve heard of this recent release about queer joy in 18th-century London. Today we’re joined by Jo Kelly to discuss the origins, development, and challenges of creating such a game, including the perils of “emotional hit points,” the difficulties of representing queer joy, and why it’s so important that betrayal was included as an in-game option.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Love and Heartbreak in Georgian London
As a second-grader, I despised recess. Not because I enjoyed class — it was boring and tedious, hemmed in by schedules and busywork — but rather because I was lonely. Some people don’t understand loneliness. They can’t. It wears the soul to a grainy powder. I had recently changed schools, bidding farewell to my friends and those familiar halls. Now I spent those interminable minutes wandering the lawns, balancing on the rocks, avoiding the bullies I half-knew from church.
And then, like the sun warming my face after a chill, there they were. Two friends. Adam and Adam. They invited me to play make-believe with them. We soared across the grass, scraped our knees together, became soldiers and explorers, scared ourselves silly at sleepovers, told our first dirty jokes. Once, afraid that I had done something that would make them abandon me, I burst into tears, only for both Adams to enfold me in a gangly, childlike hug, reassuring me that all was okay.
Everything was bright. For a time.
Our House Is a Very Very Very Molly House
I often joke that I’m a class-four prude. Like many jokes, this one hides a kernel of truthfulness. For reasons that are far beyond the purposes of today’s discussion, sexuality is not something I discuss easily or often. When I do, it’s often behind a veil of playfulness. In laughter and mirth, the untouchable is momentarily set free.
Although the comparison is an imperfect one, that also seems true of molly houses, gathering places such as coffee houses or taverns where homosexual men in 18th-century England could socialize freely, veiled from the gaze of polite society. In some ways, their idea of queerness was different from ours. Indeed, they lacked terms like “queerness” at all. The laws of the time lumped homosexuality and bestiality together, and those who were arrested could be pilloried or even hanged.
Despite these penalties, men risked shame and death to create places where they could become more fully themselves. That’s the topic of Molly House by Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle. Molly House was one of the finalists of the first Zenobia Award. Now it’s nearly here, and I can safely say there’s nothing quite like it.
SPACE-BIFF! 