#maddy thorson

[prokopetz]

I'm 100% not disputing Maddy Thorson's claim that she didn't figure out she was trans until after she'd finished working on Celeste (DLC excluded), and the greater part of the game works at least as well as an allegory for living with mental illness as it does an allegory for gender transition. However, that specific repeated motif where Badeline keeps insisting – condescendingly at first, then with increasing desperation – that Madeline is "not a mountain climber", as though "being a mountain climber" is some sort of fundamental identity... well, I'd love to know where Thorson thought she was going with that part at the time that she wrote it, if it wasn't intended to be a gender thing.

[orkazh-arts]

Time to climb ! 🏔️✨🍓

[ladyofthebookcase]

HOLD UP if maddy thorson realized she was trans while making celeste does that mean she named herself after madeline 😭 thats so cute if so

[geekysteven]

when you're about to completely fail an amazing platformer

[Image description Comment on Nextdoor from someone named Janet "Dear Celeste, I am currently day drunk and volatile."]

[queriesntheories]

@daviddavidonthewall

Hey, I think this postcard is for you, David!

And there seems to be a blank spare!

oh fuck *falls back into old habits* *screen fades to black* *level loading* TIP: your belief that you are incapable of changing for the better will become a self fulfilling prophecy if left unchallenged

[androidgirlthing]

everyone is asking me "why did you buy nine copies of celeste" and nobody is asking "how was the mountain the mountain looks fun was it fun"

[shezasag]

me trying to convince people kaizo smw is fun: you see you die all the time, levels can legitimately take you days to get through without tools depending on your skill level & the hack's level of difficulty, hack creators hate you and want you to suffer and there will be a troll only the one time you don't check, & don't go near brazilian or german shell/item abuse hacks for a long time (not because bad, they're on their own wavelengths of difficulty).......but mario go bounce hehe :)

[socialistexan]

Everyone say, "Thank you, award-winning 30-under-30 Maddy Thorson - creator of the smash indie platformer Celeste - for inventing trans people"

[also-fours]

sometimes i think about that asker who said it was "rude" that i compared isat to an undertale AU that had some similarities story-wise to it and asked adrienne if it was a possible inspiration

how dare i compare one piece of art to another

how dare i try to guess what may have inspired a piece of art that i really like by just asking the creator directly bc y'know, they are literally just a person on the internet and i can ask them if i wanted to (plus said creator clearly seemed to have grown up in the same type of environment on the internet as a lot of us did)

y'all know that all of this undertale AU shit was made by people, right?

not even famous people in the indie scene that have entire teams like fuckin. toby fox or maddy thorson, like. people who sell merch of their stuff on redbubble or whatever bc they gotta pay rent, they're not completely out of this world deities that dont have feelings and just pump out content for you to make fun of and or enjoy (hell, people like toby and maddy aren't either. they, too, are just people if you havent noticed)

putting all of your feelings AND my own about various UT AUs aside, they were made by actual people who loved what they were making and were passionate about it

like you're not above people because you dont like undertale AUs. just because you thought they were cringe doesnt mean they are thus the lowest form of art possible, and it is an insult of the highest degree to draw any sort of comparison between it and something of "higher stature."

like do you know how pompous that sounds?

(rich guy with a monocle voice) "oH, i dont associate with those SAVAGE undertale AUs! they aren't REAL art after all, huehue!"

i didnt know classism was a thing in fandom!

[homestuckconfession]

I don't really like it when people compare Hussie declaring June Egbert as canon to JKR saying that Dumbledore is gay. I think it's a little closer to Maddy Thorson, a couple years after releasing Celeste, confirming that the player character, Madeline, is a trans woman

Rowling is a cishet transmisogynist. Hussie and Thorson are both trans creators who, after realizing they weren't cis, have come to see their respective protagonists as transfem

.

[prokopetz]

It just occurred to me that all those B- and C-sides that are set up so that you can reach the end and beef it at the last moment because you aren't correctly positioned to dash into the heart are literally the Celeste version of Maddy Thorson's strange obsession with ending Super Mario World kaizo levels with obnoxiously positioned up-pipes.

[fi-aaa-na]

On Celeste and Transness

I wrote this originally as a comment under a YouTube video about Celeste, but then it turned into a short essay so I think I'll just post it here instead. The video was very good, but missed the trans allegory inherent to Celeste's story. A lot of what I talk about isn't really news here, but might be helpful to those unfamiliar with trans identity and the struggles that accompany it.

Celeste is a game written, produced, and even scored by trans women. There's conclusive evidence (including commentary by the creator, Maddy Thorson) that the character Madeline herself is a trans woman. And overall, the experiences metaphorized in Celeste are extremely relatable particularly to trans people. While there are a lot of valid readings of Celeste's themes, I think the most cohesive and defensible reading is as trans allegory. This can be recognized by examining each story beat in turn and how it contributes to the overall narrative, which is at its heart a story about making peace with one's self.

- Broad themes of overcoming hardship:

Transitioning is hard. It is a years-long process of self-acceptance, self-improvement, and self-assertion. At the end of it, trans people are faced with a brutally hard world that is in most places completely opposing us at every step. Even in the most progressive and accepting places, trans people are usually the last people to receive any of the benefits of that progress. This is the reason trans people suffer extraordinarily high rates of homelessness, addiction, unemployment, poor mental health, and suicide, and even those horrifically dark facts are often used as jokes at our expense. The act of transitioning feels a lot like climbing a mountain, and I think there's a good case to be made that that's where the premise of this game comes from in the first place. The monument at the base of Mt. Celeste is a solemn reminder of this fact. Not all who walk this path survive.

- The dark reflection:

The relationship between an egg and their transness tends to be very adversarial. Trans women are extremely over-represented in the military (transfemme Americans are 3 times more likely to have served in the military than the average American) for this reason; we seek a way to prove to ourselves that we are in fact men and not trans women, so we find the most masculine persona we can possibly adopt and cling to it like a life preserver. It never works. Transness, like Madeline's dark reflection, is not something you can make go away. When you try to, it makes you bitter, often drawing out cruelty and toxicity. Trans people pre-transition have this part of themselves that they hate, that they need desperately to go away, and it hurts them and usually the people around them for as long as they refuse to accept it as a part of them and not a defect.

- Oshiro and the hotel:

One can often recognize a pre-transition trans person by distinctively poor hygiene and appearance. Eggs tend to wear baggy clothing, take very poor care of their bodies, and live unfulfilled, miserable lives because they are dissociating from their bodies to avoid their dysphoria. (As a side note, this is why some trans people suspect that Kurt Cobain may have been a trans woman.) Oshiro's hotel is in disrepair, full of clutter, and part of the journey toward fulfillment (for him and for Madeline) requires cleaning it up a bit. Self-care--cleaning out the rubble and the clutter of that past life--is a necessary step before a trans person can go on the journey of self-actualization that must follow. Additionally, the presence of Oshiro as a ghost is very appropriate to this chapter. There's a reason most trans people refer to the name given them at birth as a "deadname." The identity they had before transition kind of dies, replaced by the true self.

- Theo and the eyes:

Theo's whole experience in the mirror world revolves around feelings of exposure and vulnerability. The eyes always watching him have paralyzed him. He is too self-conscious to even move when we find him. This, too, is a common experience among trans people. Existing as a trans person, particularly in cultures that aren't friendly towards us, often leads to fear, anxiety, and paranoia surrounding how people perceive us. For one thing, there is a very real safety concern. Trans people are statistically very likely to have suffered violence, SA, or just garden-variety discrimination and harassment. I personally have experiences in this, and besides the trauma I also get tons of dirty (and sometimes threatening) looks when I just exist where people can see me. This is a pretty unavoidable part of transitioning. You're going to stick out, and there are going to be people who very vocally hate you. It can be paralyzing, and trans people sometimes become shut-ins, refusing to leave their homes or go in public out of fear of that backlash. A trans person must make peace with this and learn to live in spite of it before they can reach the summit.

- Rejection of the Self:

The "Starjump" scene (in the dream after the mirror temple) is something nearly every trans person has probably experienced. The false catharsis of identifying that which we wish to destroy, to divest from ourselves, only to learn the hard way that we can't just wish for it to go away. The fall from this point goes very far down. This is another moment not all survive.

- Confrontation with the Self:

The chase scene/bossfight in Chapter 6 (Reflection) is such an emotionally powerful sequence partly because it stands contrary to the rejection of Self that came before. The false catharsis of the Starjump is met with the real, powerful catharsis of chasing after that injured, scared, angry part of us, reaching it despite all its efforts to run away, and giving it a hug and telling it "it's okay. I see you, I acknowledge you, I accept you, I love you." This is the coming-out moment, the apotheosis, escaping the Matrix and entering into the Real World. (The Matrix, by the way, is another piece of media written by trans women that strongly echoes the experience of transitioning.)

- Acceptance of the Self:

The difficulty of existing doesn't magically go away when a trans person has made peace with their transness, but life does become a lot better when we do. We see this in the game in the form of Madeline "leveling up," becoming stronger and more capable, finally able to reach the summit. The music here ("Reach for the Summit") is triumphant, elated, filled with implacable determination. Her positive relationship with her inner self literally empowers her. This happens in real life too. When a trans person accepts who they are and begins the work of transitioning, they often undergo what we refer to as "second puberty." This is partly literal, for those of us who take HRT or undergo surgery, but it's also a very appropriate metaphor for what happens to our psyches. Trans people who survive past the hardship of the egg phase often have very dramatic transformations into a self that is more fulfilled, more authentic, and fundamentally happier than when we were in conflict with our selves.

Anyway, I think all of that is why Celeste rings so true for us. Thanks for reading.

[ponett]

Got a spoilery ask about SLARPG regarding Melody's character arc and, to a lesser extent, the ending, so I'll put this below a read more!

Anonymous asked:

Heya! I adore adore adore SLARPG, and have latched pretty hard onto Melody and Harmony's dichotomy for a while... I was wondering whether you saw Harmony more as an obstacle to Melody's growth, or something to be worked on and reconciled with more like Madeline and Badeline from Celeste? Unless it's spoilers of course. It's one of the few threads left open after the game, and as a plural woman myself I was just curious. X3

I'll say up front that I've generally avoided stepping in and telling people what The One Correct Interpretation is for a lot of things in SLARPG. I didn't intend for Melody to be read as plural, since in the story Harmony is a parasitic outside force, but I also understand where that interpretation comes from and won't tell folks they're wrong for relating to her like that. That's just the beauty of art. We can relate to things however we want. I just wanna make sure my personal framing is clear before I talk about the thought behind Melody and Harmony's relationship

Harmony is more of a literary device than a character. While she's not an alternate personality for Melody, she's also not really a full person in her own right. I don't think about Harmony having her own arc. She's a magical force that occasionally externalizes Melody's darker, more self-critical thoughts for the audience, where normally she would keep them to herself. She has her own design and name to make the dialogue boxes easier to follow. I also keep it intentionally vague whether or not other people would be able to see Harmony because I find that understated uncertainty more fun.

On a literal level, Harmony is a magical parasite, and therefore an obstacle to be overcome. She's not supposed to be there, straight up. But because she's just the embodiment of dark thoughts that Melody is already having, there isn't really much point in "defeating" Harmony to me - which is why things play out the way they do.

Even if Melody got rid of Harmony, she would still have to deal with those feelings. It would be a purely symbolic victory. And symbolic victories like that are often satisfying as hell in fiction, but in real life you can't defeat your shadow self to stop those 3am "what if my friends are only pretending to like me" thoughts. So instead, Harmony is something Melody needs to cope with and minimize. It's not about getting rid of bad thoughts forever, but rather learning how to deal with them better. And that's an active, life-long process. And so Harmony remains, but Melody is working on having healthier relationships with both her loved ones and herself.

I'll also say that, while I love Celeste, Madeline and Badeline's arc is mostly irrelevant to the way I write Melody and Harmony. (I don't think this ask is accusing me of plagiarizing Maddy Thorson or anything, to be clear. I'm just on a tangent since the comparison was brought up.) SLARPG began development in 2015, so the Harmony scenes, and Melody's arc as a whole, were already planned before Celeste came out. While I worried about getting compared to a much more popular game, I stuck to my guns, knowing that my story was different enough to stand on its own. If anything, I just avoided specific phrases like "reflection" or "I'm a part of you" to try and keep people from just pointing and going "Celeste reference!"

Unfortunately the "wow this is just like Celeste" comments were unavoidable, as were the newfound generalizations about what all indie games about trans girls with anxiety must be like because there are two (2) whole games that share some common story tropes, and it seems like the ending may have thrown some people off because of expectations created by Celeste. But what are you gonna do? I at least avoided my absolute nightmare scenario of Deltarune Ch.2 doing glitch aesthetics or giving Susie and Noelle a kiss mechanic lmao

[ask-pomni-things]

Development of Celeste began in August 2015, when game developers Maddy Thorson[b] and Noel Berry participated in a game jam, where they created Celeste for the PICO-8. Thorson, who served as producer, and Berry, who served as the lead programmer, wanted to expand the PICO-8 game into a full release. Inspired in part by Thorson's own TowerFall (2013) and by Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988), the gameplay was designed to be minimal, while mirroring Thorson's experiences with bouldering. Celeste was designed to be accessible, featuring game mechanics intended to make the game more forgiving in addition to an "Assist Mode" offering several options to make the game less challenging. The themes of self-forgiveness present in the narrative began with the idea of creating a "more introspective" game, and later grew to become intertwined with the gameplay. The soundtrack was composed by Lena Raine.

Celeste released on January 25, 2018, for Linux, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows, before being released on Xbox One the following day, and on Google Stadia in July 2020. Upon release, it received praise from critics. Reviewers praised how the narrative complemented its gameplay, and movement and controls were lauded as among the best in any video game. Critics appreciated its approach to difficulty and accessibility. Reviewers lauded the story as a whole as easy to relate to or "touching", and the depictions of depression and anxiety were praised. The pixel art style was praised as well as its music, with reviewers appreciating how it complemented the gameplay.

Since its release, Celeste has garnered a dedicated fandom and an active speedrunning and modding community. On September 9, 2019, a free downloadable content (DLC) expansion named Farewell was released, introducing a new chapter to the game. The development team has stated that they do not intend to create a sequel for the main game. However, they have released a sequel to the original PICO-8 version, titled Celeste 2: Lani's Trek, as part of the game's third anniversary. Three years later, they released a short three-dimensional sequel to Celeste titled Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain.

...how bored are you?

[cuddles-edits]

Canon Trans Characters

To celebrate the International Transgender Day of Visibility, here's an icon set featuring 9 canonically transgender characters. Characters who were also created and/or played by trans people will be listed in bold.

Lily Hoshikawa from Zombie Land Saga

May Marigold from RWBY

Sallie May from Helluva Boss

Madeline from Celeste

Claire Russell from Cyberpunk 2077

Zoe from Monster Prom

Tyler Ronan from Tell Me Why

Rachel Bighead from Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling

Jewelstar from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Please like or reblog if using. Credit not required but is appreciated.

Sources:

May Marigold was voiced by Kdin Jenzen, who is a non-binary trans woman.

Sallie May is voiced by Morgana Ignis, who is a trans woman.

Madeline was created by Maddy Thorson, who is a trans woman.

Claire Russell was voiced by Maddie Taylor, who is a trans woman.

Zoe is voiced by Casey Mongillo, who is non-binary.

Tyler Ronan was voiced by August Aiden Black, who is a trans man.

Jewelstar was voiced by Alex Blue Davis, who is a trans man. In addition, the showrunner of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power was ND Stevenson, who is transmasculine and bi-gender.

[notquiteapex]

It's that time again! What's your favorite game you played this year?

would you be surprised if I told you it was a card game but it wasn't Balatro?

I'm kidding of course, I fucking love Balatro. but I also love Magic the Gathering! played a lot of that this year, including my first ever drafts game in person with some friends I was visiting. lots of fun.

but of course, Balatro is my Game of the Year. if you know me personally you know I have a family history with poker. I'll spare the details but I'm honestly not that good at it, or at least I wasn't until this year. I found Balatro through Vinny Vinesauce in between watching episodes of his latest Rimworld series. seemed like a really cool concept, and quickly me and my friends became obsessed.

I'm currently gunning for Completionist++, the achievement for beating the hardest difficulty of the game (gold stake) with every joker possible. I'm not even a quarter of the way there, but I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve to make it happen before the big content update drops sometime next year.

if you want a smaller game recommendation, I picked up Leap Year on a whim after YouTube recommended some short speedruns of it. fun little puzzle platformer I beat in a couple hours one summer night. it's also weird! I like weird.

I also fully completed An Untitled Story. there was a Tumblr post going around talking about how Maddy Thorson (allegedly), known for her work on Celeste, was responsible for a bunch of games that really defined the indie scene without a lot of people knowing. the obvious example is Jumper, featuring Ogmo, which basically kick-started the rage platformer genre. An Untitled Story is a metroidvania made by Maddy in GameMaker, and I 100%'d it. it was a lot of fun. it's pretty esoteric early on, and all of its sound design is Windows MIDI player directly into your ears. it's extremely charming. all the rooms are hand drawn, power up progression is kinda whacky, and it's story is extremely basic and silly (almost like it was written by a teenager, fascinating!). I went out of my way to fully complete the game and had to use some old GameFaq articles backed up on an indie wiki to do it, honestly awesome. I wish this game had a modernizing update to make it have some nicer UI, the game will constantly resize itself if you die a bunch, so the best way to play is full screen. controller support exists, but isn't great or intuitive. hopefully someday someone will remake it like fans of IWBTG did for that game.

Go play games.