Ritual of the Moon

A Body Without End: The Trans Twine Games of Porpentine Charity Heartscape

This extended abstract analyzes the speculative body horror in trans-authored Twine games, focusing on the work of Porpentine Charity Heartscape.

• The paper is a conceptual, close-reading analysis of trans-authored Twine games, centred on Porpentine Charity Heartscape, and presents no empirical data such as surveys or player samples.
• It argues that Porpentine's works (e.g., With those we Love Alive, Vesp: A History of Sapphic Scaphism, Parasite, all 2014-2016) use body horror to frame transition as an ongoing, unfinished, carnal process rather than a palatable experience for cisgender or straight audiences.
• Formal features across the corpus include texts dissolving into eroticised punctuation, narratives looping through quotidian rituals in dystopian settings, and hypertext prompts that alter emotional attitudes, inventories, and descriptions, casting players as both reader and writer.