Queer We Go Again: DEATHLOOP & Queer Temporality
!EXTENDED EDITION!
Originally written for the @deathloopzine , which you can download now on itch! It's a free, fully digital zine featuring a ton of awesome artists and writers - go check it out!
What with the Golden Loop extended edition of the game releasing on Sep. 20th, I figured why not extend my zine essay too? Click the read more below for an extra 1k words of Feelings.
In his discussion on DEATHLOOP’s themes, How a Time Loop Influenced Deathloop’s Narrative Design, Pawel Kroenke states that the development team was interested in Aeon’s titular Loop as a vehicle to explore ideas around how a person can feel trapped, or have their plans jeopardised, by their own ego. He claims that:
‘[The Visionaries] are stuck in vicious cycles because they are not mature enough to break out of them [...] The time loop itself is an explicit illustration of a vicious cycle.’Â
While the Loop is vicious, in that the average day on Blackreef is pumped full of lead and gunpowder, each of the game’s central characters have violent outlooks as well, detrimentally preserved and exacerbated by the repeating days. As Kroenke explains, ‘Ramblin’ Frank Spicer relies on glib aggression to solve his disputes; Charlie and Fia are involved in an unhealthy relationship that leads to them breaking up every Loop; Aleksis is unable to leave childish vulgarity behind in adulthood. Therefore, Colt’s motivation to break the Loop, says Kroenke, offers the solution to this stagnant mental rot; it ‘gives everyone else on the island the chance to re-evaluate their lives and do something with them’. Rather than representing a shining icon of their brilliance, the Visionary’s Loop only embalms their struggles and asks the player to consider: how do you battle obstacles you put in your own path and how do you get over yourself to prevent further harm?
For me, I think that the Loop - and Blackreef as a whole - can be representative of so many ideas such as a prison or a metaphor for trauma, as well as a symbol of violence. Here, I argue that, regardless of how vicious the cycle is in DEATHLOOP, the concept of the timeloop itself exemplifies an experience of ‘queer time’. While the development team point to the Loop as an allegory for repeating traumas and the cages our toxic outlooks or behaviours put us in, temporal disruption - the Time Loop - simultaneously functions as a literal break from the norm; a ‘queering’ of reality. Therefore, we’ll explore how the game’s central mechanic of Looping communicates this idea of Blackreef as a place running on ‘queer time’, the advantages of that - from the gradual building of inventory to mastery of the space through repetition - and what a ‘queer time’ world prompts us to think about regarding ideas of success, progress, and personal development.Â
This essay uses the term ‘queer time/temporality’ to distinguish an abstract and non-linear sense of time, specific to DEATHLOOP, as a deviation from the typical linear temporality of everyday life. ‘Queer time’ is used here as a neutral term - the intent here is to use this interpretive framework to explore DEATHLOOP’s design elements and themes, not to make any moralising claims regarding the depiction of the behaviours that go on within the Loop itself. ‘Queer’ is not necessarily used here to denote gender or sexuality, however, the term ‘queer temporality/time’ is commonly found in explorations of how mainstream, sociological model of time - the heteronormative, capitalist-influenced ‘birth, school, work, nuclear family, retirement, death’ pipeline - is challenged or dismantled by LGBT+ experiences, with overlap to discuss necessary intersections regarding race, labour and economic factors, and more.Â
It is worth mentioning that, theory aside, the game does feature queer characters such as aforementioned Frank and the protagonist, Colt, continuing Arkane’s apparent - and warmly welcomed - tradition of creating unavoidably queer player characters. However, while this essay does not focus on, or speculate about, the specific sexualities or gender identities of its characters, DEATHLOOP remains inherently ‘queer’ because it diverts from our ordinary understanding of temporality; our common experience of predictably mathematical, linear ‘heterotemporality’. Night may turn into day on Blackreef, but it’s functionally, intentionally, the same night and the same day over and over again. Regardless of the characters’ sexualities, or gender identities, DEATHLOOP is a queer narrative by the very nature of its story, mechanics, and core concept.
Fuck-Up Island
‘[F]ailure must be located within that range of political affects that we call queer,’ (Queer Art of Failure, p. 89) says J. Halberstam, therefore there is no queerer narrative than DEATHLOOP, in which messing up is mandatory. Fucking around and finding out within the reliability of Aeon’s Loop is how you win at DEATHLOOP; experimentation and, most importantly, failure is encouraged, rewarded, and integral to the development of the narrative. From scripted ‘failures’ - such as getting vaporised by Wenjie’s Residuum experiment to unlock inventory bonuses - to how the gradual collection of the gunpowder-plot puzzle pieces is managed and structured through a back and forth quest-marker chase around the island, the game demands that you make countless ‘mistakes’.Â
This queer failure is allowed by the game’s queer time loop; the opportunity provided by a divergent temporality, detached from consequence, is one of countless possibilities. Halberstam argues that ‘success’ is ‘heteronormative’ - the opposite is queer failure, ‘nonconformity’ (p. 89) in the face of stagnanting, corrosive forms of control, which inherently resists and ‘recognises that [...] power is never total’ (p. 88). Through queer failure, the weaknesses within seemingly domineering social forces are revealed, allowing us to see through the cracks in systems that seek to dictate the flow of our lives, usually towards capitalism but also the associated fortification of concepts like rigid gender roles and general gulfs of inequality. Whether engaged with as a conscious choice, or participating inadvertently, nonconformity inherently demands that we question power, and allows us to explore how a life within and beyond those cracks can be created and flourish. As divergence from power’s expected route is extremely common for many reasons, becoming a sort of unspoken or unrecognised ‘norm’ in and of itself, opportunities for solidarity within resistance grow. Queer time therefore reassures us that there are alternatives and, crucially, that we are not alone in our failures.Â
Aeon’s in-universe marketing campaign emphasises a similar joy in escaping into an atemporal pleasuredome with your fellow miscreants, and takes the destabilising impact of queer time to its extreme. Inspired and possessing more money than sense, the team deliberately construct a queered pocket of time for party purposes because they consider themselves irreverent nonconformists, already beyond the pale. In fact, queer time permeates their lives even before the Loop: Egor obsesses over his pseudoscientific beliefs that ordinary objects can be coaxed into unveiling an insight into history, resisting the confines of linear time, and Harriet advocates for a more productive and healing divergence from the typical heterotemporal timeline through her Two Path Divinity model. During their time with Aeon, several of them brag incessantly about being so intelligent, imaginative, or plain cool that they have gone underappreciated in the outside world or wish to preserve their wondrous minds for literal eternity, resisting the most difficult power of them all: mortality. They want to fail at injury, death, entropy so hard that they promote daily cliff dives into the abyss, two separate human sacrifice parties, literal manhunts.Â
This desire to fuck up - and subsequently rule over - time and death, failing at succeeding to die, is motivated by various personal factors, depending on the Visionary, but it is possible because of the queer time model that they have constructed. Dominant modes of power still exist in regards to the iron grip the Visionaries wind around perpetuated wealth/labour inequality and social hierarchies (I yearn for the depiction of an Eternalist coup), however, while they may not be revealing the cracks in the specifically capitalist hegemony Halberstam identifies as targeted by queer failure, Blackreef remains a queered place.Â
Once again, we see that DEATHLOOP’s central elements hinge on queerness, the existence of it tangible in its character’s motivations and the culture of the island of Blackreef. Truly, what could possibly be more heteronormative than running away from your problems to a strange, private island with your similarly self-confessed cringefail (which, as we understand, is queercoded) friends to live out the rest of your days together, violently refusing to be pulled along in the tide of tradition at any bloody, expensive cost?
Anything, honestly.
Play It Again, Colt
Colt fails consistently, too, while tasked with ensuring the failure of Aeon’s Loop. Fails a lot. Julianna does her best to ensure it, the player can misjudge how many Eternalists Colt can take at once (in a fight), sometimes the clock just resets before you’ve got all your sadistic ducks in a row.
The queer time loop of Blackreef allows for these failures to become recontextualised; ‘[U]nder certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world’ (Halberstam, p. 2-3). The ‘certain circumstances’ here are that whether Colt tumbles into a meat grinder or manages to survive hoards of trigger-happy Eternalists, until he decides to end the Loop, he invariably wakes up again on a litter-packed beach in the morning of that same day, alive and as well as one can be when trapped on a murder rock. Each of these ‘failures’ brings success in a new form - creative knowledge with which to now navigate the island, confidence with the terrain, passcodes or clues to access Blackreef’s secrets. In this, not only is time queered but ideas of progression and triumph, as the player moves forward even if they feel stuck in one place. These losing circumstances actually make him - and the player - stronger, and provide both with new perspectives with which to innovate their way through the day’s various challenges.Â
Regarding gameplay, this structure additionally provides opportunities for the player to collect unique weapons, Trinkets, and Slabs and overall customise their approach without limits. These items require repetition and reliance on the Loop to obtain or upgrade, therefore, in the queer temporal space, endless tries at fighting enemies for their Slab or re-runs of areas to find the best Trinket for a specific purpose are welcome. In a world dominated by the pressure to seemingly do ‘well’ (despite various odds stacked against you in the form of interconnected factors like age, race, gender, etc) or die, recreated in many games in which failure means punishment (eg: death and loss of resources, being physically moved backwards to a respawn point earlier in time), DEATHLOOP’s queer mechanic of the Time Loop resists conformity to convention. As a result, we are allowed a relatively low-stakes freedom to get things wrong. In temporal disruption, within queered time, we can relax for once; you get to try again ‘tomorrow’. Â
Buffing Colt in order to film epic takedowns of Julianna for Reddit necessitates queerness. However, participation within the queer temporal space is additionally how Colt reconstructs himself, regains his memories, and comes to a greater understanding of his fellow Visionaries. From a purely practical standpoint, this means the player can meet mission targets, find out where and when people are going to be for murdering them. However, there is an emotional investment involved, too. And, if we continue to read Looping through a queer lens, then getting to know the Visionaries beyond their initially shallow archetypes requires queerness, even if it is a little one-sided since they cannot remember Loop to Loop as Colt can. In short: the more the player and Colt Loop, the more they queer, the more fleshed out the world becomes, the closer to people Colt can get, the muddier the moral waters become on your murder mission. And I love it.
Maybe the queerer you get, the harder it is to machete your ex in the back, even if you need to. Maybe the queerer you get, the easier it is to think of the bigger picture, think of a world beyond this one where things are different. Maybe the queerer you get, the more hope you have, the more conviction, as you see more opportunities for escape or mastery unfolding before you. With every Loop comes difficulties, hardships, hurt, but it also represents another step forward - in this case: towards Colt’s goal. In the sociological case: towards the reconfiguration and undermining of the structures that keep us suffocating, towards finding air again. As previously established, queer time demonstrates that power is not absolute; there’s a way out, things don’t have to be this way. Colt’s persistence on getting out, breaking free, is admirable and makes him a compelling character. Despite so many people out to get him, he tries and dies and tries and dies again. The Loop, while a product of selfish whims that viciously harms its inhabitants, simultaneously reveals the alternatives and chances to do things differently. Queer time cracks the shell of how we immediately perceive the world around us, facilitates investigation and encourages vulnerable exchange towards growth.Â
This element further emphasises the recontextualisation of ‘failure’ as a doorway to discovery, and how it is facilitated by the queer Loop, dependent on it. Over the course of several dozen Loops, several dozen ‘failures’ to break out, Colt explores his history with the HORIZON project, and rediscovers his relationships with others, his bisexuality, even his own name. The process of Looping in order to explore the narrative means Colt has to get vulnerable, has to face his past and the pain there, literally unable to outrun what lies beneath. Rebuilt within queer time, recalling the self through ‘failure’ in the face of literal erasure, Colt’s character arc cannot be disconnected from the Loop and all it represents; it is a fundamentally queer experience made possible via the queer temporal model. In the queer space, there is no way to really fail, only ways towards discovery and actualisation. As such, the narrative and the environment is enhanced by this mechanic as much as the player’s inventory can be.Â
Colt, as a queer character who fails all the time, represents a meaningful message about the concept of fucking up or getting something ‘wrong’. The floating text that haunts him throughout the game frequently reprimands him for his past mistakes, clings to internalised hatred and exacerbates loneliness, laments that the plan for Blackreef and its people have gone to the dogs, reminds you that you were loved once. The Loop - here, queerness itself - suggests that you can be loved again. You can try again. Take your friends with you, even if they are extremely annoying and blew you up a few times. Extend the hand and the ladder down behind you. Rebuild with the new knowledge, under Blackreef’s red sky.
Time’s Strelak Verso
Despite the advantages and the opportunities for development, mastery, and fun that the Loop provides, Colt remains determined to break the Loop. In contrast to Julianna, who also remembers events Loop to Loop and attempts to convince her fellow Visionaries to derail the Colt-train, he frequently expresses his hatred of the Loop. At the end of the game, the player can agree with Julianna in her belief that the Loop is worth protecting, and refuse to break it. Alternatively, the player can reject Julianna and stop the Loop, waking up on the beach under a red, foreboding horizon, with time presumably running forward again as expected. Despite never seeing how things play out after the Loop breaks, its destruction can function as a metaphor for freedom from sequences of bad behaviour, harmful perspectives, and emotional immaturity, as Kroenke highlights. Colt might have spent the last century dodging bullets and grenades, but the hardest work has yet to come.Â
Considering this latter option of breaking the Loop, we might ask: what does breaking the Loop mean for our reading of DEATHLOOP through the lens of queer time? Does returning the story to an assumed heterotemporal reality, destroying the Loop, ‘unqueer’?
No.
In his retrospective, Kroenke acknowledges the discontent players had for the ending’s abruptness and ambiguity. At the time of (re)writing, this aims to be addressed through the game’s ‘Golden Loop’ update, due in mid-September, which is rumoured to provide insight into how Blackreef responds in a post-Loop world. While intrigued and excited, I found that the base-game’s decision to leave the post-Loop world unexplored intentionally puts emphasis and focus on the ideas of the Loop itself. Furthermore, whether or not the Loop is kept operational, the concept of it as representative of queer time is not contradicted. Regardless of if breaking the Loop is the ‘right’ thing to do, regardless of the player’s final decision, the divergent model of time offered by a time loop is inherently queer in that it offers an alternative to the dominant mode of operations and demonstrates a diverging view from the mainstream understanding of how our world functions.Â
Through the lens of queer theory, that which dismantles is that which is queer, and as we have defined ‘queer time’ as anything which deviates from contemporary capitalist expectations regarding how the trajectory of someone’s life will go, it is entirely possible that the world Colt returns himself and his group to is no longer a heterotemporal world anyway - in the sociological sense. Although the world of Blackreef was so influenced by an obsession with ‘success’ (most notably in a capitalist, meritocracy sort of way), Colt’s actions mean that their concept of a ‘utopia’ fails, and this model is jeopardised, left unexplored. It doesn’t work anymore, and didn’t. Outside of the Loop, the characters may experience time passing day-to-day as expected, but we can hazard a guess - from their attitudes and interests, from their previous experiences - that they will continue to reject living in conformity, continuing redefining their own ideas of ‘success’. Loop or no Loop, queer time is forever.Â
End of the Line (Conclusion)
Reading DEATHLOOP as queer at the core, not just in its representation of explicitly bisexual protagonists but in the bones of its mechanical and narrative structure, allows us an insight into alternative ways of perceiving and examining how opportunities for failure, consequent growth, and resistance exist as a result of a queer temporal framework - however temporary. Queering time through the use of the Loop allows us to redefine success and progress both in-game and assess how demands for success operate in the real world, that dominant modes of living can be unnatural constructs obstructing genuine progress or access to ourselves.Â
With acts of queerness, acts of disrupting linear modes of power, evident even in instances when the player chooses to Loop and collect a missed Trinket or trigger different character events, the cycles of DEATHLOOP may be vicious, but one that welcomes a worldview (or maybe a ‘timeview’) outside of the box that imbues resistance and queerness into the most basic mechanics of the game. Through it, we can re-evaluate our perspective on sociological expectations, how to forge the self and the significance of making mistakes. Therefore, through queer time, we can break more than just Loops but conventions that hold us back.Â
Citations
Halberstam, J. The Queer Art of Failure, Duke University Press, 2011.
Kroenke, P. How a Time Loop Influenced 'Deathloop's' Narrative Design, Game Developers’ Conference, 2022.