Like mother, like burr

Abstract

Arising out of a need to document personal memory and narrative, and, more so, to reimagine my pasts, to reconcile with them, this thesis seeks to identify and use the cathartic affordances of games, contextualizing the embedded practices as means of imbuing newfound agency, and of self-preservation. The creative component of the thesis involves the making of autofictional game sketches of my mother-daughter relationship, acknowledging such a relationship as the crux of one’s crucial identify formation (and destruction) - and the recalling, remaking, and replaying of such a relationship as the heart of crafting one’s personal catharsis. The research and practice, latticing game studies with fields of literature, film, linguistics, engage in a cyclical process of informing one another through game-making and game-playing. The process adheres to Kara Stone’s approach of Reparative Game Design, one centering on the maker, the making, and the acceptance of uncertainties, gaps and questions in the pursuit of healing and in the pursuit of knowledge. This thesis aims to offer approaches that a game maker could partake in to truly create a game of one’s own - seeing it as agency, as confession, as half-truth, as survival; as it accompanies one through the disquiets of the past and present, in fact and in fiction