As someone who loses memories with every big seizure (I have temporal lobe epilepsy), I want to speak from my personal perspective.
Thread!
To me, this rings incredibly false and comes off as tourism-trauma. So no, just no.
What's it like really?
For me the memory gaps are impossible to perceive. The mind has a tendency to paper over things and recalibrate, it normalizes the memory loss because *you cannot remember what it felt like to not have the memory loss*
This makes it more jarring when there is material evidence of the memory loss, or when someone very casually and confusedly doesn't understand.
It's all very calm, very sure, very strong. It's a defense.
I am used to being gaslit, by cis-het men mostly, who regularly attempt to rewrite or ignore my experiences. I had to learn how to fight back, hold my ground, over a long period of time.
Yes, it has happened often enough that my semi-regular memory loss cannot remove that understanding, that folks will try to gaslight me.
Well, I won't lie, the first year took me a while to really grapple with it. I knew I couldn't trust my mind. It sucked, it was hard.
It was more like telling myself the sky was pink, even tho I always saw blue.
It was weird, but not horrifying.
It's very strange, but it's also freeing.
And I think that's why I have so many games that focus on memory and changing histories and revelations of the heart. I want to share that somehow.
The game has you play different personas, and you must decide collectively if you will push through with the memory erasure procedure or try to stop it.
temporalhiccup.itch.io/interim
The game asks, who are you when your memories become corrupted? Are you still you?
temporalhiccup.itch.io/become-one
The game asks: will you keep chasing after these memories and the life you can never return to, or will you create a new life with this new family of ghosts?
temporalhiccup.itch.io/our-haunt
Playing these games is strange for me, I see players have the exact same conversation I had with myself, when I came to grips with my regular memory loss and state of being ❤️
This has helped me feel a tiny bit better, so thank you ❤️