How the developers of queer visual novel 'It Will Be Hard' are reinventing body image in the queer community

It Will Be Hard is described as an independent interactive comic about two men falling in love, with a sex-positive approach that treats diverse bodies and queer intimacy as central rather than peripheral. The article says the project aims to challenge conventional attractiveness in queer media and to show men being vulnerable, desired, and emotionally complex.

Reading notes

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• Hien Pham and John Kane frame representation as the core of the project.
• The story is meant for people outside the “default settings” of culture and media.
• Pham says there are too few stories showing diverse bodies in sexual and intimate situations.
• Kane says media rarely shows men with complex emotional relationships, especially men with non-Hollywood body types.
• Harold and Arthur embody different attitudes toward intimacy, sexuality, and relationships.
• Arthur’s arc deals with a grey asexual identity and the experience of having that identity dismissed.
• Harold’s arc focuses on being valued with a larger body and learning self-acceptance.
• The game has been welcomed by the LGBT+ community for depicting people as attractive and sexually exploratory.
• A demo shown at a queer-friendly games exhibition prompted praise for its slow pacing and the kindness of its treatment of intimacy.
• Kane says most mainstream romances stop at the first kiss or sex scene instead of exploring what relationships require afterward.
• The Kickstarter raised more than double its $3,500 goal, and the comic was expected in April of the following year.