Tagged interview

By Kastel, with edits from Lacunova.

The first game I ever played by Izzie P. was SIGNUM MALUM, a "trans lesbian bathtime eroge" promising players "horny but ... good clean fun."

Nat likes to dress up as a maid and lives in the Barbican, a brutalist housing complex and center in London. Their musings rapidly switch between council housing, a fictional Korean gacha game that has erased trans characters, and cleaning the bathroom:

Cleanliness to me seems an absence of extraneous blockages to light, and so semi-translucency is one of the cleanest states of being. Like slime...

I shiver, and feel a wet spot grow in my boyshorts dirty.

Their girlfriend, Bethany, comes home carrying a tote bag with the Weird Walk logo, a zine on British landscapes and folk horror. Her sweat activates Nat's OCD:

The sight of my girlfriend dirtied and defiled by the elements of the outside world summons within me a rumbling of emotion.

My nipples just got hard. Huh?

The game soon transitions into Nat massaging Bethany's scalp with shampoo:

nat: I feel like I'm doing one of those retro console repair videos--

nat: where a guy like disassembles a stained plastic N64 and douses it in chemicals.

bethany: Mmm bun i think what you're describing is the concept of washing.

nat: No no it's different! These guys are clinical with it. They wear black gloves and pry it apart gently.

nat: And it's all filmed in a white room, and the guy never speaks or shows his face. It's like porn.

After some playful teasing, the couple starts having penetrative sex. But a black screen suddenly interrupts the scene:

???: Maybe you don't shoot ropes when you cum because what you really want is a child.

nat: ...the fuck?

???: You're a pedophile, Nat. The sooner you admit it the sooner you'll start to feel real pleasure.

Even though Nat likes "milfs with big boobs", they are terrorized by intrusive thoughts that tell them they are repressing their pedophilia. Nat shoves those thoughts away and keeps fucking Bethany while yapping about privatization and Tories.

I didn't understand everything I played, but I could tell that every detail in SIGNUM MALUM was so dear to the author. The game showed a London populated by trans people, a sight never to be found in the back of a tourist bus.

"Having [a] strong sense of place is deeply important to me," Izzie said in an interview, "and I'll give you an example."

Heartstopper is a popular webcomic by Alice Oseman set in Thurnham, Kent, and Oseman went to the "same county, era, and type of school" that Izzie attended. Unfortunately, the Netflix TV adaptation has paved over its Kentish origins and turned the setting into an "unreal placeless place". It is a shame that "nobody can visit the nondescript streets and mansions of Truham [sic], scattered across the UK"; in an alternate universe, East Kent could've been a "site of tumblr pilgrimage".

Izzie therefore inverted this lack into a need for what they call geographic realism. "I want to map out the places I've lived in," they write, "and take readers through a walk down those streets." Slough, a town in Berkshire and west of London, would be a far more tangible location than the "generic pseudo-Japanese setting [so] common in many anime inspired works". Similarly, Izzie wrote most of SIGNUM MALUM in the Barbican, hence the loving care and affection poured into depicting the complex as a living and welcoming space. Thus, there's the feeling that every location holds some form of personal significance to the author, perhaps obscure but still endearing to the reader.

But they did not arrive with their design philosophy fully formed. In their teenage years, Izzie was initially a member of Urban Magic Yogs fandom, "a spinoff AU from a rpf scene which itself was a spinoff of the tumblr fandom for british minecraft youtubers The Yogscast." (Izzie again: "If you know any of those words; thank you for your service/I'm so sorry.")

Izzie was especially obsessed with Trott, a selkie "AU interpretation-of-a-minecraft-character-of-a-youtuber". They devoured all the fanfic related to him, made and wore a cosplay of his character, and attended London MCM Comicon where they met many of their online friends who they remained indebted to. When their interest in the fandom started to wane however, they became "deathly terrified" that other people in "real life" might find out that they were into "corny youtuber fanfiction".

But by the time the Horror and Folklore Jam 2024 came around, Izzie was "chomping at the bit to recycle my old reserves of selkie knowledge for a general audience." They were able to see past the cringe and understand the phase as a formative part of their development as a trans artist: "those internet friends were the first people to accept my transness, my queerness, and showed me what healthy relationships looked like".

The result was Seaflower, a visual novel about "a selkie who washes up on a remote scottish island and her friend, a total selkie chaser". Charlotte is the aforementioned chaser and assistant to the fishmonger; she is a stranger to her community ever since the older villagers spread the rumors that she might have been a changeling. Instead of letting this label be a mere sign of stigma,

I threw myself into books about the fae to try and understand my status as a member of the magic classes. I’d borrow books from the mainland about folklore, wondering if any of them would direct me to my people.

Selkies, Finfolk, Cat-Sith, Stoor Worms, Kelpies... there's so many beings that aren't quite human, and they seems to get on just fine.

Surely there’s a bunch of changelings like me, on the mainland?

A place where everyone was just like me... Mother always used to say I just need to find 'my people'. Then everything would make sense.

But she stumbles upon Sydney, a selkie who is married off to her abusive human ex-betrothed. Away from the grimy and murderous hands of patriarchy, they entrust in each other their loneliness, hurt, longings, and their naked bodies. Only in queer harmony will their alienation from the community cease to be.

While Seaflower didn't have the time to imagine a happy epilogue, SIGNUM MALUM is all about a loving queer couple experiencing trans joys in present-day London. We watch Nat and Bethany caress and titillate each other for the entire game.

As a submission for the Trans Joy Jam 2025, the title was required to include at least one positive ending that showed a brighter future for its queer characters. But Izzie saw trans joy as a kind of "cursed phrase" as "it brings to mind the clean, pre-watershed cliches of trans men putting on binders and smiling at themselves in the mirror, or trans women hearing their names called out for the first time in a Starbucks." These examples and more centered consumerism or "the recognition of your gender in the eyes of cis people", neither of which appealed to them.

"For me," Izzie said, "a truer representation of trans joy would be moments where I felt understood by another trans person; or a breakthrough in my relationship with my own body".

Before making the game, Izzie was a member of the UK live comedy scene. As "one of the three Art Guys", it wasn't uncommon for their artwork to be brought up in these social gatherings. "A lot of my fanart morphed into paid work for the people I was drawing," they wrote, "and I didn't want them to visit my profile and see -- I don't know -- drawings of gay stuff." They felt that their old Tumblr friends and "meatspace friends I wanted to impressed" were fighting for "dominance over my identity and creative output". Izzie had looked into alt accounts, but it didn't feel right "sectioning off what was an increasingly large slice of my creative output from my irl peers".

SIGNUM MALUM helped break new grounds for Izzie. In the "bonus disc" article, they jotted down what trans joy meant to them before starting the project. It ranged from "being able to build my identity from scratch" to "finding people who love me as I am now" to "things Izzie P specifically would love", becoming the thematic guideposts for the scenario. Navigating these priorities allowed Izzie to search for the people, environments, and objects that could harness the specific texture of trans joy they're looking for.

Izzie discovered in the process of making the game that they didn't just make "an indulgent porn game" -- it was also "a story about gender, sexual dynamics and OCD lol."

Nat's introspective narration provides ample space for readers to explore Nat's deep-seated anxieties. Pedophilia-themed intrusive thoughts are one subtype of harm-themed OCD, but the subject matter is too objectionable for mainstream media depiction outside of self-help guides. If this is to change, Izzie thought they might as well put it into the game. "If queer art is supposed to be transgressive and push people's boundries [sic]", Izzie wrote in my interview, "then why the hell not!"

That said, the game is at its most transgressive in the ending credits. We watch video footage of Izzie dipping their own feet into running bathtub water, and the narration chides the player for being a pervert watching this footage. It's a beautifully indulgent moment that encapsulates the best parts of the game, but filming their feet helped break through the mental impasse of regretting not being able to take a "normal" career path like a children's book illustrator:

By using my body as a tool (like i had for the entire development process) to destroy and remake my characters, I wanted to get across this idea that I am the reason this exists. Pervert shit doesn't exist without perverts, and we are real people. As the UK enacts legislation to wipe indie pornographers and erotic artists from the internet (our final bastion after society has abandoned us) I don't want people to ignore those who make erotic art they jerk it to. There is a trans body behind the anime foot gifs.

This move ended their need to dissociate from their public persona. Izzie had since left comedy and enmeshed themselves further and further into "dyke and trans spaces where I don't feel shy about my erotic art and my peers are proudly shooting dyke pornos and selling them on DVDs at the club".

Signum Malum was made in the Videotome family of engines by communistsister. These HTML5 engines are useful for short visual novels that characterize much of Izzie's output.

"I ADORE the videotome engine," they wrote in my interview, "it's so intuitive compared to renpy and the defaults far better suit the kinds of stories I like reading and making. The way you script text is simple and you can just input images and text and sound and it'll output something stylish."

Their next Videotome game, PETRA 2000, features two sentient satellites veering across space. The DiscMaster Jam required the game to incorporate content found in the Internet Archive. Izzie saw this as an "opportunity to do more mixed media stuff" and kept the workflow as minimal as possible; "retro porn and crunchy stock images" also helped limit the scope and allowed them to "go crazy in a targeted way."

With a list of themes on deck, Izzie browsed Internet Archive for a couple of days before noticing a pattern in the images they've been collecting: space and porn. What emerged was a narrative on "dysphoria and detachment from sex":

petra: so i woke up kind of horny and like

petra: you know how hard it is to get off with this... body

knox: mmm

knox: don't tell me you were doing valve play again

petra: sorryeeeeeeeeeee

The game is, in Izzie's words, a "clone" of Nadia Nova's slime feet. The couple sexts each other, imagining themselves in erotic situations like "circling a headphone jack around the rim of the aux then pushing it in. biiiiig feedback." Their desire is also accentuated by an inability to physically touch each other.

But it turns out that the couple is a bunch of asexual satellites:

knox: I'm completely on board. I'm laughing because we're two people who clearly don't get any physical pleasure from fucking and yet here we are.

knox: having sex

petra: ohhhhh i see. ahhaah yes it is weird when you put it like that.

The erotic scenes end up feeling less sexual and more like fun banter. Even when Knox tells Petra, "You're my sex toy, sex toys don't have feelings", the dirty talk can transform into something whimsical:

petra: your pussy tastes so good...

knox: yeah? what does it taste of? what is my scent doing to you?

petra: mmm... it's like..... hrnnngmgg

petra: ...mmmarmite....

knox: um excuse me

They are instead more excited about living together after their "posting" is over and they're able to get the "transplant". The two fantasize about sex in bodies that are comfortable and erotic to them. When Petra cries about living such a future, Knox cheers her up and says that they're almost there:

knox: you're so close. we worked so hard for this. you waited so long.

knox: the universe has been so cruel to you, and you endured it all.

knox: and now, you get your body. the body you deserved this whole time.

Even though this game is the shortest of Izzie's already short visual novels, its brevity allows the portrait of a queer couple trying to better their life to really shine. It ends with the two characters flirting with each other in the immediate present -- nothing is said about their future. This silence has staying power because it is the anthem of many queer couples who are living under the most malicious regimes.

Like many active visual novel developers, Izzie also participated in the first iteration of the TOXIC YURI VN JAM, which saw many "teams making brilliant 20k word" entries.

For DSV: Domus Soror Voyager, they took a different approach from the Trans Joy Jam and DiskMaster Jam ("a creative exercise with no pressure") and expanded their scope. The game begins with an existentialist monologue:

If nobody touches you for long enough, are you even real? I often wonder this.

Without being able to run your hand across your arm and bite into the flesh, how would you know you existed? I guess biting your own limb is probably quite hard, like how you can't tickle yourself: but the tang of your own blood in your mouth would make for pretty undeniable proof of life.

Curly lives in the Kennel with the many people who suffer from caninism, a disease that has turned their bodies into actual puppies. She follows the orders of a scientist who roleplays as her older sister in the hopes of being cured one day.

The experiments are of course sexual in nature:

Tears start streaming down my face. I lookdown at my clit - it's sticking straight up, lewdly. What on earth does Sophia think of me? I'm repulsive.

Curly: Sssorry Sohphhiaaaaa I'm.... so dirty......

Sophia: Curly my love. It's okay. I don't mind. Let it out.

Curly: Aau- eeuauauaaieieeeeeeee!!!!

On her command, my bladder empties onto the chair. Sitting in my own puddle of urine, I can't help but start to sob.

While previous visual novels have explored shades of this dynamic, DSV is fundamentally about the hollowness of control. Sophia exploits Curly's dependence on her both in the name of science and sexual arousal, but she is also substituting Curly for her real sister.

Curly reflects thus:

The reminder of her real, flesh and blood sister somehow makes our whole fake sibling thing feel more sordid. Whatever this is... whatever each of us is getting out of this... it's only ever going to be a pale imitation of the real thing.

This makes her homesick for her real family. She wishes to get out of the Kennel, but all she can do is "stare at my paws, covered in sweat, piss and cum. What am I?"

The setup is promising, but the game suddenly loses its grip. Ollie, a new puppy, is introduced as Curly's new roommate. In an alternate timeline, Ollie could have introduced complexity into the relationship, ground the setting further into real world issues, and heighten the game's ideas. We can glimpse this potential in this scene here:

Curly: ...and that's why dogthings might actually be the only native inhabitants of UFLB!

Sophia: Who told you that? Ollie?

Curly: Yeah!

Sophia: You shouldn't be listening to him.

Her sharp tone sliced cleanly through my good mood.

Curly: Sorry.

Sophia: You know he's a prostitute right? And a terrorist?

Ollie prefers the terms 'sex worker' and 'radical campaigner for decrim of caninism', but I understand what she's getting at.

Curly: But he's knows what he's talking about.

But the title loses steam: the story rushes to the ending, and we never get a good sense of who Ollie and the crew stand for. They are simply ideas that haven't been given the chance to materialize.

As a result, the game reads more like a synopsis to a larger title. There is not enough time spent meditating on caninism and its implications on the world, which makes the otherwise subversive ending feel like a non-sequitur.

Izzie thinks the work has "suffer[ed]": not only was their work too big for the jam but Izzie was also "angling for the prize and ended up making something I really hated". Losing power and hot water during the already tight time frame certainly didn't help.

"It was a great exercise in learning to manage expectations and scope as a solo dev," Izzie said, "but now I know those sorts of jams aren't for me." Today they are making a game large enough to be unsuitable for game jams, but this time it is on their own terms.

Their latest work is a zine called Wensleydale, a "T4T toxic yaoi doujin" featuring Wallace and Gromit. Copies are only available in-store at The People's Letters, a worker-led cooperative bookshop in Bethnal Green, London, that also stocks zines from Gynoid Distribution and Barbarian Books as well as UK-specific sex worker zines.

Just across the block is All My Gods, an alternative bar home to the monthly London Leatherdykes socials where Izzie runs their zine library. They have recently established their very own small press, woke dog distro, which currently publishes Exene's zines and their own work. They hope to "start introducing foreign and online-only work to the dykes of London" in the near future.

"Having my little zine library at events is so fulfilling," Izzie wrote, "shy people can hang around and read ... and I get to have awesome conversations and recommend them stuff." For example, they discovered Exene's short stories on their feed and thought to themselves, "I NEED to get the offline dolls on this, it's amazing." They were also able to recommend slime feet to a "50 year old german dyke" and Fido's Piss Kinksters Against Capitalism to "a tboy i saw reading a diaper porn thing from Deviance Magazine". On Izzie's website, you can find a photo of their table in Pie and Ass Market run by London Leatherdykes's cofounder Harrow surrounded by people reading woke dog distro's zines. It was their greatest accomplishment, and they couldn't wait to replicate it.

Viewing themselves as the "bridge between the irl trans dyke sphere and the online world", they were inspired by Remy Boydell's London exhibition and hoped to put on a similar exhibition for their online peers. "Nobody here uses Itchio", Izzie wrote, "and you'd be surprised how common it is for VPNs requirements to be a barrier to entry." The online world allows people to be "sooooo indulgent" and still "get found by your crowd", but algorithms have complicated discoverability. Meanwhile, physical spaces like art markets and Comiket are able to introduce the element of surprise and cause people to "stumble into scenes you wouldn't have encountered" casually.

I am fond of Izzie's works because you can never suggest that someone else has created them. While I don't believe their works will suit everyone's taste, I doubt that anyone would accuse their work of being sterile and sanitized. If anything, they are profoundly idiosyncratic.

Their stories articulating the real frustrations and joys of queer people living in England consistently contain glimmers of their personality. Rather than distract the reader, these digressions deepen the sense that the author is present.

Whenever I read their work, I know that I will be meditating on issues relating to politics, sexuality, and gender that occupy them. I asked Izzie what their inspirations were, and they assumed perhaps correctly that "many of the people reading this interview" would share the same artistic influences. They brought up instead How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by the late David Graeber, and Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman, i.e. books that "dissect attitudes toward work and the ethics around how we treat the disabled in our current society". Izzie is also planning to make a game about the difficulties of making "transgressive sexual art" in the UK.

And yet, they are still able to unearth the screwball comedy inside these otherwise bleak situations. It may be due to Izzie's "longstanding obsession" with the latent homoeroticism of the comedy double-act, something Izzie proclaimed that they are an expert on:

It's a doomed relationship built on unrequited tension, the fallout of which dictates the rest of your lives. Hibana, specifically the TV adaptation, is the only work I've seen come close to depth of such dynamics.

Despite their "doomed relationship[s]", the Hibana novel and Izzie's oeuvre are invested in making you laugh in the now. No suggestion of timelessness or universality can be found in these comedies. They are marked instead by a sense of humor that is sharpened by the struggles and elation experienced by their authors.

This is hilarity predicated on the comedian's background. When their characters display their mirth, they are also signalling their autonomy as queer lesbians who are in control of their bodies. We are grasping radical ideas on queerness, class, and disability in Izzie's comic routine.

And that's why I think Seaflower ends on a note of laughter:

I start laughing. all the horrid things that happened at home seem so far away now. I'm safe! I'm safe and I'm me!!

Only the human body can express this euphoric joy. Without it, this game will never materialize. It is with our bodies that art becomes possible.

The perverts are the ones making perverted art. The sickos are here to stay. There is a trans body behind the anime foot GIFs.