Even in all its cruelty, the world of children is freer and less bound by the cultural norms of the game’s 1930s setting. Identities are abolished, relationships destroyed by men eager to claim young femme flesh as their own. Patriarchy is a destructive force towards each of the principal players in some way. Cis men tend to be grubby pedos or craven child murderers, with little wiggle room. Most of the child characters are openly gay. Gender is played with and broken consistently throughout the story. Heterosexual and cisnormative doctrines are a threat to Rule of Rose’s sapphic garden. Diana immediately lashes out at Jennifer, blinded by her own pain. We see her power drain in seconds, and understand that she’s beholden to a higher, more malevolent power-the power of an old, wealthy, white pedophile. The confirmed pedophile corners her, then caresses her body from hip to head. Yet an encounter with the orphanage’s headmaster flips the script. She’s a budding psychopath if there ever was one. The catty teen is responsible for some of the most reprehensible actions in the game, from constant verbal degradation to detached violence towards living creatures. Take HBIC Diana-Duchess of the Red Crayon-for instance. Bullies are depicted not as senseless aggressors, but as fragile children clinging onto what little power they have. But where Flies is obsessed with Calvinist doctrine about man’s inherent wickedness, Tomo Ikeda’s script is built around a delicate and deliberate empathy. It’s tempting to read Rule of Rose as analogous with texts like Lord of the Flies, in how it frequently mines children’s cruelty for horror. When she awakens on a mostly empty zeppelin (!), the protagonist is forced into servitude by the Red Crayon Aristocrats-a pseudo high society governed entirely by young girls. No sooner does she follow an erstwhile boy, however, than Jennifer is knocked unconscious and forced into a makeshift casket. The game follows timid and frail 19-year-old Jennifer, as she traverses a dilapidated and overgrown orphanage.

Punchline’s 2005 horror game, Rule of Rose, mines those very fears for a sticky slice of queer horror.

They’re already asking the questions fascists are afraid of. And if they fight to stay near kids, well hey-who’s to say that married forty-something with a loving husband isn’t a closet pervert?īut kids will learn, whether or not we teach them. That gay teacher needs to hit the bricks, and those drag queens need to pack up their brunch. But above all, it’s important that children don’t know queerness exists in any capacity. Learning about sex will make them too curious, too young. Critical race theory, they say, will teach white kids to hate themselves. Pushes from contemporary conservatives to reshape our education system are built on that assumption.

Public school curriculums are often built around something called an “indoctrination model”-a regimented, state-sponsored brainwashing plan meant to stave off creative and intellectual divergences. Much of our culture is built around the assumption that kids are unruly by nature, and need to be molded by rigid hegemonies. Children know more than we give them credit for.

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