Ladykiller in a Bind
For a game about sexual relationships, Ladykill er i n a B ind shows a lot of restraint.
The actual, full title of Christine Love’s sexy sex visual novel Ladykiller in a Bind is My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress As Him And Now I Have To Deal With A Geeky Stalker And A Domme Beauty Who Want Me In A Bind!!, which, uh, tells you pretty much everything you need to know. Basically, your twin brother has kidnapped you and is forcing you to pretend to be him on a cruise full of exceedingly randy teens from his school. At the same time, a ‘game’ is going on in which you have to win votes for a chance at a $4 million prize. You have to balance two statistics: votes, and suspicion, which leads to Game Over if it gets to five points. Suspicion is earned by doing things your brother wouldn’t do, like being overly nice, kind, or naked. Because your brother doesn’t have boobs.
Unlike most visual novels, your dialogue choices are timed—you can choose the first one that appears, you can wait to choose something that might be slightly better, or you can ignore all options and just go with whatever the protagonist decides to say. This is an interesting dynamic: it makes conversations feel real and hides a lot of the visual novel framework.
The main conceit of the game is ‘consent is sexy’, though a clear slant towards ‘BDSM is sexy’ can’t be ignored. The sexual relationships in the game all have some kind of power dynamic, whether that’s you gently coaxing a shy girl into being more confident about her sexuality, or being tied up and suspended from the ceiling by a secret dominatrix. The topic of consent is handled well for the most part, with characters talking about safe words and making sure that every step along the sexy way is enthusiastic and agreed upon, but there’s this weird, uncomfortable layer of non-consensuality that undermines it.
At the heart of it all, you are pretending to be someone you’re not—you’re a woman pretending to be a man, and a stranger pretending to be a classmate. Can consent ever be fully received if you’re lying about who you are? It’s also a bit weird that in one scene, you get given a safe word but seemingly not the option to ever use it. The character you play also imposes her own preferences on you, with ‘Honest’ choices popping up about things she enjoys, even if the player really, really doesn’t enjoy them.
There’s also the question of whether or not the game is actually sexy, although this is more of a personal thing. If you’re not into power-play and words like ‘groping’ and ‘molesting’ used in a sexual context, this isn’t going to make you tingle in your downstairs dancefloor. But even if you don’t find that particular dynamic sexy, you’ll still find other parts of the game pretty steamy. Ahem. Let’s move on.
forced feedback
There are uncomfortable scenes, though there is the option to skip them, and there is a content warning (“transactional sex, degradation”). These scenes feature sexual acts that are implied to not be consensual, yet the character still seems to enjoy them (you get the option to confess that you enjoy being forced to do sexual acts against your will. Even if you don’t). There’s also the really creepy narrative framing, in which you’re telling your twin brother about all the sexual acts you’ve been getting up to, in graphic detail.
Despite all this, Ladykiller is doing important work when it comes to the portrayal of consent and interesting sexual dynamics. Most sex games are pretty vanilla and written very much from the male gaze point-of-view, and while Ladykiller isn’t all that diverse when it comes to its cast, who are mostly skinny, white and hairless from the neck down, it’s still making leaps and bounds in other areas.
When sex games can represent the diversity of sexuality, fetishes, turn-ons and kinks while still showing that respect and care are important in any level of sexual relationship, then we’ll have got somewhere good. For now, Ladykiller is a good start.
Can consent be fully received if you’re lying about who you are?