In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essen­tial element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve…

set of lads from outside of Leeds - leedssc - Tapatalk Best set of lads from outside of Leeds - leedssc - Tapatalk

For this game I dive deeper into fumble­core, an indie game genre involving humorously inefficient and cumbersome player embodiment. Each round, the hurt lad is barely keeping it together, flailing in a very unmanly way in reaction to the slightest disturbance. Practically everyone in this video has failed this public test of masculinity. Which is why I also made this game’s core chair interactions feel silly, too. Following this tradition of camp, the ending sequence for Hard Lads began as a failure in my code. I was trying to apply physics forces to keep the ragdoll upright, but instead it levitated the hurt lad off the ground. High above the rooftops, just as the lads’ final chorus swells triumphantly, there’s a randomized 50% chance for him to suddenly plummet to the ground like Icarus. I thought the morbid humor would feel appropriately British; Even with the magic of love, these lads are still merely men, God giveth and God taketh away, and so on.The real insult is that they think queer energy can be dispelled so easily! The video shows how straight mate energy is actually quite fragile. It just takes one minute to utterly destroy the lad’s masculinity on video. In the end, I argue that queer love is also the force that honors masculine vulnerability, that only we have the power to reclaim these lads. The article is based on areport by the Samaritans, and declared that ​ “macho attitudes to talking about problems mean men are denied the social support they need”. Further down, the statistics aren’t so dissimilar to those produced by The Priory Group four years ago. In 1999, it was reported that 12 men between the ages of 15 and 24 killed themselves per week, while asurvey of 1,400 men aged between 13 – 19 found ​ “67 per cent who had suicidal feelings said they had nowhere to turn for emotional help”. That’s when chair lad bosom buddy launches into a rousing rendition of “Truly Madly Deeply”, by Australian pop sensation Savage Garden: It was the tragic suicide of his dad’s friend, who he regularly played football with, which first prompted him to explore the damaging effects of hyper-masculinity through his art. Bold lettering is stitched on top of St. George’s flags, featuring slogans such as ​ “soften up hard lad” and ​ “save our bastard sons”. When finished, they form awitty take on the ever-recognisable pitch, pub and PE banter.

October 2016 – Sore Bottom Guys

Let the straight men kiss, I say, and let anyone access silly macho hunky gender performance. We’re not going to police their identity. Humphreys and Ward believe straight MSM when they say they aren’t closet cases in denial. These are straight men living straight lives who do Stuff with men for whatever reason.Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy [… and] it doesn’t sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures. As a nod to this incident, Hard Lads recreates this moment at the end of every round. Once the lad collapses from too much pain, the game drops additional chairs down from the sky, starting with only 1 chair on the 2nd round, and accumulating 69 chairs in the final 7th round.