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Design a (mini)game inspired by the Maris de France lai, Laüstic.
Translated by S.H. and P.R. Caldwell
PDF, Translated Judith P. Shoaf
In my version of Laüstic, the player must cover the princess with blood by hurling dead nightingales at her. TO make the duck bloody, the player must first break the nightingale's neck. The game takes the form of the popular NES game, Duck Hunt.
If the purpose of an adaptation is to draw attention to the distance between the reader/user/viewer and the subject of the adaptation (Benjamin), then I believe this is a perfect adaptation of the Marie de France lai, Laüstic. Other than the act (very memorable in the poem, to be sure) of hurling the bloody nightingales at the princess, none of the original content is preserved. However, by using imagery from the NES and SNES games Duck Hunt, Shinobi, and Super Mario Brothers 3, I have juxtaposed the nostalgia that surrounds these games with the air of antiquity that the lai evokes. I think this is an interesting juxtaposition, because both nostalgia and the feeling evoked when reading a work produced in a distant time are, at least for me, feelings of longing for a time past - the only difference being that I have experienced one and not the other.
Granted - this juxtaposition does not do much to unpack the meaning of the story - in fact, it engages the meaning of the story only very superficially, if at all. But this is obviously not what I was aiming for, so I will not devote too much attention to it. In terms of the mechanic, I think it would be very satisfying to cover the princess with blood, especially if, like me, you have spent hours dodging flying turtles and battling koopa troopers to save this whiny (as portrayed in the popular Saturday morning cartoon) princess.
I am also interested in the relationship between the simplified reality that exists in video games, and the somewhat stylized personalities in the lais. In many of Marie de France's poems, we see brave, brazen, and sometimes cruel knights, but if their morality can sometimes be the slightest bit gray, their actions never are. In addition, we see the objectified damsels, who, although respected by those who love them, rarely seem to have any agency other than an easily-overcome aversion to infidelity. Similarly, in these early NES games, all actions seem to be either good or evil - never ambiguous.
To be continued…