GRACE BENFELL X THE PUZZLED PRESS
KILLING OUR GODS
Essays on Religion, Christianity, and Video Games
Killing Our Gods: Essays On Religion, Christianity, And Video Games is a collection of criticism on the bizarre intersections between the divine and technological. While video games sometimes get characterized as an especially profane or childish medium, its hard limits and “little worlds” lend themselves to a curious existentialism. So many games are about defying fate, upending the holy structures that game before, or even just fighting evil monks and priests. Originally a column on the website Uppercut, Killing Our Gods explores the contradictions, contrivances, and cutting insights of this modern medium and its divine discontents.
This project will include:
All 13 original Killing Our Gods columns, edited with brand new introductions and commentary.
Other previous writings that fit the Killing Our Gods model.
New essays exclusive to this book, including writings on Mass Effect, Silent Hill, Baldur’s Gate 3, and more.
ABOUT US
Grace Benfell is a terminally unemployable and forever cranky freelance writer who has written for Paste Magazine, GameSpot, Vice, Bulletpoints Monthly, [lock-on], among many others. She writes fiction about fucked up mormons and guilty women and non-fiction about killing gods, electronic dysphorias, and virtual environmentalism. She creates for herself and for freaks like her. She is a proud member of the National Writer’s Union/Freelance Solidarity Project. She lives in Chicago with her wife and two rabbits.
Gina Louise Fowler is a book artist, writer, and all-around chaotic creative, who also works as a full-time barista. She makes work about gender, history, language, and politics, and can occasionally be found dreaming up fictional fantasy worlds. Her work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in collections across the country, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, The University of Miami Special Collections and Baylor University Libraries. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Gina and Grace first met in Germany through a set of convoluted acquaintances. Afterwards, they both served in the same LDS mission and attended a study abroad together. After they both came out and moved across the country, Gina reached out to Grace on Instagram to collaborate on a book project together. This project is a culmination of each other’s work and an outgrowth of their friendship.
THE STORY OF KILLING OUR GODS
Killing Our Gods originated when Grace shot off a tweet about wanting to work on a column about religion and spirituality in RPGs. Uppercut editor Ty Galiz-Rowe offered Grace a spot, an opportunity for which she has ever been grateful. Grace continued to write Killing Our Gods every month, until life circumstances conspired to put the project on hiatus. The column occupied a unique place in games writing, somewhere between creative non-fiction and materialist-minded critique. Every Killing Our Gods column was prefaced with the following phrase: “Killing Our Gods is a monthly column from Grace Benfell about Christianity, religion, and role-playing through a queer, Marxist, and lapsed Mormon lens.” While these elements inform all of Grace’s work, it was in Killing Our Gods where those influences found their most sincere expression.
This book provides an opportunity for Grace to write more essays in this vein, but at a more ambitious scope and in a wider timeframe. A book affords space for deeper, more complex criticism and the time needed to pull it off.
FUNDING BREAKDOWN
$3000 to Grace – initial payment for labor in advance of publication $2000 to material costs – initial investment into materials for full editions Includes cost of prototype materials
$5,000 is the minimum amount of money we would need to complete this project. Every dollar over $5,000 helps us create the book with more time, more flexibility, and greater compensation. At certain stretch goals, we will be able to add additional content to the book.
A NOTE ON POLITICS
We join billions of voices from across the globe in demanding an end to the siege in Gaza, and the restoration of Palestine from the river to the sea. In practical terms for this book, this means we will abide by the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, we will also follow the institutional pressure and consumer boycott guidelines of the official BDS organization. This book will not be available for sale on Amazon, for example. Our work as artists and critics emerges from our strongly held convictions, from values based in our communities and friendships. The work within Killing Our Gods is explicitly political. Every aspect of the production and creation of the book should align with those politics.