This article discusses Norman only as he appears in the Pokemon games, not in his anime or manga iterations. November 21st marked the one-year anniversary of the 3DS remakes of Pokemon’s third generation of games. After years of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (RSE) fans lamenting the unlikelihood of re-releases, the announcement of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (ORAS)…
Jamie’s Guide To Less Stressful Holidays
Listen… Do you hear what I hear? The distant sleigh bells coming ever closer… the hoofbeats of reindeer… The inexorably shambling footfalls of shopping mobs… It can only mean one thing. They’re coming. They’re coming! They’re almost here! Are you ready for the holidays?! Are you ready for the stress that inevitably comes with them? Yes, the…
Why I Game: World Building, Ceramic Christmas Villages, and Township
I recently read this article via Longform (a website that curates the internet’s best longform articles, which you should be following) about this author’s obsession with his Christmas village. You know the the ceramic houses and knick-knacks that line the aisles during the holiday season? Most of them seem to hail back to a bygone…
ESSAY: Disability and Language in Adventure Time’s “Bonnie and Neddy”
The seventh season of Adventure Time brought its audience back to a Candy Kingdom facing big changes. An exhausted and frustrated Princess Bubblegum handed her throne over to the selfish, air-headed King of Ooo, and left to build a new life in the middle of nowhere. In the midst of the first true regime shift…
Domestic and Sexual Violence, Final Girls, and Strong Women in Home Invasion Films
Home invasion films are among the scariest in the horror genre because the idea of having one’s home and safety intruded upon is a real, everyday threat. Some of the most famous horror movies have a home invasion component, but these same films also tend to reinforce negative stereotypes about women. In addition to the…
Marvel’s Oppression Analogues: When X-Men Reach the Unreachable
I’ve always considered myself a “bad” English major. I love to read, but I have no desire to delve into “high” brow literature. Lolita? Yeah. Not for me. Robinson Crusoe? Hell no. David Copperfield? Over my dead body. I’m not ashamed to say, I’ve read very few of the novels that The Guardian heralds the…
It’s a Crime: Two Perspectives, Worlds Apart, on Tet
Tet IDW Paul Tucker & Paul Allor Issue three out now Claire Napier: I’ve complained before about my inability to find graphic crime fiction that satisfies me on the same levels as my favoured crime prose. Well, I can shut up now. Tet is that book. I’ve known Paul Allor for a while; we’re acquainted on…
Faith in Representation: Valiant Efforts
Editor’s note: This is the first of what we hope will be several pieces on Valiant Comics’ new(ish) heroine Faith, aka Zephyr, whose solo miniseries will begin in January 2016. Do you have a perspective on Faith, a yearning to cover her series, or an interest in discovering this heroine? Get in touch. But first:…
ESSAY: Cartooning Disability: Hawkeye and Hearing Loss
I’m terrible at finishing things—fictional things, that is. It took me four months to watch the last four episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Eight weeks to watch the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I still haven’t seen the final season of Korra. And I’ve just accepted at this point that I will never be able…
How Video Games Help Us Deal with Mortality – Part 1
Death might be the most vast and most common topos in games. Since the beginning of gaming, players “died” on screen, losing one or multiple “lives.” The metaphor of cheating death pretty soon became a real option for players, be it through gaining extra lives or willingly manipulating the games’ core functions via cheat codes….
Looking at Men With No Clothes On: The Goddamned
A bit later I’ll talk about racial coding. But first: something pleasant (and NSFW).
Women Are (Slightly) More Likely to Own a Game Console Than Men, But That Misses the Point
Sexist gatekeepers have another hurdle to try to mansplain away: a recent report by the Pew Research Center examined device ownership in the United States, concluding more women than men own a game console. The study, which can be read in its entirety here, is based on telephone interviews conducted from March to April of this…
