Yes, it’s official; I’ve become part of the blog collective over at Terra Nova. I’ve even been given a fun little introduction (Thanks, Dan!). Plus, I’m quite psyched to be there; Julian Dibbel may or may not be my personal hero, and the mere thought of sharing webspace with fellow intellectual MMO-writing fanboys makes me go all dizzy. Stop by soon for actual thoughts, writing, and sexiness!

Friday at The Escapist a piece of mine went up about suffering and control in games, called “Addicted to Pain.” Why do we love to blow things up? Read and see. Remember to follow the discussion over at The Escapist blog. Also, I’ve recently joined the team at Terra Nova (Hooray!), so, if you’re interested in how these issues pertain to sex, keep an eye out for my first post over there, which will deal with just that issue.

Well, I’m officially moved in here in Ireland. I haven’t had my first beer yet, but the season is young. And yes, things are very green.

At the same time I’ve been moving, I’ve been working on a piece for Gamasutra about a sex-themed design challenge that took place back in November, and looking at the question of presenting interactive sex. Interviewing for the piece has brought me back a number of times to an issue that we’ve discussed here on Heroine Sheik before, namely in-game sex as funny. That is, if the controls are too straight forward (up, down, thrust, up, down, thrust), or if the visuals are too explicit, in-game sex gets laughable. But why?

Maybe we’re laughing at the game. We can take sex on our screens when it’s masked, hinted at, symbolized. But when it’s plain old sex, we see clearly how absurd it is - rendered bodies with rendered parts going through preprogrammed motions. And simple controls pose the same problem: in reducing sex to a basic game, we begin to understand the game is ridiculous.

Really though, the absurdity that makes us laugh isn’t the absurdity of the game, it’s the absurdity of ourselves. We see our own bodies, our own actions, which we assume are so complex, reflected to us on a screen, and we’re allowed to see just how ridiculous we are. Up, down, thrust, up, down, thrust - that may seem silly, but essentially it’s not too far off the mark. As a culture that looks at sex from a million different angles, that thinks about it twenty-four hours a day, how absurd does that make us, that mere simplicity?

In laughing, of course, we displace our personal discomfort onto the bodies on the screen. We find them funny so we don’t have to understand that the joke is on us.

Tear, tear, Miss America wave, Miss America wave…

As of Sunday, I’m headed off to Ireland, the land of all things green, where I’ll be living until the end of May. Sadly, my consoles will be staying home (Long live portables systems!), my internet access will no longer flow like sweet sweet candy, and I will most likely be lost in a sea of pale-skinned redheads.

BUT, my thirsty, kid-in-a-candy-shop love of sex in games chitchat can’t be quenched, not even by five months of Irish beer, so I’ll still be around as much as possible. Just don’t make funny faces at me if I don’t respond to your comments as quickly as I should; discussion is really my favorite part of this gig. Most likely, it’s just that lepricons have held me up a knife-point and forced me to go outside.

Happy New Year and a happy spring to America and its gamers! I’ll be seeing you soon…

Is it really possible for me talk about something besides gender and sexuality? Apparently. My piece today at The Escapist, Mainstream Gaming, Mainstream Shopping,” deals with the question of mainstream-ization. Are we losing our unique gamer culture? Are we becoming part of the crowd? Yes. But no worries — in this girl’s opinion, it’s a necessary evil in the move toward future glory.

As always, remember that the conversation continues over at The Escapist’s blog. Swing on by!

Just wanted to give a quick heads and let you all know that Heroine Sheik may be experiencing some down time here and there over the next week. No worries, though, we really are still here; I promise. In the meantime, here’s hoping everyone’s having a happy, healthy, — oh, who am I kidding — game-filled new year.