One of the things I love about the super-effeminate Castlevania game art that I didn’t get a chance to mention in my columns on the topic for Joystiq is how it makes male characters the object of the viewer’s gaze.  “The gaze” is something that gets talked about a lot in art history, especially in terms of art that […]

Up today at Gamasutra you’ll find “Sex, Violence, and Comic Books,” an interview with writer Gerard Jones from the 2006 Montreal International Games Summit. Social repression, reactionary government policy, and catty high school girls. Confused? Read! The hypno toad commands you.

Yes, it’s a me party over at Joystiq, with two weeks in a row of Playing Dirty.  Today you’ll find part two of my look at the changing gendered art of Castlevania, “Dracula Wears Eyeliner.”  Whips, widowers, and way too much compact powder: these guys have it all.

Angela Carter said we love Marilyn Monroe because she looks like, if we grabbed her, she would bruise.  Take that for what you will when you consider everyone’s favorite blond duo: Link and Zelda.  They’ve got that “would like cute together” and/or “look like brother and sister thing” that we learned the hard way from […]

Apparently I totally spaced on today’s post: end of the semester, literary magazine just came out, excuses, excuses.
Anyways, just up at Joystiq is my Playing Dirty column, “Dracula Wears Eyeliner,” the first piece in a two-part look at the changing art style (and gender implications) of the Castlevania series.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say […]

Rayman: Raving Rabbids is a strange mixture of cute and dirty. It’s populated almost entirely by bunnies (the “aww”est of all hopping creatures), but they’re ugly bunnies–who do, in all fairness, sometimes end up cuter for their ugliness. The game’s sense of humor, while sometimes sadistic, usually evens out somewhere around bathroom-joke level. Don’t get […]