Call me a dorky BDSMer, but somehow I can’t help but giggle at the name “Vanillaware.” They’re the guys who developed Odin Sphere, the title we’ve been talking about as having innovative takes on gender in games. So there’s something strangely ironic in the fact that they’re “vanilla.”
For those among us currently shrugging their shoulders in mild confusion, “vanilla,” aside from being a moderately delicious flavor of ice cream, is also the term used to describe non-BDSM (i.e. non-kinky) sex acts. Missionary sex between a man and a woman with romantic, scented candles. Totally vanilla.
It’s not that anyone in Odin Sphere gets tied up or beaten (at least, not for fun). Still. Probably, it has nothing to do with sexiness. But we can have a few mild chuckles at Vanillaware’s expense, right? Right.
Bonnie Ruberg is a sex, technology, and video games journalist who contributes regularly to publications like The Economist, Forbes, and The Village Voice. By day she's also a comparative literature PhD student at UC Berkeley, where she studies French, English, gender, sexuality, surrealism and perversion. You can reach her at [her first name and last name, all one big word] AT gmail DOT com.
July 8th, 2007 at 2:36 am
And here I thought vanilla was being referred to what is preferred to be eaten by people who are into scat, and somehow making a correlation between that and vanillaware :|
July 10th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Lol, there’s that, too. The best is when I tried to explain to my father the BDSM meaning of “vanilla.” He was like, “No. No! That’s just not true.” Big mistake. Apparently he really likes ice cream.
March 1st, 2009 at 1:04 am
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