Okay, not puppies per se, ’cause 1) I don’t know if that’s possible and 2) that’s just mean.

Anyways, after my “Portal is for Lesbians” post, Scott and I were talking about other mainstream games that slip in some subtle, maybe/maybe not, “Okay, I can totally see that now” gay overtones. For example? Nintendogs! No, don’t worry, this isn’t yet another old-school homophobic puppy bash (”ugh, adorableness threatens my manhood and is thus so very gay”). What I mean is, if you think about it, you could read Nintendogs as a game about gay men walking their dogs around town to meet other guys.

It’s hardly a new idea; guys in San Francisco and New York do it all the time. You walk your adorable puppy around the block, another guy stops to compliment you on the adorableness of your puppy, and you end up going for a coffee. What’s great is that Nintendo (granted, probably not intentionally) has passed us down a friendly hook-up sim cleverly disguised as a pet care simulator.

I mean, I don’t know about you, but everybody–and I mean everybody–in my Nintendogs town was male. “Look, it’s Gary. Let’s go say hi. Oh look, now it’s Mark. He’s so nice. And look, it’s…” Come on, you’re a single male puppy-owner with an interest in stylish home interiors and fellow male pet owners. You get it. You know you do.

So I don’t know if I’ve explained exactly what I’m doing here in France. Basically, I’m teaching English as a second language to students in “technical” high schools–which means they’re training to be cooks or receptionists or moped mechanics. As you might expect, it’s challenging work. What do I have common with a 50 Cent-loving, seventeen-year-old moped mechanic? Pretty much nothing.

Nothing, that is, except video games. I have this “Getting to Know You” worksheet that lists things I like to do, and once we hit “play video games” the whole class goes from irritated and French to super excited. Granted, I can’t imagine the aforementioned 50 Center lover and I have much in common in terms of game taste, but still, it’s something…

Then there was the time this week when one of my fellow English teachers asked me what I write about. Um, sex and gender in video games? “And you work with children?” Actually, her response was more like, “Well, that’s unique. I should look you up online. How is your squishy cheese?” We were eating lunch. I should probably mention that. Anyways, cybersexpert-dom is probably one part of “Getting to Know You” that I probably won’t bring up with my students…

Life here in France is lovely. Really. But the one thing I honestly regret about being an expat this year is missing American fall. The leaves. The cold, crisp air. The apple cider. Fall is by far my favorite time of year. And by far my favorite day in the year is Halloween.

Seriously, I must be wired wrong, because just thinking about Halloween makes something inside my chest start glowing. Going to the supermarket and seeing a big display of pumpkins outside… I barely know what to do with myself. And then you’ve got all those orange and black decorations. It’s really too much. By which I mean, it’s amazing.

Unfortunately, here in France, those things don’t really exist. Fall barely happens. I’m on the Mediterranean, which is gorgeous, but except for a slight variation in temperature, the weather here stays pretty much the same all year. Halloween has been shipped over from the States in the form of some candy and a couple costumes, but kids don’t really trick-or-treat. Worst of all, there aren’t even any pumpkins.

Luckily, I’ve got an onslaught of video-game related jack-o-lanterns to help me get over my Halloween withdrawal. This week Kotaku is full of them. My favorite is the Pikachu pumpkin. He’s almost the right color and everything.

Anyone have exciting Halloween plans? Chris Furniss of The Weekly Geek was just telling me his plans to go as the weighted companion cube from Portal. But if there’s a box on your head, Chris, how will you eat all the candy? You heard me: all of the candy!

Extra, extra, read all about it: video-game version of classic Norse tale makes this ex literature student curious, horrified, and strangely entertained.

I’ll admit my expectations for Beowulf: the Game aren’t high. Things usually turn out bad enough when movies get turned into games. To make matters worse, we’re talking about a book getting turned into a movie getting turned into a game. And not just any book: a 1300-year-old epic poem. Now it’s becoming an action adventure title. You can see why I have my doubts. And those doubts aren’t helped by gruff screenshots or gory, dramatic gameplay footage–even if it is spliced with images of a naked woman.

Still, fellow dorks over at Kotaku claim that the game’s creators are just as worried about staying true to the original. Personally, I’m not so bothered by deviations as I am by a lack of originality. John Gardner took Beowulf and made it existentialist. Grendel gives the finger to God? Great! But I don’t think we’re talking about appropriation here. I think we’re talking about a lack of creative IP. We’ve already re-made every other famous story in history and literature, right? Now all that’s left is Beowulf.

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong. All I know is the slow, even painful process of reading that book for realzies feels nothing like the hack and slash I’m seeing in trailers. It’s an epic poem, people. It’s not supposed to be fun.

Get it? It’s like “Virgina is for lovers”… Eh, nevermind.

Not that it won’t unleash an angry mob of Portal lovers, but I just have to say this. Wait, first, I should probably say I think Portal is awesome; if I hadn’t left my PC in the States (or, you know, if I was willing to shell out the cash for a 360), I would doubtless by among the Portal-infatuated hordes. Also, I should say SPOILER ALERT! So with that out of the way, I’m going to go ahead and ask: is anyone else seeing the potential lesbian thing going on in Portal?

Granted, the game has a great sense of humor, so any sex/gender imagery we deconstruct here has to be taken with a grain of salt–and a permanent smirk. Still… Okay, let’s go through the evidence:

1) It’s an all female game. Not that that makes it “lesbian” per se, but let’s take a moment to stop and appreciate how infrequently that happens. We’ve got Chell, and we’ve got GLaDOS. Hot girl-on-girl (plot) action.

2) There are some definite implications of romantic interest in Portal. Sure, Chell “kills” GLaDOS, but she also breaks her heart. Then there’s the beloved weighted companion cube, which GLaDOS thinks Chell should be all cuddly with. Not only does it have those girly pink hearts on its sides, but it’s her “companion.” That’s a word like “partner” that often gets used as a euphemism for lover or girlfriend. Is that stretching things? Of course. All the more fun!

(Addendum: an actual player/commenter informs me the weighted companion cube is referred to as a “he.” That confuses thing a bit, but let’s keep thinking. We could say the cube doesn’t count as a real male character–only an object. It’s still feminized by the hearts. But if we’re sticking with the idea that it’s a “man,” we could call it commentary on the usefulness of men: they’re cute, but they’re a burden. Any other ideas?)

3) We’re dealing with a reshaping of a highly masculine genre, the FPS. If that itself weren’t “queering” enough, there’s the whole holes issue. We’ve talked before about how the guns in first-person shooters act as phallic avatars–that is, as penises. But in a world of women, this gun doesn’t shoot bullets. It shoots orifices. Openings. Fine, vaginas. Vaginas you, a female character, have to enter/exit to solve puzzles. I don’t say this often, and almost never with so much support and enthusiasm, but that is so gay.

So, anyone who’s actually played the game instead of just read about it obsessively spotted anymore interesting sex/gender imagery in Portal? All I can say is I’m thrilled that something so fun–and so funnily subversive–has been both conceived and adored by mainstream gamer land. Now I’m off to dream of plush weighted companion cubes…

This one definitely gets filed under “bad Bonnie.”

So approximately a million years ago (i.e. about six months), I thought it would be a great idea to try a kitschy new kind of review called “the dating game review.” I was probably inspired by Jeremy Parish’s fun and creatively themed reviews for 1up.com–though of course, like any good artist, if mine ever became popular I’d have to claim I’d never read his and then I’d have to feign insult that anything could have influenced my genius. Right.
Anyways, the dating game reviews were going to run weekly on Heroine Sheik. They probably would have covered smaller titles, like indie games or casual games. The idea was to do a campy combination of personals ads and video game criticism. To start out, I was going to review Popcap’s new (yeah, that shows you how long ago this was) title Peggle. In theory, the review was going to look something like this:

LOOKING FOR LOVE
Name: Peggle
Description: energetic, colorful, ballsy
Hobbies: amateur fireworks, collecting ball bearings, loves animals
Seeking: casual gamer with addictive personality for longterm relationship

Of course, it would have been longer than that–and hopefully more clever. Oh, and also more informative. Can you tell that this was all theory and no actual effort? Can you tell I needed to get the post out of my Wordpress back end before it finally drove me insane? Reminds me of the “5 Questions” series that started (and ended) with Brad Abrams. In that one I even managed to insult friend and generally awesome person Brenda Brathwaite. Way to go, Bonnie! Ze Frank is definitely right on this one: it’s better to just do your cool projects and get them out there instead of sitting around thinking about doing them.