[This piece was written as a part of Critical Distance‘s March 2016 Blogs of the Round Table feature] In the last week or so my background viewing over meals and housework has been a Let’s Play of FromSoftware’s Bloodborne, a gothic horror fantasy spiritually succeeding the same developer’s infamously difficult Souls series. I’m not likely … Continue reading Bloodborne and Back Pain
The Magus by John Fowles follows an entitled, selfish English graduate as he escapes his failed ambitions and relationships to a Greek island. There he meets Maurice Conchis, a billionaire intellectual who may be (but probably isn’t) connected to a supernatural force. The novel, set just after the Second World War, explores post-war masculine anxiety, … Continue reading Life at the Grindstone: the small significance of grinding
[Originally posted on PopMatters] Leene’s bell chimes three times from the town square and a teenage adventurer is awakened by his mother, a cadet at Skyloft’s knight academy throws together his belongings and dashes to his practicum, a busty archeologist hones her skills on an obstacle course in the gardens while her gremlin of a … Continue reading Where the Heart Is: The Use of Home in Videogames
[Originally posted on PopMatters] The word “law” applies to two distinct abstracts: universal truths (unbreakable, mathematically provable consistencies) and socially upheld codes (legislated instructions that dictate how a person may and may not act). The same word signifies both the parameters of what is possible and the parameters of what is acceptable. In a video … Continue reading Existing Above the Law in Video Games
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