grace

@gracemachine.bsky.social

1796 Followers 400 Following

Writer, critic, co-editor @tier-review.com

Updated Content Aware Descriptions: Based on player feedback, each existing Content Aware has additional detail and updated language Subtitles for Songs and Musical Pieces for Hearing-Impaired: Miranda, Bodhi, and Keyes will display lyrics and descriptions during their most musical moments Curt and Rod Player Pronouns: We brought Davied and Jacquis into the studio for new lines that address the player with correct pronouns Daisuke/Gaia Interaction: We brought Daisuke (Tsuji) into the studio for special Traveller dialogue with Gaia! Community Sourced Sensitivity Feedback: Thank you so much for enabling us to provide a better and more inclusive experience across a whole manner of interactions with more player-focused options: Eddie has an additional line that remembers if the player doesn’t drink alcohol Players no longer have to be mean to Barry to win Bathsheba’s affection Players can confidently say that they already know about ‘shade’ with Curt and Rod, skipping the concept’s tutorial Player is able to more confidently say where Travellers are from with Gaia (info found in Date-a-Dex) More sensitive player choices in general for Farya, Arma, I, Ronaldini, Freddy, Mitchell, Maggie, Scandalabra, Stefan, Stepford, Teddy, and Zoey Removal of negative references to multiple personalities in Lyric
A screenshot from Resident Evil: Code Veronica, showing Claire Redfield standing in front of a desk with a desktop computer, various files, and a typewriter. Text on the bottom of the screen reads "The e-mail to Leon has already been sent."
The Resident Evil series is celebrating its 30-year anniversary today, March 22, 2025. Below, we look at the way the series subversively blends thirst traps with horrific thrills. Leon Kennedy is tied up. The henchmen of cult leader Osmund Saddler have injected him with Las Plagas--an ancient, zombifying parasite. His hands are cuffed to a chain, at the other end of which is Kennedy's sometimes-ally Luis Sera. They work together to get free. There is a rhythm between them as they pull on the chain. Their muscles are taut, they trade grunts like drumbeats. For now, their bodies are triumphant. Yet, in just a few short hours, Luis will be dead and Leon will be coughing up blood, while Las Plagas takes more and more hold of him. This is just one moment across Resident Evil's 30-year history, but it is far from a unique one. The franchise puts its stars in constant peril. Because that peril is so fixated on the body and its permeability, it often has an erotic dimension. It's easy to limit this to the games' casts of femme fatales and women-in-peril, but it is the men, especially Leon Kennedy, who bear the brunt of it in practice. One of the series' sincere pleasures is watching beautiful people, but especially beautiful men, get hurt.
Cover art for corpse party’s 2021 remake
Requiem can be placed within a long lineage of great Japanese art that deals with post-war trauma through science-fiction. Despite the fact that it’s set in a fictional American city, Resident Evil has always evoked the specters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (released 54 years after the tragedies) famously ends with an American bomb streaking through the sky like a comet and landing right in the center of Raccoon City. It explodes in a fury of blinding white light. Buildings blast apart and zombies are vaporized in an instant as a tower of flame engulfs the city block by block. It’s played as a “cool girls don’t look at explosions” escape sequence, but it’s a deeply unnerving scene removed from the game’s B-movie corniness. It’s not far off from the real-world accounts of Hibakusha, who experienced Japan’s bombings as children.
It is easier than ever to find upsetting material and to extrapolate that upset to a fundamental societal ill. When the personal is political, everything is public. In her essay, "west elm caleb and the feminist panopticon," Rayne Fisher-Quann discusses the urge to hold ordinary individuals uniquely responsible for societal woes. She writes, "the crucifixion of these individuals is ultimately a system of smoke and mirrors that obfuscates true systemic change while providing us with enough satisfaction to stop aiming higher." Though the work of Collective Shout takes place in a different context, it is driven by a similar impulse. Most generously, Collective Shout chases the cultural and consumptive symptoms of patriarchal violence while doing little to stop its material harms or to aid victims. Founder Melinda Tankard-Reist's own ties to religious, right-wing politics bear this out. When you cannot address causes, you are left fighting battles that don't matter.
Grace and Sibyl smiling at the camera.
A screenshot from Pathologic 2, which depicts a figure in a skin tight black suit with a white theater mask pointing down a street.
Combat in Silent Hill 2 is not about danger or dodging, or any of the regular video game feelings. It’s aesthetic, whether it is intended to be or not. Most of the enemies (outside of iconic antagonist Pyramid Head and a couple of other bosses) are choked feminine forms, suffocating forever. Some are sickly figures trapped in bed frames. In every killing, James recreates the game’s primary trauma: His murder of his sickly wife Mary over and over again. (For a deeper analysis of this, please check out Astrid Anne Rose’s essay “Nurse With Wound.“) That ambiguity is baked into the game’s design, where, outside of boss fights, you don’t actually need to fight anything. There is a question of how much Silent Hill‘s monsters actually mean harm. The enemies don’t seem to appear to Laura, a little girl who also knew Mary, who moves through Silent Hill with total ease. Or perhaps they simply do not hurt her.
Long takes in videogames, in contrast, are fucking endless. Many end only upon player death or opening a menu. Others feel almost comical in their avoidance of a simple cut. Even films that are famous for using the technique, like Children of Men, rely on the tension of the long take that will at one point shatter. In the videogame mode, these images slide off of you. Because the camera cannot simply cut, it is always moving. We have to track away from a close up to a wide shot or whip-pan between two faces to approximate shot-reverse-shot. There is no promise that it will ever sit still, much less that it will ever hard cut. There is no rhythm to it and thus no art.
In fact, I understood Mass Effect primarily as a religious allegory. Shepard as a divine child, the inevitable conflict of flesh and blood beings vs. robots a kind of original sin. The reapers, true to their name, come to cleanse us of our simple imperfection. They make us Gods, but not as we are. They chop us up, use our blood, profane material for divine ends. Mass Effect's final choice, between control, synthesis, or destruction is a choice of salvations, even approaches to sin. We can control or curb it, attempt to eradicate it entirely, or integrate it with hope that sin itself is part of the divine plan.
Alan Wake on stage with bright red and blue lights. He’s wearing dark shades that could never save the day.
Are you a media worker who has suffered retaliation for expressing solidarity with Palestine? You’re not alone. The National Writers Union is documenting these incidents and connecting workers with support. bit.ly/PAL-retaliation-survey
19. Jovial He stood above your bed, bosom bare. You reached to him. You had never seen a man like him before. Naked, unashamed, like one before the fall. When he kissed you, and the words of god flew into you, Like light through a bashed in doorway, You felt like you would never sleep again, Never bask in darkness, but witness all. His dwelling though was darkness. As Dawn touched the wooden walls of your home, he vanished Some things belong to the night.
18. Cimiter The world operates by some fundamental rules. Push and pull, slice and dice, life from death, death from life. Know that when you treat me like a man And I slice your face clean off That’s just physics.
17. Melchizedek Indulging myself to get words on the page. I think little of Melchizedek, though his was one of the names I bore. Jesus, Joseph, Aaron, another one of those old patriarchs All symbols of god rather than men I shook off these names, dust on my shoulders And gained pagan power, to leap over trains, suspend myself in air, stop bullets. Being trans is fucking magic
15. Sanctified I know it’s selfish, But I wish you lived here. If you did, I’d buy you your fifth copy of “On The Road” (I would sign this one so you would have to keep it) And some film theory book neither of us had heard of, Un-famous even by the standards of film theorists, Just so I could bring them over to you, Just to hear you go “awh” and hug me. Instead, I dance to songs I have memorized in some dazed, hungover ritual to summon you. I take pictures of spiders, resisting the shriek rising low in my throat. Here is where I’m at my witchiest, indulging magic to conjure shades of you. Do you ever think, that if you are a man, you’re the only one I’ve ever loved.
14. Wheel Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along Push along Aren’t we all part of some divine project Infinite settlers in infinite holy lands Swaddled in to-do lists, placed in career paths. How many Mormons have been called to be accountants or real estate lawyers? How many poindexters do we need in the kingdom of god? Maybe he needs them to run statistics on hell’s tortured. Do you think in heaven, they can hear the damned? Do they even care? Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along Push along
13. Flaming One day in October, I’ll write one of these poems before 10 PM One of these days, The flame in my head will purify me Instead of just Burning Burning Burning One day they’ll be world peace if enough of us go to Coldplay concerts Or read the New York Times At least now there are some days when I don’t hate myself. Fix my life Today Today Today Today Today
11. Palmyra If God can visit here God can visit anywhere A poor farmer’s boy, asking questions, Receiving fire. Drenched in the sweat of temptation, Exalted in holy water. Earthly matter made divine and the promise: It will happen again. If God can visit here, God can’t be everywhere else. He forgot those ancients, by whose mounds Joseph must have walked. Why are God’s chosen radicals always slutty white boys. Why couldn’t He give voice to the dead, the broken, instead of the merely meek? The last stay last. The first stay first. It will happen again.
10. Carpet Walls I never want to be alone with a man again. Never want to wait for him to call me in, to feel the weight of god’s unwieldy eyes on his fingertips, to know that he knows things no one else knows. I never want to be told that women can’t have power because they are too good for it,
9. Devilish They grinned, churlish, bored, Took a deep breath, and coolly exhaled. The smoke curled at the edge of the streetlamp A tower of babel, suspended twixt heaven and the joint between her fingers.
8. Laurels I imagine her, girl I would have been. Crested petals, crowned with grace, fervent love I stand beside her, dark-suited, bleak twin Flower turned in, stretched, tied, chosen above We both wear titles, one only marks age The other imbues me with grave duty Neither of them have any space for rage Nothing to feel but cold, endless beauty I feel myself, standing between, behind In front, inside, around, never resolved A map of selves made real, all intertwined A fever broken a question absolved I wonder why god chose him over her For how many versions I will recur
6. Nephite Mama’s boy to an unnamed mother You too are nameless, like your brothers When blood stained your gleaming chest Was its color so different than your lovers So when you say you’re not like the rest Not so cruel, not so strict, not so pressed But you still sing the hymns and crush the wine All we’ll remember is your grave, stone in stone, equally blessed
2. Deacon His hands quivered on the metal Radiant, solemn boy in hold His white shirt still creased on the fold One soft sign, his tie, a petal Only after his hands settle Can he sit back down and feel ache The burden of god’s atonement Being one or all, you are bent Water not wine, no fruit only fakes
Image of the character creator in Starfield with a gray haired woman in black make up.
Will Lexington, a cowboy-styled country singer, standing and yelling before a doorway in a concert venue. Subtitles read “I may be gay, but you are insane!”
Alan Wake looking down in despair. He is a writer.
Paperback copies of 50 Years of Text Games and The Drift issue ten.