GoldenEye, for a generation of millennial gamers, came during the middle school/high school/college years. It’s more violent and gory, obviously, than the cute cartoony SMB3. And yet it also came out just before Columbine and just before 9/11—the sort of last moment of our collective innocence.
I wanted to pick Pokédex entries that felt resonant, and in most cases, pokémon that I had an emotional attachment to. I didn’t have any criteria that bound me to the first generation—if anything, I wanted to resist the part of the fandom that idealizes the early games/show and dismisses what’s come after.
I grew up in a hunting family and return to that world a lot in my writing. I also like spooky shit. I like blood and guts in my poems.
But what was important for me about SMB3 was that it was a “safe” environment where I could perform my homosexuality by chasing/desiring the princess. I had this limitless free space in which to explore.
Flannery O’Connor is an ever-present influence in the brand of gothic the game trades in. Her ability to explore the horrors lurking in southern Americana while suffusing the entire thing in this overarching, terrifying presence of grace, is an inspiration.
We think video games are literature, and so why shouldn't there be literature about video games? That's the question we're hoping to answer here. Read more.
