Horrors, Together
October 2007 Issue
![Cerise Issue 6 [October 2007]](http://cerise.theirisnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/ceriseoct07_tn.jpg)
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Etched Glass Candle Holders
- Gaming in the Media: Gaming Blogs to Watch
- Market to Me: Race and gender in survival horror games
Interviews
- Blogger Interview: The Bloggers of Girl in the Machine
Articles
- Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Into the Tavern
Author: Samara Hayley Steele
- Moving Gaming Forward: Having Meaningful Conversations about Social Issues
Author: Latoya Peterson
- Fatal Frame: Feminizing the Final Girl
Author: Jenni Lada
- Shotgun vs. Skirt: Gender in Resident Evil 4
Author: Diego Luna
Samara continues her series on gender and LARP.
Latoya talks about the failure to communicate between racial activists and gamers.
Jenni discusses the ways in which the Fatal Frame series subverts the 'final girl' stereotype in survival horror.
Diego critically examines gender representation in Capcom's Resident Evil 4.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
- Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress
- Resident Evil 4
- Bioshock
- Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan
- Retro Review: BurgerTime
Odds 'n Ends
I’ve got thirty minutes before I need to be at the movie theatre for a class assignment. I’m rushing, but I stop dead in my tracks when I come upon the glow of a Gamestop shop window. I hardly ever find myself near one so, at the risk of being late, I go in. I walk past the displays and the guy behind the counter to the shelf of used PS2 games because of her face. Heather from Silent Hill 3 is staring at me with a pair of gorgeous, nervous eyes. I buy it and make it to the theatre with five minutes to spare.
Later that night, I present the game to my partner. We had just finished Resident Evil Zero and the remake of the original Resident Evil for the Gamecube. Before that was the Japanese version of Code Veronica on our Japanese Dreamcast. I say we, but he’s the one who plays. I’m the guide, the puzzle solver. I give suggestions of where to go, when to use items. I manage the health meter.
Simply put, I love survival horror games. The unnecessary and wordy descriptions of everything. The jumbled plot lines and plot holes. Solving impossible puzzles with Gamefaqs. The zombies, the rotting stairwells of plush mansions with rotting carpets. The dark woods of muddy trails and the rustling wet leaves that stick to the paws of feral, virus-laden dogs. The abandoned subway tunnels, with run down trains that house locked boxes that hold bloody, rusty keys–that final item for the final boss. I adore hoarding bullets, swinging rusty pipes, mixing herbs, reaching into the jutting drawer and pulling out a badly-needed health drink.
Yet I can’t play survival horror games in the literal sense. And God, how I’ve tried. I’ve sat on the edge of the couch while trying to perfect the tunnel controls, only to hopelessly stick Jill in a corner. Breathing shallowly, I’ve determinedly pressed A to open a door, praying a zombie won’t greet me on the other side. I have repeated to myself mantras, that “I can do it, I can do it.” But when I did come across my first zombie, I screamed. Loudly. And literally threw my purple Gamecube controller across the room.
At times, I feel ashamed that I lack the adamantium nerves to play survival horrors. At times I’ve felt that I give my gender a bad rap because women are commonly thought to be nervous and easily scared. It wasn’t until I started talking about my frustrating phobia that I met plenty of male and female gamers who also throw the controller. Now I know I’m not alone in my anxiety, in my overactive imagination. That I’m not the only one who has shaky hands. So I remain a spectator. An accomplice. My partner offers his steady hands and I offer moral support, and we plow through the survival horrors together.
