Eric is a history PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo. He studies history at the intersection of disability and fandom. Aside from work on his dissertation, he co-hosts a podcast on Canadian ghost stories called The Before Midnight Society… Continue Reading
All the behaviors of characters that are going hollow as well as the advancing nature of the illness reflect often-seen forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease. In a review of symptoms of dementia, Cereijeira, Lagarto, and Mukaetova-Ladinska (2012) note that the condition includes disturbances to psychological, perceptual, and motor skills. Individuals can start experiencing memory issues, as recollections of different times in life fade in varying patterns. Continue Reading
Video games, particularly role-playing games, have addressed madness in various ways since their inception, though usually in the form of villains and antagonists whose sole motivation for their evil deeds is their madness. Although inclusivity is important, connecting madness (among other marginalized identity markers, such as gender deviance, queerness, and femininity) with villainy only serves to further alienate and demonize those who identify as mad or have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Continue Reading
Content Notification: reference to self-harm
The first time I saw Poison Ivy, I fell in love with her. But I didn’t get to play Ivy. I had to play Batman. And Batman punished Ivy for being a Mad queer femme. He played the role of the legal system, and the legal system punishes people like her, like me. The logic of the game was patriarchal, sanist, ableist. The game made me hurt us.
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