Author: Stephanie Watson
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New Normative Comment Clinic: Don’t Worry N4G, We’re Here to Help
It’s been a sad week here at New Normative. As I’m sure you’re all aware… we’ve been banned from N4G. Good old N4G, the “Hottest Game News and Rumors” site. I know it’s a tragedy, but it’ll be okay, because our N4G friends can still find us here. With this in mind, we’d like to…
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Butterfly Soup: The Bisexual Visual Novel We’ve Been Waiting For
There are three main things you have to know about Butterfly Soup, 1) It’s very, very gay, 2) It’s also very, very bi, and 3) it knows how to do representation very, very well. The creator of the visual novel, Brianna Lei, describes the game as “A game about gay Asian girls playing baseball and…
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Is There a Link Between Intelligence and Playing Video Games?
The stereotype that gamers are lazy slobs has been floating around ever since video games were first invented. Although I don’t see anything wrong with leading a chill life, there’s now scientific research to prove the haters wrong. A recent study was conducted by the University of York (United Kingdom), on the link between video…
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10 Gifs That Perfectly Describe Gamers on Live Chat
Let’s face it, almost all of the bigotry that comes from online gaming comes straight from the live chat. Whether it’s via text form or over voice chat, you always get a slew of gamers who just do not know when to stop talking. Sometimes you’ll find feminist-friendly servers, or at least a match full…
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Horror Games That Don’t Rely On the ‘Mental Illness is Scary’ Trope
If I asked you to think about the average horror game setting, then chances are that your mind probably wandered to an abandoned mental hospital, or a spooky forest inhabited by “crazy people.” I know mine does. The horror game market is so overly saturated in games about mentally ill villains, that it’s clear many…
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Are Horror Games Becoming Gradually Less Ableist?
It’s dark, you’re alone, and you find yourself walking down a long, dank and dirty hallway. Something is groaning and screaming in another room, so you look for a weapon. In a set of drawers filled with unwashed medical equipment you find a meat cleaver. The wailing is getting louder now, and you hear desperate…
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The Hypocrisy of our Love of Sheik: A Character to be Seen and Not Heard
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, wasn’t a very popular game in my social group. The Scottish kids I grew up with were more interested in soccer, boy-girl pop groups, and Furbys. As such, I never really heard the name ‘Zelda’ being thrown around. [SPOILERS For Breath of the Wild, Ocarina of Time, and…
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Why We Need a Bigger Feminist Let’s Play Community
If there’s one thing that I wish there was more of on YouTube, it’d be more feminism, specifically within the Let’s Play community. There are many Let’s Players out there who have called themselves feminists, or at least hold some feminist values, but imagine a video game channel that was dedicated purely to feminist discourse…