Team Meat

A Post About a Blog: Edmund McMillen

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Alert, alert! @EdmundMcMillenn has recently opened up a new Tumblr dev blog for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.

That ends the newsworthy portion of this post; certainly, the opening of the Tumblr is major news to any and all Isaac buffs (like myself! I am your Golden God!), as McMillen has promised a weekly stream of teasers from the forthcoming Nicalis remake: videos, gifs, screenshots, information, and music. Diptera Sonata, below, won me over very quickly:

The main thing that I’d like to draw attention to, however, is McMillen’s personal Tumblr, which is now largely a domain for nigh-daily Q&A for fans. McMillen’s answers are astonishingly open, honest, and gripping, and recommended reading for anyone interested in the making of art and video games.

I’ll let one of the entries do the talking:

i do enjoy answering questions that might help people, i know i could have used some advice when i was younger so i usually answer those. i think its important when being in the public eye to put as much as you can out there so people get a better idea of you as a whole person, instead of the caricature  the press/internets paint you out to be 1)http://edmundm.com/post/70353083303/do-you-enjoy-having-your-fans-a-lot-of-people-look-up

Here are some more past examples of the kind of answers that you can expect from McMillen. (more…)

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Isaac and the “Grotesque Body Horrors”

Martyn Zachary 9 Comments

In his PopMatters article “Fearing God, Fearing the Body: The Theology of ‘The Binding of Isaac’”, G. Christopher Williams discusses various aspects of Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl’s ingenious (and mildly blasphemous) Zelda/Roguelike hybrid, The Binding of Isaac. Although his reading of the game astutely homes in on the “meatier” parts of Isaac – that is, the implications of the game’s loathsome representation of the corporeal -, I do nevertheless want to point out some omissions in Williams’ treatment of the game.

The article in question is altogether complete in its own right, but also lacking in discussion of the themes, concepts and terms that are nevertheless utilized in the analysis. In this way, I shall be focusing on the things that are left unsaid (intentionally or unintentionally) in Williams’ story. In my complementary article below, I will attempt to shed lots and lots of extra light on what I perceive to be these omissions, which include the genre of body horror, the grotesque, Freud’s conception of the uncanny, as well as the concepts of abjection and the abject.

(more…)

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