A Sky for Every Man

A colleague of mine recently introduced me and a group of others to the NEXT update of No Man’s Sky. Having smoothly floated from teasing his early failures, advising the best next path, tracking needed materials and off-screen dangers to ultimately naming and providing a suitably operatic origin story for the little iguana-parrot shaped humanoid we lovingly came … Continue reading A Sky for Every Man

A Garbage Wanderer’s Guide to the Apocalypse

In the past I’ve raged against some cable exclusives distinguished (even if on occasion rightly) for being “good” TV like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones because they endorse a really anti-social understanding of human relationships.1 These texts discuss an “inevitable” and desperate microsociety in the context of the world’s end (in the case of the former), or the … Continue reading A Garbage Wanderer’s Guide to the Apocalypse

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy”: Sympathizing With Devils

At the end of the first act in Shakespeare’s Richard III, the titular king, in true villainous fashion, monologues his sinister plan to capture the hearts of his unsuspecting friends and associates so’s he can see the end of his dastardly plot. The play invites the audience to sympathise, even admire, Richard while they freely admonish … Continue reading “And thus I clothe my naked villainy”: Sympathizing With Devils

Hit Him Again: For the Sadists in the Audience

[Warning for discussions of violence and genocide] What the hell kind of political dynamics are at work in Star Wars: The Force Awakens? This kind of question normally annoys me but sometimes there is such a failure to suspend disbelief that it just can’t be ignored. Spoilers or whatever. In The Force Awakens, the First Order (the villainous organization … Continue reading Hit Him Again: For the Sadists in the Audience