Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: off-topic ranting

  • Cyberpunk, post-modernism and orientalism 2: Race in Cyberpunk

    So I’m still struggling through the introduction of the PhD thesis I promised to read: understandable since the introduction is still going at page 50. In between my last post and this one I’ve had to wade through some sleep-inducing academic wank, but now I’ve got to the outline in the introduction of the importance…

  • Grindin’ for Gygax

    I am a regular reader of and occasional commenter at the left-wing political/academic blog Crooked Timber, though I don’t usually link my blog to them (the American political blogsophere is a bit scary). Recently, however, I discovered this post on the new Dante’s Inferno computer game, where anonymous commenter noen makes this great claim: The…

  • Cyberpunk, postmodernism and Orientalism 1: outline

    In my previous post I mentioned stumbling across an analysis of cyberpunk and orientalism, which interests me for a lot of reasons, and I’ve subsequently decided that since I’m living in the shadow of the zaibatsu without a job, maybe it’s time I embarked on a shady criminal information-hacking project, so I’m going to try…

  • Cyberpunk theory

    After the dispute over my opinions about the nihilistic elements of cyberpunk role-playing, I did a little more digging and found that this element of cyberpunk is not exactly considered unique. I also discovered that, rather unsurprisingly, cyberpunk is a rich field of theoretical endeavour. I discovered a cyberpunk course at the peer to peer…

  • When Denmark is full, the dead shall walk the earth…

    I had this fantastic moment of lego madness pointed out to me today: Zombie Apocafest 2009. It’s creativity such as I thought lego was no longer capable of sustaining. I particularly like the starbucks under zombie siege. The photos are on flickr so I can’t put an example here directly, but there is very creative…

  • Additional notes on race and fantasy

    I discovered recently a blog post on Racial Essentialism which describes some definitions of racial essentialism, something which has been debated (and confused) here. I also discovered a blog entirely devoted to race in D&D, though it hasn’t been updated since this time last year. It includes a lecture on race in D&D that was…

  • Antagonism, Nerds and our Idols

    Writing about Torchwood made me think of a conversation I had with a colleague about the show. She is your classic role-playing nerd, computer geek and all round otaku. When I mentioned – somewhat breathlessly – to her that I had watched 5 episodes of amazing Torchwoody goodness, she immediately launched into a tirade on…

  • Notes on British racist politics 1

    This is a complete departure from normal programming on this blog, for which I apologise unreservedly, but it seems coherent with recent posts (which are on topic) and, as an Australian of British descent living in the heart of “multicultural” london, I feel I actually do have something to say on the topic of why, exactly,…

  • Conservatism and High Fantasy

    In the interview linked to below, China Mieville claims that high fantasy is conservative, and that due to its prominence the fantasy genre in general is judged as conservative by critics. This seems pretty uncontroversial to me, but over at Monsters and Manuals this claim was disputed as a shallow interpretation of Tolkien and of…

  • Cyberpunk Bingo

    I have seen two presentations in the last week in which the William Gibson quote “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” has been used. This elevates it, in my view, to the level of a fly-blown cliche. I’m now officially starting a game of Cyberpunk Bingo. When I get four of…