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: Reviews

  • Stranger Things season 5: Why is everyone so angry at each other?

    I was hoping season 5 of Stranger Things would be a tour de force, a final reckoning with Vecna in which the kids from the previous seasons defeat him, learn the truth about his origins and persistence, and ideally destroy the military organizations that gave birth to him. These guys have been fighting this pernicious…

  • War of the Worlds 2025 and the Co-option of Black Cultural Resistance

    This week I watched the new War of The Worlds so you don’t have to. The sacrifices I make for my reader(s)! I watched it because a) I was interested in whether it actually deserved the 0% rating it has received on Rotten Tomatoes and b) I am interested in all the variants of this…

  • 28 Years Later: A bad zombie movie that doesn’t know what it’s doing

    Update [2025/12/28] I have written a short, freely-available novella exploring the world of 28 Years Later, building on my criticisms and observations from this review. If you appreciate my perspective on the movie, consider visiting Royal Road to read the story, and my other work there. I took time out of my busy weekend bludging…

  • Manchukuo 1987: High quality post-colonial SF detective noir

    I recently finished reading Manchukuo 1987, by a person known by the pseudonym Yoshimi Red on Twitter who blogs at lateral thinking. It’s in the Sci-Fi section in Amazon, and presented as an alternative history military sci-fi detective novel by Yoshimi themself, which I think is a good description. I think it’s self-published (sorry Yoshimi…

  • The Substance: Misogynist Trash, Badly Done

    The other day I aimlessly chose a movie to watch at the local cinema, and settled on The Substance, which I somehow mistakenly thought was a psychological thriller with a fantastic or horror element. I don’t know where I got that idea from, but the poster certainly did not give away that it is a…

  • Re-reading the Mists of Avalon: When No Means No

    I am writing a series of posts about my attempt to re-read The Mists of Avalon in light of the terrible things we know about the author Marion Zimmer Bradley (MZB). The story has now advanced considerably and although it wasn’t my original intention in this re-reading, I feel I am able to glean a…

  • Everything Everywhere All at Once is Trash pro-Family Propaganda

    Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAO) is a weird “absurdist” science-fiction in which a multiverse-hopping Michelle Yeoh attempts to deal with her family issues while saving the universe from destruction. It was released in 2022, gained plaudits at some random US film festival, and has been making a killing in its public release. It has…

  • Rereading the Mists of Avalon: MZB’s contempt for women

    Update [2023/12/6]: This is number 2 in a series of posts, and the original post in this series is getting a lot of attention, so I thought I’d link the entire series of posts together for those reading, so that they can follow the entire journey down memory lane. Here are the other posts: A…

  • Nobi Nobi TRPG: A Unique, Cute and Chaotic way to Role-play in your lunch break

    While digging around in Amazon recently I stumbled on a cute 1-5 person card-based role-playing game called “Novice Novice Table Talk Role-playing game [steampunk]”, pictured here. In Japanese it is shortened to “Nobi Nobi TRPG”. The game is a simple and relaxed system in which every player (including the GM) picks a PC, and every…

  • Re-reading the Mists of Avalon in Light of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fall From Grace

    Update[2023/12/6]: This post is getting a bit of attention, but it’s actually only the first of a series of posts exploring this topic. Here is the full list, which I will update as I write them, so that those interested in this journey down memory lane can follow me all the way to its grim…