Waiting For The Good Guys To Win – Middle Class China And Foreign Friends

“But in your country, at least you get to choose your leader.” my coworker told me over drinks once. Jaded and privileged first world communist that I am, I just kind of shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t really mean anything.” I said. “You just choose from this guy or that guy and they’re both the same...

Add Oil! – The Tragedy of Zero-Covid

You see, they say, we told you so. Socialist utopia has failed once again – the fantasies of Xi Jinping, insane autocratic chairman for life, that he could stop hundreds of thousands of his own people from dying for no good reason, have been defeated, and now it is so that China will have to...

US Imperialism And Quake (1998), Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Strogg

“Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie.” John Carmack once said, when id’s Tom Hall was getting too caught up in the deep lore of hit 1995 classic shooter Doom during development. “It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” In 1996 id Software released a game called...

Politics In Command? – China In The New Era And That Interesting Little Thing That Happened In November 2022

“The largest protests in China since Tiananmen Square”. You heard about those? The ‘A4 revolution’, the ‘White Paper protests’, as it were – the birth of a new Chinese youth movement, the heir to Tiananmen and May 4th, the moment where someone finally dared to say “down with Xi Jinping”. For a few magical days...

Prayer of the Oni 6: The Storeroom

It was all behind her and she was back in the courtyard with the shrine gate and compared to the hell beneath the earth, which still clung to her through the stench of the dead on her skin and the blood on her face, it was almost beautiful. She entered it through the hole in...

Prayer of the Oni 5: The Bottom of the Well

Now she found herself in a fully-enclosed corridor with solid wooden walls on both sides, a kind of transitory area that led north and south and east as well. It was sparse in decoration, with only a few lanterns and a window above to let the moonlight in, it was as well thick with dust...

Prayer of the Oni 4: The Tunnels

In her dreams she saw that face from the wooden pendant that was the face of the oni grinning at her with its demonic countenance set in a snarl. It made no sound but watched her in the dark. Its teeth were fangs and its eyes were crimson and it would not let her escape....

Prayer of the Oni 3: The Courtyard

They came to the estate in what she supposed was within the Hour of the Rooster when it was dark but not yet midnight and the streets were quieting and great Heian-kyo was coming to rest with lanterns dimmed and doors closed, all voices behind wood and only the drunk and the dead out in...

Prayer of the Oni 2: Wisteria Tree Lane

2: Wisteria Tree Lane It was the first time that she had ever bathed indoors. She washed herself in a wooden tub with water taken from the hot spring beneath the inn they were staying at, and the water was warm and welcoming and while in the bathroom of the inn the girl did not...

Prayer of the Oni 1: The Market

“The reason why sinners are deceived by their own minds to suffer these cycles in this hell is because of their wrongful passions. The wardens scold the sinners by chanting a verse: ‘’Tis not another who acted evil; ‘tis not another who’ll receive its retribution. One reaps the fruits of one’s one actions; so it...

Short Fiction – A Stiff Young Woman

A Stiff Young Woman "Fanfan sure is very beautiful," they said, "if only she would stop hopping everywhere', and I thought that in the village my father would have had their tongues for such talk, and then nailed their tongues to posts outside of town as a message to other foolish chatterers, or thrown them...