Short Fiction – Dear Comrade Winter

Dear Comrade Winter, How are you? I write this letter because recent events have, as you know, been momentous, and I found myself worrying about you. This is not a time that you and I ever believed we would see, and our old discussions on the matter really do seem so quaint now – but...

The Courage of Bad Taste – Resident Evil Vs. Reality

“This is the ultimate lifeform! Tyrant!” – Resident Evil 1/2/3 The Resident Evil franchise has always had an interesting relationship with reality. Try to remember all the way back to 1998, the original PlayStation release, where members of Raccoon City’s STARS (Special Tactics and Rescue Service) elite police unit, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, get...

The Good Communists – Or, China’s Liberal Reformers Versus History

1: The Li Keqiang Blues When good-hearted Marge Simpson is unwilling to lie to customers to sell real estate, her boss Lionel Hutz gives her the following advice: “There’s the truth,” he says, shaking his head disapprovingly, “and the truth!”, nodding vigorously. Similarly, we might say there are Chinese communists (shaking head disapprovingly) and Chinese...

Hungry Ghosts – Finding The Past In Modern China

“Resolutely prevent not believing in Marx and Lenin and believing in ghosts and spirits.” – The Central Committee of the Communist Party, Opinions on strengthening the Party’s political construction, Xinhua News, February 27th, 2019   Above an ancient kiln, dating back over a thousand years, was the incongruous shape of a smokestack. Below at the...

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....