Happiness isn’t possible, and that’s fine.

I think the internet and Hollywood really did a number on our happiness. Think about it. Is it the happiness we always think about? Because I think our culture wants us to chase something that is overstated. Like love. When characters fall in love in the movies, it’s a whirlwind of emotions. It’s an intense, […]

You are not a number.

I wonder if you felt like this too, but, when you were leaving university, or maybe when you left school or college, you were suddenly faced with the rest of your life. It didn’t look like an intricate forest, an ant’s nest of pathways, spidering out before you. It was a highway, an electric power […]

Dandelion: A 2020 story.

Exhausting, isn’t it? The world, I mean. The upcoming election in America this November is giving me paranoid fever dreams that, somehow, some way, Trump will finagle a win out of the American election system. The fear of that happening, I think, will be the breaking point for America. It’ll either intensify the protesting into […]

Ipseity

People often say, when you’re in the midst of a romantic quandary, that you need some time to be single. That maybe some time away from the pursuit of someone’s affections might do you some good. It’s an easy lesson to ignore, I mean, it sounds so boring. You mean I have to actually sit […]

War is Hell: Steam communities are a cruel nightmare.

Picture the scene: You’re hunkered down in a foxhole – a ramshackle affair, held up by dirt and logs. Americans line the fox hole, hunched over like rats in a cage. But their attentions turn to the skies – Aircraft on the horizon. The craft dip their noses towards your position and begin to strafe […]

Emotional Cartography: Self-loathing in the age of hyper-confidence.

I have never been confident. Actually, it’s the one thing I can say with true confidence. This dominates every aspect of your life without you even realizing it. It’s ruined opportunities for me before I even took them seriously. It’s allowed people close to me to treat me like dirt because I never stood up […]

How could I be wrong when others have been so bad?

When I was a kid, I told my dad I fancied someone at primary school. He used to walk me to the gates sometimes. He was a giant in the playground; Well over 6 foot – intimidatingly massive, and he never smiled. I would walk beside him in silence and people would part like the […]

Derelict/immaculate: A story about the illusion of meritocracy in a pandemic.

How many months have you spent at home now? It felt like limbo at first. My schedule was about to become a yawning, couch-based loungeathon, something that, if I’m being completely honest, was almost a thrilling prospect. But it didn’t take long for it to become an empty boredom. A numbness in the back of […]

La-Mulana 2 Review!

I was never a Star Wars kid. To me, it’s Sci-Fi trappings always seemed hokey and slightly preposterous – it’s supposed to be, of course, but to a child like me, I had been bitten by the roguish charm of Indiana Jones. Evil Nazis, skull encrusted tombs, demons and monsters, that whip, that hat? I […]

Death Stranding (PS4) Review

I don’t like giving up in games. But there’s a mighty test of my hardened patience in Death Stranding where giving up felt so easy. Half way up some snow-capped mountain with a nuclear bomb strapped to your back, where any slip, slide or bump can end your excursion instantly. It’s the kind of instant-failure states that make people run for the hills. But this is Death Stranding. A Hideo Kojima game. With Kojima, hardship and difficulty isn’t always so clear cut.