Writing

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

- Stephen King, “On Writing“

I’ve written a lot of stuff over the years; this page is a collection of those pieces of text that I’m particularly happy with, or that carry special meaning to me. The categories are, like most categories, little more than convenient bullshit. This page is always a work in progress.

Fiction

• The Oneiropolis Compendium (at landsofdream.net): A growing collection of stories about the Lands of Dream.
• Fuck Vampires: A short story written with a sledgehammer.
• Letter to the Editor: A brief submission to a flash fiction writing contest.
• The Second Coming: a poem. I don’t usually write poetry, but this one came to me and demanded to be written.

Games & Game Design

• A Moment of Perfect Beauty (originally for Nightmare Mode): A beautiful moment that could not have existed in any other medium.
• Games For Adults (originally for Nightmare Mode): On storytelling in games.
• The One Hundred Dollar Question: On class and game development, prompted by the $100 fee for Steam Greenlight.
• Designing for Grace: What I strive to accomplish.
• The Bolshevik in the Borderlands (at The Escapist): Some people may not want to hear it, but there are some great mainstream games out there.
• Second-Hand Elf (at The Escapist): Why have so many fantasy games given up on imagination? An article against the enslavement of the Elves.
• The Game That Ate The World (at The Escapist): The bittersweet story of how Phenomenon 32 was made.
• Give Me An Axe, I’ve Had Enough Of This Puzzle (at The Escapist): Astonishingly, I’ve been published by The Escapist. This article is about puzzles, obstacles, and the difference between the two.
• Annotations to “Over Games”: A response to the “Over Games” presentation by Tale of Tales and a defense of computer games as a form of artistic expression.
• Game Design Aphorisms: All of this is true. Especially what you disagree with.
• Processing Feedback: Some useful tips for dealing with feedback.
• Games, Art and Michael Stipe Laughing: Games are not just mechanisms.
• Flawed by Design: Flaws are not always a bad thing. Thoughts based on Gregory Weir’s Looming.

Politics

• Would You Kindly Not, Identity Politics and How We Talk About Ourselves: Three posts on the dangers of identity politics posing as radicalism.
• Modern Greece’s real problem? You, dear sir. A response to a dangerous article.
• set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings: A call to action. Stand up for democracy before it’s too late.
• Collaborators: Some thoughts about the people who continue to deny the facts even in light of the latest Wikileaks documents, and about our responsibility to stand up for justice.
• The Greek Situation (at Enemies of Reason): An attempt at dispelling some of the nonsense floating around about the situation in Greece in early 2010. Guest blog for Enemies of Reason.
• Heroism at Command: Why do we insist on “supporting the troops” no matter what the troops are doing? What are they really dying for, and what are we doing when we honour their deaths as sacrifices?
• Beware the Belching Moose: What’s the real source of global warming? Well, some people would like us to think it’s moose.

Art & Philosophy

• Harold Bloom and the Death of Art: A disagreement with the Mighty Decider Of What Is Good To Read, His Holiness Harold Bloom. His worshippers did not take well to this one, but they haven’t managed to kill literature yet.
• stross, to (v.): A new word for your dictionary! Invented in “honour” of Charles Stross, who is very good at talking about things without knowing the first thing about them.
• Art Without Teeth: Enough with the cowardice and abstraction of what we’re told is real art.
• Privileged Despair: An attack on Eugene Ionesco, pretentious moron extraordinaire, and his notion of what the real problems in life are.
• Χρυσόστομος: Written on the feast-day of the criminal known as Saint John Chrysostom, destroyer of the Temple of Artemis.
• The Spirit of the Whole: Socialism and Religion: On the often controversial relationship between the two.

Film

• Can we please review video game movies with our brains switched on? (at Commentarium): An analysis of how most reviews of Prince of Persia repeated the same irrelevant nonsense, derived not from the film itself but from a series of clichés that always pop up when it comes to video game adaptations.
• The Underrated Mr. Donner (at Commentarium): In praise of Richard Donner, a truly underrated director whose films are full of artistic detail and a deep feeling for humanity.
• The Matrix and Geek Culture: This is entirely too brief, but I’m putting it up here until I write a full article on the subject. The fashionable hating and anti-intellectualism that has made the two Matrix sequels – both superior to the original – so very unpopular is both disappointing and dangerous.
• A Summary of Shyamalan: A slightly more up-to-date version of my thoughts on M. Night Shyamalan.

Life

• Ελένη: The story of one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, of her accomplishments and her struggle against the stupidity of the people who ran our school.
• Nine Years: Some thoughts about having lived in Germany for longer than expected.
• Memories of Monte Cassino: A story from the war.