Unwinnable

We are excited to have freelance pop culture critic Rowan Kaiser on a very special Unlistenable!

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Sex is many things to many people. Sex is love, power, release, revenge, an endless affirmation of lifelong companionship or an urgent night of lust between strangers. Sex is a defining moment, or a comfortable constant, or a swirling haze of passion and snatched recollection as time quickens and slows with reckless abandon. It’s a spectrum of wants and desires stretching beyond the horizon in every direction, an intrinsic part of our cultural existence. (more…)

There was a soldier – a son of a poor peasant – who had never seen a flying machine in his life. It was 1961; the year of the biggest mimic warfare operation of the Warsaw Pact and only a year before the Cuban missile crisis, his Hungarian platoon boarded a Soviet Hound transport helicopter to cross a wide river. He was so afraid of flying that he defecated himself – and then spent approximately 40 hours in his own excrement before the drill was over. (more…)

I have, as my phone’s background, a stylized and quite noticeable “N7” logo — “N7”, of course, being the military designation of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series. The logo reportedly comes from a type of skiing equipment — a designer at Bioware owned a pair of Look Nevada N77 ski bindings and simply removed the third digit. In Mass Effect’s Systems Alliance military, the letter stands for a branch of service, while the number represents a level of proficiency. “N” means special forces, and “7” represents the highest level of proficiency.  I know all this because I am an absolute fool for this series. (more…)

This moment lives in my memory. I’ve walked this road before, with these companions by my side. While for them it’s the first time – the only time – I know differently. In the ruined city at the end of the road one of them will die and there is nothing I can do about it. There is no other story. It is fate, destiny; it is written. Aeris (or Aerith) dies.
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The first thing I did in XCOM: Enemy Unknown was customize my soldiers. Vincent Domingo, a beefy soldier from Ecuador, metamorphosed into an impossibly muscular approximation of myself – bald, goateed, grumpy. My other troops soon took on the appearance of friends and colleagues.

This was a mistake. (more…)

Lately, when I ride the train to Manhattan, I play a game. A friend introduced me to the basic concept a few months ago, but I have refined it in my head, giving it rules and a name. I call it Last Stop, Apocalypse. (more…)