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…)
In the window of my local used-game emporium sits a boxed Collector’s Edition of Tabula Rasa, its ragged price tag scrawled in faded permanent marker. An unwanted fragment of gaming history, a treasured memory for the few who immersed themselves in the worlds of Foreas and Arieki, rendered unplayable when NCSoft switched off the servers in 2009. Tabula Rasa lived for a brief 18 months, and now all we’re left with are relics and memories. (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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Splashing through the waves, I scramble onto the island. My head pounds with adrenaline and smoke inhalation in equal measure as I stare up at the lighthouse. It bathes in the flickering firelight of the burning sea left in my wake. Step by painful step, I press on, stumbling through ornate doors beneath a looming golden statue. No gods or kings. Only man. I’ve heard of this place, so many recorded voices describing its glories; so many tales told in wonder and delight around a bar room table; praise, plaudits, pledges of allegiance, the congregation proclaiming the name of their new cult:
Rapture. (more…)
Early one July morning in the summer of 2008, firefighters were called out to a spectacular blaze in the sleepy seaside town of Weston-super-Mare. The historical wooden pavilion of the Grand Pier, home to one of Britain’s most iconic arcades, was reduced to ashes and heat-warped metal in a matter of hours; at the height of the fire, warnings were issued of exploding games machines erupting in sprays of semi-molten shrapnel and, in the following days, as the people of Weston-super-Mare faced a future without their highest-profile tourist attraction – gleaming coins began to wash up on the muddy sands. (more…)
