about
This blog rose out of a visceral need to publish my growing pile of texts that I could not put my name to. It is meant to be personal the way many blogs used to be, but not entirely without ambition like my blogs used to be.
Think of it like a born-digital zine made by someone who cannot make up their mind whether to kick or congratulate themselves for having made one. A zine in which said someone draws upon their own interpretation of a video game they once played, established theory, and An Interesting Thought They had In The Shower The Other Day in a continuing attempt at making sense of the post(-post?) postmodern society.
I write in English (second language) when I can and Swedish (first language) when I must.
Mission statement: and thus defy the tyrannous stars
My first main outlook is the cyberpunk observation that the future is here, it's just unevenly distributed. The corollary to this statement is that all futures are already here, good and bad, to someone who knows how to look for them. Viewed from another angle, this becomes an accelerationist worldview, where the (good) future is here, and the task at hand becomes finding out how to make it arrive faster.
My second main outlook comes from the Legacy of Kain video games. Predestination and fate in general is a recurring theme of the series. The final installment, Defiance, starts with Kain making the following observation about acting under a system of only partial freedom:
Given the choice, whether to rule a corrupt and failing empire; or to challenge the fates for another throw – a better throw – against one's destiny... what was a king to do? But does one even truly have a choice? One can only match, move by move, the machinations of fate... and thus defy the tyrannous stars.
This matching of moves against a tyrannous destiny is one of my core beliefs. It condenses three insights: that subversion and freedom is possible, that it requires acute observation skills, and that it is pretty damned hard.
Downstream from both these starting points is the realisation that pop culture should be taken seriously. In fact, as I just demonstrated, anything can be theory if held the right way. This is why I will frequently blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction, using fiction to convey ideas when it suits me and employing works of fiction as theory.
My intention with this blog is to use my partial perspective to shine a light on common substructures, much in the same way that early feminism used consciousness-raising groups where masses of individual experience was collected to better understand Patriarchy.
And also to have a bit of fun on the way.