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The Geth: Beyond Human
Like many people, I find the idea of Artificial Intelligence gaining sentience to be an interesting narrative trope. After all, watching the development of awareness helps us form answers for many of the most hot-button questions in Western philosophy: What does it mean to be conscious? What is required for such consciousness to come about?…
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Time in the Apocalypse: New Vegas and COVID-19
NOTE: This is a revised and cut-down version of a paper I submitted in a Winter 2021 class on Post-Apocalyptic literature where I compared Fallout: New Vegas with Thomas King’s novel The Back of the Turtle. Because of that, my language and references here are more academic and obtuse than they usually are, and certain…
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The Player as Reader: Vault 11
Last week I was at a gamer friend’s apartment, and as the evening began to wind down, with conversation dying and the warble of her beloved Yakuza 0 karaoke in the background, I asked my friend what she feels separates a player from a reader or a viewer. She initially said “choice,” but quickly changed…
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NieR Replicant and the Cause
As I sped down the busy sidewalk, running over yet another pedestrian with my four-wheeler, I smiled with glee at the swift power over life and death that this vehicle had granted me. Police sirens blared in the background, and a helicopter circled overhead, which I think was a rather extreme reaction in retrospect.…
The Third Medium 