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Posts by Cindy Au

Essay

The Elder Scrolls: My So-called Life as a Dark Elf

by Cindy Au | 11:11 am, March 17th, 2011

I’m not by any means what most people would consider a gamer. I’m mostly obsessed with word games (Scrabble, Boggle) and I used to be obsessed with chess (which I had to quit after one 6-hr long match that gave me heart palpitations). These days I don’t have much time to immerse myself in games, due to the whole “I have to be a responsible adult and go outside sometimes” part of life, so I end up playing those casual games designed for people who don’t have time for more involved gaming.

There is, however, a game that I occasionally let myself get utterly lost in, and that’s The Elder Scrolls series. The first one I ever played was Morrowind, and what a rapturous experience it was! I loved the feeling of infinite space, that you could walk from one end of the game world to the other without ever being stopped by artificial walls. Almost everything in the game could be picked up, opened, or harvested, and I delighted in collecting things.

At the time, I was in graduate school trying to get a PhD in English, and feeling utterly lost and unmotivated. After three years, the romanticized vision I had of being a literature professor had faded away and all that was left was the realization that I may have made a mistake, one that cost me a lot of money. I was waitressing more often than I was going to my classes, and finances were about as tight as they’d ever been.

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Essay

The Dark Side of Geekification

by Cindy Au | 12:55 pm, March 3rd, 2011

Geeks are enjoying a massive cultural renaissance right now, something we should all be rejoicing in. It’s not every decade you get to enjoy all your favorite scifi/fantasy novels made into movies, see geeks at the center of popular television shows, find a game/comic book/anime convention near you almost every weekend of the year, or overhear conversations about stuff you love on the subway, in a restaurant, just about everywhere. It’s a freaking smorgasbord!

It’s also a cultural moment that Patton Oswalt infamously declared should die, and quickly. His geek culture death knell sent the internet into paroxysms, as they raised their pitchforks against old man Oswalt, that geek Grinch who hates the kids. Many argued that cultural assimilation is a part of the natural cycle of popular culture — yesterday’s punk rock is today’s mall rock. And just because geek culture is everywhere doesn’t mean it’s any less brilliant, right?

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