The first time I can recall feeling embittered by the world was when I realised, around the age of nine, that I would never fight in a real life medieval battle. My main interest at that time revolved around playing with sticks of various sizes in the garden and pretending they were swords, axes, halberds and the like, and that I was heroically mowing down thousands of enemy combatants, usually ‘easterlings’ or Orcs, in an endless arena style battle.
When I was forced by my parents to my bedroom the war would continue with my small toys, mostly collected from happy meals. The protagonist, a small green frog who I imagined to be a tall, blond muscle bound hero (e.g me) would also use imaginary swords and axes to kill waves of various stuffed dogs and if memory serves a couple of Digimons. I believe at some stage there was a female dragon who served as a love interest for the frog, although mostly as a ‘damsel in distress’ plot device as I was very much prepubescent at this stage.
My earliest memories of the internet, which I used from a very young age indeed, was reading up on the ‘sword vs axe’ debate on online forums. I had a strange emotional resonance with ‘axes’, I believe because I had seen a documentary about the Norman conquest of England and identified with the Huscarls, and later the Varangian Guard. The excellent and underappreciated YouTuber Lindybeige discusses how many young boys get very excited at the idea of ‘beserkers’ in Viking raiding groups and armies and this is something I can identify with. This was also around the time of Time Commanders and the 2000s TV adaptation of Robin Hood being on television and the heyday of the Eragon books – and of course, the Lord of the Rings film adaptations.
But the main media form which fuelled by obsession with medieval war was from video games. I put thousands of hours into the first Fable game, Oblivion and Lord of the Rings conquest. I would play these games so much during the day that I would see myself hacking and slashing on screen as I was falling asleep. There is still, somewhere in my parents house, an old Desktop computer with my sixty page fanfiction which attempted to merge all of my favourite medieval video game settings into one coherent narrative. ‘His sword ran through the armour like a hot knife through butter’.
I am sufficiently old enough now to find these eccentricities of my younger self sweet instead of embarrassing, with that said; I would never confess any of them under my real name. It is an advantage of online anonymity that I am able to transmit this is all to over five thousand people who I will never meet. I still believe, although I recognise that I am a vanishing minority, in a strict separation between ‘IRL’ and online, and that it’s always naff to use internet memes when speaking out loud.
That is why I dislike facefags who regurgitate (and also dilute) memes from the online right. Many homosexuals of a 1980s vintage had much the same reaction to the social acceptance of that practice at the turn of the century - part of the appeal of their world was that it was secretive. Look, the comparison is not exact but you get my general point. J’accuse is a magazine by and for Gamers but you shouldn’t go around thrusting it in people’s faces in the outside world.