Being Dragonborn

Mike Piero is a Professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. Marc A. Ouellette is an award-winning educator who teaches cultural and gender studies at Old Dominion University, where he is the Learning Games Initiative Research Fellow. Series editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell teaches American studies, anthropology, and writing at Pace University in New York.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments

Introduction: Skyrim as an Exemplary Gameworld

Mike Piero and Marc A. Ouellette

Part I: “Skyrim is our land”: Neomedievalism, Heroism and ­Ethno-Nationalist Gameplay

From Hero to Zero: Nationalistic Narratives and the Dogma of Being Dragonborn

Joshua Call and Thomas Lecaque

Grounding the Neomedieval Gameworld: The Dragonborn Between History and Myth

Alicia McKenzie

Expanding the Frontier Through War: Skyrim’s Ludic Contribution to the Frontier Myth

Brent Kice

Part II: “Then I took an arrow in the knee”: Agency and Alterity

Queer Harpies and Vicious Dryads: Hagravens, Spriggans and Abject Female Monstrosity in Skyrim

Sarah Stang

All the Wheels of Cheese: Hoarding and Collecting Behaviors in Skyrim

D’An Knowles Ball

Escapism as Contested Space: The Politics of Modding Skyrim

Liamog S. Drislane

Part III: “Sky above, voice within”: Ethics and Politics Within Skyrim’s Cosmology

Nature Versus Player: Skyrim Players and Modders as Ecological Force

Misha Grifka Wander

Portraits of the Neomedieval ­Family-Idyllic: Patriarchal Oikos and a Love Without Love in Skyrim

Mike Piero and Marc A. Ouellette

Skyrim’s Competitive Cosmology: A Fluctuating Economy of Power and Parasitic Deification

Trevor B. Williams

Testing Your Thu’um: Rhetoric, Violence, Uncertainty and the Dragonborn

Stephen M. Llano

Part IV: “Who wrote the Elder Scrolls?” Emergent Narratives and Difficult Questions

Emergent Worlds and Illusions of Agency: Worldbuilding as Design Practice in Skyrim

Wendi Sierra

Taking Your Time as Dragonborn: Reconciling Skyrim’s Ludic and Narrative Dimensions Through a Detective Story Typology

Andrew A. Todd

The Death of Paarthurnax: The “Good Temptation”?

C. Anne Engert and Tony Perrello

About the Contributors

Index