Oh man, it’s Saturday already? And I’ve gotta get something else on this blog? Maybe I’ll phone it in this week, since I did post a whole-ass essay last week. Truth be told, I’m noodling on another, though this one’s gonna be less Tolkien and more MSN. Which is a weird sentence to write, but hey, this blog has never been one to avoid those odd connections.
(Back in college I had a professor tell me I could probably make any two topics relate, the question was to explore the why.)
Thing is, I’d forgotten how much time these take, and even doing research takes more time than you think and it turns out people didn’t really document the fall of instant messaging in the wake of texting as much as you’d think and, even now, there’s not much literature out there since the two are seen as being interchangeable when I assure you they most certainly are not. But of course, research takes time, and time is an all-too-rare commodity.
Especially when I just finished Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XVI is out now and the demo was dope and I am here for this wild high-fantasy adventure that seems to have taken a page out of Game of Thrones’ playbook and decided to turn it up to eleven while washing it in that gloriously imaginative aesthetic Final Fantasy is known for. Even if the games are seldom perfect (except for VIII, that game’s flaws are part of its perfection), it’s so much fun to see things take big swings.
‘cuz it’s fun when things get a little different a little weird. Like when CGI animation borrows from 2D or even paintings, or when an antiestablishment, revolutionary narrative gets melded into a space opera. Or when Final Fantasy XII took Star Wars trappings and played them out in a high fantasy world. It’s fun, it’s different, and that imaginative synthesis that arises from mashing things together.
So I’m going to dive into Final Fantasy XVI, and maybe play some Jedi Survivor when I have time. And check out the new episode of Strange New Worlds (which is really good Star Trek, by the way). Somewhere along the way though, I’ll keep adding to my little research pile and, hey, there may be another big essay on this blog soon.
Or just me rambling about science fiction again.
Essays, Not Rants! 