Finding Ways
All too often, when I start writing a post, I do not know where I’m going with it. I drop thoughts like breadcrumbs to lead my way, and their relationship to each other forms a constellation that casts light on…
Category Essays
The Shape of Things
Isn’t it strange the effect that shapes can have on us? Where do they depart from abstract form and become meaningful and evocative? A cylinder, with a bit of reshaping, begins to look like a thigh… and, once we begin…
Saving Worlds
The nice thing about having to save the world is that it’s a goal most people can get behind– particularly since the world happens to be where most people live. Nearly any other objective we could set would probably suggest…
Connections
“If this is so, then what else is so?” My brother introduced me to this particular precept of improv acting a few weeks ago. The basic idea is, something comes up about a character or a situation or circumstance: Following…
Competency
I often end up choosing which games to play on the basis of which I am best at– familiarity begets skill begets more familiarity. It’s very fulfilling to do something you’re good at, even if it’s pointless. This kind of…
Immortality
It is difficult for games to create truly memorable characters. Because the characters who populate our worlds can behave in many different ways, based on the design of the game and the role they play within it, it’s an awkward…
Drive Failure
“For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn” Ernest Hemingway (maybe) I’d guess maybe fifteen years ago we were driving along on some sort of road trip or camping trip, my dad and my brother and me. I was riding in the…
Other Lives
Isn’t it strange how complex and overwhelming our feelings about fictional people can become? There is a conflict of impulses: The sympathetic and the dramatic. We want characters to be happy for the same reason we want our friends and…
No Accountability
Something I always liked about playing Final Fantasy games in particular and JRPGs in general is the way random deities tended to turn up as various monsters in the world. These creatures usually had approximately fuck-all to do with their…
Stories
The more one pays attention to things, the more one notices similarities. I’m spending a lot of time, now, writing– stories and essays, but they both have a similar rhythm. Exposition, twist, resolution. I can add more twist, or alternate…