Results of Ruminations

Out of curiosity, I googled "Why is Star Wars so good?" It gave me a lot of would-be think pieces about if the next Star Wars will live up to its hype. I had to tweak my search, and eventually I found a couple of articles that listed stuff the writer liked about Star Wars as an explanation for why it's worthwhile. Frustrated, I finally landed on an article from 1983 that actually talks about the film as a film. It didn't expand too much for me, but it was nice to see someone had tried to articulate what Star Wars does successfully. On a whim, I googled "Why is Game of Thrones so good?" and, within two hits, had found a thought-provoking, intriguing article that made a case for GoT 's success that goes far beyond "sex and violence". I don't really know what to make of this, since we've had decades to think about Star Wars and only six years to figure out GoT, but I think there's a momentum of fan ossification (mixed metaphor...s...

An item to interject before I tackle these thoughts again: One of my students posted some interesting thoughts about what inspired the previous post, which he put up in his journal on DeviantArt.com (an interesting website, if you haven't checked it out. I can't vouch for its content, save that it's 'interesting' in all sorts of ways). His thoughts are, as always, lucid and fraught with potential. I'm glad he's in my class. Anyway, he has a very interesting post that touches on some of the video game philosophy (I've gotta come up with a better term than that...it needs something more poststructural) that he and I have worked on. It's too brief for my taste, though his essay on Xenogears is eye-opening, to say the least. He has some less-than-supportive/understanding friends on DeviantArt that commented on his ideas, leading his comments section to be less than worthwhile. I have the Shakespeare quote gadget on this blog, and it, ironically, has a ...

I wanted to shoot this off ere I read one of the chapters in one of the new books I bought (don't laugh...too hard), The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless . Okay, so it's a little bit gruesome, but you know what they say about judging a book by its cover. Also, this little book has a bit of a past with me: I am part of an intelligent and helpful writing group, the members of which spend a good deal of personal time shifting through my drivel and telling me that they like it. One member even takes time to peek in on this blog, which is probably indicative of a type of literary masochism. I don't know. Anyway, one of the authoresses of the group was/is writing a vampire novel (think Twilight for grown-ups...and better), and I noticed the aforementioned philosophy book at Borders. I flipped through it and laughed, thinking that Bekah could really benefit from some of the essays about vampires that the book has to offer. I put it down, told her about it, lau...

I want to do an essay on the Resident Evil series. Strike that: The Resident Evil video game series. The movies hold little interest to me, what with their enormous variation from the source material and sub-par zombie work--that and I've only seen the first movie. So I plan on doing that. Sometime. Soon, I hope. Especially with RE5 having just been beaten by me and my wife. Man, I have an awesome wife. Analysis soon--I think.