Which one? I never finished FFX, and since I already play Gemstone I didn’t feel like paying another subscription fee for an online game. I got so disgusted with X that I didn’t want to play X-II, which I’ve heard described as “Pretty Princess Dress Me Up”. I hear that the characters don’t level up, only the CLOTHES do.
psycat90, as long as he’s interested in other stuff, he’ll probably turn out OK. He might have a lifelong interest in fantasy, but I doubt that this will ruin him. Teenagers do all sorts of weird things. That’s the DEFINITION of a teenager.
A few years back I went out with a guy who liked Star Trek. I thought, fine, I like Star Trek too. The difference is, for me it’s an enjoyable franchise of TV and movies (well, some of them) that I like to catch when I have a chance. For him, it was a total way of life. We met over the Internet, he lived in a neighboring town and we decided to go on a date.
He turned up in a jacket he had won at work-- They had personalized it not with his name, but the word “Klingon”.
He had a weirdly cut little beard, and he explained he cut it that way for when he dressed up as a Klingon at cons.
When he swore in Klingon when he got cut off in traffic, I decided I was swearing off men entirely.
That lasted about a month, until I met my husband. (Who does like Star Trek, but in a normal, non-obsessive, content-to-merely-watch-it way.)
Goodness, all these Gemstone players. I stopped playing in 1999 because it was such a time suck for me. Lots of fun, though. It’s amazing how clearly I can recall a text-based game. I may reincarnate my Gemstone character on World of Warcraft should I ever get freetime again.
I was heavily into sci-fi/fantasy as a teen, though it was pretty normal for my circle of friends and actually encouraged by my parents – my mom loved playing hostess to my weekly D&D sessions. Nothing like being served a heaping platter of sammiches and cookies while discussing the dark arts.
I’ve been to three Trek cons in my life, though the con phenomenon no longer appeals to me. Probably because I can get any behind-the-scenes info and rare goodies on the internet much easier. I really enjoy art direction, prop-wrangling and the like, so sci-fi/fantasy television and movies naturally appeal to me from a production standpoint, rather than lifestyle. (Historical movies, too, natch.)
I’m a little geeky in that I like hand-made prop replicas rather than “official merchandise.” I enjoy making my own stylized action figures based on fantastic settings and dressing up for Halloween, but I suppose this all speaks more of my, um, crafty nature than anything else. (“Don’t throw that away, I can make something out of it!” is a common sentiment in my house.)
Just recently beat my obessive devotion to Everquest. I use to live, eat, and breathe that game. My friends still play and given the opportunity, I will talk about it endlessly.
I have one friend who’s quite fluent in Elvish. And another who did Karaoke at a SF convention. The weird thing is, they’re both quite pleasant, fairly sane, pretty women. I’d expect the true insanity to come from LARPers, but I don’t know anyone who’s in danger of going off the deep end, I don’t think.
[QUOTE]
Which one? I never finished FFX, and since I already play Gemstone I didn’t feel like paying another subscription fee for an online game. I got so disgusted with X that I didn’t want to play X-II, which I’ve heard described as “Pretty Princess Dress Me Up”. I hear that the characters don’t level up, only the CLOTHES do.[/QUOTE}
Final Fantasy, FF 2 and FF 3. None of these new-fangled 3D graphics for me, no sir!
Actually I’ve been meaning to buy a cheap PS and play FF 8. I also like Chrono Trigger.
Ahem - I believe you meant to refer to it as “Ever Crack,” because it’s so addicting. My SO, whom I recently moved in with, sometimes plays obsessively (i.e. over 30 hrs/week, more time than he’s at work). Our very first fight in our 6 month+ relationship was about him spending too much time on the comp and not enough time paying attention to me.
This was resolved somewhat, until he got into the beta test of WoW. :smack:
[semi-rant hijack] Yes, I realize that there are real live people networked to that game that you have been playing with for several years, and that your guild depends on you as a “tank” and therefore your participation is an actual commitment - but c’mon, you got a loving, devoted flesh-and-blood person standing right before you - sometimes NAKED! What can beat that?! [/semi-rant hijack]
I’m not at all sure I agree with that assessment. The prologue to Dragonflight begins with “when mankind first came to Rukbat, in the Sagittarian sector…” or something like that.
(Well, maybe it begins with the “when does a memory become a myth” business.)
(Yeah, I read those books a ton when I was younger.)
I’ve known some folks that are quite obsessed. To the point of believing that parts of works of fiction were real. Evidently fictive “guides to creatures of” books can be confusing to some folks.
For my part, I once passed up sex to watch DS9. And yes, there was a VCR available, I just didn’t trust it.
I don’t do that any more. I got better. Or perhaps ST variants just got much much worse.
Yeah that’s pretty much how Dragonflight starts, and all the books have some sort of Foreword. The one I’m looking at right now (Dragonsong) starts “Rukbat in the Sagittarian Sector, was a golden G-type star. It had five planets, two asteroid belts, and a stray planet it had attracted and held in recent millenia.”
I used to only read science fiction. Period. But then I branched out into fantasy.
I used to play D&D 2nd edition, and bought the 3rd edition books just because I thought they were cool. ( Well…I was going to get a group together but some key players moved away, I already had 2 books but bought a bunch more anyways).
Now I like reading science books as much as fiction though.
I used to play Asheron’s call and DAoC, but neither for more than a year. I never played Everquest, originally because I was warned about the mages spending most of their ‘play’ time staring at spell books, and by the time they fixed it all you ever heard from players was rants about the horrible customer service.
I don’t go to any sort of conventions though, and I’ve only ever been to 2 renfests. Both were fun though, and I’ll probably go again this year if I remember.
[QUOTE]
Which one? I never finished FFX, and since I already play Gemstone I didn’t feel like paying another subscription fee for an online game. I got so disgusted with X that I didn’t want to play X-II, which I’ve heard described as “Pretty Princess Dress Me Up”. I hear that the characters don’t level up, only the CLOTHES do.
[/QUOTE}
Final Fantasy, FF 2 and FF 3. None of these new-fangled 3D graphics for me, no sir!
Actually I’ve been meaning to buy a cheap PS and play FF 8. I also like Chrono Trigger.[/QUOTE]
Heh. Some people hate FF8. I loved it, thought it was the best of the series. While you’re at it, you might want to pick up FF Chronicles for the PS, which has FFIV and CT. Don’t know about the FFIV (I didn’t play it on the SNES), but they inserted several FMVs into CT which really added to the game. The game itself played just like the old SNES version, except that every now and then you’d get this fantastic movie sequence.
My PS2 has been in the shop since LAST FRIDAY, and it’s due to come back tomorrow. ::twitch:: ::twitch:: And none of the video stores rent out consoles any more! I’m going nuts!
I’m pretty sure that they DIDN’T have that prologue in them when I read them in the first editions. But those books are long gone, lost in the various moves and floods and other hazards. The original story, I believe it was titled “Weyr Search” and is the first part of the first book, didn’t have any such prologue, of course. I think that McCaffrey started switching the series over to SF during The White Dragon, and then wrote prologues to the earlier books, to shift them into the SF category.
Surely you’re not implying that those who reply to the thread are obsessed with fantasy, are you?
Seriously, though, I myself was totally immersed in fantasy when I was involved in online RPGs (mushes/muses/the like), and I was aquainted with many others who were just as immersed – if not someitmes more so — as I. I say aquainted because I only knew them online. Many times, RPGers can be so wrapped up in their characters and the game that the line between fantasy and reality fluctuates both widely and wildly. I read in a post to someone’s lLJ recently about something that was going on in an on-line MUSH where it was described as if it was really happening. I should talk–I’ve done the same myself in the past. Once the line blurs, it’s very easy to lose track of where it is. I am glad that I’m not in that place any longer–it was “not good” for me to be there! No harm to ayone else who loves their fantasy world/life, but … well, it’s -not- real.
I’m a moderator at the world’s largest Dungeons and Dragons messageboard, and I’m a member of an invitation-only board for Dungeon Masters, and I’m a winner of the Iron DM Tournament; does that qualify me?
Oh, I’m also creating a fantasy world, maps for said world, diferent cultures of humans and other creatures for said world that are (so I’d like to think) somewhat origional and not D&D ripoffs, and realistic, non-English-cypher languages for said world. I think that qualifies me as obsessively dvoted to fantasy.
