Fantasy

It's Christmas Time, which means I'm at my Grandparents' house in Tennessee again. I love it here. If there is any place in this world from which I draw my Romanticistic inspirations, it's here.

Not only is it beautiful and open and clean (mountains!), but it also is home to my first introduction to the Fantasy genre.

My Uncle (my Father's younger brother) is only 13 years older than I am. He had a Nintendo growing up and my brother and I played it when we would come over. He had something like 8 or 9 games and we played the ones that he said we could. There were a few he said we couldn't; I think two of them were violent or something...

One game that we couldn't play was Dragon Warrior. It wasn't that it was violent that we couldn't play it, it was that he was at the very end and hadn't beaten it and didn't want his nephews to accidentally overwrite his data. I only remember him saying not to play it once, so it's very likely that that didn't last very long.

My Uncle had apparently gotten Dragon Warrior in some sort of bundle or something, because he had the guidebook for it as well as posters, maps and monster lists. While my brother was playing Super Mario Bros. I looked over these  papers and read the guidebook. Eventually, I started playing Dragon Warrior and was instantly enthralled with the swords and sorcery fantasy world. The game had everything: a dragon-guarded princess to rescue, magical artifacts to find and towns and dungeons to explore. It, to me, is the baseline Fantasy world, the genre archetype that is what all good stories should be at their heart.

I can still hum all the different music and quote the King as he tells you to be careful on your journey. I was terrible at the game as a child, but it instilled in me a sense of adventure and a love of the generic, archetypical and the clichéd.

November Over

Yes, I am aware that november has been over for a few days now.

NaNoWriMo went well! I finished the night of the 29th. I've posted all of it up on DeviantART, but it's split into 6 parts. I wonder if I can post the whole thing here? Let's see... Upload to Google Docs and... done. Well, that was easy. And there it is, too, as it was meant to be read: 11.0 font, Ubuntu typeface.

Now I'm going to go back to pretending I'm studying for exams.

Hope you enjoy!