The Personal Is Always Important

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So Rob showed me RWBY, a CGI animated series that fuses video game and anime styles. It’s by Monty Oum, and thus has quite a pedigree. I found it enjoyable if needing fleshing out, and did enjoy the use of game stylings a great deal – there’s a very definite Suda 51 vibe that appeals to me.

But what was weird in watching this fan production by a fan favorite is that I found my reactions were odd. How was I to judge it considering its pedigree? Considering it’s audience-friendly involvements and previews? Considering it wasn’t from a big company?

It reminded me when I saw Pacific Rim, which is a giant love letter to mecha films (both military and super). I mean I knew I liked the idea of it, I like what I saw, but my reactions felt strange. On one level it was totally targeted at . . . well me. On the other I wanted to judge it as I would any film.

Then I thought about Rogue Legacy, which I noted “spoke” my language. It was also a personal experience, and one that made judging the game different because that was the very goal.

I was not judging these things based on artistic merits entirely. I was evaluating them in a series of contexts like who did them, focus on the audience. It was very personal. Oh sure there were merits I could note, but in many cases they came down to merits that existed in a personal/social context.

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Check Out Proinsurance

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In my last job my company worked with a fantastic insurance provider, Proinsurance. I worked with Adam Houchins, who provided excellent support and information directly.  Literally, he took time to talk to me and answer my questions one on one.

Best of all, they handle insurance for businesses of all kinds – from the large to the very small.  So I wanted to give them a plug because the service I received was excellent – and may be right for your business, which I know a lot of you are thinking of!

Insurance is a pain to handle in a lot of cases, but the staff made it real easy. Give them a ring!

– Steven

The Loss of Cool Futurism: Disunity

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Serdar and I were recently’ discussing the revival/return of Omni magazine. If you’re not familiar with Omni then you’re . . . probably younger than I am.  So stop playing your music so loud and get off my lawn.

Anyway, Omni was one of those publications that had a theme of what I call “cool futurism”, of the amazing stuff we’d see, of soaring cities and great technology and a better world. It was hip and happening and often positive. Cool futurism is the kind of thing you see in Star Trek TOS, in speculations on future architecture, on imagining how we’ll solve disease or poverty – not naive, but, well, “Cool”.

It’s cool to make things better. Cool to imagine awesome things we can make.

It just doesn’t seem to be that popular anymore in America. So I began asking what happened, and you’ll be utterly shocked to hear there’s a blog post about it to follow. Probably several.

First of all, I think Cool Futurism is gone because there’s no sense of unity or potential unity.

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