There’s a quote by Roger Edwards that’s stuck with me ever since I read it a couple of weeks ago. Terming a phenomenon Overfamiliarity with a Genre, he describes it as follows:
“I have simply seen too many horror movies…. As a result I will never be able to experience a horror movie in the same way I did twenty or thirty years ago…. With regard to horror films, the nearest we can get to reliving a particular movie experience is to watch them with someone who is new to them. This way we can vicariously enjoy their reactions as they jump and scream, with a degree of avuncular self-satisfaction and even a little envy.”
This resonates with me because in the past two years I’ve watched dozens of movies and TV shows with my two boys. More about that later. What concerns me right now, however, is how to get nearest to “reliving a particular movie experience”, as Roger puts it. Because you see, the boys and I have just crossed into the body of fiction that is to me what the horror genre is to Roger: fandom. For me that means Star Trek, and particularly its second live-action television incarnation, TNG.
And as I’ve been vicariously enjoying the turns and twists, I’ve been thinking: why not try to get even nearer to reliving the experience by documenting and analyzing it, not only in terms of the actual mechanics, but also as to how those mechanics interact with minds that have no or only a fledgling knowledge of them? If that sounds weird, remember it’s Star Trek we’re talking about. And while we’re at it, my thoughts went, why not post a few screenshots along the way?
And then the omnipresent Belghast–or should I say: Q?–dropped in, hinting at many things hidden, one of them the existence of something called IntPiPoMo, and another that Chestnut from Gamer Girl Confessions is currently running it.
And I was reminded of the good times that were had with Blaugust in August, and how it had brought Roger’s blog to my attention in the first place, and I almost fell over myself getting to the sign-up form.
