Christmas. Or Not.
It's 12:14 am, Christmas Day, and yet for the last few days, I've been struggling with the idea of Christmas having come early, and sort of not come at all.
It came early thanks to a gift that's done a lot more for me than the person who gave it realized, though if/when he sees this, he probably will. The gift was Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, for the Nintendo DS, a game which I've been waiting for since 2003, when the last in the Golden Sun series was announced, with vague but confident assertions of a continuation.
Like a lot of things, it came at what turned out to be the best possible moment. Right when I found myself questioning everything that constituted that strange, sometimes nebulous thing called family, a game came along with a story that was about just that: family, legacy, filial responsibility and parental obligation. I was almost in tears at the first NPC death, and my heart officially broke in the middle of the game when a pair of siblings were forced to part, the older saying, "It's my duty to stay, it's yours to live." Having been that same little sister once, in a similar situation, I'd be hard pressed to find anything that hit home stronger.
It's helped me remember that family is odd and that as children we don't ever really know the exact roles we'll end up playing in our parents lives. How their stories and ours stories meld and overlap as long as we're alive and maybe longer.
Bizarre thoughts on this Christmas-but-not day. Maybe not as bizarre as most.
ADDENDUM: Woke up just in time to intercept sofiadragon and her boyfriend at the diner up the road. Awesome Christmas morning!
It came early thanks to a gift that's done a lot more for me than the person who gave it realized, though if/when he sees this, he probably will. The gift was Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, for the Nintendo DS, a game which I've been waiting for since 2003, when the last in the Golden Sun series was announced, with vague but confident assertions of a continuation.
Like a lot of things, it came at what turned out to be the best possible moment. Right when I found myself questioning everything that constituted that strange, sometimes nebulous thing called family, a game came along with a story that was about just that: family, legacy, filial responsibility and parental obligation. I was almost in tears at the first NPC death, and my heart officially broke in the middle of the game when a pair of siblings were forced to part, the older saying, "It's my duty to stay, it's yours to live." Having been that same little sister once, in a similar situation, I'd be hard pressed to find anything that hit home stronger.
It's helped me remember that family is odd and that as children we don't ever really know the exact roles we'll end up playing in our parents lives. How their stories and ours stories meld and overlap as long as we're alive and maybe longer.
Bizarre thoughts on this Christmas-but-not day. Maybe not as bizarre as most.
ADDENDUM: Woke up just in time to intercept sofiadragon and her boyfriend at the diner up the road. Awesome Christmas morning!