"Take my love,
Take my land,
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care,
I'm still free,
You can't take the sky from me!"

I'm going to make an analogy.

In game design, there are two types of impulse. There's the 'OH! I want to make a game based on this [insert theme]!' and the 'OH! I want to make a game based on [game mechanics]!' If followed blindly, either of these impulses lead to destruction. If you follow one without thinking about the other, you're toast.

MOST of the time, however, you see people going with the former impulse because everyone else does it. The multitudes of generic fangames on BYOND really doesn't look that much different then, say, the multitudes of generic television shows.

So someone comes along with a television show. Its a really good show; the creator follow one impulse while taking the other into consideration. The result was something that was truly good. The network, however, gets skittish. The show isn't generic. The network panics.

Two years later... Well, let's put it this way:

'Burn the land,
and boil the sea,
You can't take the sky from me!'

On another, totally unrelated note, I went out to the movies the other day. I've been really bummed out, because there hasn't been anything decent to see since... lets see... Sorry, can't think of anything. Being a Trekkie, and something of a Star Wars junkie, my faith in Science Fiction has dropped since the most recent attempts of both franchises in the film buisiness have disappointed me. I've been hearing good things about Serenity, but I didn't really believe anyone. I was at the theater, however, and I thought 'hey, why not? Better then some movie about an airplane'.

It turns out my money was well spent. Its certainly the best movie I've seen it quite awhile. The characters were wonderful, and had depth (while not being generically 'deep' at any moment), the universe had real flavour to it, and the dialogue was probably some of the best I've heard in any even remotely recent film, let alone a sci-fi flick.

'I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar!'