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On Research
When I first met my friend Alice, an individual who liked to say the word "moé", she was working on a roguelike in Love2D that required detailed illustrations of medieval weapons and armor. One time, we'd made plans to go on a photo-taking expedition together, but neither of us had our own cameras, so we needed to borrow them from our school's library. "This is as good an excuse as any to finally return all my overdue books," she said. She'd brought a backpack as tall as her own body filled with photobooks that she was using a reference images to do the art for her roguelike. When I saw all these books, I couldn't help but be jealous.
"Why can't I make something like that?" I thought. "Something that requires research -- something that I'd have to make trips to the library for."
Of course, I spent countless hours in the library anyway, without any external need to do research. There was no purpose to any of it. I'd pick out books about the history of railroads or the French revolution, read the introduction, then put them back on the shelves and continue my wandering. Somehow, that didn't feel the same though. All that wandering didn't amount to anything.
Essays:Contact me at saddleblasters [at] gmail [etc]
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