This past week has been something of a nostalgia trip for me.

Obviously there was Rogue One on Wednesday night/Thursday morning (and again on Thursday afternoon – and probably again on Monday). Like for many, Star Wars has been with me for as long as I can remember. I’m just slightly too young to have seen a New Hope on its original release, but watching it on TV is one of my earliest memories. It informed so much of my creative endeavours in early childhood (along with Doctor Who). It was how it was discovered I was colour blind – I coloured in my Chewbacca drawing green. I won’t go on about Rogue One for fear of giving out spoilers, but suffice to say I really enjoyed it. It’s a great prologue to one of my all time favourite films and adds another layer of context to A New Hope.

Outside of the build up to Rogue One, I’ve been reading The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Mark Frost’s book that acts as a lead in to the new Twin Peaks series due out next year. I vaguely remember watching Twin Peaks when it was originally on. I think I must have come to it quite late – possibly after the reveal of Laura’s killer – as I only seem to remember watching the later episodes on BBC Two. A friend re-introduced me to the series just before I went to university. It lead to some very weird dreams over my first year at university, and when I was awoken by a fire alarm one night, my half-awake mind immediately went to the scene of Bob in police station and the sprinkler system going off. Not the most pleasant of thoughts to awaken to. The book – presented as a secret dossier on the town that was recently recovered by the FBI – is enjoyable and, again, provides an extra level of context around the happenings from the original series. At the same time, I’ve been re-watching the original series and am now impatient for the new series to start.

I’ve also been reading Dragons of Summer Flame. The first time I came across the Dragonlance setting was in the form of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons adventure module DL8 Dragons of War. It was the very first AD&D module I ever owned. I’ve no idea why I started with DL8, other than perhaps it was what was available at the local hobby shop. I ended up collecting the complete DL series of modules, although I never got to run the complete campaign. At some point, I also stumbled across the Dragonlance Chronicles novels as well, which I devoured along with the Dragonlance Legends series and a handful of the other novels in the early part of my teens.

I’ve been playing tabletop RPGs off and on since I was about 8 and, even though I don’t get to play regularly at the moment, I still enjoy reading the sourcebooks and about the potential worlds there are to explore. I’m also a regular viewer of Critical Role – the weekly D&D game of some nerdy voice actors broadcast by Geek & Sundry. So although I might not be actively playing, I’ve still been getting my RPG fix. However, it felt like time to dip my toe back into Dragonlance fiction. The main challenge so far has been trying to remember everything I used to know about the setting. Not that not knowing detracts hugely from the story so far, but simply because there’s this constant sense of having a fact or bit of background on the tip of my tongue and never being able to quite remember it. Fortunately, I still have my old sourcebooks and modules and, if they fail me, there’s always Wikipedia and the Dragonlance Wikia.

Anyway, enough rambling.

Happy holidays and, if I don’t get to blogging before the 31 December, all the best for the New Year.