Shore Leave is the non-Trek culture arm of the Deep Space Spines website, posted every other Tuesday and made possible by donations to the site’s Patreon.
PRECIOUS
Way back in the very first Shore Leave, I talked about borrowing my brother’s Switch. Well, since then, things have conspired in my favor, and as of a little over a week ago, I finally have one of my own. Of course, times being what they are, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was a mandatory pickup. Since I bought Golf Story through my Nintendo account, I was able to re-download it to my own Switch without paying for it again. And I also picked up Octopath Traveler more or less totally blind, simply out of sheer curiosity and the fact that it looks like it culls from a lot of classic Square RPGs. Just at a first glance, I notice elements of Chrono Trigger, Live a Live, and Seiken Densetsu 3, so I think (hope) I’m in for a good time.
The video game train doesn’t quite end there either. I’ve also started watching Hi Score Girl on Netflix. I’d been anticipating it, but only realized it had actually dropped after my best friend texted me gushing about this love letter to video games (specifically, early 90s arcade games—Street Fighter II and Final Fight figure heavily into the first episode). I’m not totally sold on the relationship between Haruo and Akira yet, but then, I’ve only watched the first episode so far. Mostly, I’m curious to see what other direction the series’ love for video games expands in; the synopsis for episode two promises some PC-Engine action, so I’m excited to see how deep they dig.
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I originally had this one slotted lower, but it has taken up so much of my time and energy that I moved it into the top slot:
One thing I did pick up, however, was Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?, a biography of Larry Norman, the man generally considered to be the progenitor of “Christian rock” (though his approach was nothing like current trends in worship music and CCM). Larry Norman was a trailblazer who infuriated the religious establishment with his insistence on using rock ‘n’ roll to reach people and befuddled the secular world with his insistence on following God. The subject matter interests me greatly, because one thing I struggle with in my life is reconciling the (in my opinion) frequent blandness of worship music with the idea of musical talent being a God-given gift. However, I bought the book through a secondhand source and ended up receiving an uncorrected proof of the book rather than the final product, and for some reason this has put me off the book to the point where I find it almost impossible to pick up. It’s certainly no indictment of the book itself, which I very much recommend based on the 100 or so pages I’ve gotten through, but maybe there’s something about holding a finished product that either I’ve been taking for granted or never realized. Regardless, it’s evidently a very real and powerful feeling.