You (Still) Need Love and Friendship for this Mission!

Final Fantasy 8 -

A paper of mine on the social education of youth in _Final Fantasy 6, 7,_ & _8_ appears today. It’s in the online journal Reconstruction: Studies in contemporary culture, in a “special issue”:http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/contents.shtml on videogame culture.

This paper (mentioned in a “previous post”:http://benhourigan.com/archives/2005/01/21/you-need-love-and-friendship-for-this-mission/) has a tortured history. The editors of this issue of _Reconstruction_, Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Davin Heckman, had initially issued a call for papers for a book of collected essays. Having put the collection together, they struggled in vain to find a publisher, and eventually gave up and decided to publish the essays in the journal. Aside from my own essay, there’s a lot papers on interesting subjects in the special issue, so “check it out”:http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/contents.shtml. Just be prepared to endure some awful web-design on the site.

If you’re actually planning to read the essay, I recommend my “unofficial PDF version”:http://benhourigan.com/documents/2004/bh2004-youneed1.1.pdf. As far as I know, it contains the exact same text, but unlike the official version, it won’t assault your eyes with a monospaced font.

Author: Ben Hourigan

Ben Hourigan is a novelist from Melbourne, Australia. His books Kiss Me, Genius Boy and My Generation’s Lament are Amazon category bestsellers, and are available wherever good books are sold online. Ben also works as an editor, copywriter, and self-publishing consultant at his own firm, Hourigan & Co. For news and book release updates, sign up to his email newsletter.