I've been increasingly frustrated lately over the fact that if I write something that I actually, truly care about, it is guaranteed that at least one, and probably two people will say they didn't read it and/or don't care. I don't understand this - if you don't care, then I don't care to hear about how you don't care. Seriously. It's just obnoxious and, in the end, really just angering when people tell me they don't care, when I never asked them to in the first place. Yes, I like it a lot when people read what I write, and it like it even more when people respond and discuss what I write. I know I can't get you to be interested in everything that I am, but at least let me try?

A good example here would be if I wrote about the fundamental differences in the combat engine and character development between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX, and what Square-Enix has to do to maintain the proper formula in the future without abandoning the basic idea of the TBC RPG. I can predict the following: Paul would probably respond by saying the FF7 sucked, but then continue to comment on what I wrote. An acceptable response. Someone else would say he stopped reading after the first paragraph. Someone else would say he never played FF7, and someone else would say he hated FF7 and/or FF9, with nothing else to add to the conversation. Someone else would say I have no life, and she would be right. And Ryan would probably leave some gem of wit, unrelated to the topic, and yet hilarious. Also acceptable.

I can handle getting fewer than ten comments on any given post, but if you look at each of those comments, not many actually stimulated true discussion of any kind. The actual number of comments lies somewhere between zero and two. I look at blog posts much the same way I look at books. Say you read the first chapter of a book, and you don't like it. Do you proceed to write the author about the fact that you didn't read his/her book because the first chapter sucked? Or do you write the author about how you didn't read the book because it wasn't about a topic you were interested in? Probably not.

Now, you might write the author after reading the whole book to disagree, or to critique the content or writing, or something. You might even go talk about the book with your peers, discussing its finer points or debating whether or not it sucked. Bottom line, you don't actually talk about the book unless you actually have something to say. That's what I'm asking for here.

That said, I've been considering a number of things. How about podcasts? Podcasts, as in, me, talking about something for 5 minutes, and then sharing it for you to hear. I thought this would be a fun thing to do, but, I won't bother if everyone says no. Podcasts are fairly easy to do, so it's not a question of effort. My bandwidth is large enough to support this, especially considering that the mp3s would be, at most, 3 or 4 MB.

I've also been considering starting a totally separate blog to talk about games and whatnot. Honestly, I'd love nothing more than to talk about games all the time to you, but as said before, I can't get you to care. Alternatively, I could just post anyways and you could not read them. That, however, seems like it degrades the overall quality of the content here, mixes things up too much.

Finally, I will revamp the design eventually. I'm getting way bored of the current look, and you can be assured that things will change. It might happen soon, it might not. I've technically got a lot of work to do to catch up from being sick, but then again, I've stopped caring about school again. It's all up in the air.

And I promise, I will post about Oblivion. Just not yet.