I’ll beg your pardon while I ramble. This has been a strange weekend for me, full of things ending.

My EQ2 subscription ends this week. Realistically I do most of my gaming on weekends, so it feels like EQ2 is done for me, for now. I do hope to come back to it soon, though.

I was reading the last issue of EGM this weekend. There’s nothing really special about it, but knowing its the last one, reading the articles and knowing the writer had no idea he was about to be jobless, lends a sad sheen to the mag.

Angela and I have been watching an old Irish TV series, Ballykissangel, for the past few weeks. I’d seen the first couple seasons before, years ago when it played on PBS. There are six seasons in all, and yesteraday we finished the 6th. It’s a very good-hearted show. Ballykissangel is the name of a village, and even though characters come and go from season to season, the village remains and feels like the main character. Anyway, its done now, and the last season was filmed in 2001 (I believe) so not much chance of any more of it. What added to the sadness there was knowing that some characters left the show because the actors playing them passed away (Birdie Sweeny – Eamon, and Tony Doyle – Brian Quigley). Tony Doyle’s daughter actually played a part in the last season, and you can see a lot of her dad in her face, which in some ways added to the melancholy of it being the last we’ll see of this little village and the characters that hang out in Fitzgerald’s pub.

And today I watched the series finale of Stargate: Atlantis. I *loved* that show. Which is a totally separate issue from saying it’s a great show, because it isn’t. It was just a fun, entertaining sci-fi series with a cast of characters that felt like a family in a lot of ways. I’d *guess* that behind the scenes, the actors got along pretty well because there was always a feeling of  camaraderie when you watched. I love sci-fi and have since I was a kid. And I’ve noted in myself that I’m drawn to these shows that have a ‘family’ of characters that get along and don’t have a lot of interpersonal conflict. My own family life was pretty “lite” and I think in some small way I make these tv-show families my own. (I’m sure that’s not healthy, but oh well.) There’s no “bad guy” in the core cast of Atlantis, and very little friction between Atlantis team members. Every crew member is more or less a sci-fi cliche, but I’m just not bothered by that.

As to the finale itself, it was overly ambitious. It felt like they’d planned for a two-hour finale and had to whittle it down to an hour, because they stuffed a *lot* of stuff into that hour, to the point where it felt kind of disjointed and rushed. Not one of their best episodes, but I do enjoy when the writers of a series know they’re writing a finale (remember the last scene of Joss Whedon’s Angel? “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to slay a dragon.”) and can leave us with a poignant moment to remember the cast by.

So farewell EQ2 and Ballyk and EGM and Stargate: Atlantis.  Thanks for all the enjoyment you’ve brought me over the years. And in the case of EQ2…hope to see you again soon!

Tonight it’ll be the season finale of Sanctuary (hoping that one gets renewed) and then the conclusion of Tess of the D’Urbervilles on Masterpiece. More endings!

Just not feeling like gaming today, for some reason… this upcoming work week is going to be kind of brutal and I think I’m just recharging by watching lots of tv…