I've been a Undocumented Features fan since the Dark Ages. I missed the first post to Usenet but stumbled across the second and was pretty much hooked then and there, even if I didn't grok even half the in-jokes (as noted elsewhere on these forums, I didn't even know what Robotech *was* at the time). We could debate the quality of the Core or preceding pieces until the sun goes cold, but regardless, it was good enough to get us interested at the very least. But it was... immature.

Future Imperfect, I think, is where UF really started to grow up.

I don't mean that in the sense that "everything before it was childish crap"; far from it. But FI definitely brought a more mature, thoughtful approach, especially with the later pieces. And (not to be a gushing fanboy, but) I love that. The Golden Age pieces are fun, but they're ... simple. The Exile pieces are very similar, except anti-fun for the most part. That fits the theme, but I'm not fond of re-reading them all that often -- not because they're *bad*, but because they're torturing characters I care about and dammit I don't want to see that.

Future Imperfect actually brings *meat* to the table. Stuff is fun, but it's also deep -- not in the philosophical sense, but in terms of character depth and plotting. Not always, of course, but on the whole it's there.

I've been a UF fan forever, it feels like... but honestly, my favorite piece of EPU work has (since before it completed, even) always been NXE. The main reason isn't because I'm an Evangelion fan (I'd, um, never heard of it before reading NXE), it's because it *has* that depth. There is *meaningful conflict* throughout the entire piece, and at the same time the writers didn't let off the 'More Awesome' button. That's a hard act to pull off!

Future Imperfect on the whole has caught up with that bar and, in my mind at least, is pulling ahead at this point. When I need a pick-me-up, I open up Hunted Rose. The sheer awesome, the fact that the Good Guys win, the fact that there's a challenge -- and a *real* one, at that, not just something solved by (for example) a brand-new never-seen-before-or-since bit of tech that someone just had lying around 'because' -- and the fact that there are actual, believable consequences for everyone's actions...

... well, it adds up to a story that *never* fails to lift my spirits. Cynical as I am, it reminds me somehow that Good can triumph. And if the purpose of fiction isn't to remind people of things like that, then I'll happily go on being wrong, because I don't want to be right.

Still in Future Imperfect... If I need a laugh, I can turn to pretty much anything in the Bacon Comics imprint (so to speak) and be guaranteed that I'll end up grinning like a loon before the end of the issue. Or I can turn to one of the CSI:NA pieces. While I don't think they're primarily *meant* to be funny, the character interactions *always* get a laugh, and does so while dealing with (often) pretty dark subject matter.

I could continue listing examples (and did, before deciding I'd be here *all day* if I kept that up), but the point has, I think, been made. While I may tend towards hyperfocusing on things that the authors haven't revealed yet -- and, for the record, I apologize; I'm trying to stop looking for meat in the produce aisle, I really am! -- and while I may have some disagreements with how things turn out or were handled, on the whole Future Imperfect is really where the writing team has begun to shine, and I can't express how much it means to me that EPU continues to produce it for us.

*raises glass* To Future Imperfect!

--sofaspud
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