We know shockingly little about Tar-Míriel, an embattled queen created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

“She’s written about, but it’s a sketch of a character,” Cynthia Addai-Robinson tells Inverse. The British-born actor brings Míriel to life in Amazon Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, but the source material she had to work with is pretty slim — and that’s putting it generously. “There’s information about her, but it doesn’t go into her inner life or inner mind.”

Tolkien describes Míriel briefly in The Silmarillion, writing: “Her hair was like silver; and she was slender as a white flower in the grass. Soft and sweet was her voice, and she sang as she worked.” There’s not much else to her story beyond a physical description and a tragic fate — something that presented a challenge when it came time to adapt the character on-screen.

But when they set out to create their Lord of the Rings prequel series, showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne saw that lack of detail as a rare opportunity (remember, Amazon doesn’t even have the rights to adapt The Silmarillion, just the LOTR appendices). In reimagining the character, they did more than flesh out that initial sketch: Their version of Míriel might as well be an entirely new character.

Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy, is quick to notice the Gundam models on my shelf as we sit down to talk over Zoom.

An introspective look crosses his face as he reaches back and reminisces on building similar Gunpla as a child — how he’d obsess over any toy or model he could get his hands on. That obsession led to a singular question for the creator: What would it be like to walk through a world made of models or dioramas? But as Sakaguchi started his career in video games, that question transformed, making him ponder what it would be like to see things from the perspective of those diminutive characters on-screen.

That childhood inspiration has taken on a much more literal turn with Sakaguchi’s latest game, Fantasian, a classically inspired story in which an amnesiac boy wakes up in a mysterious machine world brought to life in beautiful dioramas. After decades away from Final Fantasy, Fantasian also gave Sakaguchi a chance to return to his roots and once again embrace the epic turn-based RPGs that defined his career.

At 61 years old, Sakaguchi has been a key visionary in video games for over four decades as one of the creative minds behind some of the most beloved games of all time, including Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, and more. Sakaguchi has seen more in this industry than just about anyone and remains hopeful, productive, and constantly inspired. How, in the midst of industry upheavals and infighting, does he remain so? It’s all about embracing the fantasy — of childhood, of an escape, and of fun.