Re: Re: Pics

From: Jeffrey Zahari <jeff_zahari_at_...>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 17:48:38 +1100

>are a very secondary market. The ones who buy as many books as they
>can afford are the natural gamers. They may well care about the art,
>but they are more apt to care whether it is well drawn and makes
>sense as anything else. In short, I think that the people who
>actually buy the books may not be averse to cheesecake, but they
>will prefer believable cheesecake.

'Cheesecake' and 'beefcake' are not believable, almost by definition. The images we are discussing are modern notions, based on late C20 ideas of what looks cool. They are not plausible representations of Bronze/Dark/Middle Age warriors. Therefore, they do not 'make sense', but are an expression of our modern age--which generally ignores real history in favour of fantasy (I cite the TV Hercules). I leave aside for the moment the question of whether such images are offensive, juvenile, sexist, or retrograde.

As Nick said: don't do it by halves. If you really want a game based on soft porn, do it in style and do it without shame. Its your game, your friends, and your fun. For myself, I can't help but feel an uneasy tension between all the finely-tuned mythological/sociological detail of Glorantha and the Marvel Comics school of illustration.

>couldn't keep up, but I remember fairly extensive debates about
>realism, game consistency, anachronisms, and so on at ages far
>younger than 16.
>
>In other words, don't sell kids short. You weren't any less bright
>when you were 16 than you are now, why assume that the current crop
>of gamers are any dumber than you were?

'Brighter' is a problematical concept, but I would be ashamed to think that I had not moved on from my adolescent yearnings for mythical female flesh, and for superheroes thinly disguised as heroic warriors. I drew the pictures, I read the comics, I wet the sheets--but in the end I grew up.



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