Hell, I'll send this letter to the whole list.
The whole discussion suffers from two problems: The Power of Big Words and the Guilt By Subjective Association.
The Power of Big Words
When discussing the Objective Reality of Gods, Myth, whatever, we are
discussing things that are Big. They are Important. As all Important
things, they are not easily dissectable, clear, or distinct, but at
the same time we all have very clear realisations of what they mean,
even if that realisation is "They are impossible to understand."
It is things that are incredibly hard to discuss in the real world,
things which has been discussed for eons, and while many people have
come up with what they consider clear answers, they have never
suceeded in convincing everyone else that they are Right.
That we should come up with a satisfactory answer to these questions
concerning a fictional world is thus highly unlikely, especially
since the creators of the game are not really in agreement (Greg is
some sort of "subjectivist", at least on alternate Tuesdays, Sandy is
some sort of "objectivist", etc).
The Guilt By Subjective Association
I have spent much time the last week digging in my little garden
plot. Whenever I do that, I think of an ancient Swedish pop song
called "Diggi-loo, diggi-ley". (It won the Eurovision Song Contest
umpteen years ago, if anyone remembers) I have no !"#=A4%=A4 idea what
the song has to do with carrots.
Everytime I re-read the Silmarillion, I think of laundromats. That is
easier, since I read it the first time while doing the laundry.
And certain things makes me associate to Bad Roleplaying Sessions.
With this I mean those sessions in which I didn't succeeded for one
second to suspend disbelief. I might have had fun, but it was the
kind of fun I would have gotten more out of by doing something else,
like just talking with my friends or playing a computer game.
For instance, one of these things are zap-people and harm them
spells. Thus, I dislike Disruption; as a GM, I have never given it to
an NPC, and I avoid Lightning the same way. Odd weapons combination
makes my head ache in the same way.
Now, I think that often when we argue about things on the digest, it is not necessarily what the Othe Guy/Gal says which we think are wrong, but we subjectively associate something they say with something horrible like those Boring Sessions of Gaming, and we think=
they are guilty of that.
I, for instance, think that very few people REALLY think that the
Gods of Glorantha (pun intended) are just figments of the human's
attention. However, all (orlanthi "all", of course) the "objectivists" see=
m (SEEM, SEEM)
convinced that is what the "subjectivists" are arguing, and condemn
it.
I also, for another instance, think that very few people REALLY think
that the skeletal Monomyth is COMPLETELY, ABSOLUTELY,
OBJECTIVELY _TRUE_. However, all (o. "a", o. c.) the "subjectivists"
seem (S., S.) convinced that is what the "objectivists" are arguing,
and condemn it.
Question B: I'm Swedish, but my father is Finnish, and whenever I feel embarrased at being Swedish (like when the only other Swedes at the Scottish restaurant are total jerks, or when Outer Turkmania beats Sweden at icehockey) I vehemently argue that I am Finnish, really. And oh, to complicate matters further, my name is totally unSwedish and unFinnish, the result of complicated family backgrounds we shouldn't go into here.
To make things Gloranthan, one kind of inconsistency which really pisses ME off is when people from Land A can have ANY kind of name - just because that is what it was like in those Bad Game Sessions way back, when "Background Culture" was something completely unknown. Look at the writeups of early Chaosium campaigns, frex. Hate, hate mutilate, crush, crush, kill! Of course, in the RW, that sort of thing happens all the time. My own name is the perfect example. I still hate it in RPG's, however.
"The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea, in a beautiful pea-green boat..."
>From "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear
Erik Sieurin
bv9521_at_utb.hb.se
Bodagatan 39, 2 tr
50742 Bor=E5s
Sweden
033/141731
Powered by hypermail