SV: The Glorantha Digest V5 #102

From: Erik Sieurin <erik.sieurin_at_sp.se>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 17:38:38 +0200


Sergio:
> Rick Meints writes:
> > Greg Stafford loves Uncle Scrooge comics, as do I, and wanted to
> include
>
> > an homage to Carl Barks in his Glorantha.
> That4s very interesting. The problem is that being a foreigner that
> knows
> nothing about Uncle Scrooge comics or Carl Barks I can't understand
> that
> reference.

Don't know what Scrooge McDuck is called in Spanish (or is it Portuguese? - sorry, Sergio, but I'm not sure where you are from), but I'd be mighty surprised if Donald Duck comics aren't found in your home tongue. Scrooge is Donald's obscenely rich, greedy and miserly uncle. Carl Barks was (he lives but is retired) one of the best cartoonists working for Walt Disney Comics. Walt Disney, by the way, neither draw nor came up with most of his comics himself - he only owned the stuff. Mr Barks was the one who really made Donald Duck into an _adventure comic_, not just a strip with one-gag-a-day. The man is a genius, not only a good artist, but very skilled at making up _stories_.

Sergio, there is much information (in English) about Barks and other Disney writers and the various characters they created on this adress: http://www.update.uu.se/~starback/disney-comics/chars/ (I hope you can wander the web...)

Now back to Sergio's complaints. I agree - but from a completely different point of view.
I'm what is known as a 'Donaldist' - a Disney afficionado - as well as a Glorantha-fan. In fact, my admiration for Barks (and other great Disney comic _writers_ - that's what I care about - like Paul Murry, Tony Strobl and Don Rosa) is almost as big as that I have for a certain Mr G. Stafford. I also happen to be a big fan of another comic book duck - Howard, you know.

And exactly because of that, I don't like cheap Disney jokes IMG. I'm not completely rational about this, since I throw in various off-world jokes now and then myself (Men in Blue my foot). But the foreign-language aspect is there - 'Huey, Dewey and Luey' are 'Knatte, Fnatte och Tjatte' in Swedish, so I have to _think_ to get the supposedly hyperfunny joke in Hueymakt Deathdrake, which takes away any small piece of fun there might have been in this lame joke. And I have at least read the comics in English - most of my players haven't.

The Ducks are in a way a stigma on the game - a small one, but it's still there. When mentioning RQ to other roleplayers, I've several times heard them say 'Oh, that's the one where you can play Donald Duck?'. That one was mighty irritating during that period when all SERIOUS roleplayers played horror games, since fantasy games where for the nerds.

> > I feel that understanding the ducks too much takes away from their
>
>
> > comical mystique. Let them stay a race we only vaguely understand.
> Let
>
> > some of them lay eggs and some of them bear live young.
> Like I said, I'me completely in the black in what concerns their
> 'comical
> mystique'.

I _hope_ he doesn't mean you are to use ducks only as a joke. ('This quest is beginning to get mighty boring. What to do? I know, I'll throw in a duck wearing a silly costume and speaking with a lisp, with a joke name. That'll be REALLY funny!) Or that players are to play ducks when they want to play silly characters (the equivalent of playing a Great Troll if you want a good warrior or an Elf if you want a good magician). I hope that because I have a high opinion of Rick Meints.

> The way you see
> ducks is artificial to me. It disrupts the 'suspention of disbelieve'
> that
> makes Glorantha so attractive.

Heavily seconded! Better do that again: Superheavily seconded. Note that I still think of ducks as comic characters, but then, I find trolls and dwarves incredibly funny too. And Lunars. And Sartarite farmers.
I've found an equivalent: Tricksters as mere walking talking Gloranthan equivalents of Bugs Bunny, running around playing silly jokes, have the same effect. Especially PC's.

> If Chaosium or Issaries, Inc. or whoelse is thinking of selling
> products
> based on Glorantha they must understand that the buyer should not be
> forced
> to acknowledge and conform to the private refferences and feelings of
> the
> designers of that fiction.

Here I do not agree. Fiction writers should write and publish whatever they feel like. Writing things that everyone understands in the same way is impossible, or at least the results would be very boring. But Glorantha is a _collective_ creation, and everyone involved is allowed to have a view. Mine is that the particular joke we are discussing is not funny enough to merit breaking the sense of disbelief. (Joy due to laughs seeing Daffy Clone < Joy which could have been achieved my immersing yourself in the world had not Daffy Clone appeared = No Daffy Clone)

> > Let them call Cacodemon, Quakodemon.
Why?


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