John Hughes has many ideas....

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_mail.utexas.edu>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 19:41:48 -0700


John Hughes give us MILLS AND QUERNS, and I love it. Imagine: burly Heortling warriors, travelling to Esrola, braving it's dangers, making perilious deals with sinister Piestesses, probably killing something or someone, all to get a food processor for a wedding gift! Sartar definitely needs a bridal registry (and a department store). He also says some very good things about Lunar Chaos and Orlanthi Violence.

and

> (Hold on, chaos theory can't work in Glorantha... can it? :))

        It's like the Lunar Empire, really: Chaos Theory is really useful, but when misapplied (which is most of the time, I'm sad to say), it is worse than useless. Much like deconstructionism, it's a pretty poison....

Later:

> Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrated that there are always some
>things within > a given system that cannot be proven - within a given
>world, we cannot prove nor >disprove anything without going outside the
>system - which in most cases is impossible. I > find this analogy useful
>both for everyday metaphysics, gloranthan metaphysics, and for > our own
>'viewing Glorantha' metaphysics. Is my understanding accurate?

        Sure. As I keep saying, there are loads of things in Glorantha that can't or won't or shouldn't be explained away. But there are also things that are the product of sloppy thinking or years of accretion or grafts that didn't take, and plastering them over with "it's myth and doesn't need to make sense" seems like a cop out to me. It's also worth noting that there could be several answers to the question of how Yelm became the Emperor. No matter which one is correct, it doesn't change the fact that no Heortling or Pelorian is likely to question the association. Just because something can be explained from our vantage point outside Glorantha doesn't mean that anyone inside Glorantha (Yelm included) knows that answer or even the question.

Peter Larsen


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