The prospects for my two-part LARP idea are looking promising; I have received some enthusiastic reactions from potential players and also an offer from someone to act as co-storyteller. For now, I will keep the volunteer's name a secret... but I'm quite excited about the game and how it may work.
At the same time, I want to do more pen 'n' paper role-playing in 2015. I've mentioned before that I miss tabletop games, especially running one of my own. The biggest hurdle seems to be people's availability. My friends have such busy lives at the moment that signing up to a campaign of tabletop games is just too heavy a commitment, especially when any campaign that I come up with would be competing for a regular time slot with all the other ideas for campaigns, LARPs and regular social engagements that my friends have.
However, Dom's one-shot Cthulhu game has given me an idea. He ran a single scenario three times for different groups, and he was able to do this because he had a large base of interested players, but each with limited availability. Dom explained that he usually runs Call of Cthulhu as a campaign, but with players unable to commit to a regular campaign, he developed a one-shot adventure that lasted for about eight hours, and played with three groups of five.
We have a large pool of players in the local area, but all with a lot of commitments. I don't propose to have a single scenario that I run multiple times, but I have a game - Leverage, which I deeply want to run - that is designed for episodic play. Each game is supposed to be a stand-alone job lasting for a few hours of play.
What if I also have a pool of players, and each one has a character. When I come up with a game, it is designed to stand alone, for any five of the players in that pool depending on their availability. I can then design other one-shot games that are all part of the same campaign, but completely different groups of players could come together on each occasion to tackle the scenario.
This allows the game to cater for players' availability. Some overlap could exist between the different player groups, because some players would be more available for games than others. In concept, that would be fine, and could even create some continuity between episodes, even though no player would be required to attend every installment or even more than one installment. Another advantage of this approach is that I would not have to run the same game twice.
I think I should refer to this idea as the "Suikoden" model of forming a player base for a pen 'n' paper game. It reminds me of the Suikoden computer RPGs; the player in those games takes the role of an army's leader, and his castle can have over one hundred named characters in it. However, for the "adventuring-party" sections of the game, the player travels around with a party of up to six of those characters. What Suikoden provides is the ability to swap out members of the party and field a team that could be different every time.
This could easily gel with the concept of an episodic game about neo-pulp outlaw heroes. Imagine a network of numerous vigilantees, including thieves, masterminds, con artists, hackers and fighters, and - every so often - a call for help goes out, and a short-term Crew is assembled to deal with the problem from the available members of the network. I think that the Suikoden model may be the best option that I have for running some tabletop role-playing in 2015 that fits into other people's social calendars, and also lets me role-play with a greater variety of people.
Monday 15 December 2014
Tuesday 9 December 2014
Fear of the Unknown
On Saturday, I participated in the third run of Dom Camus' Call of Cthulhu one-shot game. This is, I think, the only "tabletop" game* that I have played all year, and my biggest regret of 2014 will probably be that I didn't get to role-play nearly as much as I would have liked.
The game was truly excellent and a lot of fun, and had an interesting pre-amble. I'm used to the gamesmaster explaining the background and setting of the story at the start of the game, but Dom gave a quick briefing about Call of Cthulhu's literary history. What I had not realised previously was that so much of the material that I recognise from the role-playing game and Arkham Horror comes not from HP Lovecraft's books, but from the work that Sandy Petersen did to fill in the gaps. I can understand why this was necessary for a role-playing game; gamers need insight into the material if they are going to create their own stories in the Mythos. However, this got me thinking about whether filling in the gaps meant sacrificing part of what makes Lovecraftian horror so effective - and whether the rules of role-playing games might have this effect on other types of horror.
Part of the scariness of Lovecraft's works comes from gods and monsters that are incomprehensibly alien. They not only play on fears of monsters and the existential terror of an uncaring universe, but also on fear of the unknown - more than that, the unknowable. Part of the artistry of Lovecraft's creatures is that they remain mysterious even after they have been witnessed directly and investigated closely. However, when a game inevitably must give numbers and rules to those creatures, it seems to take some of the scariness out of them.
Only some of it, of course. Lovecraft's monsters certainly have the advantage that they are terrifying on multiple levels; they're still vast, powerful and hostile, and they inhabit a merciless cosmos in which humanity's insignificance is utterly apparent.
For a more solid example of role-playing rules detracting from horror, I would probably refer to White Wolf's vampire games - Masquerade or Requiem. The more they codified vampires, the less scary they became. I'm not surprised that - after 1st edition - Masquerade progressed from a game about personal horror to being about the politics of super-powered immortals. Having rigid definitions about who can do what is useful for creating divisions, but useless for fostering a fear of the unknown. Vampire books invite participants to know the source material - to read about what the various clans can do and what varying capabilities vampires have. As a result, the setting doesn't deliver shocks to the players, even if it should to the characters. To achieve that effect, a storyteller would probably need to cast a lot of source material to the wind.
The unknown seems to me to be a vital tool for cultivating a sense of immersive horror for players - so that they are actually daunted and not just affecting fear for their characters. The most success that I have had trying to make a game scary was a session of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space - an episode I called "Dead Memories". I think that it worked because the antagonist was not a familiar monster or alien from the Doctor Who television series; I came up with an alien that fed on nostalgia and induced hallucinations to trigger memories. The players had no frame of reference for what they were facing, and I think that this made them respond with more authentic trepidation.
Threats for which we have no frame of reference seem to work well as sources of horror in other media as well. I think that one of the most effectively scary aspects of Silent Hill was its lack of familiarity. It provided no clear details about what was happening; players could only really figure things out by experiencing them. Similarly, I found that Time was a very eerie antagonist in Sapphire & Steel, due to ambiguity about its capabilities. It certainly helped to give a science fiction show the feel of ghost stories.
One thought that occurs to me is that some heroes in science fiction and fantasy have ambiguous abilities. The Doctor is a good example, but pulp heroes sometimes fit the bill too. They are often able to pull off incredible feats, but the audience is not expected to think too closely about how they managed those feats. Characters that have great power but loosely-defined limitations can be fun or scary, I suppose, depending on whether they are on your side or not. Perhaps the Doctor, for instance, is an eldritch horror because of his ambiguous capabilities - from the perspective of a Dalek or a Cyberman.
*Granted, I spent most of the game sitting on the floor.
The game was truly excellent and a lot of fun, and had an interesting pre-amble. I'm used to the gamesmaster explaining the background and setting of the story at the start of the game, but Dom gave a quick briefing about Call of Cthulhu's literary history. What I had not realised previously was that so much of the material that I recognise from the role-playing game and Arkham Horror comes not from HP Lovecraft's books, but from the work that Sandy Petersen did to fill in the gaps. I can understand why this was necessary for a role-playing game; gamers need insight into the material if they are going to create their own stories in the Mythos. However, this got me thinking about whether filling in the gaps meant sacrificing part of what makes Lovecraftian horror so effective - and whether the rules of role-playing games might have this effect on other types of horror.
Part of the scariness of Lovecraft's works comes from gods and monsters that are incomprehensibly alien. They not only play on fears of monsters and the existential terror of an uncaring universe, but also on fear of the unknown - more than that, the unknowable. Part of the artistry of Lovecraft's creatures is that they remain mysterious even after they have been witnessed directly and investigated closely. However, when a game inevitably must give numbers and rules to those creatures, it seems to take some of the scariness out of them.
Only some of it, of course. Lovecraft's monsters certainly have the advantage that they are terrifying on multiple levels; they're still vast, powerful and hostile, and they inhabit a merciless cosmos in which humanity's insignificance is utterly apparent.
For a more solid example of role-playing rules detracting from horror, I would probably refer to White Wolf's vampire games - Masquerade or Requiem. The more they codified vampires, the less scary they became. I'm not surprised that - after 1st edition - Masquerade progressed from a game about personal horror to being about the politics of super-powered immortals. Having rigid definitions about who can do what is useful for creating divisions, but useless for fostering a fear of the unknown. Vampire books invite participants to know the source material - to read about what the various clans can do and what varying capabilities vampires have. As a result, the setting doesn't deliver shocks to the players, even if it should to the characters. To achieve that effect, a storyteller would probably need to cast a lot of source material to the wind.
The unknown seems to me to be a vital tool for cultivating a sense of immersive horror for players - so that they are actually daunted and not just affecting fear for their characters. The most success that I have had trying to make a game scary was a session of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space - an episode I called "Dead Memories". I think that it worked because the antagonist was not a familiar monster or alien from the Doctor Who television series; I came up with an alien that fed on nostalgia and induced hallucinations to trigger memories. The players had no frame of reference for what they were facing, and I think that this made them respond with more authentic trepidation.
Threats for which we have no frame of reference seem to work well as sources of horror in other media as well. I think that one of the most effectively scary aspects of Silent Hill was its lack of familiarity. It provided no clear details about what was happening; players could only really figure things out by experiencing them. Similarly, I found that Time was a very eerie antagonist in Sapphire & Steel, due to ambiguity about its capabilities. It certainly helped to give a science fiction show the feel of ghost stories.
One thought that occurs to me is that some heroes in science fiction and fantasy have ambiguous abilities. The Doctor is a good example, but pulp heroes sometimes fit the bill too. They are often able to pull off incredible feats, but the audience is not expected to think too closely about how they managed those feats. Characters that have great power but loosely-defined limitations can be fun or scary, I suppose, depending on whether they are on your side or not. Perhaps the Doctor, for instance, is an eldritch horror because of his ambiguous capabilities - from the perspective of a Dalek or a Cyberman.
*Granted, I spent most of the game sitting on the floor.
Wednesday 3 December 2014
Streamlining
Over time, the live-action games that I run seem to be getting shorter and shorter.
LA Confidential lasted for five sessions, as intended. Upwick Manor hadf a three-episode length. Now I have a plan for a game - The Last Day of Babylon - that is only two sessions long.
Perhaps the end point is that I will start writing one-shots. Or will I end up with games that are shorter than that, if even possible?
In a way, planning LARPs seems a little like designing a training package for work. The more practice I get delivering it, the more streamlined the product becomes.
I think that this is the result of developing as a planner for LARPs. A lot of storytellers in both live-action and tabletop have had games that run down to a close without reaching a proper finale, myself included. Past experience suggests to me that wrapping up is better than fading away. Also - since friends and acquaintances have increasingly busy lives - a game with a fixed finale seems a far less daunting commitment than one with no clear end-point.
LA Confidential lasted for five sessions, as intended. Upwick Manor hadf a three-episode length. Now I have a plan for a game - The Last Day of Babylon - that is only two sessions long.
Perhaps the end point is that I will start writing one-shots. Or will I end up with games that are shorter than that, if even possible?
In a way, planning LARPs seems a little like designing a training package for work. The more practice I get delivering it, the more streamlined the product becomes.
I think that this is the result of developing as a planner for LARPs. A lot of storytellers in both live-action and tabletop have had games that run down to a close without reaching a proper finale, myself included. Past experience suggests to me that wrapping up is better than fading away. Also - since friends and acquaintances have increasingly busy lives - a game with a fixed finale seems a far less daunting commitment than one with no clear end-point.
Thursday 27 November 2014
Bottle Episodes
I find that bottle episodes or films are very useful sources of inspiration for running live-action games. Almost all LARP organisers have to think about the limits to the amount of space that they have, and so bottle stories can teach us a lot about getting entertainment value out of a confined environment.
Sure, a storyteller could ask his players to imagine new locations, but the more that players have to pretend that their characters are in different places without leaving a room, the more a LARP defeats the point of being live-action.
In television, a bottle episode can be described as "the sad little stepchild whose allowance is docked in order to buy big brother a new pair of sneaks". The above quotation is from Scott Brazil, an executive producer on The Shield, pointing out that the practical purpose of a bottle episode is change how costs are distributed during a series - to save some budget for use in finale episodes or cliffhangers. Most LARPs, on the other hand, have nothing even close to the production capabilities of television, and so - especially if you are planning a small game for a group of friends - researching bottle concepts is a great way to find ideas for reasonable, achievable but also fun stories that would work for a LARP.
I can think of a few good examples:
John Carpenter seems to have a good grasp of bottle concepts in his films; The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13 are both solid examples. On that note, Ice - the X-Files' season 1 tribute to The Thing - is also an excellent bottle episode - perhaps one of the best in the recent history of television.
One episode of Community called Remedial Chaos Theory is also an interesting example. It takes place entirely in one room, but shows the stories of seven different timelines originating from a single point - consequences that depended on which member of the study group left the room to collect the pizzas.
Being stuck together on a spaceship is a common way to create a bottle concept; it is frequently blended with horror (e.g. Alien, Event Horizon), but not exclusively so. The Firefly episodes Our Mrs Reynolds and Objects in Space takes place almost entirely on board the Serenity.
The best bottle episodes for LARPs are usually ones that make full use of an ensemble cast, since they often help storytellers to figure out how to treat multiple players as protagonists in their own right.
I write all these thoughts down, because a bottle film that Shawn recently showed to me has given me an idea for my next LARP - something that we could perhaps do after Paul's angel game. I'll say more about the idea in a separate post, or in a message to the Egham LARP group, but I'll also be looking for a co-storyteller if I can get interested players. I tend to get very excited for an idea once I have figured out how it can work in the limited space of the Englefield Green social hall, without asking players to imagine much that is not actually in the rooms.
Sure, a storyteller could ask his players to imagine new locations, but the more that players have to pretend that their characters are in different places without leaving a room, the more a LARP defeats the point of being live-action.
In television, a bottle episode can be described as "the sad little stepchild whose allowance is docked in order to buy big brother a new pair of sneaks". The above quotation is from Scott Brazil, an executive producer on The Shield, pointing out that the practical purpose of a bottle episode is change how costs are distributed during a series - to save some budget for use in finale episodes or cliffhangers. Most LARPs, on the other hand, have nothing even close to the production capabilities of television, and so - especially if you are planning a small game for a group of friends - researching bottle concepts is a great way to find ideas for reasonable, achievable but also fun stories that would work for a LARP.
I can think of a few good examples:
John Carpenter seems to have a good grasp of bottle concepts in his films; The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13 are both solid examples. On that note, Ice - the X-Files' season 1 tribute to The Thing - is also an excellent bottle episode - perhaps one of the best in the recent history of television.
One episode of Community called Remedial Chaos Theory is also an interesting example. It takes place entirely in one room, but shows the stories of seven different timelines originating from a single point - consequences that depended on which member of the study group left the room to collect the pizzas.
Being stuck together on a spaceship is a common way to create a bottle concept; it is frequently blended with horror (e.g. Alien, Event Horizon), but not exclusively so. The Firefly episodes Our Mrs Reynolds and Objects in Space takes place almost entirely on board the Serenity.
The best bottle episodes for LARPs are usually ones that make full use of an ensemble cast, since they often help storytellers to figure out how to treat multiple players as protagonists in their own right.
I write all these thoughts down, because a bottle film that Shawn recently showed to me has given me an idea for my next LARP - something that we could perhaps do after Paul's angel game. I'll say more about the idea in a separate post, or in a message to the Egham LARP group, but I'll also be looking for a co-storyteller if I can get interested players. I tend to get very excited for an idea once I have figured out how it can work in the limited space of the Englefield Green social hall, without asking players to imagine much that is not actually in the rooms.
Tuesday 11 November 2014
When all roads lead to sexism
I created this blog with the intention of using it to write about my nerdy hobbies instead of my social or political views. Recently however, I have not been able to turn my mind to my gaming interests without also reading and thinking about the topic of feminism.
Gamergate obviously has some responsibility for this. In recent months, media coverage has brought to the fore the abuse that some male gamers have heaped on women simply for speaking their minds. From friends whose writing I follow, like Steve and Pam, to online celebrities like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, numerous people of interest have been providing social commentary on misogynist trolls.
However, Gamergate has not been the only source; my other hobbies have been intersecting with the issue of gender discrimination. Most recently, role-playing has provided me with food for thought on feminism and gender. What started as research for gaming purposes led to some very educational reading on topical issues.
I'm very keen on Leverage - both as a television series and as a role-playing game. Part of the appeal is that Leverage is basically neo-pulp; it is about people with extraordinary skills taking on bad guys and making it look fun. Yet the other part of Leverage's appeal is its basis in reality. The writers for both the television series and the game books did a lot of research on real abuses of power; behind every fantasy about a group of outlaw heroes bringing a villain to justice is a true story - sadly, it is usually a story about someone rich and powerful getting away with something horrible.
I thought that - if I want to play the game one day - I should conduct some research too. So I started to look into real abuses of power. I can't remember how my research started, but I soon found myself reading about harassment of abortion providers and Crisis Pregnancy Centres. My research went from a relatively-idle curiosity for gaming purposes to more serious interest in short order.
Part of my research included watching the documentary After Tiller, which is about the four doctors that are able to conduct late-term abortions in the United States; a pro-life supporter murdered the fifth. It certainly shed a lot of light on the people that seek abortions at a late stage. One example in the film was a rape victim, who had waited a long time to seek an abortion because she had been in denial about the pregnancy. Her denial was entirely understandable, considering what a terrible thing a rape-induced pregnancy must be to acknowledge, especially while likely traumatised.
Inside the clinics were doctors that cared considerably for their patients, while outside pro-life demonstrators were praying and picketing the facilities. I can't think of any more powerful way to challenge pro-life attitudes than the footage, which showed a priest telling his congregation that "pure evil" was going on inside a clinic, while inside a doctor listened patiently to a couple explaining that they had wanted to have a baby, and had already built the nursery and got supplies, but then learnt that the baby had a medical condition so severe that it would last just days outside the womb (on life support) before dying.
I gathered information on Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs) from a variety of sources, and they are certainly unsettling.
From reading about social engineering and life hacks, I had already learnt about "round-the-corner" tricks. Imagine a hustler positioning himself close to a corner shop, and - when the store's owner isn't looking - puts a "deliveries around the corner" sign in front of the shop. When the postal worker or courier arrives, the hustler meets the delivery man at the side of the property, receives the delivery and subsequently makes off with the goods. Well, CPCs in the United States are basically a "round-the-corner" trick that religious groups play on pregnant women.
The groups set up "health centres" in close proximity to abortion clinics (to increase the chance that women seeking abortions will enter their centres by mistake), and the centres also have well-designed websites that are intended to make them appear to be medical providers. However, CPCs do not perform any procedures - the most that they provide is usually an ultrasound. Their staff are mostly church volunteers, and they use the centres to facilitate meeting women that are seeking abortion. The purpose of any CPC is to persuade women to bring a baby to term. By persuade, I mean apply pressure and spread misinformation about the medical implications. A much more effective explanation than anything I could say can be found here.
What I found most disturbing was the effort and subtlety that goes into making CPCs appear as friendly and professional as possible. I have visited the actual website of a CPC, and the attention to detail and style is very carefully tailored.
Thanks to the joys of the Internet, I have seen friends and total strangers alike expressing opinions on abortion; some with thought and nuance - others disastrously.
I tend to get frustrated with the idea that "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are the two defining sides of this issue, as if they are two internally-unified movements. As far as I can tell, "pro-life" in particular tends to include people with a range of different opinions, some of them contradicting others.
Some pro-life commentators just seem to have the notion that ready access to abortion leads to women using it casually, as if it were a form of retroactive contraception. They may not be able to point to any woman who takes a casual view of such an invasive procedure, but they tend to take issue with the numbers of elective procedures. As presumptuous as such an opinion may be, at least it implies that the commentator accepts that circumstances - especially medical ones - can make abortion necessary in some cases. Such pro-lifers also tend to be in favour of contraception, believing that if people took proper precautions then elective procedures would not be occurring for socio-economic reasons.
Such views may be naive, but they do not cause me to fume inwardly - that reaction tends to be reserved for the pro-life activists that are anti-abortion and anti-contraception, and consider that the only safeguard against complications from sex should be abstinence and saving it for marriage. The moment anyone suggests that people should only be having sex for the purpose of procreation, I feel my blood pressure rising. This is only compounded when I note that the advocates of this position are usually the religious right, who have in the past supplied the most intimidating and violent harassers of abortion providers.
My anger stems not from research into religion or feminism, but from personal experience - of something that is easier to write about now that I have some distance from it, both in terms of time and emotion.
Until the age of 34, I was a virgin. I realise that - as an age to first have a sexual relationship - that's actually older than some of my long-term friends are now. I was not asexual, eschewing sex or maintaining a religious vow. In fact, if I was to lie and claim that I had been consciously avoiding sex, it would undermine the point that I have in mind. I wasn't averse to sex, I just did not have sexual relations.
What I can say is that - when you're a man, being a virgin is easy; being perceived as a virgin is hard. I've seen plenty of fiction that raises the idea that guys need to get laid, but the idea is itself entirely fictional. It doesn't "straighten you out" or "make a man of you". If a man goes without it, it does not make him desperate, or scared of women. In my history of mental health issues, lack of sex was not a contributor and was not conflated with loneliness.
Although not having a sexual relationship was not a cause for concern, I was acutely aware of society's expectations and presumptions about men that don't have sex. The reason I raise the issue is because men are expected to be having sex long before society puts any pressure on them to be fathers. Hence my ire towards the religious right on the topic of abortion, because abstinence is simply not a safety net, in the face of all the other pressures put on men to be sexually active. Even in conservative families and communities that pressure is there, often rendering right-wing groups' reliance on abstinence hypocritical as well as naive.
Initially, the religious right seems to encourage both men and women to abstain, but once an unwanted pregnancy occurs, the role of the man in causing it seems to become almost invisible - and all of the social consequences - particularly censure - fall on the woman. I can see how church group's behaviour lends a lot of credibility to the notion that pro-life is about controlling women's bodies rather than principle.
One consequence of being a virgin for what my sister once unflatteringly described as a "long, long, long, long time" is that I know that virginity isn't magical (I didn't get to tame any unicorns); it neither emasculates men nor sanctifies women. This just gives me ample reason to hate this madonna-whore attitude that is threaded through society - that men are expected to be getting laid, and so sexually-available women are needed, but they also have to be demeaned as part of the arrangement, so that the idea of abstinence can keep its respectability for women. I imagine that feminists would point out to me that this is a defining feature of patriarchy.
I've noticed that I never refer to myself as a feminist - not because I want to distance myself from the term; feminism is not a dirty word. I can never tell whether I would meet someone else's definition of one, regardless of what I believe. Some people have very inclusive definitions of feminism, while others don't... and the examples that I have seen go back to what I was saying about "pro-life" and "pro-choice" not being internally-unified as movements.
On Thursday, Rosamund Urwin's article in the Evening Standard was about sex-selective abortion (article here). I found a sad irony in the news that some commentators had told Urwin that she was not a true feminist, just because she had expressed a nuanced view on the topic of abortion. This mindset of excluding someone for not adhering to a "party line" - for want of a better term - may not be representative of many feminists, but it must be hard to stomach even from a select few. One of the more abhorrent aspects of Gamergate is that it represents a club of male gamers that clearly wish to exclude women; what could cause more chagrin than to experience marginalisation from some of the people that are supposed to be fighting against such attitudes?
I say "sad irony", because in another context qualifying as a feminist is apparently simple. As Anita Sarkeesian recently explained to Stephen Colbert, if he believes in standing up for equality between men and women, then he's a feminist. The behaviour of certain public figures would suggest that some regard acquiring the identity of a feminist to be as easy as putting on a Fawcett Society t-shirt.
David Cameron got a lot of stick in the press for refusing to wear one, after saying that he did not believe in labels. I'm no fan of Cameron, but I felt that he should not have been criticised for refusing to wear the "This is what a feminist looks like" slogan. He should be criticised when he actually does something manifestly sexist, like calling a female MP "dear", for example. However, being skeptical about labels is fair. As if helping to make this point, a news story came out shortly after the criticisms of Cameron, reporting that Nigel Farage had apparently sent out his wife to buy a Fawcett Society t-shirt for him. Even if this story was exaggerating or twisting the events, it still reinforced the point that donning a cause's identity and living its values are not the same thing.
One thought that troubles me is the idea that parts of society can be so obsessed with appearances that some people will assume that individuals have values just because they wear certain labels, and vice versa - people will fail to recognise values unless those labels are present.
I recently saw comments on the idea of the UK withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights. One commentator pointed out that ECHR was created after World War II to prevent the values of Nazis from re-emerging; true enough. He then wrote that we don't need ECHR anymore, because there's no danger of a return to Nazi thinking. It was just a stunningly misguided comment; evidently the commentator has not heard about Greece's Golden Dawn party, or any of the other far-right groups gaining prominence in Europe.
But is part of the problem that people would have trouble recognising today's fascists, just because they don't helpfully wear skulls and swastikas? I would hope that such clear visual clues are only needed to identify the bad guys in a Mitchell & Webb sketch....
I think that I should finish this post now. In truth, it's a mess, but that's what I get for trying to map some of my thoughts on a webpage. I don't think that I was trying to write about any single issue or particular concern; perhaps I'm just keeping track of the things that influence me, whether by inspiring or disgusting me.
Until next time, yes? Oh, and hail Hydra.
Gamergate obviously has some responsibility for this. In recent months, media coverage has brought to the fore the abuse that some male gamers have heaped on women simply for speaking their minds. From friends whose writing I follow, like Steve and Pam, to online celebrities like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, numerous people of interest have been providing social commentary on misogynist trolls.
However, Gamergate has not been the only source; my other hobbies have been intersecting with the issue of gender discrimination. Most recently, role-playing has provided me with food for thought on feminism and gender. What started as research for gaming purposes led to some very educational reading on topical issues.
I'm very keen on Leverage - both as a television series and as a role-playing game. Part of the appeal is that Leverage is basically neo-pulp; it is about people with extraordinary skills taking on bad guys and making it look fun. Yet the other part of Leverage's appeal is its basis in reality. The writers for both the television series and the game books did a lot of research on real abuses of power; behind every fantasy about a group of outlaw heroes bringing a villain to justice is a true story - sadly, it is usually a story about someone rich and powerful getting away with something horrible.
I thought that - if I want to play the game one day - I should conduct some research too. So I started to look into real abuses of power. I can't remember how my research started, but I soon found myself reading about harassment of abortion providers and Crisis Pregnancy Centres. My research went from a relatively-idle curiosity for gaming purposes to more serious interest in short order.
Part of my research included watching the documentary After Tiller, which is about the four doctors that are able to conduct late-term abortions in the United States; a pro-life supporter murdered the fifth. It certainly shed a lot of light on the people that seek abortions at a late stage. One example in the film was a rape victim, who had waited a long time to seek an abortion because she had been in denial about the pregnancy. Her denial was entirely understandable, considering what a terrible thing a rape-induced pregnancy must be to acknowledge, especially while likely traumatised.
Inside the clinics were doctors that cared considerably for their patients, while outside pro-life demonstrators were praying and picketing the facilities. I can't think of any more powerful way to challenge pro-life attitudes than the footage, which showed a priest telling his congregation that "pure evil" was going on inside a clinic, while inside a doctor listened patiently to a couple explaining that they had wanted to have a baby, and had already built the nursery and got supplies, but then learnt that the baby had a medical condition so severe that it would last just days outside the womb (on life support) before dying.
I gathered information on Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs) from a variety of sources, and they are certainly unsettling.
From reading about social engineering and life hacks, I had already learnt about "round-the-corner" tricks. Imagine a hustler positioning himself close to a corner shop, and - when the store's owner isn't looking - puts a "deliveries around the corner" sign in front of the shop. When the postal worker or courier arrives, the hustler meets the delivery man at the side of the property, receives the delivery and subsequently makes off with the goods. Well, CPCs in the United States are basically a "round-the-corner" trick that religious groups play on pregnant women.
The groups set up "health centres" in close proximity to abortion clinics (to increase the chance that women seeking abortions will enter their centres by mistake), and the centres also have well-designed websites that are intended to make them appear to be medical providers. However, CPCs do not perform any procedures - the most that they provide is usually an ultrasound. Their staff are mostly church volunteers, and they use the centres to facilitate meeting women that are seeking abortion. The purpose of any CPC is to persuade women to bring a baby to term. By persuade, I mean apply pressure and spread misinformation about the medical implications. A much more effective explanation than anything I could say can be found here.
What I found most disturbing was the effort and subtlety that goes into making CPCs appear as friendly and professional as possible. I have visited the actual website of a CPC, and the attention to detail and style is very carefully tailored.
Thanks to the joys of the Internet, I have seen friends and total strangers alike expressing opinions on abortion; some with thought and nuance - others disastrously.
I tend to get frustrated with the idea that "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are the two defining sides of this issue, as if they are two internally-unified movements. As far as I can tell, "pro-life" in particular tends to include people with a range of different opinions, some of them contradicting others.
Some pro-life commentators just seem to have the notion that ready access to abortion leads to women using it casually, as if it were a form of retroactive contraception. They may not be able to point to any woman who takes a casual view of such an invasive procedure, but they tend to take issue with the numbers of elective procedures. As presumptuous as such an opinion may be, at least it implies that the commentator accepts that circumstances - especially medical ones - can make abortion necessary in some cases. Such pro-lifers also tend to be in favour of contraception, believing that if people took proper precautions then elective procedures would not be occurring for socio-economic reasons.
Such views may be naive, but they do not cause me to fume inwardly - that reaction tends to be reserved for the pro-life activists that are anti-abortion and anti-contraception, and consider that the only safeguard against complications from sex should be abstinence and saving it for marriage. The moment anyone suggests that people should only be having sex for the purpose of procreation, I feel my blood pressure rising. This is only compounded when I note that the advocates of this position are usually the religious right, who have in the past supplied the most intimidating and violent harassers of abortion providers.
My anger stems not from research into religion or feminism, but from personal experience - of something that is easier to write about now that I have some distance from it, both in terms of time and emotion.
Until the age of 34, I was a virgin. I realise that - as an age to first have a sexual relationship - that's actually older than some of my long-term friends are now. I was not asexual, eschewing sex or maintaining a religious vow. In fact, if I was to lie and claim that I had been consciously avoiding sex, it would undermine the point that I have in mind. I wasn't averse to sex, I just did not have sexual relations.
What I can say is that - when you're a man, being a virgin is easy; being perceived as a virgin is hard. I've seen plenty of fiction that raises the idea that guys need to get laid, but the idea is itself entirely fictional. It doesn't "straighten you out" or "make a man of you". If a man goes without it, it does not make him desperate, or scared of women. In my history of mental health issues, lack of sex was not a contributor and was not conflated with loneliness.
Although not having a sexual relationship was not a cause for concern, I was acutely aware of society's expectations and presumptions about men that don't have sex. The reason I raise the issue is because men are expected to be having sex long before society puts any pressure on them to be fathers. Hence my ire towards the religious right on the topic of abortion, because abstinence is simply not a safety net, in the face of all the other pressures put on men to be sexually active. Even in conservative families and communities that pressure is there, often rendering right-wing groups' reliance on abstinence hypocritical as well as naive.
Initially, the religious right seems to encourage both men and women to abstain, but once an unwanted pregnancy occurs, the role of the man in causing it seems to become almost invisible - and all of the social consequences - particularly censure - fall on the woman. I can see how church group's behaviour lends a lot of credibility to the notion that pro-life is about controlling women's bodies rather than principle.
One consequence of being a virgin for what my sister once unflatteringly described as a "long, long, long, long time" is that I know that virginity isn't magical (I didn't get to tame any unicorns); it neither emasculates men nor sanctifies women. This just gives me ample reason to hate this madonna-whore attitude that is threaded through society - that men are expected to be getting laid, and so sexually-available women are needed, but they also have to be demeaned as part of the arrangement, so that the idea of abstinence can keep its respectability for women. I imagine that feminists would point out to me that this is a defining feature of patriarchy.
I've noticed that I never refer to myself as a feminist - not because I want to distance myself from the term; feminism is not a dirty word. I can never tell whether I would meet someone else's definition of one, regardless of what I believe. Some people have very inclusive definitions of feminism, while others don't... and the examples that I have seen go back to what I was saying about "pro-life" and "pro-choice" not being internally-unified as movements.
On Thursday, Rosamund Urwin's article in the Evening Standard was about sex-selective abortion (article here). I found a sad irony in the news that some commentators had told Urwin that she was not a true feminist, just because she had expressed a nuanced view on the topic of abortion. This mindset of excluding someone for not adhering to a "party line" - for want of a better term - may not be representative of many feminists, but it must be hard to stomach even from a select few. One of the more abhorrent aspects of Gamergate is that it represents a club of male gamers that clearly wish to exclude women; what could cause more chagrin than to experience marginalisation from some of the people that are supposed to be fighting against such attitudes?
I say "sad irony", because in another context qualifying as a feminist is apparently simple. As Anita Sarkeesian recently explained to Stephen Colbert, if he believes in standing up for equality between men and women, then he's a feminist. The behaviour of certain public figures would suggest that some regard acquiring the identity of a feminist to be as easy as putting on a Fawcett Society t-shirt.
David Cameron got a lot of stick in the press for refusing to wear one, after saying that he did not believe in labels. I'm no fan of Cameron, but I felt that he should not have been criticised for refusing to wear the "This is what a feminist looks like" slogan. He should be criticised when he actually does something manifestly sexist, like calling a female MP "dear", for example. However, being skeptical about labels is fair. As if helping to make this point, a news story came out shortly after the criticisms of Cameron, reporting that Nigel Farage had apparently sent out his wife to buy a Fawcett Society t-shirt for him. Even if this story was exaggerating or twisting the events, it still reinforced the point that donning a cause's identity and living its values are not the same thing.
One thought that troubles me is the idea that parts of society can be so obsessed with appearances that some people will assume that individuals have values just because they wear certain labels, and vice versa - people will fail to recognise values unless those labels are present.
I recently saw comments on the idea of the UK withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights. One commentator pointed out that ECHR was created after World War II to prevent the values of Nazis from re-emerging; true enough. He then wrote that we don't need ECHR anymore, because there's no danger of a return to Nazi thinking. It was just a stunningly misguided comment; evidently the commentator has not heard about Greece's Golden Dawn party, or any of the other far-right groups gaining prominence in Europe.
But is part of the problem that people would have trouble recognising today's fascists, just because they don't helpfully wear skulls and swastikas? I would hope that such clear visual clues are only needed to identify the bad guys in a Mitchell & Webb sketch....
I think that I should finish this post now. In truth, it's a mess, but that's what I get for trying to map some of my thoughts on a webpage. I don't think that I was trying to write about any single issue or particular concern; perhaps I'm just keeping track of the things that influence me, whether by inspiring or disgusting me.
Until next time, yes? Oh, and hail Hydra.
Tuesday 21 October 2014
Super Punk and Post-Punk
I used to have little knowledge of the terms "punk" and "post-punk" until Adrian explained them to me. As I understand their meaning now, "punk" describes a setting where a new development has radically changed society, such as steam technology or cybernetics, and people are still getting accustomed to the change. "Post-punk" is a setting where people have come to accept the new development, and now it is commonplace and widely-understood.
With superheroes being as prevalent in entertainment media as they are at the moment, I've started to suspect that superhumans have their own punk and post-punk settings.
"Superpunk" - as I shall call it for want of a better term - frequently seems to have the following features:
- People with supernatural powers are only just showing up.
- Most of the general public do not know about these powers, and if they do, people with powers are regarded with suspicion or fear.
- A character in the setting probably had no say in what powers he or she has.
- Many super-powered individuals have limited control over their abilities, and stress can trigger the use of their powers.
- If the story has an ensemble of main characters, they will probably have only one power per person.
These themes seem all too familiar from television shows such as Alphas, the 4400, Heroes and Misfits. They even apply to the recent Avengers films, since the general public in Marvel's setting are still getting used to the idea of thunder gods, alien beings and heroes in powered armour.
Interestingly, if I want to find something post-superpunk, I would probably have to look at entertainment that is aimed at a much younger audience. DC's cartoons portray a world that has become accustomed to the existence of powerful superheroes. Some excellent "post-superpunk" films exist, such as the Incredibles and Sky High, but I cannot deny that they are aimed mostly at children or young adults.
Perhaps this is because of an assumption on the part of film and television producers that older audiences cannot accept fantasy as easily as children can. A child can accept a character having superpowers after just a few seconds of explanation, whereas adults seem to need to be taken on a whole journey and see how those powers work out in a semi-realistic world before accepting them. As Steve Dismukes said to me in a recent conversation, DC's Dark Knight films seemed almost apologetic about the fact that they were about a vigilante running around dressed as a giant bat. Steve may be right that one of the most refreshing things about Guardians of the Galaxy is that it made no apologies; instead it simply presented a fantastic setting full of aliens and space ships - without trying to seem grounded in reality or slathering on exposition.
On the other hand, perhaps superpunk just offers more familiar options that writers can mine for drama. A world in which having powers could be unacceptable immediately offers more ways to create tension than a world where people have become used to superhumans.
When I look at role-playing instead of television and films, however, the situation seems to be reversed, and the preference seems to be overwhelmingly post-punk. A lot of games about superheroes (e.g. Champions, Mutants & Masterminds) contain a setting where superheroes and supervillains are well-established. This may be because these games try to provide a way for role-players to insert their characters into the comic book worlds that they have been reading. Marvel and DC comics both have their own licensed RPGs, and other games such as Mutants & Masterminds contain a lot of material that references existing comic books - their characters include "Superman by another name" and the like. I can imagine that another benefit of having a post-superpunk setting is that it allows writers to create heroes, villains, aliens, etc to include in later supplements and thus expand the range of products.
This is not to say that a group of players could not try to tell a "superpunk" story using these games, but they are not really designed to capture that particular narrative flavour, either in their "fluff" or their "crunch". They provide the chance to trade blows with the Joker or Loki, but their books say a lot less about characters that have to hide powers that they can barely control, and have to fear the social consequences or their controversial abilities.
The closest role-playing game to being "superpunk" that comes to my mind is White Wolf's Hunter: the Reckoning. It does a lot to capture the themes of a story where characters come into power that they cannot fully control, and they also have to reconcile this development with a world full of people that do not believe in or understand what they are doing. Hunter: the Reckoning is not quite a perfect example, because the setting's mystical powers only affect other supernatural creatures, but if this caveat and the game's interdependence with the rest of the World of Darkness were removed or ignored, it would be pretty close to what I could call superpunk.
With superheroes being as prevalent in entertainment media as they are at the moment, I've started to suspect that superhumans have their own punk and post-punk settings.
"Superpunk" - as I shall call it for want of a better term - frequently seems to have the following features:
- People with supernatural powers are only just showing up.
- Most of the general public do not know about these powers, and if they do, people with powers are regarded with suspicion or fear.
- A character in the setting probably had no say in what powers he or she has.
- Many super-powered individuals have limited control over their abilities, and stress can trigger the use of their powers.
- If the story has an ensemble of main characters, they will probably have only one power per person.
These themes seem all too familiar from television shows such as Alphas, the 4400, Heroes and Misfits. They even apply to the recent Avengers films, since the general public in Marvel's setting are still getting used to the idea of thunder gods, alien beings and heroes in powered armour.
Interestingly, if I want to find something post-superpunk, I would probably have to look at entertainment that is aimed at a much younger audience. DC's cartoons portray a world that has become accustomed to the existence of powerful superheroes. Some excellent "post-superpunk" films exist, such as the Incredibles and Sky High, but I cannot deny that they are aimed mostly at children or young adults.
Perhaps this is because of an assumption on the part of film and television producers that older audiences cannot accept fantasy as easily as children can. A child can accept a character having superpowers after just a few seconds of explanation, whereas adults seem to need to be taken on a whole journey and see how those powers work out in a semi-realistic world before accepting them. As Steve Dismukes said to me in a recent conversation, DC's Dark Knight films seemed almost apologetic about the fact that they were about a vigilante running around dressed as a giant bat. Steve may be right that one of the most refreshing things about Guardians of the Galaxy is that it made no apologies; instead it simply presented a fantastic setting full of aliens and space ships - without trying to seem grounded in reality or slathering on exposition.
On the other hand, perhaps superpunk just offers more familiar options that writers can mine for drama. A world in which having powers could be unacceptable immediately offers more ways to create tension than a world where people have become used to superhumans.
When I look at role-playing instead of television and films, however, the situation seems to be reversed, and the preference seems to be overwhelmingly post-punk. A lot of games about superheroes (e.g. Champions, Mutants & Masterminds) contain a setting where superheroes and supervillains are well-established. This may be because these games try to provide a way for role-players to insert their characters into the comic book worlds that they have been reading. Marvel and DC comics both have their own licensed RPGs, and other games such as Mutants & Masterminds contain a lot of material that references existing comic books - their characters include "Superman by another name" and the like. I can imagine that another benefit of having a post-superpunk setting is that it allows writers to create heroes, villains, aliens, etc to include in later supplements and thus expand the range of products.
This is not to say that a group of players could not try to tell a "superpunk" story using these games, but they are not really designed to capture that particular narrative flavour, either in their "fluff" or their "crunch". They provide the chance to trade blows with the Joker or Loki, but their books say a lot less about characters that have to hide powers that they can barely control, and have to fear the social consequences or their controversial abilities.
The closest role-playing game to being "superpunk" that comes to my mind is White Wolf's Hunter: the Reckoning. It does a lot to capture the themes of a story where characters come into power that they cannot fully control, and they also have to reconcile this development with a world full of people that do not believe in or understand what they are doing. Hunter: the Reckoning is not quite a perfect example, because the setting's mystical powers only affect other supernatural creatures, but if this caveat and the game's interdependence with the rest of the World of Darkness were removed or ignored, it would be pretty close to what I could call superpunk.
Monday 11 August 2014
Anime and Me
Yesterday, Wil Wheaton wrote a blog post about Akira, the film that introduced him to Japanese anime. It led me to think about my introduction to the genre; his exposure to it was quite similar to mine, but our experience was quite different.
Like Wil, my first exposure to Japanese anime was Akira, which I saw when I was about 16. It did not appeal to me. Sure, the imagery was striking, but I did not really have much enthusiasm for the themes of gang violence, state-sponsored murder and supernatural body horror. Perhaps it was relatively uncomfortable viewing at the time, because Akira was the first example that I had seen of animation being used to tell an adult story - and a harsh, bloody one at that. I did not feel any strong urge to pursue and find out more about Japanese anime.
University did not change that, particularly because I spent my second year living with Adam Hattrell. Adam is a fan, but the impression of anime that I got from him only served to convince me that it largely consisted of nihilistic adult violence with unlikeable characters (looking at you, Golgo 13), or tentacle-based perversion that I just did not want to see. I've never watched Urotsukidoji, but I was regaled several times with the horror story of the night when Adam convinced / tricked IFIS into showing it, leading to stunned silences and members walking out in shock.
I don't think that my appreciation of Japanese anime changed until I was living in House Chthulhu. I cannot remember whether Linette or Steve had the copy of Princess Mononoke, but it was the film that showed me that anime had something good to offer - in this case a beautifully-realised fantasy adventure. Of course, after being introduced to Studio Ghibli, I soon saw possibly the best Japanese anime film - perhaps one of the best animated films of all - Spirited Away, which thoroughly earned its Oscar.
From there, Shayna introduced me to the late Satoshi Kon's films with Perfect Blue, and I watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I was not expecting to like GitS: SAC, because I was expecting a thin plot as a premise for cyberpunk battles, but my assumption was of course wrong. The politics and espionage elements of the series are two of its strongest points; particularly whenever the plot was following Section Chief Aramaki. Far from being juvenile, GitS: SAC is more like the bastard child of Neuromancer and The Sandbaggers.
At House of Plot, I had welcome help finding good films and television series from Adrian and Beth, who would watch a lot of anime. I would not watch with them, but I would be interested in some of the series that they recommended, especially the brilliant Dennou Coil - a very intricate, and yet child-friendly take on post-cyberpunk Japan. Adrian and Beth helpfully sorted the wheat from the chaff for me; I think that they saw a lot of bad or uninteresting anime, but in the process saved me from doing so.
Nonetheless, their help was not always enough to save me from being shown some very bad anime. Like Afro Samurai. Thanks, Tez.
Looking back on my experience of it, the most affecting Japanese anime that I have seen is definitely Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent, which had a lot of emotional impact on me, even more than touching films like My Neighbour Totoro. This tends to surprise some of my friends that have seen it, because it can be a confusing and dark series. It contains a lot of personal horror, and it in no way holds the viewer's hand as it reveals its story.
What made it so affecting is that I watched it in 2011, while I had depression. At the time, I was having trouble finding the will to get up from the sofa on week-ends, and felt pretty miserable about a lot of things. Watching psychological horror while needing psychiatric help may not sound very wise, but Paranoia Agent actually gave me the kick that I needed to start dealing with my issues. This may seem strange, since - when most people talk about media that gave them a helpful push with personal problems - they usually refer to something uplifting - something Capra-esque, not Kafka-esque, and Paranoia Agent is certainly the latter.
To give a somewhat simplified explanation, Paranoia Agent is a story about a society being consumed with stress, excuses and pressure, almost to the point of causing Munchausen's Syndrome in the general populace. The anime follows a number of different characters, who - as a result of problems in their lives - want to occupy the role of a sick or injured person, because it takes the weight of the world off them. Just as their problems seem insurmountable, a mysterious teenager with roller skates and a baseball bat appears and assaults them, hospitalising them - and thereby providing the excuse that they need to fail. However, as the series progresses, two detectives begin to find that Shonen Bat, the boy on the roller skates, is something altogether supernatural, and his victims start dying rather than getting the release that they want. The story ends badly for a lot of people.
The story presents two characters that blur the line between reality and popular fiction: Shonen Bat becomes a bogeyman to the general public, and the story also presents Mellow Maromi, a plush mascot (and a satirical take on Japan's tarepanda) that encourages people to "take a break". However, these fictions-within-a-fiction are flipsides of the same coin. While Maromi is an enabler for people as they let their duties slide, Shonen Bat represents the extreme way out that those same people need, after ducking responsibility gets them in a jam.
In my mental state at the time, I think that my mind wrapped itself around this meaning surprisingly quickly; I know other people whose reactions to watching Paranoia Agent is more along the lines of "Wuh?". It was kind of a harsh message to get from a television series. As I said, some people find that an uplifting message is helpful. However, what got me to seek professional help was something on television that said to me "take ownership of your depression and fix it, or fuckin' else".
Well, that piece of reminiscing went a bit deeper than I had anticipated when I started writing, but hopefully it makes for a relatively-interesting read.
Like Wil, my first exposure to Japanese anime was Akira, which I saw when I was about 16. It did not appeal to me. Sure, the imagery was striking, but I did not really have much enthusiasm for the themes of gang violence, state-sponsored murder and supernatural body horror. Perhaps it was relatively uncomfortable viewing at the time, because Akira was the first example that I had seen of animation being used to tell an adult story - and a harsh, bloody one at that. I did not feel any strong urge to pursue and find out more about Japanese anime.
University did not change that, particularly because I spent my second year living with Adam Hattrell. Adam is a fan, but the impression of anime that I got from him only served to convince me that it largely consisted of nihilistic adult violence with unlikeable characters (looking at you, Golgo 13), or tentacle-based perversion that I just did not want to see. I've never watched Urotsukidoji, but I was regaled several times with the horror story of the night when Adam convinced / tricked IFIS into showing it, leading to stunned silences and members walking out in shock.
I don't think that my appreciation of Japanese anime changed until I was living in House Chthulhu. I cannot remember whether Linette or Steve had the copy of Princess Mononoke, but it was the film that showed me that anime had something good to offer - in this case a beautifully-realised fantasy adventure. Of course, after being introduced to Studio Ghibli, I soon saw possibly the best Japanese anime film - perhaps one of the best animated films of all - Spirited Away, which thoroughly earned its Oscar.
From there, Shayna introduced me to the late Satoshi Kon's films with Perfect Blue, and I watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I was not expecting to like GitS: SAC, because I was expecting a thin plot as a premise for cyberpunk battles, but my assumption was of course wrong. The politics and espionage elements of the series are two of its strongest points; particularly whenever the plot was following Section Chief Aramaki. Far from being juvenile, GitS: SAC is more like the bastard child of Neuromancer and The Sandbaggers.
At House of Plot, I had welcome help finding good films and television series from Adrian and Beth, who would watch a lot of anime. I would not watch with them, but I would be interested in some of the series that they recommended, especially the brilliant Dennou Coil - a very intricate, and yet child-friendly take on post-cyberpunk Japan. Adrian and Beth helpfully sorted the wheat from the chaff for me; I think that they saw a lot of bad or uninteresting anime, but in the process saved me from doing so.
Nonetheless, their help was not always enough to save me from being shown some very bad anime. Like Afro Samurai. Thanks, Tez.
Looking back on my experience of it, the most affecting Japanese anime that I have seen is definitely Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent, which had a lot of emotional impact on me, even more than touching films like My Neighbour Totoro. This tends to surprise some of my friends that have seen it, because it can be a confusing and dark series. It contains a lot of personal horror, and it in no way holds the viewer's hand as it reveals its story.
What made it so affecting is that I watched it in 2011, while I had depression. At the time, I was having trouble finding the will to get up from the sofa on week-ends, and felt pretty miserable about a lot of things. Watching psychological horror while needing psychiatric help may not sound very wise, but Paranoia Agent actually gave me the kick that I needed to start dealing with my issues. This may seem strange, since - when most people talk about media that gave them a helpful push with personal problems - they usually refer to something uplifting - something Capra-esque, not Kafka-esque, and Paranoia Agent is certainly the latter.
To give a somewhat simplified explanation, Paranoia Agent is a story about a society being consumed with stress, excuses and pressure, almost to the point of causing Munchausen's Syndrome in the general populace. The anime follows a number of different characters, who - as a result of problems in their lives - want to occupy the role of a sick or injured person, because it takes the weight of the world off them. Just as their problems seem insurmountable, a mysterious teenager with roller skates and a baseball bat appears and assaults them, hospitalising them - and thereby providing the excuse that they need to fail. However, as the series progresses, two detectives begin to find that Shonen Bat, the boy on the roller skates, is something altogether supernatural, and his victims start dying rather than getting the release that they want. The story ends badly for a lot of people.
The story presents two characters that blur the line between reality and popular fiction: Shonen Bat becomes a bogeyman to the general public, and the story also presents Mellow Maromi, a plush mascot (and a satirical take on Japan's tarepanda) that encourages people to "take a break". However, these fictions-within-a-fiction are flipsides of the same coin. While Maromi is an enabler for people as they let their duties slide, Shonen Bat represents the extreme way out that those same people need, after ducking responsibility gets them in a jam.
In my mental state at the time, I think that my mind wrapped itself around this meaning surprisingly quickly; I know other people whose reactions to watching Paranoia Agent is more along the lines of "Wuh?". It was kind of a harsh message to get from a television series. As I said, some people find that an uplifting message is helpful. However, what got me to seek professional help was something on television that said to me "take ownership of your depression and fix it, or fuckin' else".
Well, that piece of reminiscing went a bit deeper than I had anticipated when I started writing, but hopefully it makes for a relatively-interesting read.
Sunday 3 August 2014
Hot Finishes and Clean Finishes
Everything that I know about running a LARP, I learned from pro-wrestling.
Heh; well, okay - not everything, but the behind-the-scenes logic of American wrestling has informed some of the better, smarter decisions that I've made as a storyteller for live-action roleplay.
Being a role-player and being a wrestling fan is a strange space to occupy. I have plenty of friends who - like me - spent a number of their teenage years having to hide their interest in all things gaming-related, because the phrase "as cruel as school-children" is well-deserved, and few things could attract derision as readily as expressing interest in Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer. I know that some of us are still wary about even telling adults about the interest.
However, I have discovered at times that expressing an interest in wrestling can sometimes attract the kind of mocking responses from my fellow nerds that they used to get for being into games. Mention an interest in wrestling and I've often had to suffer some condescending jack-ass who feels the need to tell me it's stoopid, and ask me whether I know that it's not real*. I'm far from being the only gamer in my social circle with an interest in wrestling, but it can be a risky thing to admit.
I find this ironic, because if you take away the audience, pro-wrestling is similar to LARP - uncomfortably similar, some might find. Let's face it, if you like running around in a costume, playing a melodramatic character and swapping pulled blows from latex weapons, that's pretty damn close to pro-wrestling. Both activities have the notion of in-character and out-of-character, although wrestling uses the terms "kayfabe" and "shoot" respectively. Wrestling also has its storyteller behind the scenes ("the booker"). I've had some of my gamer friends literally stick their fingers in their ears and say "lalalalala" because they didn't like finding out how similar the activities are in concept.
However, the more I learned about the terminology and planning in wrestling, the more I began to notice concepts that are very useful for LARP. Pro-wrestling doesn't just have gimmicky characters, over-the-top speeches and staged fights like LARP does, it also has to sell those things to an audience on a regular basis. So maybe bookers and wrestlers might know a few things that gamers don't about making LARP a success.
The last time I used a wrestling idea was for Upwick Manor. I was watching a shoot interview with a former wrestler called Shane Douglas, and he was talking about the difference between a Clean Finish and a Hot Finish. When a booker puts on a wrestling show, he can have one or the other. In a clean finish, the Face (the fan's favourite) wins the last match of the evening, the main event, and the audience gets to go home happy. In a hot finish, the good guys get a raw deal; some sort of betrayal, cheat or ambush takes place, and the Heels (wrestling's bad guys) end the night standing in the ring with their arms raised in triumph, to the boos of the crowd.
As Shane Douglas explained, when a wrestling show is trying to get started and build up interest, hot finishes are actually far more useful to the promoters than clean ones. Clean finishes sound popular, but part of the problem is that they satisfy the audience, and so they don't necessarily feel an impetus to tune in for the next show. On the other hand, the point of a hot finish is to create a sense of unfinished business, so that the fans come back, wanting to see whether the Faces get revenge on the Heels.
Before seeing this interview, I had never really thought about the relevance of this logic to running a LARP that entails a series of games. It caused me to reflect on the different games that I had attended in old-World of Darkness Cam UK, pondering whether some of them had clean finishes, and whether some of their resolutions had made it easier for me not to go back to that venue on the following month.
I imagine that the equivalent of a clean finish in LARP are those games where the monster-of-the-week shows up at about 10pm, the players fight it, get to show off their characters' capabilities, and then the game wraps up and everyone goes home. But how many games had I attended where the storyteller took steps to make sure that the players were sent home with a sense of unfinished business or a need for revenge? How many games had I run without thinking about how useful a hot finish would be, as a way to bring players back?
So, when Elle and I were planning Upwick Manor, I wanted the reading of the Will to be one of the last things to happen during the first game. Part of the reason for this was because the players would have time to get used to the social gulf between guests and servants, before any upheaval occurred. The other reason was because I wanted a Hot Finish. I wanted the game to end while the players were off-balance, before they had enough time to recover fully from the surprise announcement and get to grips with the Will.
We were lucky during the second Upwick Manor game, because I think that it also had a Hot Finish, even though Elle and I had a lot less control over plot developments at that point. Two major revelations came out just as time was running out, both surrounding Adrian's character. I think that those controversies helped the game to keep its momentum. The third game had the Clean Finish, but of course it was the finale, and so that was the right time for it.
So, that's one of my stories about how pro-wrestling - specifically the way that bookers think about the pace of their story arcs - helped my creative process for a LARP. I think I might do one or two more wrestling-meets-LARP posts on this blog in the future, because more can be written about wrestling concepts that translate well in live-action role-play. My experience is that they have made me more considerate as a storyteller and as a player. Who knows? Maybe this post might get some of my friends thinking about whether they play in or run games that lure players back with hot finishes, or make it possible for new players to attend just one game and not show up again, because it ended cleanly.
Leave your thoughts, questions or mocking jibes about wrestling in the comments below....
*The wrestling industry became a lot more open about the fact that it's pretense in the 1990s, but wrestlers still react badly to being called "fake" in interviews or by journalists. A large part of this is due to the fact that their frequent stunt work nonetheless puts them at genuine risk of injury.
Heh; well, okay - not everything, but the behind-the-scenes logic of American wrestling has informed some of the better, smarter decisions that I've made as a storyteller for live-action roleplay.
Being a role-player and being a wrestling fan is a strange space to occupy. I have plenty of friends who - like me - spent a number of their teenage years having to hide their interest in all things gaming-related, because the phrase "as cruel as school-children" is well-deserved, and few things could attract derision as readily as expressing interest in Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer. I know that some of us are still wary about even telling adults about the interest.
However, I have discovered at times that expressing an interest in wrestling can sometimes attract the kind of mocking responses from my fellow nerds that they used to get for being into games. Mention an interest in wrestling and I've often had to suffer some condescending jack-ass who feels the need to tell me it's stoopid, and ask me whether I know that it's not real*. I'm far from being the only gamer in my social circle with an interest in wrestling, but it can be a risky thing to admit.
I find this ironic, because if you take away the audience, pro-wrestling is similar to LARP - uncomfortably similar, some might find. Let's face it, if you like running around in a costume, playing a melodramatic character and swapping pulled blows from latex weapons, that's pretty damn close to pro-wrestling. Both activities have the notion of in-character and out-of-character, although wrestling uses the terms "kayfabe" and "shoot" respectively. Wrestling also has its storyteller behind the scenes ("the booker"). I've had some of my gamer friends literally stick their fingers in their ears and say "lalalalala" because they didn't like finding out how similar the activities are in concept.
However, the more I learned about the terminology and planning in wrestling, the more I began to notice concepts that are very useful for LARP. Pro-wrestling doesn't just have gimmicky characters, over-the-top speeches and staged fights like LARP does, it also has to sell those things to an audience on a regular basis. So maybe bookers and wrestlers might know a few things that gamers don't about making LARP a success.
The last time I used a wrestling idea was for Upwick Manor. I was watching a shoot interview with a former wrestler called Shane Douglas, and he was talking about the difference between a Clean Finish and a Hot Finish. When a booker puts on a wrestling show, he can have one or the other. In a clean finish, the Face (the fan's favourite) wins the last match of the evening, the main event, and the audience gets to go home happy. In a hot finish, the good guys get a raw deal; some sort of betrayal, cheat or ambush takes place, and the Heels (wrestling's bad guys) end the night standing in the ring with their arms raised in triumph, to the boos of the crowd.
As Shane Douglas explained, when a wrestling show is trying to get started and build up interest, hot finishes are actually far more useful to the promoters than clean ones. Clean finishes sound popular, but part of the problem is that they satisfy the audience, and so they don't necessarily feel an impetus to tune in for the next show. On the other hand, the point of a hot finish is to create a sense of unfinished business, so that the fans come back, wanting to see whether the Faces get revenge on the Heels.
Before seeing this interview, I had never really thought about the relevance of this logic to running a LARP that entails a series of games. It caused me to reflect on the different games that I had attended in old-World of Darkness Cam UK, pondering whether some of them had clean finishes, and whether some of their resolutions had made it easier for me not to go back to that venue on the following month.
I imagine that the equivalent of a clean finish in LARP are those games where the monster-of-the-week shows up at about 10pm, the players fight it, get to show off their characters' capabilities, and then the game wraps up and everyone goes home. But how many games had I attended where the storyteller took steps to make sure that the players were sent home with a sense of unfinished business or a need for revenge? How many games had I run without thinking about how useful a hot finish would be, as a way to bring players back?
So, when Elle and I were planning Upwick Manor, I wanted the reading of the Will to be one of the last things to happen during the first game. Part of the reason for this was because the players would have time to get used to the social gulf between guests and servants, before any upheaval occurred. The other reason was because I wanted a Hot Finish. I wanted the game to end while the players were off-balance, before they had enough time to recover fully from the surprise announcement and get to grips with the Will.
We were lucky during the second Upwick Manor game, because I think that it also had a Hot Finish, even though Elle and I had a lot less control over plot developments at that point. Two major revelations came out just as time was running out, both surrounding Adrian's character. I think that those controversies helped the game to keep its momentum. The third game had the Clean Finish, but of course it was the finale, and so that was the right time for it.
So, that's one of my stories about how pro-wrestling - specifically the way that bookers think about the pace of their story arcs - helped my creative process for a LARP. I think I might do one or two more wrestling-meets-LARP posts on this blog in the future, because more can be written about wrestling concepts that translate well in live-action role-play. My experience is that they have made me more considerate as a storyteller and as a player. Who knows? Maybe this post might get some of my friends thinking about whether they play in or run games that lure players back with hot finishes, or make it possible for new players to attend just one game and not show up again, because it ended cleanly.
Leave your thoughts, questions or mocking jibes about wrestling in the comments below....
*The wrestling industry became a lot more open about the fact that it's pretense in the 1990s, but wrestlers still react badly to being called "fake" in interviews or by journalists. A large part of this is due to the fact that their frequent stunt work nonetheless puts them at genuine risk of injury.
Tuesday 22 July 2014
Upwick Manor Post-Game
One of my motivations behind creating the Upwick Manor LARP was to find out whether I could learn from my previous game - LA Confidential Live - and so write a better role-playing experience for the players. Not that I regard LA Confidential Live as a failed or even particularly flawed game, but it gave me the chance to see what worked well and what caused problems.
I learned a lot about tightening up the setting of a game. The Player Characters in LA Confidential Live all had disparate lives and interests inside a big city. As a result, the idea that their lives would all intersect as frequently as the game required became contrived. I learned that a LARP often needs in its premise a single, physical location where the characters all have some sort of business, and for all of the players to understand its relevance from the beginning. One re-watching of Gosford Park later, I was convinced that an English Manor house was a great setting for a game, with the upstairs / downstairs divide being something that could be replicated using the two staircase-linked rooms in Englefield Green's Social Hall.
I also wanted to move away from needing much of a game system. The Dirty World system that I had used in the past was obscure and clunky - not very accessible to the players - even after I had chucked out Greg Stolze's accursed and pretentious One-Roll Engine. Elle Clegg, Elle Bullimore and Martin Hornsey's "Corporate Weekender" game in Gosport taught me a great deal about what a game could achieve purely with soft role-play. So, I went looking for a premise that would require as few rules as possible.
At first, I spent weeks in 2013 mulling over ideas that didn't work. I considered a game where an aristocratic family's fortune could be tied to a Faustian pact, and the rich family members would have to decide whether to re-new a deal with the forces of darkness, or see their wealth crumble. The problem with these fancy ideas was that I could not see how such a plot would engage the "downstairs" players and give them as much to do in the game.
I realised that the problem was trying to make a game with a supernatural element. So many of the LARPs that I have played over time have had science-fiction or fantasy elements that I was trying to use them just out of habit. I had not needed LA Confidential Live to have supernatural things, and they were actually limiting the way that I was thinking. Once I ditched the fantastical, I soon hit on the idea about executing a Will - a weird blend of Downton Abbey and Brewster's Millions.
I can remember when I approached Elle with the concept and my request that she co-ST, because we were at Ross and Pam's summer barbecue in 2013. Some guests were talking about their Requiem characters at her, and this gave me the perfect opportunity to offer her a change of subject. I already knew from things said in passing at the Doctor Who tabletop game that she liked the idea of preparing food for a LARP set in an historic period, and I fully intended to exploit *cough*, I mean pique her interest in doing that.
The premise also appealed to another interest that Elle and I have in common - making players squirm on the horns of a dilemma. Plotting with Elle was very useful; it identified a number of things that the game should include, and tightened up the story. She determined that the Will should be a winner-takes-all dilemma, foreseeing that giving the executor power to divide up the inheritance in any way would make it too easy to negotiate a happy ending for everyone.
One thing that I liked about the LA Confidential Live game and wanted to keep was that it had a wide range of possible endings, and the Storytellers were not at all invested in any specific outcome. Tom and I did not have any preference for what would happen, and this helped to keep us from nudging the plot and taking away from player agency. Similarly, neither Elle nor I were pushing players to choose a particular winner during Upwick Manor. The only push that we gave was to make an obnoxious NPC with bad intentions the person who would win if the players simply defaulted and failed to make any decision. However, this was merely a device so that the players would come to a resolution within a time frame, while still giving them a lot of options.
The first game of Upwick Manor was deliberately slow to develop. The idea was to let players get used to their characters and to get to know each other. I also hoped that the upstairs players would get used to treating the downstairs players as servants - although I was a little surprised at how quickly and naturally the guests fell into the practice of taking the staff for granted and acting as if they were invisible. Still, this seemed useful for setting up the twist that would drive the rest of the story. In order to shake up the balance of power between the rich and their servants, a little time was needed first to establish how that balance of power would normally feel. Frances' speeches in the first game about the "servant problem" were golden material to that end.
Of course, this meant that the downstairs players had to do a lot of... well, being servants in the first game, and I feel like I should apologise for all the genuine manual labour that their side of the story entailed. I am grateful for everything that they did, and I hope that it added to the atmosphere of the game. When Norwegian LARPers talk about the drawbacks and benefits of "bleed" - where in-character issues have meaning for players out-of-character - they are probably not thinking about the amount of washing up that Ross had to do....
I must admit that I enjoyed the style of LARP in Upwick Manor because the Storytellers did not need to offer any solutions for the players; we just had to seed the entire plot piecemeal among the players, and let them sort it out according to their whims. If done right, I think that this approach is good for the Storytellers, who don't have to take on as much work during play, and for the players, who get a lot of agency and can rest assured that the ending will not involve a "NPC ex machina" plot.
In so many role-playing games, whether live or tabletop, the Storyteller often has to be an authority figure, telling players what they can and cannot do, and whether they succeed. By contrast, being a Storyteller in Upwick Manor and LA Confidential Live was about sowing as much chaos and unclear choices as possible, while giving no answers. I'm starting to appreciate why the tricksters in mythologies seem to be having the most fun.
However, even sowing chaos actually requires orderly planning. In order to make sure that the game was not straightforward, Elle and I had to ensure that the different possibilities in Upwick Manor all had an equal chance of being revealed and considered. This meant that we had to think about ways to ensure that no particular choice was clearly superior or easier than the others. We also wanted to ensure that the game fostered interaction, and one of the main ways to do this was to plan so that, if one character had a problem, he or she could not resolve it without talking to other PCs, usually the ones on the other side of the social divide. For example, if one of the staff was the Lord's illegitimate child, we made sure that the proof of this was in the hands of a family member.
I've had a lot of thoughts about both Upwick Manor and LA Confidential Live. One thing that has struck me and makes me happy is that I had no control in advance over what themes would emerge from these games. For example, I did not know that a major theme in LA Confidential Live would be man's inhumanity towards women - that emerged organically from player's ideas and choices. Upwick Manor could, depending on the player's decisions, have been a completely different game, not just in outcome but also in tone. Due to the players, I think that it was a comedy-drama story about manners, tradition and sympathy, but all the ingredients were also there if the players had wanted to have a less-gentle game about intrigue, shady deals or class warfare instead.
This makes me happy, because - when I can see a web of storylines that could just as easily have been, but did not happen, then I know that the game's direction was genuinely driven by the players' interest. Plus, this is the second role-playing game with multiple episodes in a row that I have been able to run to its intended ending, and that feels positive.
Any comments or thoughts below, and I'll do my best to answer any questions.
I learned a lot about tightening up the setting of a game. The Player Characters in LA Confidential Live all had disparate lives and interests inside a big city. As a result, the idea that their lives would all intersect as frequently as the game required became contrived. I learned that a LARP often needs in its premise a single, physical location where the characters all have some sort of business, and for all of the players to understand its relevance from the beginning. One re-watching of Gosford Park later, I was convinced that an English Manor house was a great setting for a game, with the upstairs / downstairs divide being something that could be replicated using the two staircase-linked rooms in Englefield Green's Social Hall.
I also wanted to move away from needing much of a game system. The Dirty World system that I had used in the past was obscure and clunky - not very accessible to the players - even after I had chucked out Greg Stolze's accursed and pretentious One-Roll Engine. Elle Clegg, Elle Bullimore and Martin Hornsey's "Corporate Weekender" game in Gosport taught me a great deal about what a game could achieve purely with soft role-play. So, I went looking for a premise that would require as few rules as possible.
At first, I spent weeks in 2013 mulling over ideas that didn't work. I considered a game where an aristocratic family's fortune could be tied to a Faustian pact, and the rich family members would have to decide whether to re-new a deal with the forces of darkness, or see their wealth crumble. The problem with these fancy ideas was that I could not see how such a plot would engage the "downstairs" players and give them as much to do in the game.
I realised that the problem was trying to make a game with a supernatural element. So many of the LARPs that I have played over time have had science-fiction or fantasy elements that I was trying to use them just out of habit. I had not needed LA Confidential Live to have supernatural things, and they were actually limiting the way that I was thinking. Once I ditched the fantastical, I soon hit on the idea about executing a Will - a weird blend of Downton Abbey and Brewster's Millions.
I can remember when I approached Elle with the concept and my request that she co-ST, because we were at Ross and Pam's summer barbecue in 2013. Some guests were talking about their Requiem characters at her, and this gave me the perfect opportunity to offer her a change of subject. I already knew from things said in passing at the Doctor Who tabletop game that she liked the idea of preparing food for a LARP set in an historic period, and I fully intended to exploit *cough*, I mean pique her interest in doing that.
The premise also appealed to another interest that Elle and I have in common - making players squirm on the horns of a dilemma. Plotting with Elle was very useful; it identified a number of things that the game should include, and tightened up the story. She determined that the Will should be a winner-takes-all dilemma, foreseeing that giving the executor power to divide up the inheritance in any way would make it too easy to negotiate a happy ending for everyone.
One thing that I liked about the LA Confidential Live game and wanted to keep was that it had a wide range of possible endings, and the Storytellers were not at all invested in any specific outcome. Tom and I did not have any preference for what would happen, and this helped to keep us from nudging the plot and taking away from player agency. Similarly, neither Elle nor I were pushing players to choose a particular winner during Upwick Manor. The only push that we gave was to make an obnoxious NPC with bad intentions the person who would win if the players simply defaulted and failed to make any decision. However, this was merely a device so that the players would come to a resolution within a time frame, while still giving them a lot of options.
The first game of Upwick Manor was deliberately slow to develop. The idea was to let players get used to their characters and to get to know each other. I also hoped that the upstairs players would get used to treating the downstairs players as servants - although I was a little surprised at how quickly and naturally the guests fell into the practice of taking the staff for granted and acting as if they were invisible. Still, this seemed useful for setting up the twist that would drive the rest of the story. In order to shake up the balance of power between the rich and their servants, a little time was needed first to establish how that balance of power would normally feel. Frances' speeches in the first game about the "servant problem" were golden material to that end.
Of course, this meant that the downstairs players had to do a lot of... well, being servants in the first game, and I feel like I should apologise for all the genuine manual labour that their side of the story entailed. I am grateful for everything that they did, and I hope that it added to the atmosphere of the game. When Norwegian LARPers talk about the drawbacks and benefits of "bleed" - where in-character issues have meaning for players out-of-character - they are probably not thinking about the amount of washing up that Ross had to do....
I must admit that I enjoyed the style of LARP in Upwick Manor because the Storytellers did not need to offer any solutions for the players; we just had to seed the entire plot piecemeal among the players, and let them sort it out according to their whims. If done right, I think that this approach is good for the Storytellers, who don't have to take on as much work during play, and for the players, who get a lot of agency and can rest assured that the ending will not involve a "NPC ex machina" plot.
In so many role-playing games, whether live or tabletop, the Storyteller often has to be an authority figure, telling players what they can and cannot do, and whether they succeed. By contrast, being a Storyteller in Upwick Manor and LA Confidential Live was about sowing as much chaos and unclear choices as possible, while giving no answers. I'm starting to appreciate why the tricksters in mythologies seem to be having the most fun.
However, even sowing chaos actually requires orderly planning. In order to make sure that the game was not straightforward, Elle and I had to ensure that the different possibilities in Upwick Manor all had an equal chance of being revealed and considered. This meant that we had to think about ways to ensure that no particular choice was clearly superior or easier than the others. We also wanted to ensure that the game fostered interaction, and one of the main ways to do this was to plan so that, if one character had a problem, he or she could not resolve it without talking to other PCs, usually the ones on the other side of the social divide. For example, if one of the staff was the Lord's illegitimate child, we made sure that the proof of this was in the hands of a family member.
I've had a lot of thoughts about both Upwick Manor and LA Confidential Live. One thing that has struck me and makes me happy is that I had no control in advance over what themes would emerge from these games. For example, I did not know that a major theme in LA Confidential Live would be man's inhumanity towards women - that emerged organically from player's ideas and choices. Upwick Manor could, depending on the player's decisions, have been a completely different game, not just in outcome but also in tone. Due to the players, I think that it was a comedy-drama story about manners, tradition and sympathy, but all the ingredients were also there if the players had wanted to have a less-gentle game about intrigue, shady deals or class warfare instead.
This makes me happy, because - when I can see a web of storylines that could just as easily have been, but did not happen, then I know that the game's direction was genuinely driven by the players' interest. Plus, this is the second role-playing game with multiple episodes in a row that I have been able to run to its intended ending, and that feels positive.
Any comments or thoughts below, and I'll do my best to answer any questions.
Sunday 20 July 2014
Opening Post
This is my first post in a new blog that I have created for my nerdy interests, particularly role-playing.
G+ is great for short entries, but its compressed presentation style does not really work if I want to write extensively on a subject. If I have enough material in my head to produce an article, I'd rather just create an entry with a link to a blog, than showing people the first line or two, with a tag at the bottom that says something like "read more (300 lines)".
I could use Livejournal, but I tend to restrict my posts to LJ to friends only, and few of my friends still use it. Besides, the point of this Blog is not to be about my life or personal matters, but more about the details and thoughts that go into my hobbies and interests, especially the ones that I share with friends.
I rarely write about my feelings, angstings and other emotions. This can be my place for scheming and plotting.
G+ is great for short entries, but its compressed presentation style does not really work if I want to write extensively on a subject. If I have enough material in my head to produce an article, I'd rather just create an entry with a link to a blog, than showing people the first line or two, with a tag at the bottom that says something like "read more (300 lines)".
I could use Livejournal, but I tend to restrict my posts to LJ to friends only, and few of my friends still use it. Besides, the point of this Blog is not to be about my life or personal matters, but more about the details and thoughts that go into my hobbies and interests, especially the ones that I share with friends.
I rarely write about my feelings, angstings and other emotions. This can be my place for scheming and plotting.
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