thread: 2005-07-05 : Setting and Source Material
On 2005-07-13, Vincent wrote:
Emily: "Having a specific text is not to blame, but it is imaginable that loyalty to a given work might cloud someone's judgement about what is really interesting about creating fiction."Lord. The thread goes from "fetishization is creatively unhealthy" to "it is imaginable that loyalty might."
Here's a story. Once upon a time I joined the Ars Magica email list out of Berkely. Shannon Appel, David Woods, David Chart, a bunch of others hung out there. The fourth edition was in the works. I read for a while, of course, figured out the rules and social order and stuff. When I felt comfy doing so, I posted.
I said, "y'know, if you want Ars Magica to not suck so very, very bad, here are the first five fundamental things you'll have to change."
They received me ... poorly. The end.
I'M HERE AMONG GEEKS SAYING THAT SOMETHING WE GEEKS DO, SUCKS.
I'm totally willing to back off about fanfic: I grant that fanfic exists that doesn't fetishize its source material.
But I stand: fetishizing our source material is something we do a lot, something that most rpgs insist that we do, and it's holding us back - holding us back relative to my agenda and the stated purpose of this blog thingy. We need to work out a whole new relationship with our source material - that's part of what we're doing here. We need to learn how to treat it as what is, our tool and subject to our whim, not some sacred unchanging thing.
