[Nicotine Girls] If you want it hard enough, and you try hard enough - and?
C. Edwards:
Thanks for that disclosure, Raven. I've been hesitating to post myself.
Reading Ron's post gives me a big black queezy sucking rock in the pit of my stomache. I knew those girls, and a dozen others like them. I still keep in touch with a couple of them. Some of them ended up doing okay, and some not so much. Most of them were single teenage mothers.
I think Nicotine Girls is a game that deserves to be played, but for me it just hits too close to home to do so.
Callan S.:
What's the importance of playing it, in relation to people who are in this cultural/resource situation? Atleast from my looking over it again, to me it's fingering the wound and...it seems to stop there? I get that other artistic mediums can raise awareness and sympathy - but atleast to me I think you'd have to be atleast somewhat sympathetic and aware to play this to begin with?
greyorm:
Quote from: Callan S. on June 16, 2009, 03:17:32 PM
What's the importance of playing it, in relation to people who are in this cultural/resource situation? Atleast from my looking over it again, to me it's fingering the wound and...it seems to stop there? I get that other artistic mediums can raise awareness and sympathy - but atleast to me I think you'd have to be atleast somewhat sympathetic and aware to play this to begin with?
Because having to play characters you care about--that is, people, whom you can't help making being a person yourself--who are in that situation puts nails in the idea the lower class is lazy, dirty, stupid...dehumanized untouchables basically lower than animals. (And lest anyone chuckle or roll their eyes, I am not kidding about or overstating that perception in any way. I am deadly serious.)
This is more than just "fingering the wound" because there's a difference between having an intellectual understanding of all these issues, which you can easily push out of sight like you can with most things in your head, and having a personal, emotional connection to it that doesn't go away so easily, and which a game that highlights the humanity of untouchables can provide in part, forcing one to understand and empathize. (ie: if you spend your time thinking about the feelings and struggles of even a fictional construct in that situation, it's much more helpful and motivating than if you understand and accept only that the poor have struggles.)
E:
I don't know, I think those stories don't necessary need to be seen only as depressing or as the fingering of a wound. Opportunities are maybe absent or missed, but still, people are living through those situations and manage to swim in those waters, they still have significant moments and experiences. Their life don't have to be felt as stories about some kind of victimization. Not fulfilling one's dream can be seen as a tragedy, but it don't need to be perceived as a constant state of being. Maybe even that Hope and the epilogue about fulfilling one's dream or not impose on those stories some unnecessary values or morale. I don't know, since those stories are also close to me, maybe I want to see them as ordinary stories that have their own inner value without needing of being morale or about sensibilisation. Maybe I also want to see them as not constantly sad or tragic even if they are about lack of opportunities (or missed ones).
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
Chris, one of my thoughts about this thread is that if we cannot utilize role-playing for the feelings and emergent stories for issues of this kind, then the medium itself is unsuitable for Narrativism. Emulating Hollywood is one thing; doing this is another. I happen to think that no fiction-creating medium is inherently limited in content, so I'm optimistic. Or to put it less abstractly, that "big black queezy sucking rock" is your signal to do it. If you were a filmmaker or a novelist, that'd be the case without controversy. And I'm guessing you know what to call such a creative person who shrinks away from the signal and remains with making only pablum, or even workmanlike quite-good stuff that happens not to be the BBQS rock.
(Side point: assuming the existence of a medium which is not capable of such content, the other, non-Narrativist things to do with it are not inferior or stupid. I'm talking in the context of the desire for fiction, and to create it, in the same or greater range of literature, theater, and film.)
Callan, I'm glad you posted that question. As I see it, there is no specific goal involved beyond that of what I called the cold grasping hand. If it's cold and grasping enough, then the person who feels it must re-evaluate his or her behavior. What will they do after that? I don't know. I definitely don't have a specific recommendation. What I want is to be around people, to live in a community including people, who've experienced that. Whatever actions or attitudes I'd be seeing and dealing with, I prefer those - including ones I might not like - to what I see and deal with now. I guess I'm saying ... to me, it doesn't "stop there" in terms of having played. Now that I think about it, or rather, as you've prompted me to think about it, if we're talking about having merely read it, yes, I agree with you. Maybe that's where Chris' stomach is at, actually. It's definitely in tune with Raven's point, because his post is about play.
Evlyn, one of the things I want to stress about the epilogues is that Maura and I weren't thinking in terms of constructing "the moral of the story," but rather thinking in terms of what the fiction so far made nigh-inevitable, as we saw it. I think that such endings do create (facilitate?) themes, which are themselves "the moral of the story" in simplistic terms, but I also think making them as I describe generates honesty and insight rather than imposing a false lesson. The best thing about the honesty and insight that I'm talking about is that it can prompt disturbance, not merely confirmation, of one's currently-held values. I think that's related to Callan's question in a positive way - if coming up with the point of the story in an external, overlaid, imposed way were to be done, then yes - the only possible result would be ... it's hard to find a word ... trivial.
Best, Ron
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