[Nicotine Girls] If you want it hard enough, and you try hard enough - and?
E:
After reading back my post I was like "ouch It dint come out as I wanted to express m y thought on the subject". I wish I was able to adjust my vocabulary as I expressed myself like in a direct conversation. I agree that my comment about a moral dont fit with your actual play report. I enjoyed the trivial endings, and I liked your actual play report. I dint see it as sad. I especially liked the Walmart epilogue. I think that since I enjoy stories containing the theme found in Nicotine girls, the comments about dreading to play this game just confused me, and I exaggerating their intention. For my part I enjoy the premise of Nicotine girl, and I find it entertaining to tell and be tell those stories.
C. Edwards:
Hey Evlyn,
My dread of play comes the lurking spectre of memories and past experiences. Not even just painful or heart breaking memories, because sometimes happy memories become bittersweet when surrounded by the context of history. So, basically, play isn't going to be just a story for me. I'm watching out of the corner of my eye to make sure nothing sneaks up on me. As Ron rightly points out, that probably means there is something there that I need to take a look at. Daunting, but there you have it.
Nicotine Girls is like that first domino. It's waiting there, ten feet tall. Once you tip it over you set into motion a series of internal events that have to run their course.
Callan S.:
Yes, but why push that particular domino? Speaking of mythology, I think the idea that if it's depressing it must be meaningful somehow, is mythology (I'd suspect it's a psychological defence, actually, developed over thousands of millenia). And one that's not specific to the middle class.
If there's already a reason formed for engaging the game or it's responding to something like a nars equivalent to gamisms gutsy daring ('Dare you to face off with the cold, grasping hand!'), fair enough, I get that. But drifting into an emotionally charged activity without a prior reason, atleast to me seems to be giving up guidance of oneself.
Ron Edwards:
Callan, three things, all of them involving intellectual courtesy and rigor.
1. I know you're asking Chris, but I hope you can see that I answered that question regarding myself in my earlier reply to you. In a discussion of this sort, please acknowledge when someone has given you their time.
2. You're putting words into people's mouths: "if it's depressing it must be meaningful." No one said that. You can criticize it all you want and it won't mean a thing.
3. Since you've brought it up, evolutionary psychology (or to call it by its perfectly good name and better scholarly grounding, sociobiology) can serve us well here - but not in the speculative way you're using it. One of the core issues, and best studied in non-humans, is reciprocity. In an ultrasocial ape such as ourselves, reciprocity (and its modifiers, exploitation and deception) is affected by, and even serves as an environment for, every decision we make.
Which is to say, human decision-making (what people call our "selves") is nigh composed of decisions about whether to help honestly or to screw over, and whether to do so covertly or overtly. More basic decisions about mating and bodily survival (or in the case of Nicotine Girls, status improvement of whatever sort) are embedded so thoroughly in this social web that they cannot be considered in isolation. Economics is a primary and direct means of expression of this web. Like it or not, you and me and the nearest nicotine girl are connected.
The game, or the hand I mentioned, asks, What are you going to do about that? A perfectly valid answer is "nothing." I'm not saying the game is a guilt trip. One might not even find it depressing; I didn't (Chris' reaction is his own). The point you keep wondering about is to get that question onto the table in a dramatic context.
As for middle-class issues, I don't regard the term as foundational (i.e. at the level of primary causes), but it's our best term for how certain sociobiological decisions are constructed under specific economic circumstances. Its core feature is to combine extreme faith in social mobility with extreme blindness past a certain range of economic parity, and hence is, yes, distinctive from upper-class (gentry) and certainly from working-class constructions regarding those same decisions.
The key references for any deeper discussion about that are Timothy Goldsmith, The Biological Roots of Human Nature, and Richard Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems. A number of people who have no business publishing anything like to speculate foolishly about selective explanations about human actions, to the annoyance of those of us who actually research the topic, and I think our discussion here should stay grounded in the substantive material.
Best, Ron
jrs:
Why play Nicotine Girls? Ron’s given his reason; mine is somewhat different. It is the type of game that lends itself to a visceral experience. I enjoy that and will actively seek it out in my gaming. It’s why I play games like Grey Ranks. There is no fantastical elements or special powers to get in the way of the emotional experience of the characters. In the one scene where I played Britney’s mother, her pain and anger over losing her son was as real to me as any of my own personal losses.
I would like to add that I did not find our game depressing. There was some sadness and longing for the unrealized dream, but it was not an overwhelmingly dark story. And yes, there is also my own tenuous connection to the Nicotine Girl world where if I had been born in a different branch in my family, this would be me; which in turn lends itself to the illicit joy in recognizing these are not my stories.
Besides, it’s one of those games that require zero preparation. That’s always a plus for me!
Julie
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