Doug Millington-Smith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
magicaddict) wrote2006-08-21 02:18 pm
magicaddict) wrote2006-08-21 02:18 pm
Thoughts On A Hollow Victory...
...as I sat watching a four-hour IC session in the pub after Sunday's larp.
Did I miss a trick here?
Three years ago when I started, I distinctly remember there being one IC post-larp pub session. Now, each and every week, there are two, three, four separate conversations that happen between characters who may or may not have been present on the preceeding game. In addition, I have to assume that the number of IC MSN conversations has at the very least, not dropped between then and now. To whit, the game world has transcended time in/time out boundaries, and carries on in its own dynamic universe of player-created and multilaterally influential plot free of GM, ref, or scaffold-toting giant moderation.
Hang on, I think to myself, this all sounds very familiar.
It appears that one way or another, some of my points got across.
Looking around this brave new (or more likely rediscovered) world, I ask myself: Did I create the concepts I see now in regular use? Not remotely. Did I catalyse their inception/return to BLADES? Quite possibly. Am I pleased they are now (once again) in place and people can enjoy them? Very much so. Am I pissed off that continued criticism of my use of them prompted me to stop trying not six months before they became both commonplace and acceptable?
Ever so slightly.
I find the character I created to pander to these very criticisms is obsolete. A character that could not affect the world around him, by way of his being unable to physically or socially interact with it, I thought would cover all bases of acceptability. No-one could possibly claim that a character who never spoke to them or looked at them could be interfering with any roleplay they were engaged with or might be engaged with in the future.
Now I find that it was alright to do so all along.
Not only am I left feeling as though I slammed the stable door shut just as the horse managed to bolt, but I face the added dual annoyances of the horse having been mine and my inability to afford a new one. I have two dead characters, another who was more boring to play than statistical mechanics and another who's roleplay occurs exclusively in his own head, the only place I thought it was safe for me to do so without somehow getting anyone else's way, and now I find precisely what I dreamed of my dynamic characters being able to do happening for several hours every Sunday night and all over the MSN network 24/7/52.
Am I selfish to be wanting a part of what I spent my entire career at Bath trying to do and now has belatedly been accepted? Maybe I am, but similarly maybe I'm not, and regardless, this is my LJ and I'll cry if I want to.
Did I miss a trick here?
Three years ago when I started, I distinctly remember there being one IC post-larp pub session. Now, each and every week, there are two, three, four separate conversations that happen between characters who may or may not have been present on the preceeding game. In addition, I have to assume that the number of IC MSN conversations has at the very least, not dropped between then and now. To whit, the game world has transcended time in/time out boundaries, and carries on in its own dynamic universe of player-created and multilaterally influential plot free of GM, ref, or scaffold-toting giant moderation.
Hang on, I think to myself, this all sounds very familiar.
It appears that one way or another, some of my points got across.
Looking around this brave new (or more likely rediscovered) world, I ask myself: Did I create the concepts I see now in regular use? Not remotely. Did I catalyse their inception/return to BLADES? Quite possibly. Am I pleased they are now (once again) in place and people can enjoy them? Very much so. Am I pissed off that continued criticism of my use of them prompted me to stop trying not six months before they became both commonplace and acceptable?
Ever so slightly.
I find the character I created to pander to these very criticisms is obsolete. A character that could not affect the world around him, by way of his being unable to physically or socially interact with it, I thought would cover all bases of acceptability. No-one could possibly claim that a character who never spoke to them or looked at them could be interfering with any roleplay they were engaged with or might be engaged with in the future.
Now I find that it was alright to do so all along.
Not only am I left feeling as though I slammed the stable door shut just as the horse managed to bolt, but I face the added dual annoyances of the horse having been mine and my inability to afford a new one. I have two dead characters, another who was more boring to play than statistical mechanics and another who's roleplay occurs exclusively in his own head, the only place I thought it was safe for me to do so without somehow getting anyone else's way, and now I find precisely what I dreamed of my dynamic characters being able to do happening for several hours every Sunday night and all over the MSN network 24/7/52.
Am I selfish to be wanting a part of what I spent my entire career at Bath trying to do and now has belatedly been accepted? Maybe I am, but similarly maybe I'm not, and regardless, this is my LJ and I'll cry if I want to.
no subject
Look at the end of the day all I can tell you is my intentions behind asking you those questions and statements I made in that long debate. Which was to try and bring an end to all the Blades related negativity both on the boards and in your LJ because I didn't feel it was doing anyone (yourself included) any good, and to hopefully reach a point where you could enjoy TL.
All I can say is what I was trying to do, and what I thought I can do. I can't change how you interpret my actions, I can't make you believe me, and I can't speak for other people on this matter. In the same way as you can see from my comments above I clearly interpreted the above post in a way different to how you intended it. For example, I never registered the fact that you 'took pains in the original post to point out that I was not potentially creating anything new, rather revamping what was there' in your entry. In the same way I regularly felt you were reading something different to what I wrote in that original debate. You saw me 'jumping sideways', I saw you heading off at a tangent to what I wrote. Honestly I suspect there was a bit of both from both sides, because I feel that's how all these kinds of debates/arguments end up.
I personally don't feel that your negative behaviour should have brought any change, because it was negative behaviour. That's just me. All I wanted to point out in the comments, is the debate that was had, did almost certainly bring about change, but that I felt change was just as likely to have been an outcome if the whole thing wasn't negative. I didn't see how you benefitted from feeling it was a hollow victory, and I was concerned that that impression of yours would only create more negativity in future.
Look honestly I don't want to annoy you, though I do react, but mostly because I hate the feeling someone is forming false opinions of me because of a misunderstanding. So I can't leave it alone when I probably should. Ideally I'd want you to really enjoy yourself next year, and ideally I'd like to not get into this argument once more, because it seems to get us nowhere. I'd also like to avoid generally arguments with you in future, but seeing as our viewpoints on some things are diametrically opposite I'm not sure how feasable that is.
So I'm proposing the following: pick a time and a place, we can go to a pub together, I'll buy you a drink and we can hammer this all out. It would be nice if we can put this negativity behind us, and move on, so we can enjoy a mutually shared hobby together. If you don't want to fair enough, I just wanted to offer it.
Anyway I hope you have a good rest after the Gathering, and a good week.
no subject
I feel very little would be solved by having a drink together, for as you yourself pointed out, we seem destined to never agree on matters. Any deliberate attempts to sort it out are therefore probably going to end unsuccessfully. The fact you see that we always disagree, yet keep resolutely slamming your point home every time I post something contentious in my own webspace in an attempt to make me see your side of things, suggests that this is what you would do if we were talking face to face.
What can be gained from this? Deeper understanding of each other? Mutual respect for each other's standpoints? Miraulous changing of my opinion as I finally see what you've been trying to do for the last thirty or so replies to my LJ, and proclaim how you were always right and I was too blind to see it?
I'm sure you would anticipate a long discussion with me as little more than a string of disagreements, just as I would. I may not particularly like you, but I don't hate you, and have no desire to expose you to the brain numbing chore of repeatedly stating your point to someone who doesn't, and probably never will, agree with it, however it is made.
I'd rather agree to disagree and leave it at that. If you feel happier having made the offer, that's your perogative. It very neatly put me in the position of having to accept or appearing surly and stubborn, so it probably had a positive effect.
no subject
I assure I had no alterior motives to make you appear one way or another, I just don't think like that. Still, your right I'll make a promise never to get involved with a dicussion about this or anything similar to this topic again. It would lead to no good.