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While I'm here, I'd like to ask you to consider at least looking at all of the mail you recieve. I know a lot of it is junk, and I sympathize. Especially someone who's bought into all of the technological progaganda of our modern age. But, even so, please check it. I know my mother had thrown away a lot of important notes that she should have read, thinking they were junk, and almost had to go to court over it. Tonight, I reap the reprecussions of a dozen people not reading their mail when Tri-County Electric passed everyone in certain areas a card in the mail telling them their power would be out. Despite this, the number of outage calls has risen into double digits, and power calls are the most awkward and painful to handle on both ends.
It's not that bad and, hey, it keeps me busy. All I'm saying is that you can save a lot of headaches by making sure your lame snail-mail isn't even lamer spam mail.
In other, more non-public-service-announcement news, I was spending time on I Blame the Patriarchy again. IBtP is actually one of my very favorite sites on the web, because a lot of really terrific stuff gets said. I could go on and on about where I disagree with the site founders brand of philosophy and where I agree, because there's an awful lot of both, but I generally think Twisty Faster and the whole damn site is excellent and I hope blaming is done for a long time.
But, I'm kind of a geek, and there's plenty of geek-slamming, and I play Vampire (sometimes, but it's been getting more frequent) and that got slammed a few days ago, too. The crux of the matter is, I think there's something to the argument that a vampire is something of a sexual predator. First of all, because you can (and people will) find the sexual metaphor in any kind of text, but also because the predator metaphor is a particularly violent as well as heavily-romantisized one.
It's not that bad and, hey, it keeps me busy. All I'm saying is that you can save a lot of headaches by making sure your lame snail-mail isn't even lamer spam mail.
In other, more non-public-service-announcement news, I was spending time on I Blame the Patriarchy again. IBtP is actually one of my very favorite sites on the web, because a lot of really terrific stuff gets said. I could go on and on about where I disagree with the site founders brand of philosophy and where I agree, because there's an awful lot of both, but I generally think Twisty Faster and the whole damn site is excellent and I hope blaming is done for a long time.
But, I'm kind of a geek, and there's plenty of geek-slamming, and I play Vampire (sometimes, but it's been getting more frequent) and that got slammed a few days ago, too. The crux of the matter is, I think there's something to the argument that a vampire is something of a sexual predator. First of all, because you can (and people will) find the sexual metaphor in any kind of text, but also because the predator metaphor is a particularly violent as well as heavily-romantisized one.
I think there's an arguement to be made that a vampire is inherantly misogynist, and that playing a vampire in a game is an inherantly misogynist thing to do, but as far as I can tell, this is only inherantly so in so far that you accept the argument that most things propagate a patriarchy because the patriarchy is so pervasive. I think this is a point that is mostly academic, because you really can point out the roots the patriarchy plants in almost anything. Vampire, as a game, would only then be mosgynist because, from a certain point of view playing a fanged, invasive critter is a misogynist act.
I'm sure everyone's heard the argument for a vampire as a rapist metaphor before. I think that's a narrow reading, myself. A vampire is a predator, emotionally and physically. It's the very core of their being. They feed. They overpower people and take sustainance from them. Every WoD vampire game featured this as a central element, and it really feels like it would be a game of horror, personal and otherwise, the more this is played up on. In general, I wonder how many people play Vampire of any stripe as a game of horror, though.
I'm not saying people are playing wrong, but I am curious. In LARPs, I see feeding glossed over a lot because it could easily become a logistical nightmare. Everyone shows up, and maybe it's a big game, so everyone's making feeding pulls. Maybe some people fail really awfully, how many times is that going to happen a night? The more people there are, the bigger an issue this is. There's a real incentive to keep populations down if any sort of hidden presence is going to be maintained for long, and still, a serious incentive on keeping things like feeding groups and skills that allow more successful feeding would be a serious issue.
In addition, I'm not sure how many people keep in mind that their character basically feeds on people. Like, what the ramifications are for that. I think maybe almost everyone considers it for a while and then files their appropriate reactions away for when the subject comes up, usually just dismissing mortals as food quickly and moving on. I'm not sure, though. Honestly, though, I think the game would get bogged down super-quick if that's the main topic. I just know that when I'm playing my character, I really want that on the forefront of what drives him. Especially, I guess, since I'm playing Lance, and that's a real issue for him.
Amusingly, I think that when I played Covington, the predatory nature of vampires was even clearer. While a ghoul has more resources to draw on then your everyday mortal Joe or Jane, it's hard to forget that with a few exceptions, you could be considered easy pickings. For a vampire, it's kind of like walking down the street and seeing all these people and knowing that if you wanted, you could absolutely just kill anyone like snapping your fingers. With some Disiplines, it's not even killing. You could get anything you wanted; total violation without even breaking a sweat. That fact is harder to see when you're in a room with what are basically equals. The big difference is that there are noobs and there are elders, so its easy to forget that even the most freshly baked of vampires can pwn 90% of the mortal population.
So I was thinking about that. What do people think about the undead nature of the characters they play? How much have the characters thought about it?
I'm sure everyone's heard the argument for a vampire as a rapist metaphor before. I think that's a narrow reading, myself. A vampire is a predator, emotionally and physically. It's the very core of their being. They feed. They overpower people and take sustainance from them. Every WoD vampire game featured this as a central element, and it really feels like it would be a game of horror, personal and otherwise, the more this is played up on. In general, I wonder how many people play Vampire of any stripe as a game of horror, though.
I'm not saying people are playing wrong, but I am curious. In LARPs, I see feeding glossed over a lot because it could easily become a logistical nightmare. Everyone shows up, and maybe it's a big game, so everyone's making feeding pulls. Maybe some people fail really awfully, how many times is that going to happen a night? The more people there are, the bigger an issue this is. There's a real incentive to keep populations down if any sort of hidden presence is going to be maintained for long, and still, a serious incentive on keeping things like feeding groups and skills that allow more successful feeding would be a serious issue.
In addition, I'm not sure how many people keep in mind that their character basically feeds on people. Like, what the ramifications are for that. I think maybe almost everyone considers it for a while and then files their appropriate reactions away for when the subject comes up, usually just dismissing mortals as food quickly and moving on. I'm not sure, though. Honestly, though, I think the game would get bogged down super-quick if that's the main topic. I just know that when I'm playing my character, I really want that on the forefront of what drives him. Especially, I guess, since I'm playing Lance, and that's a real issue for him.
Amusingly, I think that when I played Covington, the predatory nature of vampires was even clearer. While a ghoul has more resources to draw on then your everyday mortal Joe or Jane, it's hard to forget that with a few exceptions, you could be considered easy pickings. For a vampire, it's kind of like walking down the street and seeing all these people and knowing that if you wanted, you could absolutely just kill anyone like snapping your fingers. With some Disiplines, it's not even killing. You could get anything you wanted; total violation without even breaking a sweat. That fact is harder to see when you're in a room with what are basically equals. The big difference is that there are noobs and there are elders, so its easy to forget that even the most freshly baked of vampires can pwn 90% of the mortal population.
So I was thinking about that. What do people think about the undead nature of the characters they play? How much have the characters thought about it?
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I also wonder if the argument towards the vampire as a misogynistic icon changes somewhat when you allow for powerful, female vampire characters in a variety of roles, and if that changes the nature of vampireism. It's hard to form an argument that it's not predatory, and I'm pretty sure that for someone arguing about the misogynistic nature of vampires, it'd get it off the hook.
So, I'm doing a lot of wondering tonight.