Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Cherubs Who Have Aged Out

In the latest episode of our well-provisioned podcast, Ken and I talk RPG gear, Angela Merkel's cellphone, story structure bookshelf and the Voynich Manuscript.

An Incomplete List of Congressional Metonyms

As profound students of Restoration comedy one and all, you surely know what a metonym is—a given name for a fictional character that telegraphs his or her personality or role in the story. This may be direct, or simply through euphony. Examples: Charles Surface, Sir Benjamin Backbite, Mr. Gradgrind, Mistress Quickly, Severus Snape.

Sometimes real people have metonymic names. This can come in handy sometimes.

For example, certain members of US Congress have names that an editor might reject as too metonymic if we tried to use them in fiction. I hereby nominate my top ten.

1. Henry Waxman

2. Louise Slaughter

3. Bob Goodlatte

4. Bobby Rush

5. Mac Thornberry

6. Sam Graves

7. Emanuel Cleaver

8. Marcia Fudge

9. Leonard Lance

10. Raul Labrador

Though perhaps not strictly a metonym, an honorable mention must surely go to Dutch Ruppersberger.

How apt these names I leave as a matter for other scholars. Just how creamy and delicious is the legislation of Marcia Fudge?

Equinenimity

Sarah Monette applies her experience of real-life horses to list five ways in which the actual creature differs from its portrayal in fantasy fiction:

Diana Wynne Jones famously deduced that the horses of Fantasyland are vegetative bicycles. Here are some ways that real horses are anything but:

1. Horses are very large animals. This is something that you can know in the abstract, as we all do, and still be taken aback by when interacting with an actual horse. Horses take up space. Their heads are massive chunks of bone. Even when they're being affectionate, they're still a good eight to ten times larger than a human being, and they are proportionately stronger. [Read on...]

I am not a horse person and will totally cop to a nagging anxiety whenever I write a fantasy scene with riding in it. Sure that I will get called out for reality-defying nonsense, I keep the horses in the background to the maximum extent possible. Fortunately the latest novel is set in a city, with lots of walking and almost no horses testing its verisimilitude.

Another problem, though, is that real horses are disjunctive in most narratives. As Sarah describes, they’re fragile and headstrong animals, both of which traits have a tendency to suddenly disrupt a protagonist’s momentum. (A recent headline reinforces their fragility: the show Luck, in which that fragility was a major theme, has had to cease production after a string of horse deaths.) Well-constructed narratives don’t provide much space for accidents or distractions. If an accident leads to a crucial plot development, it suddenly becomes a contrivance. If it exists only to show that accidents happen, it’s failing the rule of fictional parsimony, which allows only for events that drive the story or in some other way relate to its overall throughline.

Hence the convention of the herbivorous bicycle.

Community, Comedy & DramaSystem

Benjamin Hayward asks:

After watching the first season of Community sequentially, I was struck by how much it's characters resemble Dramatic Heroes much more than Iconic ones in their decisions despite the show being advertised as a sitcom. Reading the DVD box reveals all. The show is supposedly about how attending college changes the characters through the lessons they learn. In this way, the characters all slowly change throughout the season, with some doing so more than others in each episode. Have you watched enough of Community to comment on how Drama System might fit it? Or perhaps how Drama System might fit serial comedy in general?

I haven’t subjected comedy to the same analysis that I have drama and the procedural, so consider these thoughts provisional. Blame Aristotle for losing the treatise on comedy that originally accompanied The Poetics. If only he’d backed up to a USB drive!

Comedies tend, like procedurals, to threaten the characters’ status quo and then return to it. The leads aren’t solving external problems as the iconic heroes of procedural stories do. Iconic heroes encounter disorder and tame it. Comedy protagonists tend to instigate disorder (often by pursuing an internal flaw, just like tragic heroes), which continues to spiral out of control in response to their efforts to control it. Finally the disorder reaches a culmination. The hero, undone, confronts his flaw and all is forgiven and order restored.

The equivalent of the procedural would be the slapstick or physical obstacle: the accelerating conveyor belt, the clock hand from which the hero dangles, the damnable road runner who won’t be caught. Moments of character comedy play out just as dramas do—there’s a petitioner who wants something, a granter who does or doesn’t give it to them. Because of these similarities you could play a sitcom format with DramaSystem—though I’m not sure who really wants to. It’s easier to be funny by riffing on a putatively serious game than to keep the jokes flying on purpose.

Community creator Dan Harmon sets out to subvert sitcom conventions and as such bends his characters much further out of their original molds than the audience’s comfort level might permit. This becomes all the more apparent after Season One. Still, you could argue that whatever changes the characters go through, or surprising qualities they reveal about themselves, the study group itself—the real community the show’s title refers to—is restored to harmony at the end of each episode.

Ironic Hero, Absurdist Villain

If an iconic hero remains true to himself and thereby changes the world around him, the ironic hero hews to his inner compass and is disappointed by the way the world changes despite him. We don’t see the ironic hero much in fiction, because that pattern is too much like life.

As is apt for a playwright, the life of Vaclav Havel divides readily into three acts—from avant garde dramatist to dissident to head of state. In that third act, he becomes an ironic hero. The act begins with heady early days, scored to deep Zappa cuts, as he strives to infuse his office with an artist’s humanism. From these scenes of bohemian promise, the story shifts tones. He presides as a constitutionally weak President over a society quickly bored by his ideals. Despite his efforts, his country splits in two. He urges the dismantlement of the lucrative Czech arms industry, and is rebuffed. Havel remains a hero to the outside world, and certainly to me. To the home audience, not so much. Heroes get tiresome when they stick around too long. We prefer them when they to ride off into sunset in timely fashion.

The ironic hero is sadder than the tragic hero, and leaves the stage without catharsis. The tragic hero falls from greatness, brought low by his telling flaws. The ironic hero fades, due to ours.

In a bid to provide easy contrast for blog posts, Kim Jong Il died on the same day as Havel. By immiserating an entire nation and killing millions by famine in order to maintain his cult of personality, he leaves a legacy as one of the era’s most monstrous real-life villains. The scale of his crimes makes him almost too monstrous for fiction. Another of his qualities definitely disqualifies him as a fictional bad guy—despite his enormous body count, he was as ridiculous as he was menacing. This is a consistent trope of the modern mega-mass-murdering dictator. Comic characters become funny through a gap between self-perception and the way others see them. Mussolini, Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein all embodied not just the banality but the absurdity of evil. It’s not always the case—Pol Pot managed to be straight-up sinister, and the publicity-shy goons running Burma are no barrel of yuks. Kim, however, might have been a character in one of Havel’s allegorical plays.

Lowering Cain

I enjoy observing politics—that is, the politics of nearby other countries whose results I suffer only indirectly —as a venue for real-life drama, of clashing personalities and personal flaws heightened by stakes and pressure.

When it comes to men of power, no flaw is more classical than hubris. It takes that and chutzpah, too, to know that you’ve been carrying on a long-term affair and had a series of sexual harassment claims filed against you, and to think that you can run for President without either of these things coming to light. You might think that the solipsistic miscalculation of a Herman Cain is somehow off the charts. And it is, insofar as it got him hoisted from nominal front-runner to footnote.

According to this podcast interview, of controversial Republican campaign manager Ed Rollins, conducted by Alec Baldwin, hubris might almost be a prerequisite of the mindset required to run. [Engage paraphrase engines!] Rollins says that the first thing a would-be campaign manager asks a prospective candidate is if they have any skeletons in their closet. And they all lie.

(The seasoned campaign manager, Rollins continues, knows this and hires a private investigator to dig up the truth on his own client, as it will otherwise come out from an unfriendly source, timed at the worst possible moment.)

True tragic heroes must not only be afflicted with the flaw that brings about their downfall—they must also embody greatness, lending piteous significance to the final plummeting. In an age of political cable and radio, a candidate can get close to the sun free of that pesky quality. Instead he can shape himself into a hot button cartoon character, vivid enough for TV but without the dimension for drama, and rise at least to the level of primary contender. At first blush, this seems to add entertainment value to the proceedings. But as Aristotle might tell us, it’s not as profound when the players come pre-satirized.

Essential Elements of a Player Character

A question over the transom from blog reader The Cosmic Goose:

When you sit down to create a new character, be it for a story or game, what aspects do you consider core to that character’s persona? Its emotional and spiritual, so to speak: the place from which the character moves, that influences their choices and decision making process? Background is certainly a part of this, but I find that its almost an afterthought. Background tells you why the character is the way he is, but not the more basic question of what or who he is. This is all from a gaming perspective, of course.

As the truism goes, Cosmic, character is action. We experience a character through what he does and, to a lesser extent (in forms that allow for interior monologue) thinks.

So to create an interesting gaming character you have to have some sense, broadly speaking, of what he is going to do. This is why it is so crucial for an RPG to come with a built-in default activity: exploring the spaceways, rectifying paradoxes in the timeline, solving eldritch mysteries, or killing monsters and taking their stuff. If your GM hasn’t clarified what your character will be doing, find out before you create him.

(An older school of roleplaying would have it that the willingness to undermine the game’s core activity represents true dedication to characterization. This “my character wouldn’t do that” syndrome came about for a particular set of historical reasons I may talk about later, but by now has clearly established itself as dysfunctional.)

So, knowing what your character is going to do, find as compelling, unique and urgent a reason to have him do that as you can. In certain GUMSHOE games, this is hardcoded into the character creation system as the character’s Drive, allowing you to grab a core motivation off the shelf. For other games you'll need to create one.

Then work outward from there, developing the backstory that adds detail and perhaps an origin to the Drive. Everything from his appearance to his gear to his special powers can arise out of this.

This covers you for the procedural narratives that are roleplaying’s bread and butter. For dramatic characters, stay tuned for my upcoming DramaSystem, as seen in its debut game, Hillfolk.

Hillfolk Characters and Their Dramatic Poles

As an example of the sorts of characters you’ll play in Hillfolk, the first DramaSystem game, here’s the roster from the in-house playtest. They are stalwarts of the Horsehead clan, highlands-dwelling raiders at the dawn of the Iron Age.

The most important element of any DramaSystem PC are her dramatic poles—the two contradictory emotional impulses she’s torn between.

Redaxe (played by Paul) is the clan’s bad-ass war champion, a confident berserker with axe in hand, but an often confused man in the confusing realms of love and politics. Poles: man of peace vs. man of war

Thickneck (Justin), Redaxe’s brother and the clan’s most accomplished shepherd. His desire for himself and the clan is tranquility; so far, events have given him little of it. For the first season, he served as self-appointed conscience and advisor to the chieftain. Now he is the chieftain. (He’s also for the moment become a GM-run recurring character, as Justin has had to bow out for the fall semester.) Poles: ambition vs. loyalty.

When we first met Twig (played by Lisa) the clan’s willowy young hostler, her lack of confidence led her to seek the approval of others. She started out as Redaxe’s girl, then realized her true feelings were for Thickneck. As last season closed, her confidence issues seemed to disappear, as she sought power for herself and Thickneck. For the first season, her poles were conformity vs. adventure. Now, as she becomes more political and materialistic, she’s shifted to selfishness vs. altruism.

Skull (Christoph) was, for the first season, the brash and maneuvering village headman, who by fits and starts negotiated the Horsehead clan into vassal status with the northern kingdom, only to be set aside by King Goldenthrone. Skull’s search for a new place after losing his authority will doubtless drive much of season two. During the first season, Christoph expressed his poles as assimilator vs. protector. As GM, I would have asked him to adjust these to something more personal and less abstract—were he not in practice playing the more gripping set of poles: arrogance vs. wisdom. In his new renegade state, his poles have shifted to vengeance vs. the people.

Farhawk (Chris) is a young firebrand, and a burr in the saddle of the other main characters. His father, headman of the defunct Lavender clan, was slain by Redaxe, who has sworn to train Farhawk in the art of combat, so they can fairly fight to the death later. Though generally distrusted and disregarded, Farhawk may have the keenest political instincts of any Horsehead. His poles: becoming a Horsehead vs. destroying the Horseheads.

Chris started out playing Roll-the-Bones, the clan’s wise woman. But after she proved dramatically inert—her sole tactic in dramatic scenes was refusal—he was dragooned into playing the powerfully double-edged Farhawk, first introduced as a recurring character (an important NPC.) Roll-the-Bones then became a recurring character, where her obstructionism suits her for the role of nemesis.

Classic Post: Dramatic Poles

I’ve talked before about the iconic characters and how they are driven by an ethos. By recapitulating it, they triumph over external obstacles, affirm their selfhood, and restore order.

But what drives dramatic characters?

When we care about a fictional character, we hope for X and fear for Y. X is the positive condition; Y is its opposite. In a procedural, we hope the character will succeed in reaching his procedural goals and fear that he will fail. In a drama, we perceive a positive and a negative potential. We want the character to reach the former and avoid the latter.

Compelling ongoing dramatic characters possess dual natures, or internal oppositions. We want them to overcome one of these and realize the other. Another way to express this is to say that the characters are torn between two internal forces or impulses. These are the poles of a dramatically active character.

• Rick Blaine (Casablanca) selfishness or altruism?

• Shelley Levene (Glengarry Glen Ross) winner or loser?

• Nora (A Doll’s House) subservience or selfhood?

• Tony Soprano: family man or Family man?

• Nate Fisher: (Six Feet Under) freedom or responsibility?

• Frank Gallagher: (Shameless US) dissolution or dignity?

• Walter White (Breaking Bad) virtuous weakness or anti-social power?

Our feelings toward the two poles may be clear-cut, or divided. Dramatic characterization deepens, and our reactions to it become more complex, when our reaction to the dual nature becomes ambiguous. Part of us wants Tony to be the good family man, but part of us takes dark vicarious pleasure in his sociopathic side.

What Attack the Block Nerdtropes

Earlier, I discussed nerdtroping, the process of popularizing older genres via the addition of geek-friendly tropes.

The delightful SF-horror-actioner Attack the Block (go see it, right now in mid-sentence, before continuing to the rest of this post) nerdtropes a surprising genre: the social realist docudrama. The genre represent the underrepresented, placing its working class or underclass characters in struggles typical of a broader struggle against difficult social circumstances.

Its classic presentation, as seem in the films of the Italian Neo-Realist movement, emulates cinema verite documentary in its pursuit of polemical credibility. The genre has long held a fascination for British filmmakers working from a leftist perspective. Pioneering films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (both based on Alan Sillitoe novels) continue to shape UK film today.

Attack the Block concerns itself throughout with the social conditions that made its delinquent heroes who they are. The council housing project that defines them is the object of alien attack—a dynamic mirrored when the police come calling. The final character turn that brings the alien-conquering protagonist salvation from outside authority comes when the audience viewpoint character finally understands the circumstances of his upbringing. It wraps the message in thrilling chase scenes, bloody surprises and refreshingly lo-fi monster effects. The realism may be dustbinned, but the social message throughlines the script from alpha to omega.

[Classic Post] Neologism of the Moment: Nerdtrope

nerdtrope
verb

To make an old genre palatable to a contemporary, audience through the addition of fantastical, geek-culture elements.

Deadlands nerdtropes the western. 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings nerdtrope the swashbuckler and chanbara genres, respectively. Mutant City Blues nerdtropes the police procedural.

We’re used to seeing nerdtroping in the definitionally geeky of hobby gaming world. Now that geek culture has gone mainstream, we’re seeing it in big commercial films. Cowboys and Aliens nerdtropes the western as Deadlands did before it. Reel Steel nerdtropes the boxing flick.

Link Round-Up: Porgy Backstory, Pelgrane Wrap

The dreaded virus of unnecessary backstory reaches the shores of musical theater.

I thought Pelgrane’s Gen Con sales were up 50% from last year. Nope, it doubled its previous take.