Maia>so I think something that isn't really discussed is magical play
Maia>or at least, I haven't heard much about it
Mese>unpack "magical"
Maia>here's something that came up in SI
Maia>most of us in SI are basically, uh
Maia>kind of evil
Maia>we've done a lot to change this for various reasons
Maia>but
Maia>one of the interesting and fun things about SI, and in fact what I have called the POINT of SI is Maia>"let's explore the essential madness of ultimate power"
Maia>"and how we become separated from humanity even as we are responsible for humanity"
Maia>so evil is probably the wrong word
Maia>because I wouldn't say spring is evil, but he is pretty nuts
Maia>because we have the power not to compromise in the face of reality
Mese nodnods
Maia>so when you say to spring "sometimes people get hurt in the pursuit of a noble goal" he can say "no, I don't think so" and make it stick
Maia>sometimes
Mese>okay
Maia>there was one discussion we had with dan, though, which was interesting
Maia>dan has a quite different view of exalted than the rest of us
Maia>well, by that I mean, like, shreyas/quin/me/probably char
Maia>and dan said, essentially
Maia>"yes, solars are the good guys, the revolutionaries, and all the other stuff is the evil of the establishment and how it oppresses and destroys people"
Maia>because dan lives in brazil, where there is a lot of that going on (I think; I don't know enough)
Maia>"and the story of exalted is the story of the powerful people saving the world from evil"
Maia>so while this has some correspondences with our perspective it's not really a fit
Mese nods, thinking that from what he knows of Exalted, that is only potentially true; solars are or at least were terrible people
Maia>well
Maia>it's a bible
Maia>you can read whatever you want in it
Mese>there was a whole curse, and stuff, and the solars were all decadent and shit in the um
Mese>first age
Maia>yes
Mese>or whichever one it was where they ran shit
Maia>I know all that
Maia>I'm not really arguing over whether dan's reading is accurate or not
Mese>of course you do :) I am just trying to express what I think I know about exalted
Mese>but carry one, yes
Mese>*carry on
Maia>I think that the text is complex enough that you can have multiple views of it which aren't congruent without having one be inaccurate
Maia>anyway yeah
Maia>so
Maia>there's a difference, I'm trying to say
Mese>yep
Maia>between "I am playing this to see what happens if I were put in these narrative straits"
Maia>and "I am playing this to make the world the way I think it ought to be"
Maia>but it's really pretty subtle
Maia>and I don't think one or the other is necessarily BETTER
Maia>but I think (I am not sure) that they both lead to making artistic statements, but of very different types
Mese>yes
Maia>so
Maia>any thoughts
Mese>what's um
Mese>magical about this?
Maia>oh
Maia>it's by analogy with magical thinking
Maia>which is kind of
Maia>"doing things that express your desire to the world to be different in the hopes that it will become so"
Maia>I would probably make that sound a lot less negative if I had time to phrase it better
Maia>so this kind of play is magical play
Maia>because you are playing in order to create a fictional world that is more like the world you think should exist
Mese>hum
Mese>not sure I quite see that
Maia>what part
Mese>I mean I am pretty sure none of you actually want the real world to be like SI?
Maia>oh oh oh
Maia>here's the big distinction
Maia>me/shreyas/etc. ALREADY think the real world is like SI in the relevant ways
Maia>that's why we play it
Maia>if it was disconnected from reality in the relevant ways then it wouldn't be an interesting exploration
Maia>in this case the relevant ways are like
Mese>so it's almost an allegory for you?
Maia>yes
Maia>absolutely
Mese>you draw analogies between your solars and other entites with nigh-absolute power?
Maia>no
Maia>solars are protagonist people
Maia>the relevant characteristic of a solar is that they are a human who is gifted with abilities that set them apart from the other people
Maia>people who have the power to make a difference
Maia>etc.
Mese>so you draw analogies between you SI characters and "people who ahve the power to make a difference"
Maia>basically
Maia>yes
Mese>so your human issue, as it were, is like "can one have the power to change humanity while remaing part of it?" and you answerring, largely "no"
Maia>something like that
Mese is now known as Gazelle.
Maia>I think a big bit of that is like "how do you grapple with being different"
Gazelle>sort of the same issue in H So S, n'est pas
Maia>yes
Maia>well, that's a little different
Maia>I guess the questions are more like
Maia>"how do you grapple with being different and powerful" vs "how do you grapple with being different and powerless"
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