Erfworld 77, page 71

[FoolishOwl]

As Bongos pointed out, Erfworld is *not* a game. It is a world that happens to look just like a game. This is a critical distinction to make.

On storytelling conventions: years ago, I read a book, An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction. (Nota bene, college students: if you really like a book, do not sell it!) It discussed what the author called "genre fiction," particularly genres with heavy-handed conventions, such as romance novels or detective stories. The author argued that people who enjoy reading such genres read "thickly," that is, read lots and lots of such novels, and were thus thoroughly familiar with the conventions. What readers are looking for is how this particular novel varies from the conventions.

I think that's a truth about fiction in general, and also in other art forms. In formal poetry, for instance, poems establish a meter and a verse form -- then vary from that meter or verse form, to draw attention to the point where the meter is varied. Similar things happen in music.

Not to put too fine a point on it, us folks reading this comic are mostly gaming nerds, who are familiar with both games and with storytelling conventions. There's an enormous amount of play with those conventions going on, and it's part of what we enjoy about it.

Where this gets important for the plot of this comic, I think, is that we're nearing the end of Part One. I think we've been set up, to continue thinking of this setting as simply some sort of game -- as Parson has been thinking, and for that matter as most of the other characters have been thinking. I think that assumption is about to be shaken.

That is, for instance, why I don't think that there was ever any "spell" placed on Jillian. Lots of readers, and most of the characters, seem to believe that there was a spell that may, or may not, have been broken. I can see, from SteveMB's argument in an earlier thread, that the idea was deliberately planted -- but I think that it will prove that Jillian has actually been under the conflicting demands of desire and love, and the conflict between the desire to be free and the desire to be subordinate. I think that it will prove significant that the characters will have failed to perceive what was really going on, and especially significant that Parson, who came from our world and thus shouldn't be limited to thinking that everything is a just a game mechanic.

Lastly, I think it's worth mentioning that what reveals Parson as *not* a perfect warlord, is the nature of the strategem he invented. It was *very* clever -- the sort of thing invented by someone who's smart, and enjoys winning through cleverness, but who's more invested in looking smart and clever than in actually winning. A group of gamers talking over a game after it's been finished will comment that a plan was very clever, and it's a shame it didn't work. That's what some people in this thread have said, after all. But if you're fighting for real, than you don't get credit for a clever idea that's too clever to actually work. Parson is used to planning battles for fun, not for keeps.