My boyfriend is getting into Magic, and so I’ve been playing more of it recently. (I’ve played off and on for years; my first set was Tempest, which came out in October 1997). The two most recent sets have been set in Innistrad, their Gothic Horror setting.
One of the things I like about Innistrad is that I think it has the correct red/black archetype: Vampires. That is, red/black is about independence and endorsed hedonism; vampires who take what they want from those weaker than them, and then use the strength gained from that taking to maintain their status. [They are, I think, a great allegory for feudal nobility, and one of the things I like about Innistrad is that they’re basically the only feudal government around.]
Often, when I think about fictional settings, I focus on the things that seem… pointlessly worse than they need to be? The sort of thing that a good management consultant could set straight, if they were a planeswalker showing up to advise. But often meditating on a flaw will point out a way in which it had to be that way (unless you could change something else upstream of that).
Someone observed that monsters often have a potent reversal of some important fact: vampires, for example, have endless life, the consumption associated with life, but none of the generativity associated with life. Human civilization developed agape (mostly in the sense John Vervaeke means it, which I think isn’t that far from how the Christians mean it) in part because this is how human genes sustain themselves across time; the present giving selflessly to the future (in part because it’s not actually that selfless; the genes/memes/civilization will still be around, even if the individuals won’t).
But what need does vampire civilization have for agape? Edgar Markov, the original vampire on Innistrad, is still around. He has a typical-for-humans domineering relationship with his grandson, in a way made totally ridiculous by the fact that their ages are basically the same. (Sorin is about 6,000 years old, Edgar is his biological grandfather, and they became vampires at the same time, when Sorin was 18, if I’m understanding the lore correctly.) There’s no real need to move beyond selfish interest towards general interest in mankind if you expect to be around for the rest of history.
[And vampires reflect the perversion of that agape, because they consume resources that could have instead been put into building up human civilization, and are generally uninterested in their human subjects becoming anything more than artists and cattle.]
[Incidentally, I wrote a short story that I will maybe someday publish, where in a world that has Warhammer-esque Vampire Counts, one of them roughly-by-accident mades a nerd court that turns into a university that then becomes a city-state of global importance, roughly because they’re able to channel this sort of competitive selfishness into something agape-flavored.]
My boyfriend is getting into Magic, and so I’ve been playing more of it recently. (I’ve played off and on for years; my first set was Tempest, which came out in October 1997). The two most recent sets have been set in Innistrad, their Gothic Horror setting.
One of the things I like about Innistrad is that I think it has the correct red/black archetype: Vampires. That is, red/black is about independence and endorsed hedonism; vampires who take what they want from those weaker than them, and then use the strength gained from that taking to maintain their status. [They are, I think, a great allegory for feudal nobility, and one of the things I like about Innistrad is that they’re basically the only feudal government around.]
Often, when I think about fictional settings, I focus on the things that seem… pointlessly worse than they need to be? The sort of thing that a good management consultant could set straight, if they were a planeswalker showing up to advise. But often meditating on a flaw will point out a way in which it had to be that way (unless you could change something else upstream of that).
Someone observed that monsters often have a potent reversal of some important fact: vampires, for example, have endless life, the consumption associated with life, but none of the generativity associated with life. Human civilization developed agape (mostly in the sense John Vervaeke means it, which I think isn’t that far from how the Christians mean it) in part because this is how human genes sustain themselves across time; the present giving selflessly to the future (in part because it’s not actually that selfless; the genes/memes/civilization will still be around, even if the individuals won’t).
But what need does vampire civilization have for agape? Edgar Markov, the original vampire on Innistrad, is still around. He has a typical-for-humans domineering relationship with his grandson, in a way made totally ridiculous by the fact that their ages are basically the same. (Sorin is about 6,000 years old, Edgar is his biological grandfather, and they became vampires at the same time, when Sorin was 18, if I’m understanding the lore correctly.) There’s no real need to move beyond selfish interest towards general interest in mankind if you expect to be around for the rest of history.
[And vampires reflect the perversion of that agape, because they consume resources that could have instead been put into building up human civilization, and are generally uninterested in their human subjects becoming anything more than artists and cattle.]
[Incidentally, I wrote a short story that I will maybe someday publish, where in a world that has Warhammer-esque Vampire Counts, one of them roughly-by-accident mades a nerd court that turns into a university that then becomes a city-state of global importance, roughly because they’re able to channel this sort of competitive selfishness into something agape-flavored.]