ES - Re: response to role playing

[willowjonbardc at juno.com]

Dear Everybody Greetings from  Willow
One of the reasons I wrote my  role playing comment was to get an handle
on what people were currently saying about it. I felt I was talking a
completely alien language. This  statement embodies what I feel I do when
I play  persona. Well said!!


> I agree; there must be balance.  One of the ways that I have found 
> most 
> useful is to believe that I am not at "home" in Milan, but I am in 
> Ansteorra, a far off country that has many strange and wondrous 
> things!  My 
> heritage is from there, and I "grew up" there, but "somehow" I was 
> transplanted to Ansteorra to live.

As to the matter of doing fantasy.
I don't  think it is fantasy rather it is historical fantasy. The
medieval construct we have made shows many of the fantasies that were
popular in the middle ages. That statement not as it was but as it ought
to have been has been taken out of context. I think it was Diane Paxton
who stated it but I could be wrong.  The article that it is found in
talks about us studying the fantasies of the middle ages, their ought of
beens.  For example, the fair and great knight was an ought of been.
Warfare is always bloody and ugly but people in the middle ages wanted to
think it was noble. Many times real knights fell from the ideal but the
people of the middle ages still kept that shining dream. In a savage
times it is strange how many times people lived up to the dream. Our
concepts of relationships between men and women reflects the grand ideals
of courtly love but this was a fantasy also. Women were not treated in
such a grand manner in the medieval times. People in the middle ages knew
it to be a noble fantasy but they liked to think of themselves in that
context. They took dreams from the Chansons and the Romances and made a
world to live in. We have taken the dreams of the middle ages and made a
similar world. Our world may be better because we don't have harsh
reality getting in the way. We play the hero a hundred times, dieing
gloriously  and still dance at the feast. We can kill our enemies and
still drink with them. We have all the advantages of Valhalla without the
problems. You can look at the reports of the tournaments in period to see
that they were playing a great game  and I have always felt that we were
studying that game by playing it also. 

Duchess Willow de Wisp

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