[UA] various topics

[DocHopt at aol.com]

Matthew Rowan Norwood wrote:
>TOSG is one of my biggest beefs with UA. I think the 
>setting really adheres to the political beliefs of the 
>writers -- which is fine, but I disagree with them. TOSG 
>as described by Randy Douglass' ideology should be made 
>up of the kind of people who were protesting the WTO in 
>Seattle last year. Instead, two out of three sample 
>members are insane sadists, and the third one is 
>borderline. In contrast, TNI sounds like the worst kind 
>of megalomanic vigilante enterprise -- Ross Perot with a 
>team of thugs trying to take over the world. But Alex 
>Abel and Eponymous are represented as Superman and 
>Batman instead of an anally-fixated covetous neurotic 
>with a God complex and a cold-hearted killer who is so 
>disconnected from humanity that he wouldn't think twice 
>about smashing an infants' brains out if it were in his 
>best interest.

I have to agree that these two groups seem to have changed from the way 
they're first presented... TOSG even changes from one end of the UA book to 
the other. In the "itty bitty summaries of every group" section at the start 
of the book, they're presented as a group of tinfoil hat-wearing nutjobs, 
like a little white supremacist militia that's just discovered magic or 
somesuch, but once you turn to the NPC descriptions in the back you learn 
that the bigwigs in the Order are really, really dangerous and not just 
small-time crackpots.

The Inquisition was also presented in the first book like a large, 
mixed-about magic mafia that was entirely dependent on Alex Abel's 
networking, and that he was just kind of poking his fingers into the magical 
underground pies for the fun of having power. But once "LG&M" comes out, we 
find he actually has a purpose, and some organization to his structure, and 
the whole organization gets a 'good guy' presentation. I don't get it? :P

Hopt
-- 
"Nihilistic mystics, epistolic alcoholics
Messianic manics, cataclysmic and horrific
In the age of superboredom, hype and mediocrity
Celebrate relentlessness, menace to society..."
   -KMFDM, "Megalomaniac"

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