[UA] The Muse

[Joe Iglesias]

On 23 Sep 2000 23:50:17 -000   Nick Wedig wrote:
>So, I've been planning on writing this up and >mailing this to the list for a while.  Someone >said The Muse isn't in Statosphere, but I >wouldn't know (I'd get Stat quickly, but I'm >waiting for my copy of the Rough and the Smooth >to come before ordering more).  I'm sure that >I'd change things around once I have Stat, but >here ya go.  Comments on changes would be good. 

This is good stuff as is (and no, Muse isn't in Stat), and actually ties into something I was thinking about a ways back-- a 'mysterious stranger' archetype meant to represent the intriguing but dangerous person that certain artsy types are drawn to even tho it kills them (see Tim Powers' STRESS OF HER REGARD, and the entry on 'Twisted' in the EVERWAY supplement SPHEREWALKER for Stolze's take).  One reason I never did it up was that I couldn't think of a way to make the channels support a positive and negative interpretation.

The other reason is that, on reflection, the whole muse idea may not fit too well into UA's cosmology.  The archetypes we've seen so far are all pretty definitively human-- they're exaggerations of recognizably human impulses.  The classical idea of the muse derives a lot of its power from the notion of the creative impulse coming from Outside; artist as shaman channeling stories from the heavens and all that.  While I like your writeup, I think it kinda muddies the waters of the statosphere some.  Make it the Artist, keep the channels the same, only based on a physical object as a vector (still transmits ideas, but to people in general instead of to just one) and I think it'd work great.


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