[UA] Parables, Archetypes and the yellow brick road

[Eric Brennan]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad Underkoffler" <chadu at yahoo.com>
[Baum Oz/Populist]
> No, no, no, no.
>
> http://www.eskimo.com/~tiktok/faq02.html#q2.15
> http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/Populism.htm
>
> And the article that started it all:
>
> http://www.amphigory.com/oz.htm

    On this note, I find it interesting how many innocuous things can be
bent into religious/political significance by a mere lack of sleep or leap
of imagination.  After a late night of gaming and watching a Cheers episode
in which the crew claimed that the "Coyote was the Anti-Christ" my friends
and I tied most of Scripture to the old Looney Tunes.  Once you tie the
Coyote into Job, it's an easy walk...
    For that matter, I wonder if it would be effective to take something
that everyone has _good_ memories of and then turn it into the mythology for
a serial killer/rogue sorcerer or the like.  I once used "Alice in
Wonderland" and Lewis Carroll to that effect in a Shadowrun game through
effective use of Carroll's twisted background as a mathematician and amateur
pornographer...  Perhaps UA-esque enough for this is a cabal of young mages
channeling ghosts as malign Loa based on, hell, "Little House on the
Prairie" or something.  The trick is to make the new mythology twisted
enough that the players get a "Wow!" moment when they finally twig to the
fact that it's based on this happy childhood memory.
    I seem to recall a Dean Koontz novel in which the young serial murderer
based his entire mythology around "Star Wars" and Tolkien...
--Eric


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