[UA] Stereotypes and archetypes

[holycrow at mindspring.com]

>Do you still stand by that distinction, Greg? 

Hell yes.

>The UA archetypes (e.g. Masterless Man

Miamoto Musashi, possibly Matthias Rust

>Flying Woman

Gloria Steinem, Amelia Earhart, arguably Florence Nightengale

>Pilgrim

The guy who tracked down Troy using the Iliad as a guide.  Mike Moore.

>Fool

I won't post my first reaction, for fear of an OT political discussion.  But I can think of several personal acquaintences who qualify -- who seem to succeed despite themselves rather than because of themselves.

>Surely you'll agree that REAL people in history
>never fit into neat little categories like this, and that they can >only do so insofar as they allow their lives to be fictionalized and
>mythologized.

People?  More complicated than archetypes?  Gee, you think so?

Sure, I'll agree that there's lots more to Steinem than her actions that synch up with the Flying Woman, but those actions don't really matter to anyone outside her circle of friends.  The behaviors that count are the ones that put her in a long line of crusading women from Boadacia on.  

I think that what you get with stereotypes are either (1) handy coat racks from which we hang our prejudices (The Humorless Kraut, the Cowardly Dago and the Superstitious Catholic, to mention groups to which I belong) or (2) archetypes as we'd LIKE THEM TO BE, rather than as they REALLY ARE.  What is the superhero but a demigod with the responsability and the capriciousness filed off?  (And the demigod is, in turn, a deified king who never fails at what he attempts.)  

I resist the idea of "fictional archetypes" in UA because I think it clashes with one of the central tenets of the game -- that the universe responds to HUMANITY.  Not to particular, chosen representatives of it, but to the whole mess.  Now, if we start going for fictional archetypes, suddenly the lives that 99+% of us live don't matter as much as what one writer's perceptions.  Most people don't write books and a lot don't read them or care about them.  There's much more to life than the idealized or bowdlerized or polemicized images that writers see fit to confine in print.

Do you really think writers have a deeper understanding of humanity than anyone else?

Plus -- on a much more practical side -- putting fictional archetypes in opens the door wide for all kinds of dumb, silly crap.  Some games thrive on omnivorousness.  "Over the Edge" springs to mind, and to a lesser extent "Feng Shui."  But UA is meant to be fairly specific, and that means it has to be exclusive.

-G.

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