[UA] Cannibal Avatar?

[Stuart Anderson]

Gareth Hanrahan wrote:

> There seems to be quite a bit of space "up there" if it takes 333 archetypes
> to fill a Clergy.

    I don't think humanity breaks cleanly into 333 stereotypical
psychologica/mythic types. If it did, the universe would reincarnate virtually
the same way every time. And that may work in most games--it explains the
Compte's consistency, which is difficult for me to explain. But I've always
looked at ascension as a metaphor for that brief, reeling moment after you do
something that was just *so* perfect. My first taste of it was when I was 11 and
hit a grand slam in little league. I wasn't a good, cocky hitter. I just did it.
Man, I gone. Stu left the field. It was the Avatar of the home-run hitter running
those bases, baby. Channelling Hank Aaron or some shit. I readjusted after a
while, but that was a very real feeling. Since then, I've channelled the Driver,
the Tuba Player, the Teacher, the Dad. I don't know. A bunch of them. Most pretty
non-mythic.
    So I exaggerate that feeling a little and get the IC. When someone has lived
their whole life in the service an idea big enough to lose themselves in it, and
the only validity they ever have is that moment I described, then up they go. So
I accept a broader range of archetypes than most would, with the assumption that
the Ascension process drives the IC. When the slots are filled, party overloops,
out of time. I expect my assumption is that the IC is much less static than most
play it, with lots of booted avatars running around, like all those fat guys that
were jocks in high school. That's not a very mythic image, but it's archetypical
as hell. Further--I don't really think the IC have any clearer idea of the Big
Picture than we do. It would defy all the laws of UA if, just because you
ascended, you ceased to be a terminal fuckup.
    But anyway, I guess I accepted the freedom of abandoning any typical
mythological/religious cosmology as the freedom to interpret the Archetypes as
what I thought was relevent around me, without really worrying much about
validating factors of the Archetypes. But I run a real street game, and it hasn't
emerged as a source of conflict. I can see how it'd be different in a game of
real mythic-minded cats who really wanted to get the nuts and bolts of all this
down. So. I don't know. I just wanted to throw that out.
--Stu


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