[UA] (OT) Kevin Matchstick

[Timothy Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Royal Minister of Stuff"
<yokeltania at yahoo.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 2:17 PM
Subject: [UA] (OT) Kevin Matchstick


> Someone asked me to explain a reference to Kevin
> Matchstick I threw in earlier, but I
accidentally
> deleted the message.
>
> Kevin Matchstick is the main character in Matt
> Wagner's /MAGE/ comic books.  He's kind of like
an
> Avatar of the True King, only he gets the power
to be
> indestructible while on quests against
supernatural
> monsters.
>
> He also has a baseball bat which contains the
> "essence" of Excaliber. I dunno, did Barbarosa
have a
> magic sword?  Maybe Matchstick isn't as much an
> archetype of the True King as, well, a Monster
Slayer.

Actually the Mage books are fairly on-topic, the
difference being that UA has variable weirdness,
while Mage has high weirdness coupled with high
fantasy.  In The Hero Defined, we meet other
Avatars, who, like Kevin Matchstick, embody
mythological figures.  These avatar-like entities
tend to repeat the storylines of their archetypes.
For instance, the Hercules guy is on a quest to
perform 12 labors.  If he gets help, then that
labor doesn't count. They also tend to repeat the
doom of their artchetype.  For instance,
Matchstick hooks up with someone named (I think)
Gwen, which we know will lead to badness down the
road.  Laid on top of that is the fae world which
never really went away.  More often than not, the
Unseelie are behind most of the organized crime in
the world.

What brings this fully on-topic is an idea I had a
while ago, concerning dual archetypes.  While it's
fairly sensible for there to be dual archetypes
(the lovers, the twins, etc.), what about certain
archetypes bringing about archetypes in others?
For instance, the True King tends to create a
Necessary Servant, and a Hero brings about a
Villain.  You could give a one time bonus to the
other's Avatar score, which remains if and only if
the person ties his future to the Original.  If
they seperate for any length of time, and the
Other doesn't maintain the connection (by keeping
the memory alive), the bonus is forever lost.



One thing about the on-topic / off-topic fal der
all:  It's been my experience that once we set up
a mechanism to distinguish the two, it legitimizes
the existence of the OT beasties, resulting in a
HUGE upswell in off-topic posts.  It's best to
rely on invisible pressures to keep the OT demons
at bay.  In reality, the OT-label advocates really
want A-Mailing-List-With-Stuff-That-Interests-Me,
and no amount of labeling one way or another will
provide that exactly.


_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua