[UA] Houston Drownings

[Timothy Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bryant Durrell" <durrell at innocence.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: [UA] Houston Drownings


> On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 09:11:18PM -0500,
Infamous36 wrote:
> > Anyone see that story going on in Houston?
> > Where that woman drown her 5 kids?
> > The hell was up with that?
> > Any Ua ties to it?
>
> You know, this is a perfect opportunity to add
Power Kill into your
> UA game.  I think that if you find yourself
spending a lot of time
> wondering how various real world tragedies could
be merged into your
> campaign, then Power Kill would be an excellent
tool for you.

I tend to go that way--leaving real life events
alone until a suitable enough time has passed, and
the media has a chance to trumpet 15 similar
cases, thus blurring relevant facts, and often
missing the point entirely.

That being said, there's been a spate of
post-partum depression cases here in Chicago, and,
given that PPD was linked to the Houston case
initially as a possible motive, it got me
thinking.  What is PPD except for strong feelings
of guilt brought about because the mother doesn't
feel the natural connectedness to the baby that
everyone says she ought to have?  Given that these
feelings have a genetic component (Stephen Jay
Gould does a nice bit about this in The Panda's
Thumb), it must take a real abberation to throw
this off.  The best guess is that it's the various
chemical imbalances manifest in a woman's body as
it tries to return to normal.  But maybe it's
possible to -steal- avatar points by ripping them
from others.  In this instance, someone who could
never be a natural Mother gains her points by
removing the motherly instinct from new mothers.
While you could channel the Mother without ever
being a Mother, I can imagine some aware sicko
taking this short-cut.  THink of all the other
manifestations of this trick--proto-Demagogues
crashing and burning at the start of a brilliant
career, while other leaders seem to be coated with
teflon, borrowing their 15 minutes from somewhere
else.


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