~HARQALYA~ Author Topic: Fiction as Gamesmanship Mr. Nowhere posted 12/29/00 6:16 PM Fictional accounts as a means of drawing in the reader and bypassing the rational mind or the usual "screens" we utilize to filter our perceptions and instill separate and yet curiously entwined levels of meaning...All the great storytellers down thru history employed this simple, subtle, downright subversive method to impart wisdom to the masses. The internet as a medium is no different by any means, except for the fact that disinformation is as widely circulated as the aforementioned, if not moreso. And while disinformation could be thought of as an "anti-story" in that sense (in that it imparts no great truths but lies and half-truths meant to confuse and cloud one's thinking), it could also be thought of as a form of "roleplaying"...To take the role of a disseminator of informatiom and then to do the opposite, and then to pretend to be doing the opposite of that while saying "not so" and providing beside-the-point replies when asked about intent and content for that matter...And yet there is something to be gained from "treading the labyrinth" as it were, a literary or even multimedia labyrinth straight out of one of Borge's lucid dreams...Perhaps all such cognitive struggling ultimately leads to a more refined sort of "roleplaying" in the end, but I'll leave that for you to decide. 'Til next time. "Never Open William's Head, Evil Reptiles Emerge" ;) Battletested posted 12/31/00 7:03 AM lol...yeah, JM bugs me a bit too...maybe he read some Vallee and sees (consciously or not) the opportunity to be remembered a hundred years from now as the Harry Lincoln of the "Ong's Hat Mystery"/myth. "...it is possible to make large sections of any population believe in the existence of supernatural races, in the possibility of flying machines, in the plurality of inhabited worlds, by exposing them to a few carefully engineered scenes the details of which are adapted to the culture and superstitions of a particular time and place." "...the historical character of the persons celebrated in epic poetry is not in question. But their historicity does not long resist the corrosive action of mythicization" "And to control human imagination is to shape mankind's collective destiny, provided the source of this control is not identifiable by the public" Jacques Vallee lol....see, I can quote!....seems appropriate...ammusing myself anyways It's good to see something written by YOU again Mr.N Post New Topic