Lydia Davis may be a name unfamiliar to gamers but she is no slouch. She got a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit medal and a Booker Prize.
Here is the story, in its entirety:
Fear
Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, “Emergency, emergency,” and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has not been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families too, to quiet us.
Imagine my surprise at finding here writing here, specifically, in a short story, about RPGnet, StoryGames.com, the Forge, etc. and the many other hugbox communities that caused trouble onlint because of their desire to comfort their local lunatic.
I have written these things many times myself, but nobody really took it to heart.
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I mentioned online somewhere else that in our zeal to protect those perceived as weak and/or deserving of protection, we can easily blind ourselves to the duplicitous, and this at first seems to echo that. But I've read the quote from Davis several times, and I don't think this is what she means. I think what she means that many (most? All?) people have within them the capacity for exuberant irrationality. This is the part that I find to be the salient bit: "We know she is making it up; nothing has really happened to her." Davis avers that it's common, but she assumes we understand the *why* (which to me is the real riddle here). I don't think RPG people are any more or less subject to this sort of acting out; but if I'm reading you correctly about the "local lunatic" sacred crackpot is simply (and weirdly) narcissistic. Their crackpottery manifests like a car alarm with a cultural shotgun slaved to it, lots of noise and attention seeking, that results in diffuse fast moving pellets that do damage to others while the preliminary noise serves to justify the blast.
ReplyDeleteOh it certainly can be not what she meant, but it's what it speaks of.
DeleteI think what bothers me, as someone with mental health issues, is that if you suggest that they, the local lunitic, you know, get help and deal with their lunacy as opposed to just being crazy, the community will treat you as if you are the problem and not the loony.
ReplyDelete@remial
DeleteYes, I very well know.
The problem is that most of "the community" aren't exposed as much as the lunatic's victim, so they can afford to simply say--at best "Leave that weird fucker alone", dodge the whole thing and call dodging it "common sense", "avoiding drama", or "minding their own business".
Examples abound.