2002-10-08 -

Fletcher, The Devil, and Me

Tonight was the last session of Mer's game, which was bittersweet fun. It ended on a good kick, and it's nice to think that Mer's brain will once again be able to focus on her writing, but I'll miss playing Fletcher. Aside from the sheer demented joy of the awful southern accent I used for him, his utterly self-centered mindset gave me a real rush. I'll have to hasten toward running my own game so I can play sociopathic villains. They'll have to lose, but other than that, they should provide similar sorts of fun.

During Amber I mentioned an idea that I'd been meaning to write about for a while. In _Faust_ (which I've never actually read, so I may well be talking out my ass), we see a devil depicted as a sort of all-powerful force which is bound only by his own word. The hero, having foolishly bargained with the devil, must scheme to trick the devil to get the soul back. Once you're dealing with the devil, it may very well take divine intervention just to get back to square one.

In America, we have "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", in which the devil gets sent packing because our backwoods fiddleplayer hero can just plain kick his ass. Square one nothing- you can beat the devil at his own game and show a clear profit!

What does this say about our cultures? Does the wide-open frontier that has been part of American cultural memory lead us to believe in a more optimistic, open-ended cosmos than the Old World? Or do I just need a lot more sleep a lot more often?

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