Hope, Vengeance and Dice
What we need is hope, not vengeance.
I am consistently impressed by just how much I learn through storytelling. I built and tested a game where "theme" was a mechanic - in it, two alluring and almost-but-not-quite-oppositional principles wove themselves through the story over and over. I listed a bunch of established TV shows as examples. Hope and vengeance were he examples for BSG, a shitty world that I'd have been willing to live in at the time I watched it, because it has what I need.
And perhaps that is where I should steer my activism. Can I get the same strategic kick out of inspiring optimism as I do out of outmaneuvering and crushing an unjust opponent? Well, it's the maneuvering and outthinking that's funnest; the crushing ends the fun and leaves you around wondering what the fuck happened and what will you do now. Hope can have that. I think. Okay, well, maybe it requires a little vengeance.
But
Hope, Elchis, - as long as you're exciting and not bland, as long as you are about innovation and not a return to a status quo, real or imagined, and as long as I get to fight, may I be yours.
Amen.
(or "so say we all")