For the Gaming Theories
Via Tyler Cowern, Galen Strawson's "Against Narrativity." It's about cognition and ethics, not RPGs, but it has relevance to a lost current in RPG theory/advocacy discourse. Back before Forge theory collapsed the rgfa distinction between Dramatism and Simulationism, and for years took the former as the whole of the latter, and before critics of
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e.g. if you get macro enough and make Gatsby "A" and Daisy "B," you can say, "A doesn't change B" and "this story is a tragedy." At the end of the story, God knows, Daisy is very much the same twit she was at the beginning. But if you get micro enough, in the scenes where we have Carroway to show us their interactions, they change the shit out of each other. (We get to see more of this unmediated by Nick in the movie.) But I think that the book ends with Gatsby lastingly defeated and feeling it, quite apart from the shot dead thing, and and with Daisy tied to her husband in a way that she wasn't at the beginning. That's pretty macro change. Contrariwise, we can decide that it's Nick Carroway's book, on account of it is. And Carroway keeps trying to tell us he's a changeless sort, but if Gatsby is A and Carroway is B, then even at the macro level A has changed B when the whole mess convinces Carroway to leave New York for good.
On the micro level, A changes B means that in this scene B gets madder, or happier, or decides to help A, or cut her off, or is murdered by A, or fired, or betrothed, or taught how to smoke dope, or whatever.
Also, I think Salinsky and Frances-White include consequences in their definition of "change," so the actual outcome of a tragedy would pretty much count. Jocasta changes Oedipus by giving him the info he shouldn't want, and Becky Doppelmeyer changes Enid Coleslaw when Becky settles into a "normal" relationship with Josh.
I think what you're saying is that in a lot of tragedy's there's an A who fails to help B to successfully overcome his tragic flaw? I take your point, but the tragic flaw is only one definition of "B-ness." Even in her bedroom at the end, doesn't Desdemona actually make Othello madder and more convinced of her guilt while trying to talk him down? Reciprocally, even leaving aside the getting strangled, Othello certainly changes Desdemona.
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Lastly: Yes, I was tweeting with your wife about this the other day. Our AD has been showing at least one South Park episode to his various groups because in South Park the characters have great honking big reactions to what's going on. (Salinsky and Frances-White also adduce South Park as a model for this reason.) At the same time, there's always a reset either at the end of this episode or before the next one. (Our class he showed the episode where Cartman gets infected with HIV.) That's one reason to think that, to a certain point, where "A changes B" is on the micro level. Situation comedies work for a lot of people, and while they mostly get their platforms carefully reset at the end of each episode, the episodes themselves often consist of tilting the merry hell out of those same platforms. The Simpsons does this in an outlandish way at the level of plot; other shows do it at the emotional level. Even my daughter's Disney-Channel comedies work this way.
Midlingly: I think we have a disjunct because you're talking about "change" or lack of it at the level of some ineffable core being of the character. Conan is always indomitable; Conan never renounces the ideal of badassness etc. But I don't think either S&F-W or I mean "A changes B" to apply only on that level or not at all. Conan can get scared enough (or sensible enough) to flee something; merciful enough to kill something else; merciful enough to spare someone; angry enough to take vengeance on someone he liked. He can and does develop or lose respect for people he meets. He gains and loses commands.
Upper-midlingly: But you do have a point. It ties in with things like the conventions of detective fiction and some monster stories (think Man-Thing or some stretches of The Hulk), where the protagonist functions as catalyst and unmoved mover: there to show us the changes the "NPCs" wreak on each other. (S&F-W talk about this too.) Tying this in with your other comment this afternoon, I think this may suggest why bunches of gamers like playing metaplot-heavy games and don't mind being in service to "the story the GM is telling." They're not lazy or even exactly passive. They're enjoying partaking in the same shakeycam function that the typical private investigator fulfills in a hardboiled detective novel. I'd go so far as to suspect that, when that kind of play works, the players have emotional reactions to the NPC's fates and those internal reactions are a primary point of play for them.
Toply: Oh I don't know. But I think this ties back to the end of your comment. Maybe Euripides shows us Medea changing under the pressure of Jason's betrayal or maybe he just shows Jason't betrayal for what she was all along. Either way, the children get et. At the beginning of the play she has a family. At the end she has a dragon and a tummyache.
And it's not just "changed me to annoyed" that might happen. We might do a scene that ends with me firing you from your job. Your character might still be this integral thing at his core, whatever that thing is. But you lost your damn job.
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