Twilight Sorrows
Living Among the Departed
A rather recent developed awareness day is today. Only for a few short years the 24th of February has become the HIV is not A Crime day. Long overdue! But then we have an even longer history of illnesses being criminalised and thus the people who need help getting only more problems. And don’t get me started with perceived pathologies being criminalised either. But I getting ahead of myself, lets start in ancient times!
For many centuries it was leprosy that was the disease everybody treated as a crime, thus we can find it used as a symbol in fiction as well, like in Ben Hur or in Princess Mononoke. Telling us something about the characters by how they treat the ill. In that regard is is fascinating how much Christianity has fallen from grace when it came into power. While early Christianity cared for the sick, these days are long gone. Even figure like Mother Theresa let people suffer fro the glory of her deity and send the money to the Vatican instead of spending it to ease the suffering of those in her care.
Anyway, there we have already our second prong, since it is always with the rise to power and thus authority that social norms can be regulated by what is and what is not considered a crime. That is also why moral realism gets put on as defense to justify inhumane treatment, something storytellers should know better, since in the end, morality is always a social contract.
Then came HIV along, which affected disproportional gay men, and thus the criminalisation of homosexuality and the virus made the life for the intersection of these marginalised people even worse. And it was not the Christians that stood up, but the lesbians to support the men. Which is commonly cited as the reason why the L is the first letter in the LGBTQ+ acronym, to honour the women who showed compassion.
Death has ever since become something most queer people are all too painfully aware is a constant travel companion. Which is sometimes playful like in the tele series Our Flag Means Death, but too often it will be the Burry Your Gays trope. But since we are already talking about colours and television, Pluribus has been a great last year. I will eventually talk about it more,but for now I leave it here spoiler free, just a quick note: the first episode felt like someone has read If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die by Patti Bellantoni, and well, the series also has some queer representation.
Before we move on to the next segment, allow me to spill some personal beans. I mean aside from the media to consume, I was mostly too young to have experience what happened in during the AIDS crisis nor would I have known that these are my fellow queers. I lost my mother when I was still a teenager, not to HIV, but to another terminal illness — Cancer. And I guess that is why these topics are so important to me, that is why my Veitztanz setting addresses yet another disease — Huntington’s.
Of course it might not always be easy to have such heavy topics in your fiction. As I said in my Barren Lands article, the narratives get weight and depth when we dare to face these facets of the human condition. And also like I recommended there, playing in third person might be a good idea to create a solid emotional frame. It was not easy for me to have that in play, I remember a Mage: the Ascension game that ha me leaving early on in the evening of the very first session. This was in the days before a session zero became common practise, but my GM knew about my mother’s demise, and yet they imposed a terminal disease on my character, which was a young mother that became only aware of the magic in the world while giving birth. I could not play that. I have since do so, but always when I could do so on my own accord, as a kicker, not a hook.
Deeper Into Darkness
Lets stay with the World of Darkness, but switch to the undead — Vampire: the Masquerade. The game could capture my morbid sensibilities, even though it could be said that vampyrism is basically the opposite to a terminal illness, more like a perpetual condition.
But laws (in this case the traditions) and criminalisation of people that do not fit could be found here as well. Especially in the four independent clans, which maybe with the exception for the Giovanni, all got painted as very much morally depraved, that they also all got tied to ethnic groups made it just worse. And I have to say I have not touched any VtM in a log time, but at least I heard that some efforts have been made to reduce the racism that was implied there. Back then it was however the same dynamic he had earlier, of minorities getting profiled as criminals by those who hold power.
In the case of VtM the saying that traditions are just peer pressure by the dead is literally true. As horrible as this was,it was at least honest, since we see these dynamics play out in the real world over and over again. Sure, for our fictional settings we could distance it a little and not just perpetuate the same prejudices directly, but more through use of metaphor and allegory. This requires careful handling though, since even Tolkien dropped the ball in regards of the Goblins and Orcs with the orientalism he used to paint them, and worse by declaring them inherent evil he lost any leg to stand on.
Okay, okay, I come down for a moment from my soapbox. Again to share some more intimate experiences of play. No, not that intimate, get your mind out of the gutter! For a few years I used to play VtM as LARP, not under the Minds Eye Theatre rules, which ever group I had ever encountered in Germany had outright discarded. And I should have have somewhere lying around a version I hacked myself about twenty years ago. Have to find it and maybe one day when I run out of topics I might put it up here. Anyway, my ADHD brain derails me again. I was about to tell an anecdote… or two?
The character I played the longest, and in slight variations for different LARP groups was a Gangrel… and as much as I would love to go of-topic again to talk about why I love roaming characters, I will postpone for another day. Anyway, that character was for me an exploration into walking the thin line between suffering and wanting it to end but ten being undead and not yet willing to make a really permanent decision. I had some nights that remain treasured memories throughout all these years from playing that character. Like one night when me and a few other Gangrel players drove from Berlin to Bremen a clan meeting. I love to stir drama, and so of course I clashed with my pack leader. It was a real fun night, and people from other cities came after play had concluded to tell us how much dynamic we brought with us. However,the night stayed in my mind for a second reason as well — I got bitten by a bat. I guess it thought my hand must be a small rodent, this caused me to feel very sick the next few days. And since my constitution was never that good to begin with, was worried for a time I could have picked up some disease there. But eventually I was cleared.
Maybe a year later my character got killed by another Gangrel, guess stirring the drama eventually comes back around to bite you. Vampire — not always about biting others, but often enough something is going to bite you! I was a little upset when it happened, but it was also a fitting end for my character. Have not played since any LARP again, and that is know probably like I mentioned earlier, about twenty years since. Still, I made a few years back a playlist on Spotify for the character, even though I slightly changed the name, and last years revisited the playlist to serve more for a scenario that deals with similar themes and motifs for my Heartbleed system:
The Sickness in the System
Before we part, hopefully not for the last time, let me take a moment to lament… yes, again. Instead of systems that tear down the barriers for those that need help, society often excludes them even more. And that is something we can talk about in fiction and in roleplay. Did I say “can“? No, I mean we should!
The sick are not to blame! And while my plan was not to get today into the red pill discussion, it is fascinating that the film Matrix calls humankind a virus. I will schedule that topic too. For today I have only two more points to make.
First: Down with ICE! America get your house clean! Why is it always the the King in Orange makes everything worse. Why did nobody learnt from the first time, there even was another virus going around, and then lots of Asian people got criminalised in the process. Maybe the United States could learn how a proper federal republic system should work by taking a Look at how Germany does it, best before the tyrant becomes an emperor (a Caesar or Kaiser if you like to pronounce it without a soft C as the Fallout tele series recently pointed out).
Second, and last: Again the dynamic of those you shape the law and the marginalised people it affects. Not sure if I already mentioned it before, but I really dig The King in Yellow. And yes, the King in Orange is a play on that. And if you read those stories, then it will show up there again,the dynamic between power, marginalised people who get criminalised, and of course sickness is also there. Thus,there is an argument to be made that these intersections can indeed serve as fertile ground for worldbuilding and storytelling.