Goddess of Spring

So not long ago I finished book 2 of P.C. Cast's Goddess series, "Goddess of Spring." The book is about a baker who finds a cookbook and with it calls upon Demeter who in order to save the bakery switches her with her daughter Persephone, Goddess of Spring. Lina, in Persephone's body makes the journey to Hades to complete her part of the deal and unwittingly falls for the Lord of the Underworld.

I'm not going to lie, I'm a sucker for stories involving Hades and I'm a girl who likes smut on occasion. Of course when Hades is compared to Batman, I was hooked. So I devoured the book and moved on, but I still find my mind going back to it on occasion, such as tonight. I couldn't very well make a 11pm run to the library seeing as it's closed, so I opted to have a night of girly fun (especially after the hard day I've had today). Soak in the bath, pjs, and finally painting of the fingernails. I came up with something that was inspired by Hades and Persephone.

I chose to put gold coins on my pinky (Hades is the god of wealth and fortune), a flower on my ring finger, the Lapis Lazuli precious stone on the middle finger, a white flower a quick version of the Narcissus flower mentioned in the book on the ring finger, and finally on the thumb the Amethyst precious stone. I chose the stones because in the book Hades was fond of precious stones and used them in his palace.

So that was my night. I don't pretend to be good at painting my nails but I enjoy doing it on occasion and having nail designs inspired by books is never a bad thing.

Role-Play Games According to Caillous?

So I have been working on a paper for some time on table-top rpgs and it was suggested by the professor that I pick up and use Roger Caillous' "Man, Play, and Games." I am reading through it and I have reached a bit of a pickle.

Caillous divides games into 4 categories: Agon, Alea, Mimicry, and Ilinx and he goes on to explain what they mean.

Agon is always a question of rivalry which hinges on a single quality such as speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, ingenuity, and so on. This is exercised within defined limits and without outside assistance. There is a winner and a loser in which the winner is better than the loser (go figure). These types of games can be found in sports and board games such as checkers or chess, and can also be found in acts of courtly war such as a duel or tournament (yay jousting!). These presuppose sustained attention, appropriate training, assiduous application, and of course a desire to win.

Alea is a latin word for a game of dice. This is up to chance. This negates work, patience, experience, and qualifications. You either have total disgrace or absolute favor. Some games combine both agon and alea such as dominoes, backgammon, or cards.

Next is Mimicry in which you become an illusory character yourself. You make believe or make others believe that you are someone other than yourself. But then he goes on to say that this has hardly any relationship to alea and that a competitive mimicry is born in the public at a sporting even or such (agon).

Finally, is Ilinx, and it is based on the pursuit of vertigo and consists of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflicts a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind. This can be found with rollercoasters and the like.

Now obviously ilinx has nothing to do with table-top role-playing games, but I believe that the other three do. You are pretending to be another person, a character of your own or someone's creation, it is agon in that you compete with others (a lot of the time non-player characters) using the skills of your character on your character sheet. The results of those actions are alea in that it is up to the rolling of dice.

There I think I've got that figured out for the paper, but I keep second guessing myself on this based on one thing Caillous said. "Mimicry has hardly any relationship to alea." Does mimicry play a part in the classification of role-playing games?

The book was first published in 1913, so there was no way that he could have known about role-playing games seeing as it wasn't until 61 years later that Dungeons and Dragons first came out. Lord of the Rings, arguably the inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons hadn't even been thought of, let alone the Hobbit. So it is dated, yet it is still highly regarded within the community of those who study games.

Many things have happened since 1913, many reprints of this book moving from publisher to publisher. While many things that I have read in this book hold true today, there is one small hiccup when it comes to role-playing games. It isn't the first time these games have been looked over by sociologists and anthropologists alike, most of the studies I have been able to find on the topic skip over the table and go straight for the computer. I have found many World of Warcraft studies, a few on role-playing games that I have had to adapt to work with my paper, and very few on the table games. I knew this paper was going to be a challenge, but I wasn't expecting it quite like this.

Books, Books, Books

Went to a comic book convention today. Spent 2 hours going through books, and left with 75 books when I hit my budget limit for comics. I picked up some Dragonball Z (which I want to send to my brother), Ranma 1/2, X-Men, Star Wars, and a lot of Catwoman. I have been on the hunt for old Catwoman books, not only to collect, but I would like to use some to make comic book heels.

I then went to the game store and picked up the Marvel RPG game book so that I can finish building my super hero/super villain (she does what she wants). I have already decided to make her a Crime Master, this will help her know the ins and outs of the crime world. We should finally get to play this Wednesday, I am so excited.

I then wandered down to my favorite used book store where I decided I needed more cook books. I found The Absolute Beginner's Cookbook, and Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola. I can't wait to start cooking, maybe I'll blog about that as I do it. When I told my boyfriend about the cookbooks his question was "Comic book cookbooks?" That prompted me to go on a hunt on amazon and sure enough I found one and ordered that and multiple books from my wishlist. It truly was a day for books and it was glorious.

So I bought more books, but my bookshelves are not ready for now books. I'm still in the process of cleaning and organizing my room. So I decided it was time to tackle my bookshelves. I gathered up all of my books that were not shelved and shelved them (by author for the fiction books, the non-fiction still needs work). Then it was time to tackle the taller shelf. I pulled books out and stacked and went through them. I pulled a huge stack that weren't even mine but my dad's, so that promptly left my room. By the end of it I had narrowed 3 shelves of books down to two, leaving me with a new shelf for my gaming stuff. I used the top shelf for my rpg books and cookbooks, and the second shelf for my board games, the bottom two shelves were my non-fiction books. I don't plan on leaving the book shelf there when I start moving furniture, but it works for now.