What's Interesting?

[qos]

This - like many other good things - lifted from mommybird

Pick an interest from my interests page that either 1) you know nothing about but sounds intriguing, or 2) you know something about but can't fathom why yours truly would be interested in it, and demand an explanation. Verily, I will provide.

Comments

[ex-mommybir.livejournal.com]

Tell me about "castle falkenstein".

[qos.livejournal.com]

Castle Falkenstein is a role-playing game system that uses playing cards instead of dice for determining outcomes. The rule book is written as if it is the journal of a person from our world who has been brought over by magic into an alternate "steampunk" world. It's a Victorian-type world with steam-powered machines and magic.

[ex-mommybir.livejournal.com]

Gee, I'm not into gaming, but that sounds really cool.

[qos.livejournal.com]

It's a lot of fun -- and the use of the playing cards allows a degree of strategy into what is often simply a random test when dice are used in other systems.

Of course, in any game system it's as much what the GM and players bring to it as the system itself. But some game worlds (like some fandoms) provide a richer starting point and more fascinating and compelling elements from which to create.

[toesontheground.livejournal.com]

I'd like to hear what you have to say about "doors into other worlds"

[qos.livejournal.com]

I'm finding it hard to put this into words. . .

It's not the doors themselves that intrigue me, it's the whole concept that there are different worlds, and that we can move between them. In its most fantastical application, you have stories in which people accidentally stumble through a portal (or ride a tornado) into a different world where magic works, animals talk, time runs differently, and etc. There are also science fiction stories of moving between worlds via starship.

Then there's the fact that in our own real, mundane earth, there are different worlds of meaning, different worlds of culture.

Since I was 12 years old, I have wanted to be able to move between worlds and understand them: to be able to slip out of the habits and assumptions of my own world and truly see and appreciate and be able to partake in the customs of another world -- not keep repeating "This isn't like it is at home."

I also want to be a mediator: someone who can apply my understanding to helping people from different worlds communicate with each other, to translate symbols and ideas from one world into the symbols and ideas of another, while staying true to the original meaning.

Whatever mechanisms - "doors" - that exist to make this possible, are of interest to me.

[queenofhalves]

mirabai?

[qos.livejournal.com]

Ooooohhhh. . . I would have thought you knew Mirabai. I'm delighted to be the one to introduce you!

Mirabai was a Hindu princess who lived from 1498-1550. She was a devotee of Krishna, and resisted the arranged marriage her parents forced on her because she wanted to give her entire life to her god, whom she addressed as Dark One. Legend has it her in-laws tried to poison her because her religious ecastasies and her refusal to conform to their household infuriated them. Eventually she left her husband and became a wandering saint whose poetry has been preserved down to today.

Her devotional poetry is erotically rich and filled with the yearning of the soul for the Divine.

Come to my bedroom,
I've scattered fresh buds on the couch,
perfumed my body.
Birth after birth I am your servant,
sleep only with you.
Mira's lord does not perish --
one glimpse of the Dark One
is all she requests.

And. .

Your colorful kingdom
just bores me.
Among your subjects no seekers, O Prince,
only trash --
these people are abject!
Prince Ratan Singh,
I strip off my jewelry,
thrown down my bangles,
eye-black and rouge -- gone.
I shake the barrettes from my hair.
Why? Mira has found
a lord who lifts mountains,
a lover who fills her completely.

[queenofhalves]

ooh. yes, that is someone i should know about. :>