as seasoned flamers and flame developers we can sometimes lose track of the essential elements of the flaming hobby. what, in its essense, is a flame? so its like... its the feeling of having your soul lit up by a thing. its that neato feeling in your navel, corresponding to a sharpness of cool air, where you're like, heck yeah, fuckin, wooo
i think its perhaps important to distinguish flame from like, sexual arousal or like dopamine response or community-infeeling or performance of right behaviour, as like another separate thing that isnt these other things. a flame is not a system of rules that allows for player agency. a flame is not a toy or structure that creates a flame.
so like, a flame can be created by reading a sourcebook or executing a combo or getting a funny idea for how to mess with your friend, a bit of a song that you like, the smell of old books, these things are not the flame, but we can recognise that they are among the things that can create the flame. but not necessarily reliably. a game might create a flame in you but the game will persist even when the flame is gone. its important perhaps that the two things are not the same
anyway i think what i mean here is evident from what ive said but i'll reiterate here to spell it out; this because i sometimes characterise myself as someone who 'likes systems' but i dont actually 'like', 'systems'. a system does a thing. theres a point to all this. star wars isnt star wars, star wars is star wars. and so on
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