To Tor, Jesse, and Paul

[jburneko]

Hmmm... Tor gave me an idea for a telltale, "Sweats as if in a humid heat even on the coolest of nights."

I think noir without conspiracy and Bogey is pretty easy actually.  Noir is about double-cross, backstabing and greed.  I remember seeing a short film on the Sci-Fi channel.  I can't remember the title but I was very impressed by it because it only had 3 characters but was one of the most intricately woven plots where you couldn't figure out who was working against whom.  At first it looks like this guy and his girlfriend are trying to murder his wife so they can get his money.  Then it looks like the girlfriend and the wife are trying to murder the man so that they can carry out their torrid lesbian love affair.  But what's REALLY going on is that the man and the wife are trying to kill the girlfriend so that not only can they steal her money but that they also get some kind of sick power trip thing out of it.

Yeah, Noir without Bogey or Conspiracies or Nazis, I can see that.

I totally get the Material Wealth Premise and I'm definitely with you on the high class thing.  I see decadence, decadence, decadence.  I see a black and white, slightly gothic version of Moulan Rouge, if that makes any sense.  If you didn't want to be high class I'm assuming that you would have to be someone with High Aspirations in order to make this work.  An Artist who craves world recognition.  Again, I'm reminded of Salvidore Dali, not because of his style but because of his aspirations.  He was widely criticised by 'real artists' because he was only in it for the money and the fame and he was very open about that.

Some one asked what he loved most about life to which he replied, 'Being Salvidore Dali.'

I'm still seeing the clean lines vs. organic but Tor's mention of an inner fevor really struck a note with me and so did the mention of A Street Car Named Desire.  I'm thinking of man's obsession with order and cleanliness coming into conflict with primal animal facts.  You may wear that smart tux and live in those clean, elegant buildings but you still sweat like a pig.

I see sexy Passers (who doesn't?), I see sweaty Parasites and Primal Possessors.  I'm thinking about jazz instruments as object demons and shadows as inconspicuous ones.

Sorcery?  It's messy.  Messy.  Messy.  Messy.  Blood, Sweat and Ink.  I see blood soaked tuxidos, melting walls, vampiric sex rites, drunken hallucinations, feverish chanting (which is just thinly disguised begging), weeping, and anything else that betray's our assumed mastery of our surroundings.

Yeah, I'm good with this.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Jesse's on it. Tor's on it now too. Mike's not, but since the meaning of "noir" was retro-fitted in film and pop culture about four times between the 30s and the present, and since Mike's not in the player-group, I'm not going to worry about it. I'll simply say that I used the word as one of many adjectives, not as the single defining element.

Paul?

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

Now I have to step in & say this all sounds brilliantly cool. I love the Batman animated series (as well as the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons) & the whole "dark retro" thing (Fritz Lang, baby!).
If I were in charge of the Batman comics, they'd all be a mix of German Expressionism & timeless retro noir. Pretty much exactly how Jesse described it.

Hmmmm...I think I'm thinking of a Sorcerer narrative of my own...

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Gonna jump in for a second as well and say this:

Demon as vigilante superhero costume/mask.

[Paul Czege]

Paul?

I'm cool with it. I get the black and white mood, starlets, captains of industry, and heavy aspirations of materialism. I'm not sure I have the same psychic bond with it that Jesse and Josh do, but maybe just because my thoughts about a character are pretty unfocused. I still don't get the "honor" part though, but in general I'm with you.

Paul

[joshua neff]

Paul--

Eh, just go with the "bored rich boy who's into sorcery". Then the question is, what would a bored rich kid want that he doesn't already have that he'd need to use sorcery to get it?

Actually, the first idea that pops into my head is: he'd use sorcery to get what money can't buy--the love of a parent or the love of a woman or man.

Or flip it around--maybe he's the lower-middle-class kid who worked his ass off & got into Harvard. Now he's got an ivy league education & degree, a leg up into the world of high finance (or law or medicine or whatever), & the sorcerous knowledge to summon & bind demons, as well as a chip on his shoulder from his background. He's moving through the world of the upper crust, knowing that they look down on his lower class origins & hating them for it. It's almost Count of Monte Cristo/Stars My Destination, mixed with a little Gattaca & Good Will Hunting (& maybe Talented Mr Ripley?).

That's what I might do, anyway.

Sorry, am I nosing in? I just really, really like this set up. I'm so gonna have to run this kind of Sorcerer narrative.

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-10-17 12:57, Ron Edwards wrote:
Jesse's on it. Tor's on it now too. Mike's not, but since the meaning of "noir" was retro-fitted in film and pop culture about four times between the 30s and the present, and since Mike's not in the player-group, I'm not going to worry about it. I'll simply say that I used the word as one of many adjectives, not as the single defining element.

Oh, sure, don't ask me to play and then just ignore me because you didn't. Niiiiice.   :wink:

Hey, I think I qualify as a film buff. Well, I've taken a class, and, maybe more importantly, managed a video store, anyhow. And I've watched more movies than anybody has a right to. I was going off what I thought was the defintion of Noir that I figured the players would know. We can discuss the impact of Ingmar Bergman some other time if you want to really get into it.

I have a title which I am going to bestow on the setting that you have created whether you like it or not. I dub it "Art-deco Melodrama".

So there,
Mike

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-10-17 16:41, joshua neff wrote:
Or flip it around--maybe he's the lower-middle-class kid who worked his ass off & got into Harvard. Now he's got an ivy league education & degree, a leg up into the world of high finance (or law or medicine or whatever), & the sorcerous knowledge to summon & bind demons, as well as a chip on his shoulder from his background. He's moving through the world of the upper crust, knowing that they look down on his lower class origins & hating them for it. It's almost Count of Monte Cristo/Stars My Destination, mixed with a little Gattaca & Good Will Hunting (& maybe Talented Mr Ripley?).

Will Smith's character in Six Degrees of Separation? Con your way in. With the help of a demon. I'd say that'd be perfect.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Couple last points and then we'll kill this thread.

1) Mike - ignore you? Never. But that discussion threatened to go way off into uh-oh film-talk, and so it was best squelched.
2) Paul - "honor," for our purposes this minute, is only the sense of "justice as I see it, and how I demand to be treated on that basis."
3) Jared - no superheroes. No masks. No costumes. Not in this particular setup, anyway.

There!

Next step, characters. New thread, please.

Best,
Ron