The time has come once again* for me to muse on work while I sit in my home office, in the air conditioning, doing little heavy lifting. How much work that can be, my typing things up and reviewing emails and treating bank feed data coming in (because all that does need done despite the holiday), is an open question, and I am well aware that there are good-faith arguments to be had about what work is. (I’m also aware, thanks to an undergraduate education many might well argue makes me useless for actual work, that there’s a collection of poetry titled What Work Is. It’s been since undergrad that I read it, however; I don’t remember how well it addresses its titular topic. Perhaps another rereading is in order.) There are also a lot of bad-faith arguments had about it, dividing workers in fields from each other and inhibiting their abilities to organize to effect.
Kind of the point. Photo by Tyler Mascola on Pexels.com
Although it is the case that I am currently management (technically; I don’t have a staff, working a largely seasonal business as I do for my day-job), I remain sympathetic to labor unions, having benefited from being in one (UAW Local 2110) and from growing up in then-current and formerly union households. I know well what a union contract can mean for a working person and for the family of the working person, and while I can readily acknowledge there are problems in unions as there are in any human organizations, I have also spent a long time working in at-will states without contractual protections, and I’d happily take the union problems over the other set.
(For reference, my day-job is a family business, and my parents are the owners. While it’s technically at-will employment, it would take a lot for me to walk away from my folks on this. The dynamics are different, and I acknowledge that my current situation is atypical; I do not expect to stand as a standard for anyone else’s experience. Just so it’s said.)
Given my union experience, I tend towards a broader view of labor, if only because it does allow more effective unionization. As noted above, I was a member of UAW Local 2110; I was not and never have been an automotive worker. Through some historical quirks, the entire working staff of a school at which I taught in New York City was represented by that union; everyone from the janitors and kitchen workers through administrative assistants and faculty up to the teaching heads of departments was part of a single collective bargaining unit. Only upper administration–deans, the provost, the president, and the like–stood outside of it. Accordingly, when it did happen that the contract needed renegotiating, it was a supremely unified effort at the school, and we did end up getting pretty decent deals for ourselves while I was on the payroll. Again, for me, it worked well; looking back, I could have and should have done more than I did with what I had at the time, but so much is true for a great many things in my life.
Yes, again, there are problems with the ways many unions are set up and operate. I’m not blind to them; I was on the receiving end of them, and more than once. (Seniority matters, time on task matters, but they are not the only things that do, especially in fields that do, in fact, evolve over time.) But there are, again, problems in any human systems. Self-interest and self-aggrandizement stain human experience, and peccadilloes and perfidies pervade it. I need not rattle off a litany of even this long weekend’s events to show so much. I’ll note, though, that the sometimes severe problems present in a great many systems do not dissuade a great many people from taking part in them; for many, the price of indulging such flaws is worth paying for what is received thereby. How broadly such a lesson might be applied…I suppose it is, for now, for others to say.
* Oh, yes, it’s again. I mention the observance here, and I ruminate upon it here, here, here, here, here, and here. That the observance always falls on a Monday and I try to post each Monday makes it easy to mark the event.
Following up on last week, I continued to work with the students taking part in the Dungeons & Dragons game at my local public library o get their characters built for the game, moving forward; it was, in effect, Session Zero and a Half. With as many as were at the table, and as relatively few sets of materials as were present, it took some doing, but I feel like good progress was made. It helped that one of the stated goals of the program is to develop players who can run games of their own; since dealing with building characters is part of running games, having one or two of the more senior participants work to help others build their own characters seemed a useful part of training.
It’s a good result. Photo by Lucius PK on Pexels.com
I’ve had my own building to do, as well. While I was able to get a lot of information put together in advance of the previous session, there was still more I needed to have ready to go for the players; that is now completed, to my great comfort. It helped that I was able to leverage a fair amount of my expertise participating in online play-by-post games, something I think I noted, and I’m minded that the kind of adventure I have planned for the young players at my table is one that would work, with some adjustment, for a more mature group (and a larger one, although I had nine people at my table last week, which is a pretty damned big group, all told). It is something of an escort mission, one resonant with local history and that makes use of silly internet memes–so a good kind of thing. For another group, a less-memed such mission might work; similarly, one that faces multiple challenges of the sort I have planned for the kids, and on a more predetermined than dice-driven schedule, might well work. (And, honestly, for a play-by-post game, it would be better to have things scheduled out; there is an expectation of scheduling rather than spontaneity in such a setting.)
I know that escort missions often annoy in video games. The escorted often have poor pathfinding and action trees, making them unwieldy to play around. That’s part of why I’m working with the memes at my youth table*; my thought is that the silly nature of what the players and their characters have to address will offset at least some of the annoyance, given how often people are willing to put up with vexations if there’s a laugh to be found (or something cute, which I think is the case for what I’m having the youths treat). In the case of what I’m offering to my current players, the common patterns of escort missions make sense; I can’t give too much detail here against the possibility that one or more of my players will do the work of looking up what I write,** but silly things of limited wisdom and some intelligence can be expected to act in…odd ways. And that can work with adult groups no less well than with younger ones, honestly.
Too, the escort mission does allow for a particular narrative focus. While railroading remains problematic at best, as I’ve noted, younger groups often do need a bit more overt direction than older ones. More open-ended things, while rewarding player initiative and creativity, offer ample opportunity for distraction and, in my experience, character and player conflict. Older goups tend to handle such conflicts better, in addition to being more willing than younger ones to let stories form around them. For larger groups–and I have a larger group at present–it’s more helpful, as well, to have the greater focus; with many people working together, things can go well, while having them work at cross-purposes means things don’t go much at all. And having them go really does make for a better time for all involved.
It is a game, after all, and even if it, like all works of art,† does other things, it has as its purpose working toward making a good time for all involved.
* Another part is to amuse myself. I get to have fun at the table, too, after all.
** Given that one of the players is my daughter, I know at least one of them is aware of my blogging in this webspace. I would not be surprised to learn she’d mentioned as much to her friends at the table, and I’d honestly welcome it if one of them tried to do the kind of metagaming that looking at what I write here would entail; it would show engagement with the game and its materials. I would have to address the matter, of course, for reasons I’ve discussed previously, but I can appreciate the initiative and investment. To avoid the need to address, then, I keep things somewhat obscure here. Perhaps sometime I will post the narrative materials here. Maybe.
† I follow Daniel Mackay’s The Fantasy Role-playing Game: A New Performing Art for this. I’ve referenced him more than once before, as witness this, this, this, this, and this.
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The fourth chapter of Forest Mage, “The Fast,” starts as Nevare, escorted by his elder brother, reports to the work detail led by Sergeant Duril. The surroundings and work are described as Nevare joins the tasks, and Duril privately expresses his surprise at Nevare’s appearance, to Nevare’s shame. But the work continues through the day, and when Nevare returns to his room at the end of it, washes up, and surveys himself, finding himself much changed from even his expectations and puzzled at how the changes have happened.
It’s a little close for comfort. Photo by u0391u03bbu03b5u03beu03b1u03bdu03b4u03c1u03bfu03c2 u039cu03b1u03bcu03bfu03c5u03bdu03b7u03c2 on Pexels.com
Having thus diverted himself from his intention to join his family at dinner, Nevare repairs to the kitchen, thinking to drink only water. He does drink a mugful of milk before trying to fill himself on water, but it does not satisfy him, and he withdraws to his rooms to make a journal entry and assess himself. He compares himself to Gord, noting the latter’s inexcessive eating, and determined to go out for a walk on the property. Along the way, he overhears his father’s displeasure, and goes outside, walking amid property he has helped tend.
While considering a pond he had known to be full of fish, Nevare finds himself beset by Yaril. Her ire confuses him, given their previous closeness, and he attempts to defend himself against her assertions of his ill intent. She presses upon him, upbraiding him with the political ramifications of his appearance, and words grow heated between them surrounding their expected marital prospects. Yaril leaves, and Nevare sits, considering her words and the folly of a fish-pond amid the semi-arid plains.
Selethe soon joins Nevare, speaking softly to her son. She notes her surprise at his appearance and summons him to her sewing room, where she speaks of seamstresses who had been hired in preparation for the coming wedding and takes measurements from which to make Nevare a new suit in haste. Selethe ascribes Nevare’s fatness to bad food at the Academy and his convalescence, and she notes having interceded with Keft for him. Soon after, he takes his leave, drinking water again and again finding no satisfaction from it.
The next day, Nevare reutrns to work, faring badly at it. After the work day, he has to avoid the kitchens despite his hunger, and he washes carefully before reporting to his mother’s sewing room and the attentions of the seamstresses. After an embarrassing interlude there, he withdraws to his bed, dreaming as his other self and recognizing the victory earned at the Dancing Spindle.
The following day repeats Nevare’s work experience, and through his exertions, he arrives at the idea that the Academy had stripped him of his self-discipline. He falls into self-recrimination, but he uses it to return to work with vigor, delighting in punishing himself with the effort. He finds when he returns to his mother’s sewing room for final fittings, however, that his efforts have not changed him, and he despairs of Carsina. Again, he compares himself to Gord, and when he returns to the sewing room as he had been directed, Elisi upbraids him. Selethe admits that having to make a new suit for Nevare has left them with insufficient time to prepare Elisi’s outfit to make an effective presentation to a visiting noble. Efforts to prepare for the wedding continue, and Nevare is, at last, sent off for the evening.
To address the chapter-length issue: the present chapter, in the edition of the novel I’m rereading, runs 17 pages in length, approximately 2.33% of the novel. There is perhaps some irony in so slim a chapter focusing on concerns of fatness to the extent that it does, although it might well be read that the text is being pared down as much as it is hoped Nevare will soon be. I’ll admit, though, that that might be over-inflating something that is merely coincidence, but even if it is mere coincidence, it’s something that bears some comment.
Also, for indexing purposes, the following: Alfalfa, Carsina Grenalter, Cilima Lading, Clover, Derwith Toller, Dr. Jakib Amicas, Elisi Burvelle, Eron, Gord Lading, Honeysuckle, Kase Remwar, Keft Burvelle, Nevare Burvelle, Old Thares, Poronte Family, Rosse Burvelle, Selethe Burvelle, Sergeant Erib Duril, Speck plague, Specks, Tree Woman, Widevale, Widevale Hall, Yaril Burvelle. A brief chapter might well be expected to have relatively few indexable items, and the present chapter meets expectations.
It’s time for affective reading again, it seems. I recently to this writing had a series of medical appointments. In them, I was reminded of being overweight–clinically obese, in fact–and that some health problems are starting to crop up in relation thereto. I don’t have quite the animus directed at me that Nevare does in the present chapter, having quite a bit of support as I begin working in earnest to take care of my overweight and my other incipient (and not-so-incipient, as it happens) health problems. There are challenges, though, and I don’t know that I’d do terribly well without the kindness and compassion of those in my life. I am grateful to have it. The present chapter reminds me that I should be thus grateful.
I will again refer to Metsäpelto here, the present chapter once again putting on display a variety of Gernian attitudes toward fatness that echo those present in the late nineteenth-century United States, echoing those in Victorian England. In the case of the Victorian English, part of what informs attitudes towards fatness is a reaction against Regency norms and excesses, a motion towards self-restraint and “decency” and away from the perceived immoralities of the recent past. Fatness is viewed as an indication of excess, thus of indecency, as attested by William Banting in his Letter on Corpulence, Joyce L. Huff in “Fat,” Peter R. Stearns in Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West, Georges Vigarello in The Metamorphoses of Fat, Garabed Eknoyan in “A History of Obesity, or How What Was Good Became Ugly and Then Bad,” and elsewhere. The scholars note that such attitudes arise in force only in the later Victorian period and the post-Civil War United States, Stearns situating it specifically following 1890 (which reinforces some of the suggestions of more specific antecedents for Gernia noted in Shaman’s Crossing‘s “A Ride in the Park,” although the note must be repeated that Gernia borrows from the nineteenth-century United States rather than reflecting it precisely). They contrast in force with both earlier understandings of fatness (being more concerned with mobility than with girth as such) and ancestral regard for obesity as signifying sufficiency of food.* Such makes the Gernian disdain for fatness make more sense; Gernia, as presented, is very much about adherence to norms, to self-control and differentiation from indigenous lifeways, and the Burvelles are presented as being more concerned with such things than most. The vehemence against fatness** is not more comfortable for having such a context, of course, but the context does matter.
I’ll note also a strange myopia as regards how Nevare is expected to address his fatness. While several characters acknowledge that a scant few days is not enough time to lost all of the fat Nevare “should,” most do seem to think there will be a noticeable difference in him in those few days with work and short rations. For his part, Nevare does make a good faith effort to heed his father’s commands, starving himself for days as he does hard manual labor in the sun and heat. Having picked up rocks in the sun, I know it is no easy thing to do. I know, too, that I did not lose weight from it, at least not in the course of a few days. Water weight might be shed so quickly, but even then, doing so comes at costs–including some of the same symptoms that Nevare shows of weakness and fogged thought. It’s not healthy, even in the short term, and it’s not really sustainable.
* Indeed, the evident preference for fatness among the Dappled People is suggestive of their adherence to such regard. Later portions of the reread will treat this.
** There is some vehemence even when encountered in moderation, as in Selethe’s opinion of Nevare’s weight as stemming from the circumstances of his convalescence. She, at least, seems to regard it as a thing that has happened to him, rather than as a thing he has done to himself; she does not decline to regard it as a problem he must solve, however, nor yet does she conceal her distaste for even her supposedly favored child due to his fatness.
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