This website is about
More specific: This website is about
Story games are about how to make stories with a special quality:
All this is explained in the articles below.
‘Desire’ is the first in the list. It is just an example.
The articles following that explain all about story games.
The storefronts are lit. Trams come and go. People on their way to amusement. So am I. I am walking in just another city, at just another night.
Out of the crowd a group takes shape. Scum on their way to have fun. Drunk. Shouting. Looking for an occasion, a victim. They scan the environment.
Alas, I am spotted. ‘Hi faggot, where are you going?’ This is what I dreaded. Am I going to be beaten up by this scum? Oh no, not me.
The street is narrow. Escaping difficult. Running hardly an option.
I go as fast as possible to the nearest small crowd. It is by tram stop. I go and stand amidst of people who are standing there. They don't like it. But not being liked is less important now than being beat up.
Seeing I am part of a little crowd now, the punks loose there interest. They move on.
‘Desire’ is a story. It is an example of what this website is about.
It is no literature. It is just some words.
In fact I wrote it in five minutes.
But I did write with some considerations. It is not just another story.
It could have been something else, but not anything else. It could not have been any sequal of words.
It had to be ‘something like’ the story above.
‘Desire’ is based upon a story someone else wrote.
I
This is relevant.
The story ‘Desire’ was based upon can be seen later here on this website when I will have had the time to put it here.
The story was written with a rather explicit
Relevant is also that the
That is one thing this website is about:
The story ‘Desire’ is based on is in itself a new version of another story.
That is another thing this website is about. The story was a product of an attempt to make a good story, to make a better story, a better version.
This website is about
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So, which words are important? Story, story game, useful, rewrite, action, better, version. Purpose? No, this word has a terporary use. We will be able to do without it along the way.
The (very) short story ‘Desire’ published above is based on a research.
This research can serve as a template for other projects I plan to do
in the context of the containing project ‘Story Games’.
I will describe this research in following articles.
I will also write an article of how I see this kind of research can be repeated an be repeated better.
Maybe a setup for a kind of research project I hope to do will emerge or of it.
The research that Desire was based upon was called ‘Flikkers en Agressie’; in English: ‘Faggots and aggression’.
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Please, don't be discouraged about that. This game is not about using strong language. However, it is about avoiding it either. In the seventies all over Europe groups of 'militant' homosexuals arose that opposed the 'repressive tolerance' of people who used words like 'homophiles' and 'homophile fellow humans' (Dutch: homofiele medemens.) No doubt, once (in the early sixties), a lot of this newspeak was well meant. But at this time (early seventies) it had become nothing more than lipp service. Anyhow, it had become obsolete. It had become 'oldspeak'. Once it was meant to be a step toward tolerance, by this time it had become a hindrance. |
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(Nowadays something similar can be seen.
In the fifties openly was spoken of Negro's.
Then Blacks.
Than colored people.
Now we suffer the popularity of monstrous combinations like African Americans, for the people (speakers, tellers) who want to stress their cultural correctness.
And especially now some 'African Americans' start using the word Negro again, and even nigger.
It is just to show: there is nothing wrong being a Negro, a Nigger, a Faggot. )
This club is not to promote nigger rights, or african american rights,
european african american rights, nor azian african rights, nor womens rights, nor immigrant rights,
nor faggot rights, nor gay rights, nor homophile rights, nor any rights whatever.
This website is not about rights.
It is about stories and story games. Just stories! Stories! Stories! Stories!
The story 'Desire' that I published above, was based on a story that was part of the product of a research by that name. I will go into that more extensively later on.
At this point the following is relevant.
Faggots and aggression (Flikkers en agressie) was a research a group of students at the University of Amsterdam did in 1975. The product of this research was two fold:
A collection of stories plus A set of legitimating sentences.
The legitimating sentences consisted of criteria that were used to select some (versions) of stories above others. The collection consisted of stories about how ('imagined' or 'real') people coped with aggression directed at them.
The collection was the result of:
finding stories in a 'source group',
imagining stories by the students themselves,
thinking about the quality some (versions of) stories had over others,
trying to improve these stories,
explicating what was so good about some stories or versions of them: criteria.
This in a nutshell is what I am interested in. I am interested in repeating what these students did an try to systemize it further, make make a methodic out of it.
I am not so interested here in the faggot-ness. It can be any social category.
I also am not so much interested in the emancipation-aspect; although that remains one of the main applications of this project.
What I am interested in is
And of course, I do not just want to know, I want to share. Find fellows to cooperate with. Share ideas, share knowledge. Cooperate in research.
Thus, this project is about:
How can 'good' stories be produced.
How can stories be improved?
How can this improving be done more or less systematically?
How can heuristics be made out of this?
This is a story club. A story club has just one goal: play story games.
You are in a game now. (Nothing new though… Life is nothing less than a game (that is: if well played.))
And this game is about stories. Ans of course story games. And of course story clubs.
By visiting this website you entered a game. (That is, if you are a good player. That goes without saying. Thus I will not repeat this anymore.) You are in a game with me. And ‘me’ is ‘this website’. And thus the maker of it.
Don't worry, nothing happened to your computer. No cookies installed, nor worse. You are in this game like you are in any communication game, reading, writing, sendind, receiving, etc.
The maker of this website started this game. He just wants to write articles about stories and converse aboout them. Maybe with you.
In fact this is just a simple website about stories, like so many others. Or is it…
Why call it story games and story clubs? Because, writing about stories, ‘I’ came at a point I found that these words just about descroibed exactly what I find important, what it is all about for me. These words describe well hat I want to talk about, what I want to do, and what is the subject of what I an writing about. What would anyone want more…
So, hoping I did not discourage you too much, please dug into this piule of articles (of which I hope they are stories). And if you are the playing kind indeed, don’t hesitate to contact me.