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So I just spent most of the night at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
enemy_anime's house, playing with rabbids with Rayman on their wii and DS. (We never had any game platforms at home, and we never were the kind of kids who would go to somebody else's house to play, so this wii is really the first time I've done much of anything on a gaming system since Dad's friend Terry showed us how to play Duck Hunt, and Raving Rabbids really puts the wii through its paces.)
Anyway, I'm just totally *fascinated* by the rabbids, by the little glimpses we see of their society and what must underlie it - the closest I can come up with is that they're like Reaver bunnies, except where Reavers torture and torment and kill, the Rabbids *play*. And they play with a bizarre but impeccable sense of honor, the most important element of which is caring more about the rules of the game than about their own lives - lives which they spend profligately, masterfully, *joyfully*.
It's probably a *good* thing that I've really never played through games with any more story than your average platformer, because I'm at real risk of trying to write *serious science fiction* about the Rabbids and their motivation and the way they live together.
It probably doesn't help that the fandom I'm currently submerging in is Young Wizards. (I'm slowly reading through Wizards at War, which is the only one I haven't read yet, not counting The Big Meow and Wizards on Call, and it's taking me forever because it's going like a nonfiction book - like a philosophy book - I have to put it down every few minutes to *think*.)
And it's pretty obvious that the rabbids got a really raw deal when they bargained with the Lone Power. It's hard to imagine a place more full of life and yet more lost to entropy. I suppose it went something like, they accepted the Lone One's gift of death in exchange for power and civilization, but with the caveat (which I suppose they thought was a good bargain) that death should never be a burden to them. And in that bargain - where the only goal can be to live and die as brilliantly as you can, with no care for pain or suffering (not to mention that they've become almost completely nonverbal) - how can there be wizards?
But .. they're not completely lost to the dark. There's a sense of honor to them, and a communal spirit, and a deep, deep joy, and somewhere in them a striving to be better than they are, a thirst for beauty - no species that dances like that can ever be beyond redemption.
And then playing the DS game, it's so obvious that Rayman's on Ordeal - he even has his own version of the Whispering, guiding him in the use of his new powers! - I kept waiting for him to find a rabbid who is on the verge of taking the Oath, and for them together to face down the Lone Power, re-negotiate the Bargain, and lead the Rabbids forward into a new era --
Apparently there've been a lot of Rayman games so far, without Rabbids? I wonder how *his* species stands in relation to the Lone One. They seem to have endless life - but they're doomed to always move forward in set pathways, and never turn back, never try a new strategy - renogotiating with the Powers must seem entirely foreign to them ...
PS: I bought a copy of Only You Can Save Mankind t'other day. It's now filed next to Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars under 'this is exactly what adolescence was like for me.'
PPS: Reavers are totally canon in YW-verse, did you know? Because YW crosses over with everything else she's written, and the baddies in Tale of the Five are Reavers - reavers Overshadowed rather than drugged, but, still, Reavers! This left me fairly confused fairly far into Firefly, I must say, because to an outsider's view of them as Other, they're nearly indistinguishable - and yet so totally different in the end.
enemy_anime's house, playing with rabbids with Rayman on their wii and DS. (We never had any game platforms at home, and we never were the kind of kids who would go to somebody else's house to play, so this wii is really the first time I've done much of anything on a gaming system since Dad's friend Terry showed us how to play Duck Hunt, and Raving Rabbids really puts the wii through its paces.)Anyway, I'm just totally *fascinated* by the rabbids, by the little glimpses we see of their society and what must underlie it - the closest I can come up with is that they're like Reaver bunnies, except where Reavers torture and torment and kill, the Rabbids *play*. And they play with a bizarre but impeccable sense of honor, the most important element of which is caring more about the rules of the game than about their own lives - lives which they spend profligately, masterfully, *joyfully*.
It's probably a *good* thing that I've really never played through games with any more story than your average platformer, because I'm at real risk of trying to write *serious science fiction* about the Rabbids and their motivation and the way they live together.
It probably doesn't help that the fandom I'm currently submerging in is Young Wizards. (I'm slowly reading through Wizards at War, which is the only one I haven't read yet, not counting The Big Meow and Wizards on Call, and it's taking me forever because it's going like a nonfiction book - like a philosophy book - I have to put it down every few minutes to *think*.)
And it's pretty obvious that the rabbids got a really raw deal when they bargained with the Lone Power. It's hard to imagine a place more full of life and yet more lost to entropy. I suppose it went something like, they accepted the Lone One's gift of death in exchange for power and civilization, but with the caveat (which I suppose they thought was a good bargain) that death should never be a burden to them. And in that bargain - where the only goal can be to live and die as brilliantly as you can, with no care for pain or suffering (not to mention that they've become almost completely nonverbal) - how can there be wizards?
But .. they're not completely lost to the dark. There's a sense of honor to them, and a communal spirit, and a deep, deep joy, and somewhere in them a striving to be better than they are, a thirst for beauty - no species that dances like that can ever be beyond redemption.
And then playing the DS game, it's so obvious that Rayman's on Ordeal - he even has his own version of the Whispering, guiding him in the use of his new powers! - I kept waiting for him to find a rabbid who is on the verge of taking the Oath, and for them together to face down the Lone Power, re-negotiate the Bargain, and lead the Rabbids forward into a new era --
Apparently there've been a lot of Rayman games so far, without Rabbids? I wonder how *his* species stands in relation to the Lone One. They seem to have endless life - but they're doomed to always move forward in set pathways, and never turn back, never try a new strategy - renogotiating with the Powers must seem entirely foreign to them ...
PS: I bought a copy of Only You Can Save Mankind t'other day. It's now filed next to Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars under 'this is exactly what adolescence was like for me.'
PPS: Reavers are totally canon in YW-verse, did you know? Because YW crosses over with everything else she's written, and the baddies in Tale of the Five are Reavers - reavers Overshadowed rather than drugged, but, still, Reavers! This left me fairly confused fairly far into Firefly, I must say, because to an outsider's view of them as Other, they're nearly indistinguishable - and yet so totally different in the end.
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And I should know better than to read DD (In fact I do know better - they've been sitting on the shlef for ages) but yes, wizardry has eaten my brain again.
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And Duck Hunt still rocks, to this day. >:o