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These days I have been reading a little bit about some theory material, like the “Three-fold theory”, “GNS Theory” and the “GEN Theory” and something came into my mind.
Ok, it is not a new thought, as it actually did strike me months ago, but for the first time came the idea on trying to organize the concept about aesthetics on forum and text-based role playing games. When I say aesthetics, I am not proposing a writing style or concerns about the process of typing the story itself. It is not a way of arranging words of constructing the “poiesis” itself. I am concerned about the tone, the shading. I am referring in essence, to the game’s “Suspension of Disbelief”.
The main focus here is that I could identify three major and recurring aesthetics used here on Blue Moon RPG: Hentai, Realistic and 3D. This terms are not used this way all the time and sometimes they flow a little bit to one side or the other, but so far I could identify and separate on this three major areas that, lacking a better name, I attributed those.
For Hentai, I guess we may include all referring to Animé/Mangá/Hentai Japanese like aesthetics. So, as a starting thinking, we may assume that most of the characters will look like the Mangá characters, having large ayes, strange hair colors, and probably extreme long hairs. But apart from that, there other concerns about “Suspension of Disbelief” we may attribute to this aesthetic line. I suppose furries will be on top most of the time, some magical, extra-planar, divine traits and some sort of power bringing characters away from the ordinary people they will meet, except, of course, the opposition. The curious thing about the Animá/Mangá/Hentai line is that people around does not care much about the differences, so everything is takes with extreme neutrality. Also, this line tends having young characters linked to the school age and female main characters tend to be naïve, innocent and cute. There is a more “tense” relation to the smut factor, as if before anything sex-related would happened some sort of exploration and “almost sex” must occur to reinforce the sexual scene itself.
On 3D aesthetics, there is a sort of approaching to real things, but with strong links on fantasy. Actually, the 3D concept is an umbrella for 3D art itself, comic books and everything roughly following this direction. Characters tend to have powers and differences from the ordinary or the common, but many other characters also may call upon such differences. They are mages, werewolves, angels and the like, but they live in a world where they are not alone and still causing impact on the lower ordinary people, as the sorcerers and demons may be venerated, followed or feared. Also, the smut is high much more to its original sense – which is to be sensual or sexual indication, but not sex properly. However this does not exclude sex scenes, of course. And even if the sexual content is abundant, it is more linked to the character’s or story’s core.
For Realistic I mean just like that. It does not means it excludes fantasy or powers and amazing things, but characters confronted to such reality absolutely get impressed and considers all the implications of such capabilities. That means that if a character possesses an exclusive power, it must be hidden or someone, somewhere, will be doing something about it. Also, for all sort of scenes and action – including sex scenes – characters tends to be far more guided by logical, rational and psychological reasons than the other aesthetics. Nothing excludes the fact the Priestess of the sex cult have sex all the time, but it changes how this behavior is seen on the setting and how it articulates to other setting’s elements.
At some point, once again taking ride on the GNS and GEN theories, I tried to dare connecting these three mapped aesthetics to the concepts of Gaming, Simulation and Narration, but I am not sure if it would be fair, for example, linking the Japanese-like aesthetic to the Gamist concept. But at other hand, there seems to be a sort of link between how much you want to simulate and narrate and explore settings and themes when you use one or the other aesthetics. I suppose it becomes a little more visible when you drop the free form playing and adopt a system style game, but further investigation seems to be needed.
This post is just a sharing of thoughts and no way I consider this a study or an article on the subject. Ideas?
These days I have been reading a little bit about some theory material, like the “Three-fold theory”, “GNS Theory” and the “GEN Theory” and something came into my mind.
Ok, it is not a new thought, as it actually did strike me months ago, but for the first time came the idea on trying to organize the concept about aesthetics on forum and text-based role playing games. When I say aesthetics, I am not proposing a writing style or concerns about the process of typing the story itself. It is not a way of arranging words of constructing the “poiesis” itself. I am concerned about the tone, the shading. I am referring in essence, to the game’s “Suspension of Disbelief”.
The main focus here is that I could identify three major and recurring aesthetics used here on Blue Moon RPG: Hentai, Realistic and 3D. This terms are not used this way all the time and sometimes they flow a little bit to one side or the other, but so far I could identify and separate on this three major areas that, lacking a better name, I attributed those.
For Hentai, I guess we may include all referring to Animé/Mangá/Hentai Japanese like aesthetics. So, as a starting thinking, we may assume that most of the characters will look like the Mangá characters, having large ayes, strange hair colors, and probably extreme long hairs. But apart from that, there other concerns about “Suspension of Disbelief” we may attribute to this aesthetic line. I suppose furries will be on top most of the time, some magical, extra-planar, divine traits and some sort of power bringing characters away from the ordinary people they will meet, except, of course, the opposition. The curious thing about the Animá/Mangá/Hentai line is that people around does not care much about the differences, so everything is takes with extreme neutrality. Also, this line tends having young characters linked to the school age and female main characters tend to be naïve, innocent and cute. There is a more “tense” relation to the smut factor, as if before anything sex-related would happened some sort of exploration and “almost sex” must occur to reinforce the sexual scene itself.
On 3D aesthetics, there is a sort of approaching to real things, but with strong links on fantasy. Actually, the 3D concept is an umbrella for 3D art itself, comic books and everything roughly following this direction. Characters tend to have powers and differences from the ordinary or the common, but many other characters also may call upon such differences. They are mages, werewolves, angels and the like, but they live in a world where they are not alone and still causing impact on the lower ordinary people, as the sorcerers and demons may be venerated, followed or feared. Also, the smut is high much more to its original sense – which is to be sensual or sexual indication, but not sex properly. However this does not exclude sex scenes, of course. And even if the sexual content is abundant, it is more linked to the character’s or story’s core.
For Realistic I mean just like that. It does not means it excludes fantasy or powers and amazing things, but characters confronted to such reality absolutely get impressed and considers all the implications of such capabilities. That means that if a character possesses an exclusive power, it must be hidden or someone, somewhere, will be doing something about it. Also, for all sort of scenes and action – including sex scenes – characters tends to be far more guided by logical, rational and psychological reasons than the other aesthetics. Nothing excludes the fact the Priestess of the sex cult have sex all the time, but it changes how this behavior is seen on the setting and how it articulates to other setting’s elements.
At some point, once again taking ride on the GNS and GEN theories, I tried to dare connecting these three mapped aesthetics to the concepts of Gaming, Simulation and Narration, but I am not sure if it would be fair, for example, linking the Japanese-like aesthetic to the Gamist concept. But at other hand, there seems to be a sort of link between how much you want to simulate and narrate and explore settings and themes when you use one or the other aesthetics. I suppose it becomes a little more visible when you drop the free form playing and adopt a system style game, but further investigation seems to be needed.
This post is just a sharing of thoughts and no way I consider this a study or an article on the subject. Ideas?