Xmas Geek Games
Thanksgiving weekend is almost over, so Christmas is in full swing, as far as the television networks are concerned. My family is spending its last night before the flight home watching some smarmy holiday special, starring Peter Falk as an angel meddling in the lives, arranging happy endings for second-rate actors. I wouldn’t mention it at all, were it not for the subtext running through my head as we watch.
See, I like In Nomine a lot, enough to read and reread over a dozen or so rulebooks and supplements in the line. In Nomine is an RPG devoted to the theme of an ongoing war between heaven and hell, using human lives to keep score. And, since I’ve studied the game setting with such relish, I find myself viewing all angelic material through its lens. This can be a problem: it distorts how I absorb actual angelic mythology in preparing for Fairyland, unless I persistently remind myself to keep a sense of perspective. On the other hand, it makes stupid programs far more interesting, because the transparent characters of a Christmas special become so much more layered and complex.
Suddenly, Falk isn’t a saccharine do-gooder; he’s a Mercurian serving Yves, Archangel of Destiny. When his methods develop logical loopholes, I can now ascribe such incongruities to his choir and servitor dissonance restrictions. His fussbudget supervisor isn’t a simple foil, she becomes one of Yves’s Seraphim. And when she begins losing control of herself, it isn’t for cheap comic relief; it’s because she’s becoming dissonant, having violated her seraphic nature by lying. It’s built into her very nature. Her arguments with Falk aren’t cut-and-paste dialogue; they’re symptomatic of the differences of grand perspective between Seraphim and Mercurians, and between old and young angels. I can amuse myself by working out which Demon Prince would most like to interfere with the angelic program, and trying to pick his demonic agents out of the crowd of bit parts. My money is on the bully kid at the babysitting service, though Sally’s boss, with his appeals to profit and job responsibility, might be under the thumb of one of Mammon’s Habbalah.
Watching this way is sort of like taking Star Trek shots, or making smartass comments along with Mystery Theater 3000. The only problem is that the jokes make sense to a much smaller demographic. Well, that and the fact that it proves my irrecoverable geekdom.