Go read Charles's interesting review of and meditation on the movie "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," which has been getting praise from my go-to reviewers on YouTube. Charles's piece brought me back to the 80s when I used to play a somewhat bastardized, fairly diceless form of D&D with my buddy Mike, who was always the agreed-upon dungeon master. I remember getting caught up in various narratives and keenly feeling the stakes as this or that might happen. Those were the days.
In his piece, Charles mentions the Satanic Panic of the 80s, along with tracts, a term (with a very specific meaning) used among certain fundamentalist Christians to describe little black-and-white cartoon booklets that purported to teach Bible-based moral lessons, sometimes illustrating events from the Bible itself, sometimes telling modern stories that evoked biblical themes (Charles links to an example here). I read through a few such tracts when I was a kid (and was creeped out by the image of a blank-faced God sitting with angry body language on a heavenly throne), but by the 80s, our family had switched from Southern Baptism to the much more moderate and milquetoast Presbyterianism of the PCUSA (Presbyterian Church of the USA), joshingly known as "God's Frozen Chosen" for being so boring and harmless.
Tracts, in this Christian sense, largely passed me by, as did the Satanic Panic, which our moderate Presbyterian pastor never preached about from the pulpit (PCUSA doesn't do fire and brimstone, but our former church, the Southern Baptist one, did for sure). Dungeons and Dragons was something I simply outgrew. After high school, I may have played it once or twice with old friends while on vacation in my college years, but that was about it for me.
I plan to see "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" eventually; it's on my queue. But I'll most likely watch it when it's on streaming video, and I'll offer my own review then.
I was so steeped in evangelical Christian culture growing up that I didn't realize "tract" was not common parlance (you know, besides "Huge... tracts of land!").
ReplyDeleteFunny that you say Presbyterians were called "God's Frozen Chosen." When HJ and I were in San Antonio this past January, we went to an Episcopalian church, and the older couple sitting behind us jokingly referred to Episcopalian's with the same phrase!
As for outgrowing D&D, I can't say that ever happened to me. I played a little online with some friends (it wasn't D&D, but an alternative system that's actually a lot more deadly) just a couple years ago; we would still be playing if we (and particularly the DM) had the time.
Damn... if I can rouse my fellow Presbyterians from their bland complacency, perhaps we can take back the "Frozen Chosen" label from those godless Episcopalians.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Episcopalians have a sense of humor about their own blandness. They're certainly a source of humor. I'm sure you've seen Eddie Izzard's take on the Anglican Church.
I'm reading over my comment again, and I see a stray apostrophe there. Oh, the huge manatee!
ReplyDeleteIt has been recorded for all time.
ReplyDeleteMeh. If that's the worst the internet has from me, I feel pretty good about that.
ReplyDelete