critique 3: the emergence of the "traditional" game

PART 2

last time we talked about the structural underpinnings of (old school) dungeons & dragons as a language or a system of interactions. i argued that what sets apart (old) d&d from other games is that it is open and infinite. d&d is open because instead of being contained inside its own explicitly-defined rules, it opens the set of interactions to anything the players say happens. d&d is also infinite because it is a game without an end, which it accomplishes by shifting goalposts in the form of experience levels. i talked about how these structural constraints (or lack thereof) allow d&d players to simulate their fantasy endlessly, and how the enjoyment derived from pursuing this fantasy differs between (typical) women and men. gygax is therefore correct to notice a difference in enjoyment of games along gendered lines, but he is wrong to attribute it to biological difference when it is actually a social function of how girls and boys are raised and socialized.

finally, i suggested that gygax’s ad&d actually opened up the space for "traditional" games to emerge:

it does not necessarily feature the closed interactions that later traditional games do, i.e. "look at your character sheet to decide what to do". however, the book appeals to its own necessity as the final word on all matters, and it upholds gygax's vision as the ideal according to which to structure your own party. gygax's tome is therefore the progenitor of the injunction that "system matters"--not "system matters" as a basis of critique, but "system matters" as a justification for a system (i.e. as an ideology). gygax's systematization matters because it is his authorial vision, and it is the way the game is meant to be played.

let's just pick up where we left off! i want to talk about the emergence of traditional role-playing games alongside the wargame-influenced d&d line. then, i want to introduce some more lacanian theory to talk about the players' relationship to the rules and to their own enjoyment of the game.

the fall of TSR and the "old school" game

i want to start by sharing a short timeline of some early role-playing games:

• 1974: Dungeons & Dragons ("Original D&D") by TSR
• 1975: Empire of the Petal Throne by TSR (put a pin in it!)
• 1977: Advanced D&D Monster Manual by TSR
• 1977: D&D Basic Set by TSR
• 1977: Melee by Steve Jackson under Metagaming Concepts
• 1977: Traveller by Game Designers' Workshop
• 1978: Advanced D&D Player's Handbook by TSR
• 1978: RuneQuest by Chaosium
• 1978: Wizard by Steve Jackson under Metagaming Concepts
• 1979: Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's Guide by TSR
• 1979: RuneQuest Second Edition by Chaosium
• 1980: Basic Role-Playing by Chaosium
• 1980: Pharaoh by TSR
• 1981: D&D B/X by TSR
• 1981: Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium
• 1983: D&D BECMI by TSR
• 1983: Call of Cthulhu Second Edition by Chaosium
• 1983: Ravenloft by TSR
• 1984: Dragonlance by TSR
• 1984: RuneQuest Third Edition by Chaosium
• 1986: GURPS by Steve Jackson Games
• 1986: Call of Cthulhu Third Edition by Chaosium
• 1987: Ars Magica by Lion Rampant Games
• 1988: Cyberpunk by R. Talsorian Games
• 1989: AD&D Second Edition by TSR
• 1989: Ars Magica Second Edition by White Wolf Publishing
• 1989: Call of Cthulhu Fourth Edition by Chaosium
• 1991: Vampire: The Masquerade by White Wolf Publishing
• 1992: Call of Cthulhu Fifth Edition by Chaosium
• 1998: Call of Cthulhu 5.5 by Chaosium
• 2000: D&D Third Edition by Wizards of the Coast

this is not by any means comprehensive (duh). i don't want you to read this and get the idea that chaosium was more prolific than TSR, who published a ton of d&d resources and non-d&d games in the eighties. however, if you're familiar with the games listed, you can see a broad trend away from role-playing games as small-scale wargames [1] to so-called "traditional games".

the hickman revolution

the retired adventurer (link) distinguishes these two categories insofar as the primary goal of a traditional game "is to tell an emotionally satisfying narrative" crafted by the game master [2]. he attributes this development to laura and tracy hickman, who wrote the narrative-focused d&d module pharaoh published in 1980 and would then by hired by TSR to write the d&d campaign settings ravenloft and dragonlance published in 1983 and 1984 respectively. these books signaled a shift from previous TSR publications, with their new focus on epic story-telling and NPCs with their own personal desires.

james maliszewski at grognardia (link) attributes what he calls the "hickman revolution" to these authors, since their work resulted in a new understanding of how role-playing games are meant to be played, namely that they ought to be vehicles for story-telling and genre emulation. however, grognardia is a blog written from the perspective of the old-school renaissance movement. the OSR yearns for a style of role-playing thought to have been lost to time because of the popularity of traditional games. the retired adventurer notes that the OSR is not actually an accurate representation of how old d&d games were actually played, and that grognardia in particular "provided [the OSR] with a reconstructed vision of the past to position itself as the inheritors of."

in this context, it seems obvious that grognardia is attempting to attribute the hobby's fall from grace to an intruder from the inside of TSR itself. i would like to challenge grognardia's notion of the "hickman revolution" by looking at the history of chaosium. the retired adventurer describes call of cthulhu as the first major traditional game proper, but i think we can take this a step further.

chaosium: stafford and gygax

greg stafford founded chaosium in 1974 to publish a board game based on a fictional fantasy world he invented during his freshman year of college, called white bear and red moon (later called dragon pass) [3]. it was basically a way for him to publish material based on his fantasy world, and this creative aspect was noted by reviewers at the time. chaosium would publish runequest in 1978, a tabletop role-playing game based on stafford's fantasy world.

1978 was the same year that gygax's ad&d player's handbook was published, so a comparison between the two games might be helpful. i mentioned in my previous post that ad&d (again, not withstanding its huge expansion of rules) is not played very differently than the original d&d game. the main difference is that ad&d appeals to its own necessity as the end-all-be-all for rules, standardizing the game by substituting referee fiat for gygax's vision. i've read a mix of reasons why this happened. some say it was because d&d tournaments became commonplace and TSR wanted to offer an objective version of the game, since od&d was flimsy and required subjective interpretation. others have said that TSR wanted to get a better grip on the burgeoning role-playing game marketplace by asserting itself as the publisher of the one true dungeons & dragons game. these are not mutually exclusive, and i can easily imagine that both are true at the same time. regardless, d&d is d&d, and i don't think maliszewski is incorrect to say that TSR would not deviate from gygax's vision of the game until the publication of ravenloft in 1983.

whereas gygax never lost sight of d&d as a strategic game that could be won or lost [4], runequest was always-already a traditional game born from the desire of a passionate "worldbuilder". the attitude expected of traditional game masters, that their job is to create a fleshed-out world and story for the other players to navigate, originates in stafford's desire to create a world and then to have that world be respected by others. the desire of the worldbuilder is a very different one from the desire of the gygaxian adventurer, or even that of gygax's dreaded LARPer. yet this does not necessarily come from the role of the game master as described in the text of the game; it really just happens that some people take the role in a way which complements their desire.

before talking about how different structures (patterns) of desire inform how one enjoys role-playing games, i wanted to point out that chaosium was also not the first publisher to release a game motivated by the publication of someone's fantasy world. TSR would publish empire of the petal throne, a game written by m.a.r. barker based on his own fantasy world, in 1975--the year right after the original dungeons & dragons was released. interestingly, dave arneson considered barker to be his favorite dungeon master! the reason i point this out is to show that these different approaches to role-playing games, resulting from individuals' patterns of desire, were baked into the hobby scene itself. there was not a fall from gygaxian grace; instead, people like barker and stafford were there from the very beginning to create their worlds and propagate them.

but why? where does this desire come from, and how can we talk about it?

discourse and fantasy

in the interpretation of dreams, freud talks about how dreams are wish-fulfillment simulators because they select (often unconscious) memories in our brain based on the connections we make between them. these connections are informed by the way we think, what we desire, what we fear, and so on. freud would apply this to our conscious thought in general: our unconscious desires (our fantasies) are inaccessible to the waking mind, but they shape our conscious thoughts and how we perceive things. lacan gives us some new vocabulary to think about this.

the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real

lacan distinguishes between three levels of human existence. the first one is called the Imaginary, which stands for the human subject's perception of the world. the second one is called the Symbolic, which stands for the rules that govern the world and the relations between objects within it. the third one is called the Real, which is where things get a little bit weird (and perhaps besides the point of this blog post). although lacan was inspired by what's called the linguistic turn--the trend in the early 20th century to use semiotic linguistics to explain things (link for a crash course)--lacan is not what we would call a "structuralist". this means that he does not think that everything can be fully represented or understood in language. instead, he was interested in the opposite sort of thing: where does language fail to operate? it's easy to think about, given the definitions above, how the Imaginary is how we perceive the Symbolic, and the Symbolic is what determines our individual Imaginary perceptions of things. the Real represents where it's impossible for us to perceive things in the Imaginary because the Symbolic does not have rules to govern things. it's our blind spot for understanding.

there was a lecture i watched years ago where slavoj zizek uses chess to explain the difference between these three registers. the Imaginary is the idea that chess represents an actual battle between soldiers and knights. the Symbolic is the set of rules which dictates how the chess pieces move and interact with one another. finally, the Real is the actual physical pieces on the board, without any of their imagined meanings or rules imposed by the players. however, i think this analogy falls short because it treats the Real as something that actually exists outside of the game of chess. the Real is not the same thing as 'reality', which is actually better equated with the Symbolic (the governing rules of things). instead, the Real is the point where the Symbolic fails to structure the Imaginary. imagine if you were a chess piece and you're torn out of your reality on the chessboard, only to discover that you're a little piece of plastic. the Real is that sort of trauma that threatens the cohesion of your Symbolic reality.

understanding fantasy

fantasy is the Imaginary narrative (so to speak) that structures our desire: in the same way that our brain selects images for our dreams (as per freud), our brain selects things to desire to fulfill our fantasies. in the last blog post, i talked about how the phallic drive is a really common structure of fantasy. an individual with a phallic drive perceives themselves to lack something, and they seek substitutes out to fill that lack. the literal freudian connection is how the typical male subject seeks out women to substitute for his mother, who is made unavailable by his father.

i think the myth of prometheus and pandora is a more interesting phallic fantasy. the archaic greek poet hesiod believed that zeus prevented men (specifically men) from living like gods in order to not let the earth go to waste; zeus took way men's bios, their ability to live carefree. hesiod understands zeus' theft of fire to be an instance of zeus taking away bios, perhaps because fire seems like a divine thing that sets humans apart from animals. prometheus steals fire back from zeus on behalf of man, opening up the possibility that men could live like gods. in order to prevent this from happening, zeus creates the first woman pandora as the cost of fire. then pandora opens her jar, releases the evil spirits, and traps hope inside. pandora not only represents woman, but also the earth as an antagonistic entity towards men. thanks to pandora, hesiod says, now men have to plow the earth and plow women to survive. the hope trapped in the jar represents the slight bios that man recaptures temporarily to make a living, while in entirety remaining out of reach. men will never live like gods, thanks to pandora. (this is what i'm writing part of my thesis about!)

understanding discourse

we can see how the prometheus-pandora myth structures hesiod's desire: his belief in it justifies his daily activity (plowing earth, plowing women), and he must believe in it or else his world is meaningless and so is his life. without the myth, hesiod cannot rationalize his desire; furthermore, the myth is what defines hesiod's desire in total. yet we can see that this myth does not exist by itself: it is actually hesiod's rationalization of the world he finds himself in. hesiod knows that he's going to die one day and that all his work will be for nothing. he also understands that as long as he lives, he needs to work to survive, and he derives pleasure from this. earth and woman are the same thing to him in this respect, and they appear totally alien to him; they are his vending machines for getting off.

this just goes to show that hesiod is trapped in what lacan calls a discourse: there is the human subject (hesiod) and the totally alien Other (pandora as woman & earth). there is also the rules that dictate how hesiod relates to pandora (farming & fucking), and what hesiod gets out of doing those things (cereal & children). the important thing here is that there's nothing inherently desirable about cereal and children per se. sure, they're materially necessary for survival, but this is more than survival for hesiod: he derives pleasure and a greater cosmic purpose from his farming and fucking. he wants to conquer pandora as best he can. therefore, to reiterate, we're not concerned with literal cereal and children. rather, we're concerned with the unreal part of them that becomes desirable due to hesiod's antagonism towards pandora.

discourse and dragons

i hope it makes sense now that fantasy and discourse are different things. fantasy is the Imaginary narrative according to which we desire things, and discourse is the Symbolic law that puts us in the position to desire. meanwhile, the Real sits in the background and threatens the cohesion of it all. perhaps there's a really bad harvest one year, or hesiod's wife divorces him. at such a point, hesiod's fantasy starts to fall apart because the rules of his Symbolic universe no longer apply.

i hope it is also clear, at this point, why i'm talking about all this for our make-believe games. the discourse of the role-playing game is none other than the game in total, as a complex of four elements: the players who desire to play, the avenues through which they are able to play (their interface), the world of the game (not just the fictional 'lore' or whatever, but that which exists outside of the players), and the enjoyment received from playing the game.

there is a difference, then, between any player's position in the game scheme (the game as a discourse), and the way in which the player perceives/understands/enjoys their position. hesiod fantasizes about having cereal and children, and the mythological discourse which generates this fantasy is a distinct structure from the fantasy itself. likewise, the gygaxian player fantasizes about looting dungeons, and the game-discourse which generates this fantasy is a distinct structure from the fantasy itself.

i point this out because the phallic drive is not the only model of fantasy to exist, and neither is the adventurer's discourse (so to speak) the only one which occurs during play. first i will talk about lacan's cycle of discourses, which relates to how the Symbolic is not a static system but it is always in the middle of being constructed. then, i will talk about lacan's different "formulae" of fantasies, and how this maps to different enjoyment patterns within the game.

discourses of play

we've discussed four terms already, and now i'm going to give them shorthand symbols from lacan's own terminology. i will not explain the symbols themselves much, but you can find more information if you research lacan's four discourses.

• $: the player as the subject, or the one who desires to play.
• S1: the player's representation in the game-world. this is not just the fictional player character, but the avenues through which the player is able to interact with the game-world.
• S2: the game-world. the player represents themselves towards the game-world through their game representation.
• a: the enjoyment from playing the game, or the thing which the player desires to gain from playing the game. the game-world acts as an obstacle to acquiring this enjoyment, but it should be obvious that without the game-world, there would not be any enjoyment to be had.

the subject and the player

this first "algorithm" is called the master's discourse [5]. it represents why the thing being desired (a) is desired at all. let me construct it for you. the player $ has a representation S1. we show this as:

the player is represented by S1 towards the game-world S2. this means that the player does not have a relationship to the game-world S2 that is not obscured or abstracted by S1; in other words, S2 only sees $ insofar as S1 is a representation of $, and so S2 does not really see $ at all. there are more complex versions of this diagram, but we can represent this simply with an arrow from S1 to S2:

these three terms cause a fourth to emerge because $ cannot be fully represented to S2 by S1. i mentioned before how lacan is not actually a "structuralist": he does not believe that language can encompass everything, and in fact he is concerned with what happens when language fails (and how this is an essential part of human experience). the inability to be fully represented in language is what defines the typical subject's desire. the subject desires to reclaim what it feels has been lost due to its representation in language.

although this sort of existential trauma underlies our typical experience in general, perhaps it sounds less applicable for games where we know it's all made-up. in such a case, it's less apt to say that the player (as the subject of the game) feels existentially torn up by the game. instead, we can say that by participating in the game, the player lacks something they need to win the game (otherwise there is no winning and no game) [6]. the thing which the subject lacks/desires due to language, and the thing which the player lacks/desires due to the game-world, are the same thing structurally speaking. we represent this as a:

this algorithm is called the master's discourse, and it can be read as: "S1 represents $ towards S2, such that a emerges." for hesiod's myth, we say that "farming & fucking represents hesiod towards earth and woman, such that the desirability of cereal and children emerges." for the gygaxian adventurer, we say that "the player-character (who explores & loots etc.) represents the player towards the game-world, such that the desirability of gold pieces emerges." let me give this as a bulleted list to make the analogy clearer:

• $: hesiod as farmer, hesiod as man, player
• S1: farming, fucking, player-character
• S2: earth, woman, game-world
• a: cereal, children, gold pieces

the analyst and the dungeon master

there are other three discourses, and it happens that the emergence of one term in each discourse causes another discourse to happen. this is a lot to talk about at once, so i'm going to skip steps and go straight to what lacan calls the analyst's discourse for reasons i hope you'll find interesting.

this discourse is arrived after two clockwise turns of the master's discourse. we read this as "a represents S2 towards $, such that S1 emerges." that doesn't mean anything, so let's replace the terms with more meaningful ones.

"children represent woman for hesiod, such that fucking [7] emerges." hesiod does not care at all about women, nor does he understand them. he does, however, want children. therefore children represent for hesiod the only thing he can get out of women (he is a thorough misogynist). this causes fucking to be hesiod's main relation to the outside world, if we consider the outside world to be women like he does [8].

"gold pieces represent the game-world for the player, such that the player-character emerges." keep in mind that the player-character is more than the player's fictional avatar: the PC is also the way through which the player interacts with the game-world. the gold pieces are the parts of the game-world that attract the player; this is not because they are gold pieces, but because (as per the master's discourse) the game has made them desirable. to accumulate the gold pieces, the player must take on the mantle of the player-character through which to interact with the game-world.

lacan calls this the analyst's discourse because, during clinical psychoanalysis, the psychoanalyst must allow their patient to project their desires onto them. the psychoanalyst should appear basically like an extension of the patient, so that the patient feels open to talk about whatever comes to mind. this is made possible by the analyst's own role as an analyst. the doctor is supposed to know everything (regardless of whether or not this is true--it usually isn't) so that it makes sense for the patient to trust them. if there is not this level of trust and free communication, the analyst cannot help the patient. again, this has nothing to do with the analyst's level of expertise. psychoanalysis is called the "talking cure" because it amounts to the patient talking to themselves and relieving their problems. the analyst is only there to guide this one-sided conversation, and help the patient explore their thoughts. the outcome of a successful analysis is a reframing of the patient's perspective. this is represented by S1, the way through which the subject perceives and interacts with the world.

i claim that the dungeon master fulfills the same symbolic role for the player that the psychoanalyst does for the patient. for one, the dungeon master represents the whole game-world for the player(s). the game-world does not actually exist, but the dungeon master must represent it anyway or else the illusion disappears. the dungeon master also interprets the desire of the players ("i want to look for a secret door") and reframes it through the relations S1 allowed by the game-world ("okay, you slide your hands across the wall" or "okay, make an investigation check") [9].

fantasies of play

if i told you that the formula ($ <> a) represents phallic desire, you might already be able to see what i mean. the subject $ desires the object a. hesiod desires cereal and children. players desire gold pieces. straight men desire tits. it has little to nothing to do with the literal nature of what takes the place of a; it's all about the discourse (above) and why that object becomes desirable.

lacanian psychoanalyst bruce fink specifically identifies that formula ($ <> a) as the obsessional-neurotic fantasy, which is usually associated with men (duh, it's phallic). he specifies that hysterical-neurotics have a different formula (a <> A) where A represents the Other (french: Autre). the A is absent from obsessional fantasies ($ <> a) because they want to basically compete with A for a. meanwhile, the $ is absent from hysterical fantasies (a <> A) because they want to erase themselves and let A have what it wants. i don't usually see this point brought up, but i thought it was worth mentioning if only to not give credence to the idea that obsessional/masculine desire is the norm [10]. it also helps us understand two kinds of players: players who play to win, and players who play to play.

lacan says that there is something called the pervert's fantasy (a <> $), which is the inverse of the (obessional-)neurotic's fantasy ($ <> a). the pervert imagines himself to fulfill the desire of the Other, with an interesting caveat. for a desire to be totally fulfilled means that there's no more desire. to rephrase then, the pervert imagines himself to fulfill the demand of the Other. the pervert and the Other complete each other such that there isn't an Other at all.

this is distinct from the hysteric's fantasy (a <> A) because hysterics do not see themselves as fulfilling fantasies. instead, they want to erase themselves and figure out what the Other wants. what exactly the Other wants is a horrifying existential question for the hysteric, whereas the pervert thinks they always-already know what the Other wants. hence the A is absent from the pervert's fantasy because to them, there is no A (no Other) at all.

some people have identified the analyst's discourse (shown below again) as the "pervert's discourse", because the top half of the discourse resembles the pervert's structure of fantasy. i do not share this opinion, and i think it is as false as calling the master's discourse the "obsessional-neurotic's discourse." the discourse diagrams show how desire is determined; they do not represent the fantasy that has been generated by that desire. the analyst's discourse cannot be equivalent with the pervert's fantasy because it does not depend on the fantasy of whoever plays the analyst (nor does there have to be a person being the analyst at all!). arguably, a pervert would be an awful analyst because they would think too much on the patient's behalf and put words in the patient's mouth.

and it's taken me all this way to get to the topic of traditional games and what's called the "forever GM", or forever game master. there are game masters who are simply game masters by virtue of their position in the game: they take on that role and they act it out for the other players. then, there are people who desire to be game masters. for example, such a game master wants the other players to align with their vision of their game because the game belongs to them. this has nothing to do with the symbolic position of being a game master, but it has everything to do with the individual person's structure of desire. i think you would be better off with a hysteric game master who is self-conscious and eager to please, or even an obsessional game master who antagonizes themselves, than a perverted game master who assumes what you want because it's what they want.

but there's one more category beyond neurotics (both hysterics and obsessionals) and perverts. the psychotic's fantasy is unstructured: there's no $, there's no a, there's no A. the psychotic cannot interface with the Other through discourse because they have not been made aware that the Other exists. instead, the psychotic constructs their own Imaginary world of relations to substitute for one structured by the alien Symbolic. this renders the psychotic's world especially susceptible to being challenged by intrusions of the Real. there is no Symbolic world outside of them to refer to, and so their whole existence is rocked when faced with a contradiction from the outside.

therefore i suggest that we can break down the self-identified forever GM into two kinds of people (notwithstanding others, but in light of the categories mentioned above):

• the pervert: someone who presumes the desire of the others at the table, and gets frustrated that they are not playing along with what they have already decided.
• the psychotic: someone who constructs an Imaginary world as an extension of their own being, and gets frustrated when this construct is contradicted or disrespected.

the pervert is more likely to believe that "system matters" because of their desire to dictate the desire of others. we find this in the mindset of some earlier writers like hickman and later thinkers like those at the forge, since they desired to create in their games a cohesive experience at the whim of the author (who has the authoritative right to determine your desire). meanwhile, the psychotic is more likely to believe that "system matters" because they have invested their own being in the worlds and games they created. someone once said on twitter that system matters because otherwise game design does not matter; such a statement actually depends on the very desirability to perform game design and justify it in retrospect because so much personal identity has already been invested in the activity. what if game design doesn't matter?

however, we shouldn’t treat this as a diagnosis; some people share symptoms and the same language for talking about their desire and experience, even if there are different things happening “under the hood”. for example, an obsessional game master might also be dismayed at the players not playing the game right, but only because it gets in the way of their ideal game experience (as opposed to it being a huge investment of their personal identity). these are all hypothetical people, and the differences between them is not always stable or clearcut.

regardless, by talking about different structures of desire, we can better understand why different people think about games the way they do. we can also understand that traditional games became popular because they simply appeal to a wider range of fantasies: the obsessional-neurotics can self-aggrandize, the hysterics are happy with whatever, the perverts can have greater power over others’ desire, and the psychotics can engross themselves in their Imagination. finally, we can see the later notion that “system matters” emerge from a variety of desire-contexts: perhaps it matters because it’s how you play the game for maximum enjoyment; perhaps it matters because the author has a right to determine your desiring experience; perhaps it matters because otherwise, design as a creative activity doesn’t matter.

having now established a lot of the vocabulary needed, i hope next time to dwell more on this point and talk about how traditional games and forge indie games try to construct their own necessity. i talked a lot about gygax and about abstract things in this one, and hopefully next we can just focus on the evolution of traditional games.

[1] although d&d literally emerged from wargames, i want to use the term here really loosely to refer to games where the focus is on strategic play.

[2] "the DM is the primary creative agent in making that happen - building the world, establishing all the details of the story, playing all the antagonists, and doing so mostly in line with their personal tastes and vision." the retired adventurer, six cultures of play (link).

[3] the rules to dragon pass almost sound like sid meier's civilization, the way it's about building stacks of units and having to deal with zone of control (your units are paralyzed next to enemy units).

[4] even though, as i have talked about, d&d is an infinite game so the goal is not to attain victory but precisely to continue striving for it. remember phallic desire?

[5] it's called the master's discourse in reference to hegel's master-slave dialectic, which relates to finding self-identity through the recognition of another person. hence S1 is actually called the "master signifier" and S2 is none other than the Other itself. the master's discourse is about wrestling for recognition in the eyes of others (whether literal other people, God, historical progress, etc.).

[6] i've mentioned before how d&d distinguishes itself from board games etc. because it keeps shifting goalposts for victory. therefore when i'm talking about 'winning' here, i don't mean an actual victory condition as much as the thing that the player-as-subject desires to have or accomplish.

[7] not fucking as an action, but fucking as a mode of existence for hesiod. you know men like this.

[8] i'm using hesiod's misogyny as a clear-cut example; we should keep in mind that he sees an equivalence between woman's body and the earth (the figure of pandora), and so for him the desires to plow both are the same thing. i hope this also illuminates some aspects of toxic masculinity.

[9] the analyst is a structural role, and so is the dungeon master. games without masters simply distribute the responsibility elsewhere, or the discourse takes place without a person taking that position in the discourse. this is a vast reduction of the topic.

[10] interestingly, whereas the obsessional fantasy ($ <> a) corresponds to the bottom half of the master's discourse, the hysterical fantasy as given by fink (a <> A) corresponds to the bottom half of the hysteric's discourse (given below, where S2 is equivalent to A). i don't think i've seen this mentioned before by anyone i've read? anyway, as i will discuss, we should not take this to be an equivalence between the fantasy and their corresponding discourse. the hysteric's discourse in particular has to do with how the disconnect between the subject $ and its representation S1 causes the subject to become aware that the Other S2 exists.