LNH: An Important Public Service Announcement!

Saxon Brenton saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
Fri Jun 15 01:19:41 PDT 2007


On Sunday 10 June 2007 Tom Russell <milos_par... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jun 9, 10:38 pm, Lalo Martins <lalo.mart... at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Actually, you may have a fair point here.  I love world-building.
>> But it can be argued that it's not "how the LNH works".
>
> I also love world-building, and people will be seeing more of that
> in the Eightfold Universe (to a degree), for example.  One of the
> big draws of Dave's ASH universe is-- perhaps more-so than its
> plotting or > characters-- the universe itself and the way it works.

One thing I've noticed about the LNH is that when it comes to world-
building it tries to have its cake and eat it too (and usually
succeeds at this).  It's a comedic universe.  Different writers can
develop intricate bits of backhistory, and other writers will usually
try to accommodate this, but if something happens and this starts to
clash it can be laughed away with any number of cliched superhero
genre excuses.

> And we're not a fanfic group.  The LNH is its own entity, and one
> that I feel is deserving of serious scholarly attention.  It is
> important and unique and original.
>
> But when Panta hunts down an ewok, or when Spider-Man shows up
> to give Easily-Discovered Man a pep talk, or when someone plays
> quidditch, or when Golden Man dies and is resurrected as four
> different Golden Men... (and I'm very, very sorry for that last
> one, and for all the other stories of that type that I'm
> responsible for)
>
> It makes my job as advocate that much more difficult.  I think it
> detracts from the truly original and brilliant thing that is the LNH.

I hadn't realised that you put quite so much effort into
proselytising.  So, it take it if I, hypothetically, used one of Matt
Rossi's throwaway characters (Henchman Smurf, the one who went
=really= bad) you would look askance at it.

That makes me feel a bit guilty about the quidditch stuff, but I do,
actually, have a reason for it.  Part of the history of superpowered
university sports that I've had on the backburner for a while is that
since the end of the Looniverse's equivalent of the Silver Age
there's been a limited amount of intermingling of various super-
powered communities: mutants and aliens and subterraneans and mages
and what have you.  Mostly its diplomatic, which has little cultural
impact, but there's a whole generation of young weirdlings based in
the Mutant Town district of Net.ropolis and going to the nearby
universities (Net.ropolis U, Dave Thomas Deluxe, Callisota State U
and probably others) who are doing the cultural synergy thing like
there's no tomorrow.  And so they started playing superpowered sport,
like Zero-G Volleyball and Paraball (which, yes, they did use Digita-
prosomancy to steal the name and rules from the ASH universe
future).
And then somewhere along the line the idea of playing a flying sport
on broomsticks came up, and their eyes went as wide as saucers, and
they went, 'Aww KEWL!!!' and things kind of got out of hand from
there.  I think it probably got imported from one of the Looniverse's
reclusive magic using communities (the equivalents of Marvel's New
Salem or DC's homo magi), but it could have simply turned up when
the fictional 'Harry Potter' books started to be published.  But,
yeah,
I can see where simply having the NAME quidditch could be a problem,
even though some of the players are flying brooms powered by magic
while others are using weird-science anti-grav and others are using
their own superpowers to carry their brooms aloft.

Sorry, I'm babbling, aren't I?

-----
Saxon Brenton    Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia




More information about the racc mailing list