20131014.0614

As I was doing my morning reading (among which is keeping abreast of social media updates), I ran across a link to this story, Shawn Carman's "There Will Be Blood, Part 3A."  I have noted my long engagement with the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game, not seldom through influencing the official story the game has been telling for more than fifteen years now.  I have also made no secret of my study of the academic humanities, particularly English, and that much of that study comes in the form of picking apart text.  That I have an opportunity here to offer a small piece of literary criticism about Carman's recent piece is therefore not wholly unexpected, but it is entirely welcome.

The story, as its prefatory blurb notes, seeks to enshrine some of the results of the various card tournaments that underpin the game's story, and it does so within a three-part narrative frame.  The frame for each centers around a member of one of the Imperial Families--in this case, Otomo, Miya, and Seppun--houses sworn directly to the Imperial Dynasty and serving it with no intermediary.  The frames encapsulate the natures of the three Imperial Families, offering understanding of how they function within the fictional milieu of Rokugan in which they exist as well as insight into how to perform the roles of such characters within the roleplaying game that milieu supports.

After a brief introductory paragraph, Carman's story offers a third-person narration of a member of the Otomo Family, Demiyah.  The story relates Demiyah's thoughts concerning a day-long mourning festival put on by one of the major factions of the milieu (during the course of which, a number of the tournament results mentioned earlier are announced).  Throughout the narration, Demiyah is depicted as being dismissive and condescending.  At no point does she speak with other characters, instead remaining aloof and coldly evaluating them.  She calls the day of mourning "trivial" and is "annoyed" at "relatively unimportant" losses.  She also remarks, among others, that the eventual defeat of a member of the festival-sponsoring faction is attained through the efforts of the Imperial Families, although her own Otomo "would never lower themselves to physical combat and the Miya were hardly suitable for such a thing, so a Seppun was an acceptable outcome."  None of the remarks are particularly complimentary, portraying the Otomo as self-important and dismissive--as they often are in the milieu of Rokugan.

The compositional structure of Carman's story reinforces the Otomo self-importance.  592 words after the brief introductory paragraph are devoted to Demiyah's narrative, some fifty more than that of the Miya and 176 more than of the Seppun; giving more talk-time to the Otomo suggests that they tend to use it, and being overly loquacious is often taken as a mark of over-inflated self-importance.  Too, the Otomo narrative is presented first, foregrounding it to initial appearance but actually positioning it as least important in traditional rhetorical order.  The Otomo are thereby suggested as being ostentatiously present--and necessarily so for purposes of structure--but far less powerful than other factions, and the view is one current in Rokugan.

The second of the three vignettes in Carman's piece treats Miya Masatsuko, offering her a third-person narrative that encapsulates several tournament results, as well.  Notably, while the Otomo narrative does not involve conversation, that of the Miya focuses on it, marking the Miya as far less remote, far more accessible, and therefore far more likeable than the Otomo--which is borne out in the milieu.  There is still some removal, however, appropriate to the status of the Miya as one of the Imperial Houses; Masatsuko tacitly compares herself to a parent of the factional representatives present around her (who are not named), and she notes that her status as a member of the Imperial Families protects her from verbal abuse.  Even so, she notes having been chastised (humanizing her, since chastisement follows fault) and is willing to engage with a junior member of one of the factions, which is far more than the Otomo offers and which bespeaks a quiet motion towards egalitarianism typical of the Miya.

The composition of the Miya section also reinforces the role of the Miya within Rokugan.  At 544 words, the vignette makes up a significant portion of the story, but not an overwhelming part--and much of the text is given to the words of Masatsuko's interlocutor; the Miya are present, but they are concerned with others.  They also function as a unifying force within the Empire, serving as the bearers of Imperial messages as well as executing the major public works and civic relief programs of Rokugan.  That the depiction of them occurs in the middle of Carman's story positions them as a bridge between others, a role the Miya traditionally fulfill in the milieu as a whole.

Carman's piece ends with a narrative of the Seppun, and, like the other two vignettes, it reports some tournament results.  It is also, like the other vignettes, a third-person narrative, suggesting the removal of the audience from the Imperial Families and reinforcing the differences between them and the majority of the population.  Unlike the other two pieces, however, the narration does not get into the Seppun's mind; indeed, other than membership in the Family and a description as a maiden with a fine voice, the focal Seppun is not named at all.  This suggests that the identities and psychologies of the Seppun are unimportant against their deeds--and it is the case in Rokugan that the Seppun are noted for their self-sacrificing nature.  They subsume themselves in their duties, so it befits a story about them to eschew such vanities as names and titles.  It befits them also to not have their words individually recorded; the events matter more than the narration of them.  It befits them further, as with the focal Seppun, to absent themselves once their duties are done--and if it shows some arrogance to leave without speaking to others, the Seppun are an Imperial Family and, traditionally, the most noble among them.  It befits them well to be shown, as in the vignette, as having a great effect on others through their actions; when they do a thing in Rokugan, it matters.

The composition of the piece reflects the Seppun nature.  They are generally regarded as taciturn, and the vignette accorded the Family is the shortest presented at only 416 words--hardly the most verbose.  Too, it contains no dialogue and no quotation, concisely glossing over its events, and that is also suited to the quiet Seppun.  And its position as the final piece positions it as of primary rhetorical importance; traditional argumentative structure puts the most important point at the end.  Since the Seppun are accorded the most important position in the piece, the piece suggests that they are the most important of the Imperial Families.  In the milieu, the Seppun serve as the corps of the Imperial bodyguard, and it is easy to argue that security is the most important feature of the government, especially in a feudal society where loyalty to one's sworn master is of utmost importance.

In each vignette--the necessarily bloviating, self-important Otomo; the conversationally bridging Miya; and the tactically taciturn Seppun--Carman's story demonstrates the essential character of the Imperial Families.  Doing so offers players of the roleplaying game insight into how characters from those Families ideally work, as the enshrining of their behaviors and revealed attitudes in official, canonical storyline embeds those ideas in the living, developing body of text that is Rokugan.  The story's origins mark it as the effect of play upon the world, and it invites others to continue to influence the milieu--an influence I am happy to have had and hope to have again.