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fuck the story

The meaning of my blog's name is twofold. At least. More reasons may come up later.

First, it's sincere. Fuck the story. Don't play RPGs for the fucking story, don't use plot armour, don't let the GMs rail the fuck out of your fun just to serve some perverse, narrative agenda, don't throw the rulebook in the trash just because the setting doesn't suit your homebrew. Play it as written, reveal its strengths, or if we're talking about 5e, realise why the fuck it's the worst plight in RPGs, and the most absolute shitfest in the storytelling toolbox after whatever MCU inflicted upon us. Fuck the story, play for you, play for your friends, your table, your insecurities, your whatever. Gaming is about people.

Yes, obviously, you turd, if your table demands a beautiful 5-arc narrative with internal strife, do railroad that shit. But make it about yourselves. Stories are nothing if not communicated for our pleasure, enrichment of spirit, suffering, emotional exertion, or whatever.

Secondly, it's ironic. Beneath everything, I'm a historian. Stories matter, stories are constitutional, core experiences that shape what it means to be conscious. We may one day discover that dogs or crocs function in unconscious narrative arcs. What we will not discover is that humans don't. Our whole day is a story, relationships can be described and lived as chapters, suffering can be justified or villified through constructed narratives, even nazism had stories to back itself up, and logical arguments strengthen themselves if communicated through an allegory. 

Stories matter. Until they don't. Then the stories you tell about the story you crafted matters most. The story about the time you had fun telling stories that made other people have fun.

It actually was twofold. Nice.

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