Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
CTGttW Question 4: Relationships and family
Relationships and family are, I think, the driver of events in the book. Marya is driven by her love for her father, then later her love for Suzuki. Weiwei tries to balance her compassion for the stowaway with her duty to the Captain. Grey is driven by his relationship with the wider scientific community.
There's also the communities that form on the train. The crew look out for each other, the passengers form communities in First and Third classes.
Which of these Relationships stuck out for you? Which were important for the story? What's your opinion on whether events were driven by relationships rather than personal, internal drives?
What about all the relationships between things in the Wastelands? How is Elena's changing connection to the Wastelands important, and how does it affect her?
Comments
Lol - no relations stood out to me. Only the roles played by various people. I never thought of relationship as a driver of anything. The train was moving forward regardless. The wasteland was infiltrating the train regardless. I suppose at the end the characters had a choice of whether to stop the train in the station, or break through and bring nature to the world. But who ultimately made that decision?
It seemed to me that most of the plot was driven by people making decisions that they believed to be right regardless of what others might think - Marya for example pursuing the quest to find out about her father, or Henry Grey going after his samples whatever the cost. there weren't all that many decisions which were changed or abandoned because of relationship - the only one which comes to mind is that Weiwei consistently didn't tell people (esp the Captain) about Elena, despite considering it several times.
I'm with @Apocryphal on this. The important relationships were with the dead, or inaccessible, and not among the present and living. Goes with the conception of class. Part of how I recognise a death cult.
Yes, things were carrying regardless. The train was moving, the ecology was asserting itself, the future and adulthood were coming anyway. But most of the people there chose to open themselves to those experiences, and they chose how they behaved in reaction to the events that happened to them. I think the people had more agency than the passive passengers that @Apocryphal experienced!
Weiwei had important relationships with Elena, Alexei, and the Captain. Marya's relationship with Suzuki grew into importance. The connections between The Professor / Artemis and both Weiwei and Marya were important. I don't think the relationships were with people out of reach.
@BarnerCobblewood , "death cult" is something you've mentioned a few times, and I don't know what you mean by it here. Could you please expand on the meaning for you, and why it's appropriate here?
@NeilNjae When I say I see a death cult I'm most often using it in a perjorative sense to refer to the worship of death as necessary and productive of life. All cult/ures have aspects that are about death, but those that suggest that death is some kind of good is what I am talking about, especially a couple of specific ideas:
1) That violence can be justified to protect the dead, which symbolically includes denying to the living the use of the land where the dead have fallen, and that violence is legitimated by appeal to the dead who speak through the cult; and
2) That killing (producing death) will lead to a good result for a community. Mao said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Josef Stalin stated it most crudely - No man, no problem. Death cults actively sacrifice others so the community will flourish, e.g. National Socialism in Germany through the 1930s and 40s sacrificed others, especially Jews but all inferior people, so the Aryans it represented would have "living space." A large part of North America cult/ure is grounded in the same idea. They are very big throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and 21st century too so far.
Saying that toxic pollution is necessary for the well-being of the community is death cult. Saying that truth which harms must be spoken is death cult. Saying that family lines matter more than living creatures is death cult. Saying that directing the death of other people is good for the community is death cult. When the dead are used to define the living, that is death cult. When death is hurried along to make living easier, that is death cult.
When the people on the train decide to break quarantine because their continued existence is more important than the existence of those beyond the wall, that is death cult. When the train community is purified by the killing of the Crows, that is death cult.
Obviously there's a lot more to say.
For me this is a big problem in the structures of TTRPGs. Many of them encode death cults, because let's face it, most people think death and killing can solve our human problems.
Thanks for explaining that.
And yes, I agree with the privileged place violence has in RPGs (and culture more generally).
In another RPG community I'm in, someone ran a game of First Responders (emergency response people). Some people were surprised by the notion of an action-based RPG that didn't revolve around combat.
What a cool idea! You could probably do some good scenarios based on Mountain Rescue or Coastguard teams.
According to TV shows about first responders, their lives are basically filled with first-responding and sex - the later of which gamers usually shy away from in games lol. But I do like the idea of a game about dramatic healing instead of fighting. Did they develop a trauma treatment subsystem to zoom the focus in on it (as they do with fighting)?
I have designed several. In fact the only games I have designed which 'revolve around' violence - as opposed to being a true last option - Are my military/paramilitary RPGs. This is probably one of the many reasons I have few customers.