Counter Cultural Thoughts...

 OK, before I start, let's get the groundwork laid out. 

I was lucky to 'come up' right at the start of the 'breakout' of gaming, beginning as I did in 1981 - It's 45 years ago, but feels still, like just a few months have passed.

I am not your typical 'old fart' in cardigan, crimpolene trousers and comb over. At almost 58, I have long hair becuse I can and because that's who I am, I favour bright coloured t shirts, collect leather jackets (if leather offends you - deal with it) and outrageously bright footwwear, accessorising with 'women's' scarves and floral scents because - yes, I can, and because it is counter to the cultural norms for a hetrosexual man of my years. I rub people the wrong way aesthetically...

This is nothing new. This is right and proper...

I was the eldest child in a very traditional and staid family, which as a child with imaginative overkill syndrome, could make life difficult.  

At age 12, in a school of a thousand cookie cutter kids, destined to make more money than I, but also to live grey and mundane lives, ruled by football, cars and a trip to B&Q at the weekend, probably two dozen across all 4 years were cocking a snook at the it all and being themselves as punks, metal-heads and in the case of my group of 4 or 5 boys and girls prog' rockers.

And we got the shit kicked out of us - even the girls, because that was just the way it was. There were no flags for us to rally under and to be honest, we would have run a mile in the opposite direction because that would mean we were part of something 'mainstream' - asimple fact which seems to escape the current commercialise alternative movement - poor things. 

Now, this is just background, but it gives you an idea of where I am coming from.

Now, I was listening the other day to a podcast which discusses and interviews  leading lights of what was called 'the counter culture'  and the point was made that true counter cultural (CC from here to save arthritic hands) movements or people are essentially invisible to the dominant culture of the time, and cease to be such once they are absorbed into the accepted mainstream of that same dominant culture, becoming larger and normalised, but losing something in doing so.

And this simple series of comments struck home for me as a perfect metaphor for the gaming hobby and what it's become, big, brassy as a backstreet bar room tart and yet at the same time diminished.

My wife came to gaming in 1988 as a result of teaming up with me for a life sentence with no appeal or remission being offered, and so, her roots are different to my own. Not too different but different enough that we do have different points of reference which can lead to lively discourse at times.

But, where we do cross over is in knowing empirically that the hobby is just not as edgy as it was, and that it's so mainstrean that what was a badge of honour - not being like the rest of the drones - has vanished. 

The characters who evolved naturally from a culture in which you had to find your own way in, negotiate the metaphorical 'secret handshakes' and serve a kind of apprenticeship in being an oddball, have gone, or even worse been treated as 'old farts' who are no longer relevant.

But let me tell you, some of those old, grey haired men and women could drink you under the table, would fight you in the car park over your smart ased comment about their French cuirassiers and have probably absorbed more solid, practcally acquired, game related knowledge than you will ever get from watching YouTube where it seems stuff that some of us have known for 4 or five decades is now being pushed as 'new' and claimed as their own discoveries by the same people who deride the true elder statesmen and women of this hobby.

The discussion also commented on how it is culturally important to study and record from first person sources the history of CC, bevause without that, the context of any CC movement is diluted and lost, doing a disservice to those who struggled against the odds, be they artistic, creative of indeed physical to allow the ingrates of the present to indulge themselves without a care in the world and free from persecution which may have originally taken place.

I was sat the other morning - a rare instance in what has been a week of hard work, multiple unexpected vet visits, with a pet who's lost 99% of his vision to diabetes in 14 days, and all the other mundane drivel which stop us playing with toy soldiers or reading old RPG books.

It's actually made me a little testy with one of my oldest friends who, to his credit has not 'lost his shit' with me although I suspect that he is a little disappointed with my attitude and one-liner emails this last week. 

But, back to the show...

Part of the fun, part of the core enjoyment of the hobby for myself and others of my generation was having to delve into some pretty fucking dark corners to find a fix. We were true junkies, no question, but we got our fixes in backstreets and basement emporia, from erudite and learned pushers of toy soldier smak, rather than the stste sanctioned zoot-suited pimps of the present hobby.

It's rare that something comes along that is totally 'new' and when it does, you are fortunate indeed if you involved with it. I came 10 years late to Goth and missed out on the golden age, but did at least get to play in the ashes for a while and that was an eye opener while it lasted, before I  returned to my prog' rock roots in the 90s.

Oh how I recall at 15 finding my way across Liverpool at a time when it was a bloody edgy place indeed, to Games, and into the basement (no, really - the RPGs and wargames were in the actual, fucking, basement) into a CC subtly different to my own, driven by the tastes and moraes of the local scene, with all the nuances that I had to pick up quickly - and did - to get the bet out what was a solid 4 hours of going through that legendary store so remembered by readers of White Dwarf before it became the whore-mother of the empire of evil (in my opinion).

In Games, l actually got to see a copy of Gi'Ac My for the first time, saw the D&D toys in all their abhorrent glory and realised just how much of a dice obsessed junkie I was, upon beholding the eye watering range of colours and finishes (settling on a clear brown set - an assassins set of dice, if you gamed in a pub with beer swilling adults as I did - a D4 in the right glass, several pints into the night  and a place on the committee was surely mine).

All this adventure aswell as having a Yorkshire accent in the Scouse heartlands. It got even better when I was travelling on my own by rail and changing at Mancheter, sometimes detouring to Games Workshop in the Arndale or Affleck's Palace, being chased by Manc' Skinheads once through the Arndale - But Hi-Tec beats Dr Martens in a sprint every time unless the wearer of the latter is an ex Squaddie used to wearing clown shoes under combat conditions. Thankfully back then most Skins were too high on glue to get through the doors of the recruiting office in the first place.

Upon finding a new range of figures, you sent a postal order off for some samples and waited. Then, when they arrived you would paint them and casually show them to a few select mates, sharing where you'd found these gems.

At shows, you found such a variety of stuff that you could simply not buy everything you wanted, so you built up a personal table of desire on which you mentally marked the names of the companies you liked the most or which had recently advertised something in a mag - the more obscure, the better because of course you did not want to run with too large a pack, which led to my circle having 'specialists' in one or another period whilst by some kind of group osmosis, also having a few periods or themes which were fair game for everyone.

Warhammer was like this, but of course every kid had their own favourit epage in Forces Of Fantasy so could be unique to a degree, from the rest of the mob.

You may recall an earlier post where I mentioned the release of the Macross model kits and the arms race which ensued to get the best collection of often 'one per store' models... 

There was so much information to absorb and it was done in person, in the the manner of the oral traditions of old, with the particular flourish of each sage colouring the message being imparted. It was personal and was given not for 'likes' or profit but out of a wish to proselytize upon the joys of this occulted cultural phenomenon.

And, it weeded out the wankers, those who were mere journeymen and not true fellow travellers, who fell by the wayside. It was a sort of self regulating quality control for the hobby. Of course, gaming generally attracted a particular type of person, but sometimes one of those mundane 'normies'  got over the fence and caused a commotion in the fold. Only a few stayued and I think those who did were converted ina similar way to 'Ogre' in the 'Revenge Of The Nerds' film series.

It wasn't cool to be uncool... It was just that we were so cool that the cool kids hated us. Now it's de rigeur to be a geek, because society has now subsumed that CC trope and made it 'normal' and in doing so has turned over the stone so to speak, allowing the cleansing radiation of the sun to change the hobby forever.

I'd love to see gaming crash and become something of a minority interest again, because I think it's reached it's Imperial phase and all empires fall. 

Prhaps a few will survive in the ruins, go back to the source and start the hobby once again so that new generations will get a true feel of being on the fringes and bask in the dawn of something as we did. Perhaps a plastic eating bioform would help too... Maybe one that also fed on the products of big box companies. Of course that could never happen, but one can tdream of that in a true counter cultural state.

 

TTFN