sravana said:
OTOH, I'm thinking that after working with such a compellingly esoteric deck for so long that the BG is simply too 'thin' for you. I had a great time with the BBC, but to tell the truth, these decks are both just RWS clones, and I have my doubts about using any RWS clone for a deck *study*. In some way there is no "there" there. (I'm getting back to my reply to Scion upthread).
Hey gang!
I've been thinking about this the past few days...
Sravana, I know exactly what you mean. Not that the BG or the BBC will be "thin" for everyone, but that once you come to expect a certain amount of symblioc traction from your deck, using a theme deck that's light on esoteric underpinning just gets harder and harder. There's something at work here about our old Plug-n-play thread and Koster's
Theory of Fun. The line shifts for each of us, but there is a line. Too hard and we get bored, but too easy ditto. In some ways lighter clones seem like window dressing; they just spruce up the WS images for folks who don't want a big change, but want to stir the pot a little. Like holiday decorations. They aren't a remodel, just an overlay. And when you peel the overlay back you're left wiuth that one foundation. The clones that have more passionate adherents probably have more grist, and thenc emore symbolic traction.
Now,
that speaks to something about the Bohemian Gothic specifically...
Emily, I seem to remember that the thing that finally "broke open" the Liber T for you was the way it accessed your intuition. Back when Karen & Alex were building the deck, I took a big load of books on the Gothic to Prague that they wanted. The deck was already underway, but Karen sort of wanted to toss some ideas into the stew. Maybe if you put away the deck and approached it from a more narrative standpoint. Karen was so dedicated to keeping the BG about Gothic as a landscape as opposed to a narrow list of stories.
I feel like what's so great about the Liber T is the way it reads as though you're having a waking dream, and the BG seems like it could head in that direction. Maybe if you took a week and just read some great gothic fiction... stuffed your head with the stories as it were? You might return to the BG deck with a wider field of internal references upon which your readings would draw. Not in the sense of book-learning, but just to feed your imagination.
Anyways, just wanted to toss my 2 cents in... Very interesting thing to think about actually. And one that probably merits a nice rowdy thread, sravana.
Having written all summer, I'm actually taking a much needed break from writing myself.
XO
S