Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Anadil on Over!

"I shant have a moment's peace until its over. I love her, I hate her. My life is a misery." - Valmont

Tragic movies, music, art, and game NPC's have always captured my interest and imagination. If you look at some of my favorite movies of all time, it's a smorgasbord of sad tales across many genres: Fiddler on the Roof, Dangerous Liaisons, Cyrano de Bergerac, Casablanca, Terminator...just to name a few off the top of my head.

Who cannot feel a bitter satisfaction as Roxanne realizes she has mourned the loss of her fair Christian for years on end, when in fact it was Cyrano's words that she truly loved. Or wanted to feel the poignant relief in Valmont's evil heart as Chevalier Danceny stabs him, ending his life and the torture of his love, Madame De Tourvel. Who doesn't think that Lady Hawke should have ended with the priest killing the hawk, or A.I. ending with David sitting at the bottom of the ocean staring at the blue fairy's sunken statue until eternity's end.

Anti-hero's have become such a fad that it's hard to find true tragedies in books and graphic novels anymore. Give me Grendel and Sandman. Toss the whole X-Men squad out the window (except for Hugh Jackman...mmmm...yummy). Give C.S. Friedman your undying love for Gerald Tarrant, and Robert Jordan kudos for Lews Therin Telamon. You have my permission to give Mr. Jordan several quick kicks in the shins after patting him on the back though. The money grubbing bastard took a story that would have been a masterpiece if written in two or three books and watered it down to crap across however the hell many books he's written.

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite short-story writers because a good majority of his tales have at least some hint of unexpected, yet deserving pain. "St. Amy's Tale" haunts me often, as does the sing-song "A Plague of Butterflies".

It would be impossible to mention enough musical influences to be fair to all of the albums that sit in my cd-racks at home. Eclectic doesn't even come close to describing the varied albums that entertain me. Rock, pop, country, rap, folk, classical, blue-grass, techno, alternative, heavy metal, old jazz. I can play a Frank Sinatra tune and follow it up with something from Tool, David Grisman, Gerald Levert, and Cecilia Bartoli. Yes, my friends give me that same odd look too, so don't feel bad ;)

One of the most singularly heartfelt moments in playing AC happened when I read the Campaign Journal after killing Anadil of Shakrassekor for the Nomad's Staff. Such a tragically beautiful NPC, and I'd just killed him for a marginal staff that mostly just let me run around even faster than the lightning speed I could already achieve. I actually make a point of avoiding mu-miyah's and not killing them when possible out of some contorted sense of respect for the noble warriors. Prior to playing DAoC and joining Warcry's staff, I had started a small AC website called nomadwinds.com, the name somewhat referencing the feel of the sand kings. Don't bother going there...nothing there now but a picture of my devil cat and a couple of ancient AC fan fictions I wrote a long time ago (Anonymous Note and A Gharu Story).

The whole Martine story-arc would not have been as popular if Martine wasn't such a tortured soul. And when he was 'cured', they really did have to kill him off as quickly as possible, since he was totally uninteresting after that point. Heck, I would have tried to kill him if he hadn't been flagged as friendly he was such a wimpy character.

Dark Age of Camelot has a few quest plots that were interesting. Midgard's Grenle Clan comes out on top of the story lines I've personally encountered. Each son of the clan adventured out and was soundly defeated. Runemasters and Spiritmasters get to kick each of their ghostly butts during their epic quests. In Hibernia, I laughed in glee at the Sad Fomorie who sits up on a hill and cries and cries because the Stinky badger took his toy. I don't remember any particularly sad tales in Albion, but it is set in post-Arthurian Camelot, so I suppose that's good enough for me.

So call me a pessimistic romantic. I love to hear tales of undying love lost and brave adventurers being defeated on the brink of victory. It's not something that can be easily understood. I suppose I've always lived a fairly average life, safe in cubical-land and a middle-class America, and tragedies are complex enough to exercise my emotional muscle more thoroughly than standard tales will ever achieve.

Love of tragedies is a subject that has interested philosophers for many years.

"Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain."--Percy Bysshe Shelley

"A tragedy need not have blood and death: It's enough ... that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy."--Jean Racine

"Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life."--Stefan Zweig

So I guess I'm not in bad company. Well, discounting the Bee Gees, of course ;)

Tragedy
When the feeling's gone and you can't go on
It's tragedy
When the morning cries and you don't know why
It's hard to bear
With no-one to love you you're
goin' nowhere
Tragedy