Alive, and in Cambridge

( Media in transition: notes on fandom studies )

canon and gameplay

This Salon article on gay marriage (actually its extirpation, at the cost of all marriage) in the official Lord of the Rings game is fascinating because of the tropes of canonicity and freedom deployed: the antis say "only that which we saw examples of in canon is allowed; all else is precluded," while the pros say "gameplay is about experimenting with the boundaries of the world."  And then we get authorial intent: Tolkien was a conservative and would have opposed it.  (And how would he have felt about the movies, or the game?  Do we get to ask that?)

By the way, I will try to post more, but not five times a day; I just saw this story and liked the interaction with what I'm seeing at Media in Transition.