I know something the PC doesn’t know
Several Game WISHes ago there was a question about keeping secrets in-game. Lately I’ve had several chances to appreciate a marvelous reason not to keep secrets: intentional meta-game irony.
While Nacreon and Tamasi are closeted with Rilagan, Isleen and a not-dead-yet Nikolao are flirting chatting in the garden. “I can’t imagine what news Rilagan could possibly bring that would hold your uncle’s attention for so long,” Isleen just observed innocently—when Isleen’s player knows perfectly well what is up because she’s read it too.
Nice moment. If the threads had been kept separate, limited only to the participating players, it wouldn’t have been possible—or at the very least wouldn’t have had the same resonance.
There’s some metaphor cross-pollination happening, I think, that I’m also liking. I called Rilagan a puffer-fish in a Tamasi thought-bubble; Nikolao’s player appears to have liked the image. (The sea is turning out to be remarkably rich in not-yet-clichéd similes and metaphors. Kinda fun.)
Alisa and I did the meta-irony thing during the Siberia trek with regard to Vroomfondel. Shirley and Margaret repeatedly reminded each other (and themselves) that he was in custody in Irkutsk. The Times, of course (just updated with some great interviews from the Folks Back Home; go see), knew otherwise, far sooner than the Addams did.
I think there’s another scarlet sardine lurking in the latest Times. I happen to know that Princess Vandana Pathak was in Vladivostok at the same time as Ananda Das (and I do not believe that 4/9 arrival time for an instant; Das bloody well walked across Japan!). I very much don’t think it’s possible to get from Vladivostok to London in time for the Queen’s birthday party.
So who is this Vandana Pathak impersonator, and what is the purpose of the impersonation?
Again, I can put these pieces together—but Shirley hasn’t a hope of it.
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