Aslan and Gandalf
Sep. 28th, 2012 12:17 amAs children, we're often first taught something by going through the motions of doing it, even if all the heavy lifting is actually done by our parents. If done well, this can be a very uplifting way to be introduced to a new concept; to get to play at it, and go through the general steps in a top-down way, without having to get each intermediate step right. (If done badly it can be very dispiriting, if you want to see if you can do it right, but someone just swoops in and does it for you before you can try.)
Digression on boardgames
This is something that's occurred to me in the concept of teaching people board games. For instance, in teaching someone MTG, especially to geeks, you fairly quickly need to move on to knowing at least a subset of the rules you interact with regularly, as there's lots of rules, and if you don't know them and just try to learn individual situations piecemeal, you're constantly bitten by special cases where your teacher says "no, it does [thing you didn't expect]" and you don't know why.
However, when introducing the game, I think people are often too regimented in explaining the rules. I think it's often better to say something like "each turn, you play a land, cast a creature (paying for it with the land cards you have), and then attack with your creatures", and letting the beginner get an idea of how a game normally goes and why it's fun, before explaining "you can play a land after a creature, but it's normally worse to do so, and you can cast multiple spells a turn if you want to", etc, etc.
Sometimes you really need to explain from the bottom up, but sometimes going through the motions without knowing the detailed rules is enough to give the flavour of the game.
Narnia and LOTR
The reason for this post, is I sometimes feel Aslan and Gandalf are doing that: they both vary in power level, typically being "somewhat stronger than whoever they're facing", partly for in-world reasons, and mostly for plot-reasons.
But I wonder if it's also because doing "just the minimum necessary to win the war" means that everyone else gets the experience of winning (mostly) through their own effort. Which is horrible if you think of it as real life, letting everyone die to make a point, but makes a lot more sense if you think of it as a warm-up before deciding who goes to heaven.
But several people have said they don't think that's consistent with what Aslan and Gandalf actually do.
(Dumbledore doesn't even have an excuse of being God, he really doesn't know best, he just acts like he does. Often because there's a good in-world reason for manipulating everyone, but also because that's just what Wise Mentor Figures do, even when it's blatantly counterproductive.)
Digression on boardgames
This is something that's occurred to me in the concept of teaching people board games. For instance, in teaching someone MTG, especially to geeks, you fairly quickly need to move on to knowing at least a subset of the rules you interact with regularly, as there's lots of rules, and if you don't know them and just try to learn individual situations piecemeal, you're constantly bitten by special cases where your teacher says "no, it does [thing you didn't expect]" and you don't know why.
However, when introducing the game, I think people are often too regimented in explaining the rules. I think it's often better to say something like "each turn, you play a land, cast a creature (paying for it with the land cards you have), and then attack with your creatures", and letting the beginner get an idea of how a game normally goes and why it's fun, before explaining "you can play a land after a creature, but it's normally worse to do so, and you can cast multiple spells a turn if you want to", etc, etc.
Sometimes you really need to explain from the bottom up, but sometimes going through the motions without knowing the detailed rules is enough to give the flavour of the game.
Narnia and LOTR
The reason for this post, is I sometimes feel Aslan and Gandalf are doing that: they both vary in power level, typically being "somewhat stronger than whoever they're facing", partly for in-world reasons, and mostly for plot-reasons.
But I wonder if it's also because doing "just the minimum necessary to win the war" means that everyone else gets the experience of winning (mostly) through their own effort. Which is horrible if you think of it as real life, letting everyone die to make a point, but makes a lot more sense if you think of it as a warm-up before deciding who goes to heaven.
But several people have said they don't think that's consistent with what Aslan and Gandalf actually do.
(Dumbledore doesn't even have an excuse of being God, he really doesn't know best, he just acts like he does. Often because there's a good in-world reason for manipulating everyone, but also because that's just what Wise Mentor Figures do, even when it's blatantly counterproductive.)