75.5 For the love of Grotesques

I’ll admit that my textual evidence for this claim is embarrassingly thin, but I’ll make it anyway: grotesques hold a special place in Apocalypse World. They are an “essential threat,” but I think their importance goes well beyond that. In fact, I think they are pretty central to the game, thematically and mechanically. I’ll explain.

First, an in-game definition:

A grotesque is a person - remember fundamentally a person, human, not a monster - whose humanity has been nevertheless somehow crippled. Choose which kind of grotesque:
• Cannibal (impulse: craves satiety and plenty)
• Mutant (impulse: craves restitution, recompense)
• Pain addict (impulse: craves pain, its own or others’)
• Disease vector (impulse: craves contact, intimate and/or anonymous)
• Mindfucker (impulse: craves mastery)
• Perversion of birth (impulse: craves overthrow, chaos, the ruin of all) (109)

Grotesques are defined by that missing or damaged piece of humanity, and that damaged or missing piece is expressed by their craving. The word “craving” is a perfect word choice because it captures the sense that that need exists at the cellular level of the grotesque’s existence, a near animalistic drive. Grotesques are the only threat that have a craving instead of an infinitive verb connected with their impulse. I made some noise in my last post about the infinitive verb tying the threats’ impulses to their actions, that their nature is made real only through their actions. For the grotesque, then, it appears that their grotesqueness is anchored to that very craving.

When that craving is expressed, it is expressed as a violation of social norms. Cannibalism is taboo in human cultures the whole world over. Even at its most metaphorical level (and the categories should most certainly be interpreted metaphorically as well as literally to let them fill the space of their limitations), cannibalism is to feed on your own. The mutant isn’t just mutated; it clearly blames its mutation and the difficulties that arise from it on the world and community surrounding it, demanding restitution and recompense for its lot in life. The disease vector needs to be among others to fulfill its craving. Even the pervsersion of birth, who wants to watch the world burn, needs a community to overthrow. (As a side note: “perversion of birth” is a delicious phrase all around—so much for the imagination to chew on!)

From this list we see that grotesques exist within the social structure but violate one basic tenet or another of that society because of its damaged or missing piece of humanity. Literarily speaking, grotesques are never simple villains or monsters, and Apocalypse World continues that tradition by emphasizing the humanness and humanity at the core of the grotesque. Let’s look momentarily at the dictionary definition of the noun “grotesque”:

a style of decorative art characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms often interwoven with foliage or similar figures that may distort the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature (Merriam Webseter online dictionary)

a very ugly or comically distorted figure, creature, or image (online Oxford Dictionary)

The grotesque is about exaggeration, about the nexus of what is human and what is inhuman, about how thin the line is between human and beast--all as a way to point to the fragility of humanity itself. A single exaggerated feature can throw off the delicate balance that defines us as human, and a single exaggerated aspect of character can do the same. Grotesques are haunting because their differences always remind us of just how similar we are. We see that difference as absurd, comical, or ugly to explain the uncomfortable union of similarities and dissimilarities. That, I think, is the power of the grotesque in Apocalypse World. The grotesque tells us what we may become, physically and socially, living in this is post-apocalyptic landscape.

The players’ characters are given awesome power and competence but only a limited set of tools and abilities with which to wield that power. They can lug guns, pry into minds, manipulate and seduce, seize shit—it all requires force and struggles of both will and strength. The characters kill, sacrifice others, and measure the worth of lives in order to make the difficult decisions they have to make. The rules guide the MC to force the characters into hard decisions, and the characters are given a list of compromises to choose from, to forever turn that screw a little more. And the rules of the game make it so that everything has consequences, both successes and failures, so your actions keep compounding. The game only gives the characters shovels to dig, never a ladder to climb. To some extent the badassery of the playbook characters is a lure, a finely baited hook. Come play and be powerful, they say. Let’s see where that power takes you, the game asks. Because how long can your character continue before they too lose a key piece of their humanity? How long before they too become grotesques? Will they even recognize their own grotesqueness? If I were to guess, I’d say those are the questions the game is designed to play to find out.

That’s why I think the first two MC moves associated with the grotesque threat are so well chosen:

Threat moves for grotesques:
• Push reading a person.
• Display the nature of the world it inhabits.
• Display the contents of its heart.
• Attack someone from behind or otherwise by stealth.
• Attack someone face-on, but without threat or warning.
• Insult, affront, offend or provoke someone.
• Offer something to someone, or do something for someone, with strings attached.
• Put it in someone’s path, part of someone’s day or life.
• Threaten someone, directly or else by implication.
• Steal something from someone.
• Seize and hold someone.
• Ruin something. Befoul, rot, desecrate, corrupt, adulter it.

To use the grotesque to display the nature of the world it inhabits is to display the nature of the world that the PCs inhabit. To display the contents of the grotesque’s heart is to reveal something potentially lurking in their own hearts. Revealing its heart is to reveal something repugnant and familiar, alien and yet so much like our own. Those two moves anchor the grotesque’s roll as an offshoot of the world itself, a naturally occurring phenomenon in this unnatural world. The grotesque exists within its context and the larger community shared by the PCs. God damn, I love that.

In addition to all that – to all the importance I think the grotesque holds in the game – they are just thrilling in play. They come with apocalyptica pre-barfed upon them. Pain addicts? Perversions of birth? Mindfuckers? Attacking someone face-on, but without threat or warning? Befoul, rot, desecrate, corrupt, adultery something? Get the fuck out of here—I want to see that play out every time.