Washington Square on air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review, Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with scholar Courtney Crisp. Courtney and I crossed paths last summer at the Pop Culture Institute's summer research program at Bowling Green University at their super awesome pop culture library, which is filled with all kinds of amazing pop culture things like comic books, lunchboxes, old magazines. What else do they have there, Courtney?

Oh, man. For me, what was most specific was they had a lot of old tabletop role playing games as well as, like, fanzines galore.

Right. So there's just boxes and boxes of all this amazing pop culture stuff kind of hidden behind these doors. And so when we were at the research institute, it's basically like, I don't know, summer camp for nerds, maybe, because it's like, you can show up at 9, hang out in the library, they'll get you all kinds of amazing stuff. Then they feed us lunch, different lunch each day. Some people say hi, some of us are still, like, writing notes. And then we just go back into the library and just look at our stuff until like five or six, and then eat dinner and go to sleep and get back to work, do it again. So it's a one of a kind kind of experience because everyone there is just so into what they were studying. And I was studying stuff related to Archie comics, and you were studying role playing games and the culture around them. All right, so tell us about that.

So more specifically, what I was studying was I was studying the integration of crusader rhetorics within fantasy role playing games. And at the start, it was a little bit more vague because I had two different specific directions that I want to go doing this research. I was looking both at tabletop role playing games, which is what the Institute provided me a lot of materials for. So specifically, like Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons. Right. Because those are the more commercial, the larger ones that have been ongoing for so long, but also in terms of video games. And so the one that I focused more specifically on was Dark Souls, the video game franchise. And so what I was doing was I was looking into ways in which crusader imagery. So that would be anything that we would conceptualize as paladins or Templars, religious folk usually. So these could also be like friars, something that invokes medieval and religious. Those are typically going to be remnants of crusader designs of armor and clothing. And So I was looking at how these types of characters showed up in these different types of gaming spheres and also how they changed the way we engaged with those characters and maybe the subtle ways in which rhetoric of the Crusades was being shared in those characters and their designs.

How did you pick those particular games?

So I played both of them quite religiously, actually. I recently just finished a six year long weekly Dungeons and Dragons campaign and immediately moved right into Pathfinder. And I played Dark Souls with my older brother because it is, if anybody's unfamiliar with it, notoriously difficult to play. It is the ongoing joke about how you don't play Dark Souls for fun, you play it for punishment. And so my brother and I would frequently play Dark Souls together. So both of them have been huge aspects of my life that at one point meant family communication. But now, as an academic, make me question the way in which we create characters and the way they unintentionally impact our perceptions of the world around us.

Give us some examples of what you mean by the Crusader rhetoric.

So specifically, when I talk about the Crusader rhetoric, I am referencing this invocation of holy renegade against some sort of evil force. And I'm using slightly vague terminology because in the Western perspective, we think about the Christian crusade against the Muslim religion and the Muslim people in the 11th to the 13th century. Some scholars have expressed that this type of religious invocation works in many different religious entities as well. I'm mostly speaking, though, from that Western perspective and what I understand in terms of Christianity and Catholicism, right, When I'm talking about that, I'm talking about how during the Crusades, there was this intentional use of the cross and these very elite, honorable looking knights that walked across Europe and invaded Muslim countries and they would proudly wear the Red Cross that everybody has become quite well known of. And so when they invoke Crusader rhetorics, what they're doing is by wearing these materials that express Christianity and Catholicism in their strongest, most pure, most dedicated forms, anybody who opposes them is opposing God in his purest form. And so indirectly, through their attire, as they are invading these different countries, they are invoking from other people this righteous cause that we in our presentation are the presentation of a holy force. And those who oppose us are the representation of an evil force. And as such, it creates a cultural conversation in which anything that relates to this symbolism, this ideology of the Holy Crusades is God in person, is invoking everything that God is. And then anything that opposes that in dialogue is thus evil, bad, and to be avoided. And so when we invoke that we usually use the same symbolism and the same imagery. And the way that in my research that I'm viewing this is that whether we know or don't, unintentionally, we are invoking this very long dialogue of Christian righteousness that we have seen throughout history and thus creates and shapes the way we understand the characters that take on this rhetoric, but also the characters that they oppose.

Can you give us an example of what that might look like in a game?

Yeah. So I think Dungeons and Dragons is a great one. For anybody who's played Baldur's Gate, this is a really, really good one. The paladin. The paladin is a fantastic example because the palad paladin is, through and through a righteous example of holy good. And I say that loosely because there is, you know, a vengeance paladin. But the idea of the paladin, even those that are of vengeance, is that they are righting a wrong, that they are serving a cause beyond other people that they can't understand. Only the paladin themselves is righteous enough to enact these sorts of movements, whether it be righteous enough to enact vengeance or righteous enough to save people from themselves. And so when you play a paladin, you are given oaths of a religion that you are expected to follow. You are expected to fit within a doctrine as a paladin, and as such, you are expected to act in such a way if in dnd or in Baldur's gate. If you disobey that pact, you lose your status as a paladin. You are no longer part of this righteous cause. So you must have enemies and foes that are deemed as unworthy or righteous of your anger on a holy level in order for you to maintain your status as a paladin of this party, of this religion, right? So if as a vengeance paladin, if somebody did not deserve that vengeance, if. If it was an unjust vengeance, you lose your paladin powers. You are no longer a paladin. You must become something else. If you are a paladin of a specific religion, if that God has not deemed your path worthy of their support, you lose your support. And so this whole thing is negotiating which people am I supposed to engage with, in what way that is deemed appropriate based off of my religious expectations, based off of who my God views as appropriate. And of course, if you make a mistake and you miss understand one of these signs and you enact righteousness on somebody who should not have received it, you do get warnings. But this is also A sign that, that God determines not so much us, ourselves. And the righteousness is entirely dependent on the holiness and the holy decision.

So when someone first starts playing, say, like Dungeons and Dragons, and they first, maybe they're drawn to this paladin and start playing as the paladin, I don't play Dungeons and Dragons. So if I say something dumb, go ahead and laugh at me, people. That's okay. I'm just trying to figure this out. So it sounds like perhaps somebody might come into this experience not having had a religious background, but they become influenced by these ideas without really knowing that these are religious concepts that they're adopting and absorbing. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So at the front, at the fate, like front facing level, picking a paladin, you know that there is, at least within that world, a religious context. Now, applying that to context beyond the D and D game, you may not realize, but it does invoke similar feelings of righteous cause, holy righteousness, which thus can create, through rhetoric of identification, this concept that, oh, I play a paladin that looks and acts similar to this paladin, the indirect association being that this paladin is as a good paladin, even if it is only at a subconscious level. We create a narrative that views paladins and their cause as holy righteousness. And if they act against that, they are thus not a good paladin and corrupt and not a true indication of holy righteousness. But when you sit down at the table to play, you may not realize it could have greater context outside of the game. But when you do pick that paladin, you do know I'm going to be a religious character and some context.

Is that part of your broader research, looking at the way that it connects to the outside world?

Oh, absolutely. So especially with the ongoing religious tensions starting back to 911 and anti Muslim rhetoric, and as that has been developing and growing, especially with the current political climate, I've become very interested in viewing how we portray religious figures in the media we consume and how it shapes the narratives we create about the people that are perceived as bad, ideally focusing more so on that conflict of anti Muslim rhetoric. And a lot of that is research that's still ongoing and I'm still trying to engage in it. But that's because I'm looking at a very wide range of time, starting from 911 itself and seeing how before and after the way that we discuss holy righteousness has shifted. And I want to examine, to see if our discussion of characters featuring crusader rhetorics have amplified or changed along with like anti Muslim rhetoric building up into more current political conversations.

So just to back up a little bit, you said that the conversations have shifted. It sounds like you're saying they shifted in like real life, we'll call it. And you're now you're looking to see if there's a parallel with the gameplay.

Absolutely.

Okay, so what are you seeing that shifted in real life?

So I'm just seeing that especially after 9 11, right. We saw a great increase in American nationalism, like this pride of being an American, which has to some extent become quite that. Right. Nationalism, America at all costs, which is a little bit of that change that narrative. But we also saw like a huge uptick in violence against Muslim people in America. And this has unfortunately been something that has been ongoing long after 911 to the point that our popular medias even start to present anybody who could be potentially portrayed as Muslim as a terrorist itself in all genres, not just in fantasy, but also in our sitcoms. Right. In our action, we are seeing this shift of a narrative that anybody who could potentially look like a Muslim is a terrorist, inherent and is a bad person. And this is a continuing narrative where even up into about 2016, teen, very highly volatile political run, we were seeing violence against Muslim people. I remember that there was explicitly a moment in my undergrad where a woman wearing a hijab had been violently attacked on a public bus. And this is something that's been ongoing as. Even though we push as a country to try to move past these moments of violence, these still linger and they still directly impact the greater narrative that we build around the Muslim community. Somebody who is a huge lover of fantasy, both in terms of tabletop role playing and video games. I have a direct vested interest in seeing the ways that from the outside world that is being brought into these spaces that are supposed to be open and inclusive to all and are enacting that violence ideologically and sometimes physically on characters that still fit this terrorist trope that was created as a result of 9 11.

So like I was saying, people can be participating in that conversation and shaping it without really being aware of where that conversation is getting its influences from. Is that.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. I think we're kind of dancing around the edges of something that you and I were talking about just a little bit before we started recording. Which is why studying pop culture is important. Because I'm sure you've had this experience of trying to explain to someone what pop culture scholarship is. I know I have tried to explain it to people because there's the Pop Culture association conference. And I've been on the phone with my mom, and she'll say, again, now, what? What is this conference about? Yeah, because a lot of my scholarship is on Archie comics and the community around Archie comics, and I try to explain it. So I'm going to put you on the hot seat and ask you to explain, what is pop culture scholarship? How do you explain it to friends and family? Like it, you know, dinners or something, when you just need to tell them what you do.

Yeah. So for me, it's very contextual because I'm getting my PhD in rhetoric and composition. So for me, it is very much the rhetorics of pop culture scholarship. And what that, to me, specifically means is the way that pop culture creates narratives and discourse in a way that impacts and influences and changes communities at large. People who aren't engaged actively in the creation of this rhetoric are still subjected to rhetoric because they are engaging in popular culture. And so a lot of what I do as pop culture is taking how we create dialogue and we create meaning from this communication in popular culture media and dissect it to try to understand rhetorically what is occurring here, how does it impact audiences, knowing and unknowing? And then I always take it a step further because I'm an educator. Right. And then I think explicitly, so I have a better understanding of all the ways rhetorically, this media is impacting us on an individual level. How does that impact my students, and how does it impact the way that they think? So a lot of what I do when I'm explaining that at the table is, well, mom, the history of Dungeons and Dragons is very complex, and that history shapes the way that they created the characters and the dialogue they were having with themselves as they created the characters. And that impacts the way that we play play with them. So we need to understand what conversation were they having with themselves as they created this character? How has it changed our perception of the character and anything that's inspired it? And, of course, I usually lose her at that point. I don't think that that was very clear, Courtney. And I was like, it's not. It's a very complex conversation to have. But what you need to know is that everything that we engage in is a part of a conversation way greater than us. And I'm trying to figure out what that conversation is.

So that must be why you were looking at fanzines at the library. What kind of stuff did you find in the fanzines?

Oh, I found a lot of really great stuff. So first, when we Talk a lot about Dungeons and Dragons, especially when I talk about discourse and dissent within the Dungeons and Dragons community. It's usually regarding how characters are portraying specific cultures and more contemporarily, as we are in the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Right. It has been a very long time since. Since Dungeons and Dragons have started. Some people who aren't familiar with the history might view these concerns regarding representations of culture as alarmist. Right. I think you're looking too far into it. But looking through this, fanzines very much solidified the concern that some of us were having about representations of culture, because D and D became what it is through communication and vanzings. A lot of the characters that people have become familiar with, the classes and races that we engage in, and the lore behind them were shaped by people writing in these fanzines to other fans of D and D, proposing different classes. I read up on this call this other culture, and I think it would be really interesting if we implemented it in this way. Some of it very much based in stereotypes that people had at the time, right? And then without people taking the time to look into the conversations that were occurring to create this character, these stereotypes then continue to perpetuate until you get to a point where someone says, hey, wait a minute, this is kind of ringing on a stereotype I've heard before. Let me look into it. And then on top of that, we also just see some really wild ideas. One of my favorite ideas that I saw, aside from some of these different races and classes coming to fruition, was someone proposing birth control methods for centaurs in D and D. There was no explanation in any of the fanzines about why they were proposing this. And I stared at a minute. I said, this is not relevant to my research at the moment. But the fanzines were truly capturing the culture at the time of people engaging with it, but also the impact of the culture at large impacting how these people engage with that media and proposed how it could go further and how they can incorporate new ideas.

When did Dungeons and Dragons first get started in my brain?

I want to say 1973 with Gary Gygax. So we are pretty, pretty early on. But that was also very much like when he was in the basement with his friends, test running Dungeons and Dragons. It was when we got to the AD&D, which is the late 70s, early 80s, I believe, that we started to see a rise in popularity and fanzines more explicitly becoming just more commonly magazines because more people were like, oh, Gary Gygax is onto something. Let's see what else we can do here. So from the 70s up until now, D and D has gone through so many different revisions.

So I want to ask a couple more questions about the fan scenes. How were they created and distributed in the early days? 70s, 80s.

Oh, so it started with how most people kind of fantasize things like that getting started in the 70s and 80s, somebody had a passion for it. They pulled out their typewriter and they started typing. They're like, I think I'm going to create something. Typically, it would start on the smaller scale, distributing it to their friends or at comic book stores and game stores. And then eventually it would start to reach. Somebody would disseminate that fanzine to someone in a different state. And then they would start to request. I really liked this fanzine. Can I please, like, subscribe? I'll pay. Like, I'll pay for the postage. And that's how the fanzines very quickly grew was it started in small local communities. They would disseminate it to people outside of those communities, and then through a shared passion, would all come together to discuss, befriend, and even create enemies with one another through these. These fanzines.

Yeah, it's cool to think about fanzines existing because obviously the Internet wasn't a thing yet. So the mail was the way to do it. With a Xerox machine, right? Oh, yeah, Like Kinko's or one of those photocopy places and photocopy it one page at a time and then staple it and put it in the mail.

And in the front of every fanzine is always the editor being like, hey, I need to raise the prices by 5 cents because the cost of printing is more expensive, or, hey, I need you all to lay off of me. About the spacing of the punches on the side or the occasional misspelling. I am but one person who's doing my best here. One person was like, hey, lay off me. I'm about to go to Japan for a few weeks. Please, I'm begging. And so the editor's notes were always so human because it was like they were solely responsible for the dissemination of eventually a lot of different copies of a fanzine.

And it's also kind of cool to think about what a specific niche community that would be. So the people that are involved in that would really be people who, like you said, who are genuinely very interested and had a lot at stake, right?

Yeah. You pick up a fanzine and if anybody ever gets the opportunity to go to bowling Green and see them. You should, because the passion is there from the beginning to end. Right. Like, as a scholar, I can see the things that I highlight about the culture that I want to, like, dissect. But just as a person who loves community, the passion for the community is in every fanzine you touch.

Yeah. And it gives you a snapshot of a particular time. The Internet doesn't do that because it's always changing. But a fanzine is like, this is, you know, January 1980. This is what we were talking about at that time. So you got a real specific chronological history, and that's something that it's really hard to recreate in a virtual space.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. What kind of things did you see changing over time when you looked at the fan scenes?

So it got a lot more technical. People really started to lean into the developing rules. Right. Expectations for turnstiles. How is each player going to attack? How are we going to set up a system so it's not chaos? What does rolling dice look like? What type of die should I use for this type of weapon? And it started to get more complex as people proposed. Like, I think a scimitar would roll this type of damage because. And then they would talk about the intricacies of, like, the creation of a scimitar. Right. Like, the blade does this, and because of that, it would do this. And so I think it should do slashing damage 2d6 or something like that. And so you start to see things become a lot more complex. But also what I like the most about them is while you see things become more complex and more specific, as Dungeons and Dragons itself becomes more one with itself, you still see a little bit of that charm of when it first started, of like, okay, this is great and all, but have you all considered incorporating this type of character? And they would go back to that. And while these specifics of character creation or even storytelling occurred, you would still get small snippets always about, like, proposals or silly ideas.

When you think about the fan community that you're talking about with Dungeons and Dragons and you compare it to other communities from other role playing games, are the patterns pretty similar over time or are they distinctly different?

I would say distinctly different, but it's also very contextual. So Pathfinder, a lot of the times we get really used to talking about Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons in the same breath because they do very similar things. They're both usually game master run games in which characters are rolling dice, making decisions, and it's all based off of Storytelling and chance. But of course, the mechanics of it and the expectations of it are very, very different. And so the way that the narrative of each of these games grows individually is very distinct. Pathfinder takes a more realistic look at what it would be to be an experience explorer. So you play Pathfinder, and if you want to take a long rest in Pathfinder, you're looking at your character has to take a week downtime, which completely derails the progress of your storyline because your characters needed to take a long break. In Dungeons and Dragons, especially fifth Edition, a long rest is just eight hours of sleep, and you keep going. It is more about the storytelling itself from a fantasy perspective. While we do get very involved in it, there is still that air of, I am simply a human throwing dice down. Pathfinder makes you act in a way that is in accordance. If you are a real adventurer, you have to engage with your. You have to eat. If you don't eat, you'll get sick. If you don't rest, you'll get sick, you'll get. You'll die. You have to. To decide very specifically what you're going to do in combat, because a spell costs two actions and you only get three actions per turn, right? And so you have to be very strategic, very careful. And a lot of the times people who play Pathfinder will say, much like Dark Souls, they can be unforgiving. My game master for my current Pathfinder game has told me that many times he's had characters die within the first two sessions because you have to be strategic about how you engage with it. D and D doesn't do that. You are simply a silly, goofy adventurer doing silly, goofy things. And you roll dice to really get that story rolling.

So to kind of loop back to the Crusader rhetoric. Do you see the Crusader rhetoric functioning differently between those two games in particular?

Mechanically, yes. Mechanically, yes. But that's only because, again, you have to get more strategic when you are playing any form of a holy character, any spellcaster in general in Pathfinder, you have to be super strategic. Dungeons and Dragons is, again, more about having fun with it and engaging in that story. You have more opportunity to reflect upon your character in Dungeons and Dragons and the decisions that they're making. And maybe you might not get as much engagement with the impact of those decisions as a holy person in Dungeons and Dragons as you might in Pathfinder, which requires you to. To be very introspective and careful. And so when you do engage in a holy capacity with other characters, you have to think about the consequences of Those decisions.

Okay. It makes me think about people that I know that have talked about playing Dungeons and Dragons. You know, it kind of gives me a little insight into what they're talking about. I liked what you're saying about that. It sounds a little more fun.

D and D is this edition specifically is known for being the most friendly role playing games, because a lot of it is up to your game master's discretion. Sometimes they're very by the rules, sometimes they throw the rules out the window. But ultimately the, the goal of Dungeons and Dragons is have fun, tell a story. And again, I played it for six years, right? Like straight, like, it's such a good game. But if you're somebody who prefers like detailed strategy and being super effective, Pathfinder is more for you. But if you're hardcore storyteller and you want to have a lot of fun telling story, Dungeons and Dragons, 5th edition, is it?

Okay. All right, before we go, I want to ask what we've been talking about here with the crusader rhetoric. How is that fitting into your broader scholarship that you're. That you were working on?

So a lot of what my particular research interests focus around is identity, right? And as a rhetoric and composition scholar, the composition aspect of it is how does our identity impact the way we communicate? And we view ourselves as a community communicator, but like, in all modes of conversation, right? Written, spoken, visual. Visual, for sure. How does our identity and our perception of ourselves and our identity impact the way we view ourselves as a communicator? And so I take a step further and like, okay, well, how are our people being identified? How are people portraying these other people and their identities and how does that directly impact them? And that's taken me to, like, my students are wanting to know how gaming culture impacts them, because gaming is a huge part of our culture now. And in what ways are our students being misrepresented through these medias and how does that impact them? And so that leads me a lot of the times towards something more of an anti racist framework in which I'm like, how are we doing an injustice towards marginalized communities that want to engage in conversations with us, but are at the foundations of these communications being pushed out through these miscommunications or misrepresentations?

And it sounds like the misrepresentations can exist pervasively without really being questioned.

Absolutely. Because. And the reality is the way that we talk about. So with crusader rhetorics, right? The way we talk about the history of these crusades, very different. And so people who grew up in Muslim communities may have heard about the Crusades in one way, while people in Christian communities will have heard the Crusades in a different way. And the way that they engage in the media that portrays the Crusades is going to change drastically.

And it's, as you said, it's definitely an ongoing conversation, whether people are aware of it or not, which I think in pop culture, to me that's always something that's really interesting is that the conversation is happening whether you're identifying it or not. It's still happening.

Absolutely.

And impacting people.

Absolutely. And one of the big things I try to tell my students is when we talk about rhetoric as identification is that identification may not always directly catch your attention, but it catches the attention of the people who know that identification. And that can have great strengths or horrible consequences. And in instances in which we see injustice being enacted, these are consequences. These are consequences of us perpetuating things that harm others, whether we know it or not. And by trying to make people recognize that this is an ongoing harm, whether we meant to or not, we can begin to take action to step away from it.

Beautiful. If people would like to follow you online so they can stay in touch with your scholarship as it emerges, where can they find you?

I am a strong follower on Blue Sky.

Okay.

I love getting on Blue Sky. That's where all the cool rhetoricians are at. And I keep mine so simple. My handles at cfrisp c c r I s p as in Paul95.

All right, awesome. I will be sure to include that link in the show notes so people can pop on there and find you and get in touch if they'd like to.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks a lot for joining me today. Thanks for stopping by the audio Town Square of the Washington Square Review until next time, this has been Washington Square on Air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc. Edu wsl Writing is messy, but do it anyway.