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The Player of Games

229 statements
44 feature instances
24 referencing feature instances

The Player of Games	type	TVTItem
The Player of Games	label	The Player of Games
The Player of Games	page	ThePlayerOfGames
The Player of Games	comment	The Player of Games is the second Culture novel by Iain M. Banks and the one that's generally considered the best introduction to the seriesnote Its predecessor, Consider Phlebas, is excellent, but doesn't so much as "introduce" you to The Culture as throw you at it. It tells the story of Jernau Morat Gurgeh, an expert game player, who is recruited/blackmailed by Special Circumstances into traveling to the Empire of Azad, a brutal regime where one's social rank is determined by playing the highly complex game of Azad.
The Player of Games	fetched	2023-11-21T17:01:58Z
The Player of Games	parsed	2023-11-21T17:01:58Z
The Player of Games	processingComment	Dropped link to CalvinBall: Not a Feature - ITEM
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The Player of Games / int_1ba09c9d	type	Human Resources
The Player of Games / int_1ba09c9d	comment	Humanoid Resources. Near the end of the book, Gurgeh listens to a large band perform. Then one of the Azadians explains how the instruments were made from body parts such as femurs ("do the flutes come in pairs, or are there a lot of one-legged music critics out there?"), skin ("it's called a family of drums"), etc.
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The Player of Games / int_1ec3eb0a	type	Take Our Word for It
The Player of Games / int_1ec3eb0a	comment	Take Our Word for It: Most of Azad's intricacies are never described in detail.
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The Player of Games / int_22cf536c	type	Chekhov's Gun
The Player of Games / int_22cf536c	comment	Chekhov's Gun: Subverted the first thing Gurgeh notices upon descending on the capital planet is the labyrinth prison. Flere-Imsaho explains that inside there are complex rules that if followed allow for a swift release. One would expect that Gurgeh would be interned there but it is never mentioned again.
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The Player of Games / int_272abb98	type	Shoot the Shaggy Dog
The Player of Games / int_272abb98	comment	Shoot the Shaggy Dog: A rare positive example, in that the Empire of Azad tries and fails to best the Culture in their imperial game and end up with the Emperor murdering the entire imperial power structure before accidentally killing himself. The Culture don't even bother invading Azad in the end, as the Empire collapses on its own.
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The Player of Games / int_38d02d44	type	Batman Gambit
The Player of Games / int_38d02d44	comment	Batman Gambit: What Special Circumstances' plan to topple the Empire of Azad boils down to. They worked out that Gurgeh will be able to beat the Emperor (who knows exactly how powerful the Culture are) at Azad, and task Flere-Imsaho with telling him that the unaware game-player is acting as the Culture's representative, and if he wins, they're invading, expecting him to Freak Out when his defeat looks inevitable. Sure enough, Nicosar goes nuts when it becomes apparent Gurgeh is about to beat him, destroying himself and the Empire's entire leadership in a panic. As it happens, the Culture doesn't even bother to invade in the end, as the Empire collapses all on its own.
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The Player of Games / int_3a98aac8	type	Epunymous Title
The Player of Games / int_3a98aac8	comment	Epunymous Title / Title Drop / You Are the Translated Foreign Word: As is alluded to at the beginning of the novel, in the Culture's language, Marain, the sobriquet Morat in the name of Jernau Morat Gurgeh translates to "the player of games". Towards the end of the novel, an Azadian who knows about the Culture refers to him as Morat, "the player of games". The middle names are effectively self-chosen official nicknames. Lampshaded when another character comments that Gurgeh should have chosen another name: "gambler".
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The Player of Games / int_443b78cd	type	Tranquil Fury
The Player of Games / int_443b78cd	comment	Tranquil Fury: After Gurgeh learns of the dark underbelly of Azadian society, including broadcasts of horrific torture, his next game session has him walk into the game hall, turn a losing position into the utter destruction of his opponent, and walk back out, all without saying a word or even displaying any emotions.
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The Player of Games / int_44a893af	type	Humans Through Alien Eyes
The Player of Games / int_44a893af	comment	Humans Through Alien Eyes: A brief segment is narrated from the perspective of his Azadian opponent, who mentally describes Gurgeh as vaguely insect-like.
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The Player of Games / int_46290b93	type	Manic Pixie Dream Girl
The Player of Games / int_46290b93	comment	Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Gurgeh's friend and 'lust interest' Yay, a playful and energetic young woman. She's something of a subversion, in that her Manic Pixie Dream Girl personality makes her a better fit for the hedonism of the Culture than does the protagonist's discomfort with a life without challenges.
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The Player of Games / int_5067fd81	type	Everyone Is Bi
The Player of Games / int_5067fd81	comment	Everyone Is Bi: Gurgeh is seen as odd by many folks in the Culture for never having had sex with a man.
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The Player of Games / int_5c5ac0e2	type	Really 700 Years Old
The Player of Games / int_5c5ac0e2	comment	It's easy to miss, but Gurgeh makes a comment on how the professor he knows is twice his age, and he refers to her as being into her second century, meaning that he is between fifty and a century old himself (in the final pages, we find out he's 60). While presumably, Gurgeh has developed his masterful game-playing skills in that time, he's really callow in other respects and is about as mature as his young body would suggest.
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The Player of Games / int_640ebd81	type	Bizarre Alien Reproduction
The Player of Games / int_640ebd81	comment	Bizarre Alien Reproduction The Azadians have three sexes: Males with testes and penis, an intermediate ("Apex") sex with a reversible vagina and ovum, and a female sex with uterus and a retrovirus that slightly modifies the implanted egg. Also when Gurgeh is taken to a nightclub/wrestling arena and his guide reassures him about a contestant being suffocated in the mud: "The Uhnyrchal can breathe through their dicks — that guy's fine; he'll be fighting in another club tomorrow night." Then it gets cut off by the victor.
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The Player of Games / int_69cce3dc	type	Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!
The Player of Games / int_69cce3dc	comment	Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: As Gurgeh is leaving one of his games, victorious, he notices that the terrain around him seems similar to an Azad board ... and if it were an Azad board, then one of his pieces would be in danger of a sneak attack ... and that piece would be himself ... and he dodges the assassins just in time. Later on, Gurgeh is playing an Azadian judge, and after a break Gurgeh comes back and starts playing considerably better, with the judge seeing something familiar in Gurgeh's eyes, but not quite being able to put his finger on it. During that break, Gurgeh had been shown the true dark underbelly of Azadian society, and was now operating on Tranquil Fury. Then the judge realises that the look he has given to condemned criminals over the years, is the one he is now receiving from Gurgeh.
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The Player of Games / int_6b35bdff	type	Serious Business
The Player of Games / int_6b35bdff	comment	Serious Business: The game of Azad, which represents the Empire's culture and its winners become high ranking government officials, even potentially the Emperor. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, as if you are good at Azad, you also have a good understanding of the Empire.
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The Player of Games / int_733e007a	type	Unwitting Pawn
The Player of Games / int_733e007a	comment	Unwitting Pawn: Special Circumstances keeps Gurgeh completely in the dark while it plots to manipulate him along with everyone else involved. And since Gurgeh himself never expresses much more than passing curiosity about what they're really up to, he could be seen as more of an Uncaring Pawn.
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The Player of Games / int_78d103c3	type	Exposition of Immortality
The Player of Games / int_78d103c3	comment	Exposition of Immortality: Chamlis Amalk-Ney, the aging drone who's one of Gurgeh's close friends on Chiark Orbital, is at least four thousand years old by its own admission (no-one is impolite enough to look up its construction date to find out if it's really older). In between the drone's much larger body than a more modern drone, like the warped and snarky Mawhrin-Skel, and those two sniping insults at each other about their respective ages, there's also Gurgeh's own musing about the age of Chamlis and how long the drone's been living on Chiark.
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The Player of Games / int_7b7f90d5	type	Pronoun Trouble
The Player of Games / int_7b7f90d5	comment	Pronoun Trouble: Lampshaded and defied; the Lemony Narrator points out that while many languages would have trouble with expressing the third, apex gender of the Azadian race in a non-silly way due to their speakers not having as many sexes, the Empire is such a gender-dominated society that it is probably a safe bet to refer to them as whatever the generally higher-status sex the reader's culture ascribes. From there on out, all apex-gendered Azadians are given male pronouns.
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The Player of Games / int_7c77081d	type	Language Equals Thought
The Player of Games / int_7c77081d	comment	Language Equals Thought: The Culture language, Marain, is a constructed language designed to be as expressive as possible. The Empire language, Eachic, evolved naturally and contains underlying assumptions and a more aggressive attitude. After Gurgeh has spent some time speaking only Eachic, Flere-Imsaho observes he has started playing more like "one of those carnivores he'd been listening to". It doesn't seem a coincidence that in the final games against the emperor, when Gurgeh is losing badly Flere-Imsaho has him speak his native Marain for an evening and that after that his attitude and outlook change, including the realisation that his playstyle mimics the Culture and that by becoming the Culture militant he succeeds at coming back and gaining a winning position in the game.
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The Player of Games / int_850258ca	type	I Know Mortal Kombat
The Player of Games / int_850258ca	comment	I Know Mortal Kombat: Gurgeh spots an ambush when he realizes how the area around him is like an Azad board. More generally, the whole Empire is based on the idea that a good Azad player is a good ruler.
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The Player of Games / int_8d0785d5	type	Didn't Think This Through
The Player of Games / int_8d0785d5	comment	Didn't Think This Through: Gurgeh accepting the offer of Mawhrin-Skel, a drone who is clearly mentally unstable and loves screwing with people, to help him cheat. It deciding to Blackmail him afterwards isn't that much of a surprise to the reader, though it's implied that everyone in the Culture is normally so nice that such behaviour is genuinely unforeseeable. And then it turns out that Mawhrin-Skel was a Special Circumstances plant who was intended to ensure he ended up going to Azad.
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The Player of Games / int_930e1bd4	type	Absurdly High-Stakes Game
The Player of Games / int_930e1bd4	comment	Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Your rank in Azad is also your rank in the Azad Empire; when the actual betting gets involved between players, the stakes can get downright scary. Scary like having your genitals removed if you lose (or both you and your opponent both having your genitals removed if the two of you try to cancel the bet or, heaven forbid, tie). Subverted for Gurgeh. As a guest of the Empire, he can't win any rank, and castration is meaningless since it'll just grow back. In fact, he seriously considers forfeiting to protect his opponent from a permanent castration. The final match with the Emperor is basically just an exhibition game - except that Flere-Imsaho has re-raised the stakes by telling the Emperor that if Gurgeh wins, the Culture is invading.
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The Player of Games / int_957e5fc2	type	Villainous Breakdown
The Player of Games / int_957e5fc2	comment	Villainous Breakdown / Taking You with Me The Emperor of Azad. When he loses it completely he sure knows how to lay his cards down.
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The Player of Games / int_95b7c400	type	Faux Affably Evil
The Player of Games / int_95b7c400	comment	Faux Affably Evil: Emperor-Regent Nicosar, is a modest-seeming, polite and well-spoken apex, but under his reign xenocide, imperialism, and sexism abound, most ordinary people are forced to live in squalid conditions and Azad's elite watch live broadcasts of exceptionally cruel executions for fun. This becomes much more apparent when it becomes clear Gurgeh is about to beat him at Azad, at which point he snaps, backhands his opponent across the face while delivering a Motive Rant, and decides to destroy his castle along with everyone and everything in it rather than lose. Though this is slightly more justified as Flere-Imsaho told him the Culture would invade if he lost.
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The Player of Games / int_98aaf983	type	Comically Small Bribe
The Player of Games / int_98aaf983	comment	Comically Small Bribe: An interesting, and non-comedic take on this trope. A group of Azad's elites invite Gurgeh to a private island retreat before he travels to the finals of the Azad tournament, and offer him said island, the fully-appointed luxurious mansion on it, and a harem of Sex Slaves if he agrees to retire there and never play Azad again. But, since Gurgeh hails from the Culture, however, this is utterly meaningless — he can enjoy, and indeed has enjoyed, a far more comfortable lifestyle for free back home, with the only thing he can't obtain being the slaves, which are redundant anyway.
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The Player of Games / int_9adf3455	type	Extra Parent Conception
The Player of Games / int_9adf3455	comment	Extra Parent Conception: The Empire of Azad is ruled by a humanoids with three genders. Male, female and apex. An apex has a reversible set of equipment and carries the fertilized embryo from male to female. All three genders contribute genes, but the knowledge that females are more than passive child bearers is suppressed: the apices are very much on top and exercise crushing sexual discrimination against both other genders.
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The Player of Games / int_a129cb19	type	Rockâ€“Paperâ€“Scissors
The Player of Games / int_a129cb19	comment	Rock–Paper–Scissors: The Empire's version (blade-cloth-stone-water-fire) is based on one of the sub-games in Azad.
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The Player of Games / int_a4905771	type	Double-Meaning Title
The Player of Games / int_a4905771	comment	Double-Meaning Title: As is frequently the case with Culture novels. The Player Of Games is of course Gurgeh (it's literally the meaning of his self-chosen middle name), but unsurprisingly, by the end it's pretty clear that Special Circumstances might be the ultimate game-player - using Gurgeh as a piece.
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The Player of Games / int_a7aef9ff	type	Obfuscating Stupidity
The Player of Games / int_a7aef9ff	comment	Obfuscating Stupidity: Used by the Culture against Azad in several respects. The drone Gurgeh travels with is encased in a suit which makes it look clumsy and malfunctioning, and while it plays the part of an officious translator drone, it is actually quite competent and ruthless. Also, the hedonistic Culture representative in Azad is actually a foreign-born mercenary; Gurgeh's ship/living quarters looks demilitarized and he believed it to be so, but it's actually highly armed. However, this is mostly for the benefit of the majority of the Azadian population: at least eight of the Empire's most highly ranked officials know just how technologically advanced, sophisticated, and expansive the Culture really is.
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The Player of Games / int_a8af3e53	type	Secret Police
The Player of Games / int_a8af3e53	comment	Secret Police: The Empire has them. Gurgeh, despite being brilliant at games of bluffing and deception, is confused about how these might be useful — after all, police are supposed to be obvious. Which is probably why he didn't realize the Culture might have its own undercover operatives.
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The Player of Games / int_b09c818	type	"Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word
The Player of Games / int_b09c818	comment	"Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Inverted. When Gurgeh is blackmailed into playing in Azad, the drone blackmailing him actually tells him, "what I'm doing is an old concept called blackmail." Because the Culture is a utopia, Gurgeh probably hasn't heard of the term blackmail.
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The Player of Games / int_b14ca7ba	type	Two Aliases, One Character
The Player of Games / int_b14ca7ba	comment	Two Aliases, One Character: Flere-Imsaho and Mawhrin-Skel are one and the same.
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The Player of Games / int_b53077b3	type	Take That!
The Player of Games / int_b53077b3	comment	Take That!: Immediately following a fairly lengthy description of the Empire's propaganda, not unlike some of the news commentary we have here on Earth:
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The Player of Games / int_b59f6070	type	Confusion Fu
The Player of Games / int_b59f6070	comment	Confusion Fu: How Gurgeh comes back from behind to win his first game of Azad: he mixes contradictory playstyles to throw off his opponents.
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The Player of Games / int_cd8ca67a	type	DoubleSubverted
The Player of Games / int_cd8ca67a	comment	Subverted for Gurgeh. As a guest of the Empire, he can't win any rank, and castration is meaningless since it'll just grow back. In fact, he seriously considers forfeiting to protect his opponent from a permanent castration. The final match with the Emperor is basically just an exhibition game - except that Flere-Imsaho has re-raised the stakes by telling the Emperor that if Gurgeh wins, the Culture is invading.
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The Player of Games / int_cdfe12c3	type	Nothing Is Scarier
The Player of Games / int_cdfe12c3	comment	Nothing Is Scarier: There are three levels of restricted entertainment in the Empire of Azad. The first, relatively easy to access level is largely mundane porn. The second level is nasty, filthy porn. The third level, only available to the elite of society, is clearly suggested to be literal torture porn and snuff, but we mostly just see Gurgeh's reaction instead of having it described in detail.
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The Player of Games / int_ce6555f0	type	Lighter and Softer
The Player of Games / int_ce6555f0	comment	Lighter and Softer: After the billions of casualties and Downer Ending of Consider Phlebas, this is much lighter and softer, although still pretty dark.
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The Player of Games / int_d323d090	type	Incendiary Exponent
The Player of Games / int_d323d090	comment	Incendiary Exponent: The final game with the Emperor is played on a planet with a perpetual wildfire running around the equator; the the climax of the game happens just as the fire reaches the castle where the game is being played.
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The Player of Games / int_db5e046d	type	Immortal Immaturity
The Player of Games / int_db5e046d	comment	Immortal Immaturity It's easy to miss, but Gurgeh makes a comment on how the professor he knows is twice his age, and he refers to her as being into her second century, meaning that he is between fifty and a century old himself (in the final pages, we find out he's 60). While presumably, Gurgeh has developed his masterful game-playing skills in that time, he's really callow in other respects and is about as mature as his young body would suggest. Professor Boruelal's behaviour herself is fairly immature for someone twice Gurgeh's age; spending most of it drunk and carousing and bouncing between genders.
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The Player of Games / int_e542d889	type	Gorn
The Player of Games / int_e542d889	comment	Gorn: This (literally "torture porn") is the favored programming of restricted Azadian television stations available to the political and military elite.
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The Player of Games / int_eaf5a1ac	type	Groin Attack
The Player of Games / int_eaf5a1ac	comment	Groin Attack: It is possible to use your genitals as a wager, attacking them in quite a literal way. Not only is this a very effective psychological strategy to use against your opponent (as the risk of a full castration is certainly going to throw you off your game if not pull out entirely) but its mentioned that the origin of a body bet was actually a drive towards making the game fairer for the lower classes as even those without money would always be able to afford to enter the game by betting on their own bodies.
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The Player of Games / int_ed43de19	type	Hunting "Accident"
The Player of Games / int_ed43de19	comment	Hunting "Accident": Some of the Azadians try to arrange an accident for Gurgeh by taking over the powered exoskeleton of one of his hunting partners; it quickly becomes obviously not an accident when the occupant of the exoskeleton starts resisting.
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The Player of Games / int_f52ae5d8	type	Enemy Civil War
The Player of Games / int_f52ae5d8	comment	Enemy Civil War: Azad's leaders are so darwinistic that they end up being more competent at killing each other off than posing a threat to Gurgeh. It helps matters that the main purpose of Azad is to determine status in the Empire rather than to punish upstart outsiders. Numerous departmental rivalries and personal grudges are implied throughout the novel; in particular, the penultimate game features Gurgeh sitting back and calmly gaining points while his opponents, from two different schools of military thought, tear each other to pieces.
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The Player of Games / int_fccd06b6	type	Beware the Nice Ones
The Player of Games / int_fccd06b6	comment	Beware the Nice Ones: As always, the Culture's hat, and in this book, it's indicated by a scene at the end where Gurgeh realizes he plays like he's the Culture. As opposed to his opponent who plays like he's the Azadian Empire. While his Azadian opponent is consistently ruthless in his playing, Gurgeh's style involves a generally less aggressive attitude, but when he comes up against an opponent that's too smart to play him on his own terms, he has to play as the Culture Militant; geared up for war and ready to kick ass in the name of the greater good, with occasional bursts of ruthless sacrifice of his own pieces and relentlessly violent moves against his opponent. This is pretty much how the Culture (or at least Special Circumstances) acts toward its own people and other civilizations respectively.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Player of Games	hasFeature	Absurdly High-Stakes Game / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Bizarre Alien Sexes / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Bondage Is Bad / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Calvinball / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Caught on Tape / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Discreet Drink Disposal / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Dystopia Is Hard / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Everyone Is Bi / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Exotic Equipment / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Exposition of Immortality / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Extra Parent Conception / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Humans by Any Other Name / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	King of Games / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Loads and Loads of Rules / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Men Are Generic, Women Are Special / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Narrator All Along / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Non-Heteronormative Society / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Sleeps with Everyone but You / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Televised Torture / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	The All-Concealing "I" / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Uninvited to the Party / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Variant Chess / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	World in the Sky / int_1fcfc25
The Player of Games	hasFeature	Your Normal Is Our Taboo / int_1fcfc25

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