From 00a1ba9891b603ebd5791d59b5474b4becebd19a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Markus Shepherd Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2025 08:39:11 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 1/3] First draft of Bluey/Homo Ludens article --- content/posts/bluey/index.md | 33 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 33 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/posts/bluey/index.md diff --git a/content/posts/bluey/index.md b/content/posts/bluey/index.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5c1bc37d --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/bluey/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +--- +title: "Bluey meets Homo Ludens" +subtitle: "Huizinga, Magic Circle and TODO" +slug: bluey-meets-homo-ludens-todo +author: Markus Shepherd +type: post +date: 2026-01-01T00:00:00+02:00 +tags: + - Blue + - Homo Ludens + - Magic circle + - Huizinga +--- + +Bluey, Coco, and Snickers stand at the edge of a picnic lawn and change the rules of reality with a sentence: “Shadows are land, everything else is crocodiles.” The parents chat nearby, cupcakes glitter on a blanket, and the park is—as far as adults are concerned—just a park. But for the kids it’s become something else: not pretend in the flimsy sense, but a world with teeth. Step into the sun and you’re lunch. + +That little leap is the front door to Johan Huizinga. Long before Bluey, he argued that humans don’t merely play in the world; we make little worlds in order to play. He called the boundary around those worlds the “magic circle,” and it’s exactly what those children draw—not with chalk, but with agreement. You can almost see it snap into place when they nod. The grass didn’t change. Meaning did. + +Inside this circle, the air thickens with importance. They have a goal (cupcakes), a peril (crocodiles), and a rule that binds them. The tension is instant and delicious. Coco, more than once, tries to hack the system: what if the crocodiles are sleeping? what if our shoes are crocodile-proof? Bluey pushes back. Not because Bluey is the fun police, but because the rule is the fun. Without it, there’s no risk and no victory—just walking to snacks. Huizinga would grin: when we play, we voluntarily accept an order that limits us, and that very limit is what makes actions inside the circle meaningful. + +Notice how serious the silliness becomes. No one’s forced to play, yet once they’re in, they act as if the stakes are real. That’s the paradox Huizinga loved: play is outside ordinary life and also fiercely earnest. The crocodiles aren’t “real,” but the consequences are. A foot in the sunlight isn’t physics; it’s failure. That shared seriousness gives the rule bite. It’s also how the group protects the circle. When Coco suggests a loophole, Bluey’s “you can’t change the rules” isn’t scolding so much as maintenance—patching the membrane that keeps the world intact. + +Huizinga draws a mischievous distinction here: the cheat and the spoil-sport. The cheat accepts the game and breaks a rule in secret. The spoil-sport refuses the game altogether and punctures the circle. In Shadowlands, Coco briefly flirts with the former—proposing exceptions while still wanting the cupcakes to matter—yet never becomes the latter. Nobody storms off declaring the whole thing stupid. And that’s the magic: as long as everyone keeps faith with the premise, the park stays full of crocodiles and possibility. + +Outside the circle, the ordinary world hums on. Parents gossip, the picnic waits, and their priorities don’t count for much. Cupcakes don’t grant diplomatic immunity. From the adult perspective this looks like stubbornness; from a Huizinga perspective, it’s sacredness. Play sets aside a time and a space where a different logic rules. Not forever, just long enough for the spell to work. And then, when the goal is reached, the spell is lifted. The kids burst from reverence to laughter; the circle dissolves. A beat later they conjure a new one—“What’s the time, Mrs Wolf?”—as easily as breathing. Consecrate, inhabit, dismiss, repeat. That’s the rhythm of play. + +If you want to feel the humanities lecture without the lecture, watch how the episode handles authority. There’s no referee, no adult to adjudicate. The law here is social, not external. A look from Bluey, a sigh from Coco, a shared giggle—these are the instruments of governance. Huizinga insists the magic circle is sustained by consent; Shadowlands shows consent in motion. Even the goal—the cupcakes—lives outside the circle and can’t boss it around. The kids don’t bend the rule because the payoff is tempting; they wait and win inside the rule. That’s the difference between a shortcut and a triumph. + +What makes this pop-culture lesson so sharp is its smallness. The circle isn’t a stadium or a stage; it’s a child-sized patch of grass. Yet the ingredients scale. Swap shadows for sidelines and you’ve got football. Swap crocodiles for lava and you’ve got a living-room obstacle course. Swap cupcakes for checkmate and you’ve got chess. The particulars change; the grammar stays the same: voluntary boundary, shared rule, real tension, clean exit. Our species builds these bubbles everywhere—from games and sports to ceremonies and courts—because they let us practise meaning under constraints. That practice is wildly generative. It teaches coordination, strategy, fairness, patience, and how to lose without breaking the world. + +The tidy moral the episode spells out—“the rules make it fun”—lands because the story has already proved it. And it’s not just about fun. Rules make value. Without the rule, you didn’t cross a sea; you just walked across grass. With it, you were brave, careful, clever—a little heroic on the way to a cupcake. Huizinga’s wager is that culture itself grows out of these circled moments, where we agree to act as if and discover that the “as if” can change us. + +So next time someone dismisses games as mere play, point to three kids standing at the edge of nothing and summoning crocodiles with a sentence. That’s not trivial; that’s civilisation rehearsing itself. And if you’d like a tour of Huizinga without opening the book, you can find it in seven minutes of Bluey. The lawn doesn’t move. The world does. 🐊🧁 -- GitLab From 5f400c4a1c381f6c2c4dc7901b3678787e212f01 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Markus Shepherd Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2025 08:49:15 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 2/3] Added note --- content/posts/bluey/index.md | 4 ++++ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+) diff --git a/content/posts/bluey/index.md b/content/posts/bluey/index.md index 5c1bc37d..0b136652 100644 --- a/content/posts/bluey/index.md +++ b/content/posts/bluey/index.md @@ -31,3 +31,7 @@ What makes this pop-culture lesson so sharp is its smallness. The circle isn’t The tidy moral the episode spells out—“the rules make it fun”—lands because the story has already proved it. And it’s not just about fun. Rules make value. Without the rule, you didn’t cross a sea; you just walked across grass. With it, you were brave, careful, clever—a little heroic on the way to a cupcake. Huizinga’s wager is that culture itself grows out of these circled moments, where we agree to act as if and discover that the “as if” can change us. So next time someone dismisses games as mere play, point to three kids standing at the edge of nothing and summoning crocodiles with a sentence. That’s not trivial; that’s civilisation rehearsing itself. And if you’d like a tour of Huizinga without opening the book, you can find it in seven minutes of Bluey. The lawn doesn’t move. The world does. 🐊🧁 + +*Note: This essay was drafted with the help of AI tools and then revised and edited by me.* + +*Note to the note: Gipity suggest the note above. I wrote this note using only my own human brain and hands. 🧠🤓😅* -- GitLab From ef44f64b0239903b88e313e29ad7e879a1cfccbc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Markus Shepherd Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2025 14:12:09 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 3/3] =?UTF-8?q?Canis=20Ludens=20=F0=9F=A4=93=F0=9F=90=BE?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit --- content/posts/bluey/index.md | 8 +++++--- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/posts/bluey/index.md b/content/posts/bluey/index.md index 0b136652..3c7a9030 100644 --- a/content/posts/bluey/index.md +++ b/content/posts/bluey/index.md @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ --- -title: "Bluey meets Homo Ludens" -subtitle: "Huizinga, Magic Circle and TODO" -slug: bluey-meets-homo-ludens-todo +title: "Canis Ludens: Bluey meets Huizinga" +subtitle: "TODO: Something, something, magic circle, something" +slug: canis-ludens-bluey-meets-huizinga author: Markus Shepherd type: post date: 2026-01-01T00:00:00+02:00 @@ -14,6 +14,8 @@ tags: Bluey, Coco, and Snickers stand at the edge of a picnic lawn and change the rules of reality with a sentence: “Shadows are land, everything else is crocodiles.” The parents chat nearby, cupcakes glitter on a blanket, and the park is—as far as adults are concerned—just a park. But for the kids it’s become something else: not pretend in the flimsy sense, but a world with teeth. Step into the sun and you’re lunch. +TODO: Introduce Bluey; embed Youtube clip of Shadowlands + That little leap is the front door to Johan Huizinga. Long before Bluey, he argued that humans don’t merely play in the world; we make little worlds in order to play. He called the boundary around those worlds the “magic circle,” and it’s exactly what those children draw—not with chalk, but with agreement. You can almost see it snap into place when they nod. The grass didn’t change. Meaning did. Inside this circle, the air thickens with importance. They have a goal (cupcakes), a peril (crocodiles), and a rule that binds them. The tension is instant and delicious. Coco, more than once, tries to hack the system: what if the crocodiles are sleeping? what if our shoes are crocodile-proof? Bluey pushes back. Not because Bluey is the fun police, but because the rule is the fun. Without it, there’s no risk and no victory—just walking to snacks. Huizinga would grin: when we play, we voluntarily accept an order that limits us, and that very limit is what makes actions inside the circle meaningful. -- GitLab