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Ghogargi posted:My husband has seen this thing through from beginning to end, and has been talking to me for a while about doing an Ask/Tell regarding my time spent totally submerged in the LARP scene, and the things I saw and experienced, and how it pretty much nearly killed me. I think it could be a good thing all ‘round, but I also know it may be a little grim for an A/T. The venerable 'anime husbando' thread took some dark twists that quite often involved RP (there's one about halfway down page 88), as has the 'furry' one, and recently there have been threads from people fresh out of prison, and recovering from being beaten near to death. I don't think grimness will be an issue. That said, you're on the Ask/Tell discussion board of a comedy site, and I wonder if this is the place for you to write about this unless you do want to let it all hang out (others have done this and even seemed to find it therapeutic, but it's probably not for everyone). People are going to want to hear all your most toe-curlingly awful tales, in forensic detail, with harrowing turns that would unnerve the Ancient Mariner himself. Ghogargi posted:[*]I know there are going to be LARPers who decry everything I say, call me a liar, and tell you guys not to believe a word. That’s cool. But I absolutely swear what I tell you is the truth as I know it. LARP Lifers (those in as deep as I was, where it’s central to their lives) are, to me, like cult members. Harsh, but that’s exactly how it felt when I came out. They go utterly berserk if someone impugnes their lifestyle. If they seem to have the more compelling, reasonable arguments, though, I’ve no problem not being believed. I just want it clear that I am not going to lie or embellish. At all. What will happen is that LARPers will come out of the woodwork to share their own most hideous stories. Ghogargi posted:[*]There’s going to be a lot of self-castigation, I think, because my being a Lifer meant I was complicit and participated in some gruesome stuff and I am ashamed. It’s not a pity party, and it’s not White Knight Bait. It’s the truth. It’s cool, I’m doing okay, but I am not a victim. I'd keep the self-castigation brief. It's not going to be amusing or horribly fascinating, just sad. Ghogargi posted:I did the freeform/theater LARPing, not boffer drat, hardly anything is absurder than two grown adults earnestly whacking each other with pool noodles (note that I am not saying I've never tried this, just that it's innately absurd). Ghogargi posted:I am not angry or bitter, and accept all responsibility for the choices that led me to, and kept me in, LARPing. This isn't therapy; bitterness is permitted. If LARPing gradually ruined your life over 18 years, there must be something you're angry about, something that you didn't choose. But that sounds heavy. So my question is: What's the most abominably awkward, embarrassing LARPing moment you've ever witnessed? Preferably one that didn't involve you directly, so it's not stressful to write about. In fact, if you just wrote keyboard portraits of various LARPing denizens*, and not about yourself directly, it might be easier. * leaving out any very identifying details, of course. But if threads like this have taught me one thing, it's that someone will write 'I knew this uniquely bizarre person', and three or four people will chime in to describe a person almost exactly the same. Carnival of Shrews fucked around with this message at 11:15 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 11:07
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Ghogargi posted:Sexual shenanigans, gross exhibitionism and serial corset abuse. Yup, that sounds pretty bad. How much did you spend on clothes and other kit, if it's not too painful to calculate? I've only been vaguely in involved in UK boffer LARP, which as Camrath says, runs heavily to camping, beer, more beer, and daftness; these are the sort of people whose motto could well be 'Too rowdy for Sealed Knot'. I get the impression that whilst it attracts out-and-proud nerds, they're generally still confident enough to tell anyone trying to socially control them to sod off. 'Treasure Trapped' is quite a fun documentary about the better-run sort of outing ("In the early days, we had characters...but it was all about the violence") that's going to be released outside the UK later this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz_1p1wfDOI Ghogargi posted:Here’s a funny thing, and sorry it's a bit of a tangent. Oftentimes, someone will comment that roleplayers, or furries, or reenactment people, or actors, take on a persona because they don’t want to be themselves, they want to be someone cooler or hotter or more powerful. I think that’s maybe true a little, but I think there’s more; at least for me there was. The characters I played weren’t people I wished I could be - they were all aspects of my sickness, manifesting unconsciously in this weird, very intense way. I know that WoD vampires are officially High or Low clan, or none at all, but when I vaguely looked at the game ages ago, it seemed that there were three main character types in WoD generally (though in nearly infinite, baroque variation): * Wish-fulfilment figures: aristocrats, sexy aesthetes, natural-born warriors in an amoral society, supernatural Mafiosi. * The unfortunate: the horribly disfigured, the deranged, and those doomed to devolve into an animal-like physical state. Probably the most interesting group IMO since in human society they'd be near-powerless, but not in WoD. * Unabashed monsters: repulsive sadists, experimenters in flesh, or worshippers of corruption, beyond the pale even by vampire standards. What was the ratio of those three types in WoD gaming? I'd naively expected the first group to be most numerous, but from what you've said, this may not be so. Not necessary to go into your own choices if that's still a stressful area. Ghogargi posted:There are also just Weird Moments In LARPing, where I just couldn’t believe these were the people I was spending all my free time with. Like the dude who told me he could call storms to him. And the guy who bragged he was going to fly a jet in his friend’s private army, and that his genes were ‘too awesome’ to get cancer from smoking. And the night my husband and I walked into an after-party at a convention and there was only one girl on the dancefloor and she was humping the ground in a frenzy. Now you're talking. I vote for Storm King.
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Aug 11, 2015 17:03
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