Disabled

Man, I have missed LARPing. And if I can say that after the costume I wore last night, it really must be true.

(Short form, for those who I’m very glad didn’t see it: think truck stop diner waitress. I’ve done skin-tight and low-cut costumes before; now, with the crossing of the short skirt boundary, I’ve got about as far as I can in terms of revealing costumes without violating public decency laws. You know there’s a problem when you put off getting changed until game’s right about to start.)

Beforehand, gollumgollum and I were running a scene for a different (tabletop) game, and we ended up half-LARPing it, with me stretched out on a couch and her in a chair at my side, because it just wasn’t possible to get into the right headspace without doing the spatial positioning the scene required. And we both felt underdressed for playing those characters. Once you get used to physically performing things, it can seem weird to not do so; I know I’ve been frustrated in tabletop games when I’m having an important, personal conversation with someone and we’re on opposite sides of the room. It just isn’t the same. I like the physicality, the way that posture and stance and clothing and everything else can change the way you behave.

But there aren’t any LARPs in town I feel particularly inspired to join right now. (OTOH, maybe this means the boy and I will get off our butts and run “The Dance and the Dawn” like we’ve been saying we will.)

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  1. diatryma

    I’ve realized in my letters game (sorry, I’m going to go on about this a great deal, because you’re one of the people whose roleplaying is… inspiring, in a less shaft-of-sunlight-through-the-roiling-thunderheads-as-Wagner-plays way) that I have Elisabeth-space in my head. Her handwriting is different (though mine is changing to fit the things I did on purpose) and she capitalizes many Words as she feels they are Necessary, which I blame on epistolary novels in the past two years. I’m very glad we’re not doing this face to face; I can handle writing, piece of cake there, but even then I’m a bit too much myself.
    But yeah, getting out the special journal and the lined paper so I can have nicely ruled writing, those are Elisabeth things. The cat hopping up and trying to eat my pen, not so much.

    • Marie Brennan

      Oh, yeah. There was one time — I’ll spare the lengthy background details, but I was playing a rather dramatic character I knew was going to die (the Swan Lake + Donkeyskin reference from an earlier post), so I put together a little prop. Sadly, my cursive was not the perfect flowing copperplate hers should have been, but I did my best: got out my quill pen, a bottle of blue ink, and a half-sheet of paper, wrote an over-the-top “If you are reading this, then I am dead” letter, dripped water on it before the ink was dry (tearstains, of course), rolled it up, tied it with a silver ribbon, stuck one of my white feathers in the ribbon, and had it delivered to my True Love after I sent myself to Hell to save his life.

      I called it the Scroll of +3 Melodrama.

      Sometimes die-hard typists find themselves writing certain stories or books out longhand. Sometimes they go to unusual locations for writing. I know exactly what you mean by Elisabeth-space, and yeah, there are often rituals for getting to it.

      • diatryma

        Of course her handwriting wasn’t perfect copperplate. Wouldn’t you be emotional?
        I love the Scroll of +3 Melodrama. I don’t think we’ll get to that point (I am one of several people in the game who are being as purposefully mundane as possible) but hee. And fun.
        However, if I reach Laurell K Hamilton levels of character-reality, do please cause yourself to become incredible badass, in costume or out, come to Iowa City, and slap me.

        • Marie Brennan

          Well, but my cursive is just bad. And not in the right way.

          I doubt you’ll go batshit like LKH. A certain amount of thinking of your characters as real is normal.

  2. gollumgollum

    One of the only things that bugged me about the Zoe-meets-Reynald scene is that we were sitting so damned far apart. (And that we were sitting.) Sure, we probably would have started rather far apart, but i imagine Zoe would have been trying to close that distance rather quickly. Even if Reynald was trying to preserve it. (; So yeah. It’s why i’m so fidgety when we tabletop.

    • Marie Brennan

      When Lessa and Grektar had their chat, and I were out to dinner, so of course I said we were eating IC as well. I feel a need to work things like that in when I can.

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