Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Reality Repackaged
January 2008 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Gaming Gloves
- Gaming in the Media: Women Working in Games - 5 Viewpoints, 2 Ways to Play
- Market to Me: Women as players
- Gamer vs Gamer: An old debate for the new year: casual vs. hardcore
Interviews
- Industry Interview: Naomi Clark
- Blogger Interview: Mighty Ponygirl [Feminist Gamers]
Articles
- Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Reality Repackaged
Author: Samara Hayley Steele
- Planning a Women-Only Gaming Group
Author: Robyn Fleming
- Celebrating women in the industry
Author: Andrea Rubenstein
- Choosing Imitation Over Innovation
Author: Richard Pilbeam
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP Organization.
Robyn outlines the trials and tribulations of organizing an all-women gaming group.
Andrea looks at some of the influential women in the video game and tabletop gaming industry.
Richard discusses ways in which imitation and a lack of innovation help to perpetuate sexist themes in games produced by the RPG Maker community.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Retro Review: Pitfall!
Odds 'n Ends
Editor’s note: Though Samara was unable to continue her regular series this month, we at Cerise are pleased to publish a poem she has written that deals with the same topic, as an interlude.
I drink it in like communion wine, as though the crisp forest air can purify me, washing away the smog and dirt and grimy memories I left back in the city.
Reality Repackaged
The first rule of LARP is…you don’t talk about LARP
Think postmodernism.
Think Fight Club.
The Matrix.
Equilibrium.
Office Space.
Stop and think:
| How many hours of your life do you spend sitting down? Lying down? Only moving when you need to | |
| get from one chair to the next—from your car to your classroom to your desk | |
| to your cubicle to your car to your couch to your dinning room to your bed | |
| to your car—an endless game of musical chairs with no winner, no prize. |
I am not the first to say this:
We live in a society that is sitting on its ass.
Our bodies are no longer stimulated but our minds are on overdrive. Our education and our jobs are dominated by mental tasks. More and more, our identities are becoming grounded in abstraction instead of physical reality. We carve out our personalities in the wasteland of cyberspace—
| graffiti | ||
| Cellphone | on the | |
| I.M. | subway | |
| Blog | wall | |
|
—hoping someone is reading; listening to the whine of a disembodied mind. |
We live in an abstract world where minds are the masters and bodies are containers.
Stop and think:
How often is your body on autopilot?
(Here’s a hint: Where are you now?)
In my first article, I described LARP as a symptom of one thing. But I believe it is a solution for another.
There is no widespread cure for the endemic illness that academic theorists have named ‘The Postmodern Condition’, but some people have been fortunate enough to stumble upon personal solutions. For some it is mountain climbing. Others: skydiving. Paintball. Backpacking. Martial Arts. Anything will work as long as it’s physically engaging enough to pull you out of the world of abstract concepts and back into your body.
So imagine this:
| Six howling teenagers dressed in skeleton costumes suddenly drop from the trees and you scream like your heart is on fire. You run, but they catch you. They surround you and beat you with their boffer swords. Your imagination paints over the scene, adding special effects, filling in the gaps; it is almost like you can see the flesh being ripped from your limbs. You fall—a crumpled corpse caked in mud—but still hoping, praying that your friends are somewhere nearby, and that they heard you scream. |
Or this:
| You hear a girl yelling for help in the woods and you run to find her, thrashing through the underbrush, following her cries, until they suddenly stop. You shout: “Where are you?” No reply. Then you see her motionless body, dappled in moonlight, sprawled across the forest floor. Then you feel a sword slice into your back. |
Or this:
| You and your companions are trapped inside a barn and people dressed as wolves are swarming around you, howling, attacking you—friends are falling—and the only way out is to solve a puzzle—an intricate scheme of rocks and crystals—and “a piece is missing!” someone shouts, and you spot it, a blue-green gem resting against the far wall, so you bolt toward it—faster than you have ever run—but the entire hoard turns and chases you, and now they are howling at your heels, their claws rip into your back—if only your legs were longer!—but you are not dead yet, and the gem is only a few feet away, so you stretch out your fingers and— |
Many LARPers talk about this strange feeling they get when they play the game: colors become brighter, smells stronger, tastes richer. The air is more crisp and clean than it has ever been before.
Physicality is thrust upon you
in a way you can’t ignore
and it is reality that chases you, screaming into the night.
Poem © January 2008 by Samara Hayley Steele.
