Thunderstruck!
Saturday night was You Are Cordially Invited..., a LARP game written by Paul and Jenni about the wedding reception of two superheroes. I was playing the lucky groom Jack Reynolds aka Thunderbird (a Superman analog) who had just married the lovely Kelly Cassidy aka Ultima. While Kelly lives openly as Ultima, Jack keeps his heroic identity a secret from the public and lives as a mild mannered accountant. This LARP has been quite revelatory for me and has been going around in my head since. It's nice having the morning after at Kapcon to discuss the previous evenings event. I guess that is what a blog is for the rest of the time?
This is the first LARP for me that has maintained such a visceral level of connection for it's entire length and I've been trying to determine what was different that allowed this. This evaluation has centered around the emotional climax of the game.
For me this was about half an hour from the end of the evening when it was revealed to me that another superhero Billy aka Jester was in love with Kelly. Any shock from the revelation was muted by the fact that had said earlier in the evening that someone had told her they had feelings for her. I had suspected Billy but hadn't realised just how strong his feelings for her were. He vented his resentment towards me and was hoping for a response, yet all I could feel was pity for him. This guy was in love with Kelly, something I could completely understand, but he'd missed his chance and I could empathise with just how terrible that would be. My lack of anger only frustrated him more but he was eventually convinced that the situation wasn't going to change and he left.
I then immediately had the wind knocked out of me when Kelly revealed that she did have strong feelings for Billy. I was left reeling and couldn't think straight. Suddenly Loki burst onto the scene and we has another apocalypse on our hands. I stepped forward to combat this new threat but after only a few seconds realised I just didn't care. It was the End of the World but I had something more important to deal with. I grabbed Kelly and headed into the other room.
My dad came up to us and I tried to dismiss him but he insisted on speaking. He'd been nailed for tax evasion and was most likely going to prison. Unfortunately I was still so numb from Kelly's revelation that this mostly passed me by. He was guilty so as a paragon of truth and justice there was little more for me to say than I loved him and would stand by him. It wasn't until later that the full impact of this hit but by then the LARP was pretty much at an end.
Alone again, Kelly and I confronted the issue at hand. She had been friends with Billy for many years and they'd been through a lot, it was unsurprising that she would care deeply for him. Had his revelation changed her feelings towards me? I loved her and hoped to spend my life her but did she still feel the same? To my enormous relief she told me that whatever her feelings for Billy, she loved me and wanted to be with me. We embraced and headed back to the party.
Looking back at this now, if Kelly has said anything other than "I want to be with you" it would have been devastating. The anger Billy had been looking for would suddenly have materialised and after the initial explosion of indignation, that would most likely have been the end of the evening for me. One of the internalised elements I was playing with Jack/Thunderbird was the constant need for self-restraint (an idea lifted from the character's inspiration, Superman). With the sheer amount of power at my command I couldn't afford to lose control, even for a second, or people could die. Faced with such raw emotion my only choice would have to been to flee to some unpopulated region where my feelings could find a safe outlet. As aside, this I also viewed this need for constant self-restraint as part of why Kelly and I worked; also gifted with invulnerability she was the only woman in the world whom I could completely be myself with and not need to tread on egg shells for fear of accidentally hurting her.
After the resolution of this situation, sensation started to come back. Thankfully the Ragnarok apocalypse had been averted and I could move on. I started to feel something else for Billy now; annoyance that he'd wait until our Wedding reception to drop this bomb shell and ruin Kelly's evening. There was no way he was getting into the League of Heroes now! I comforted Mum, threw a Fae out of the party, and a few other things as the evening came to a close but my focus was now on what was after the end of the LARP; I had a lot of frustration to work out and there was an invading space monster called a Zor Beast that was about to get the crap kicked out of it.
I think the main reason this LARP was so different for me was one I'd identified going into it. I'd requested a character with a strong personal connection to another character, whether good or bad, and preferably with someone that I knew well. This turned out to be Sam as Kelly and it worked much as I'd hoped. As we were friends there was already an robust emotional framework upon which to lay out this other relationship. The existing familiarity meant the two of us could relate to one another as our characters without having to worry about being self-conscious or the awkwardness around personal space. It made it easier to embrace the mind-set of the character. I imagine this would be different for other people depending on how open they are with others or how good an actor they are but as a fairly private individual it made an enormous difference for me. Yet again I must give my thanks to Sam for helping me to have such a great experience and also thanks to Paul for suggesting the pairing.
The other reason it made such an impact was that I had such an emotionally charged goal for the evening but it wasn't one of the ones that was written on my character sheet. My only real objective that evening was simple; do whatever I could to make Kelly happy. Everything else I did, whether intervening in squabbles or preventing an apocalypse, was in service of that. Being so focused meant I always had something to do, whether just checking in with how she was doing or tackling the next obstacle.
So for those who made it this far, thanks for reading and I'd be keen for any insight you might have here.
This is the first LARP for me that has maintained such a visceral level of connection for it's entire length and I've been trying to determine what was different that allowed this. This evaluation has centered around the emotional climax of the game.
For me this was about half an hour from the end of the evening when it was revealed to me that another superhero Billy aka Jester was in love with Kelly. Any shock from the revelation was muted by the fact that had said earlier in the evening that someone had told her they had feelings for her. I had suspected Billy but hadn't realised just how strong his feelings for her were. He vented his resentment towards me and was hoping for a response, yet all I could feel was pity for him. This guy was in love with Kelly, something I could completely understand, but he'd missed his chance and I could empathise with just how terrible that would be. My lack of anger only frustrated him more but he was eventually convinced that the situation wasn't going to change and he left.
I then immediately had the wind knocked out of me when Kelly revealed that she did have strong feelings for Billy. I was left reeling and couldn't think straight. Suddenly Loki burst onto the scene and we has another apocalypse on our hands. I stepped forward to combat this new threat but after only a few seconds realised I just didn't care. It was the End of the World but I had something more important to deal with. I grabbed Kelly and headed into the other room.
My dad came up to us and I tried to dismiss him but he insisted on speaking. He'd been nailed for tax evasion and was most likely going to prison. Unfortunately I was still so numb from Kelly's revelation that this mostly passed me by. He was guilty so as a paragon of truth and justice there was little more for me to say than I loved him and would stand by him. It wasn't until later that the full impact of this hit but by then the LARP was pretty much at an end.
Alone again, Kelly and I confronted the issue at hand. She had been friends with Billy for many years and they'd been through a lot, it was unsurprising that she would care deeply for him. Had his revelation changed her feelings towards me? I loved her and hoped to spend my life her but did she still feel the same? To my enormous relief she told me that whatever her feelings for Billy, she loved me and wanted to be with me. We embraced and headed back to the party.
Looking back at this now, if Kelly has said anything other than "I want to be with you" it would have been devastating. The anger Billy had been looking for would suddenly have materialised and after the initial explosion of indignation, that would most likely have been the end of the evening for me. One of the internalised elements I was playing with Jack/Thunderbird was the constant need for self-restraint (an idea lifted from the character's inspiration, Superman). With the sheer amount of power at my command I couldn't afford to lose control, even for a second, or people could die. Faced with such raw emotion my only choice would have to been to flee to some unpopulated region where my feelings could find a safe outlet. As aside, this I also viewed this need for constant self-restraint as part of why Kelly and I worked; also gifted with invulnerability she was the only woman in the world whom I could completely be myself with and not need to tread on egg shells for fear of accidentally hurting her.
After the resolution of this situation, sensation started to come back. Thankfully the Ragnarok apocalypse had been averted and I could move on. I started to feel something else for Billy now; annoyance that he'd wait until our Wedding reception to drop this bomb shell and ruin Kelly's evening. There was no way he was getting into the League of Heroes now! I comforted Mum, threw a Fae out of the party, and a few other things as the evening came to a close but my focus was now on what was after the end of the LARP; I had a lot of frustration to work out and there was an invading space monster called a Zor Beast that was about to get the crap kicked out of it.
I think the main reason this LARP was so different for me was one I'd identified going into it. I'd requested a character with a strong personal connection to another character, whether good or bad, and preferably with someone that I knew well. This turned out to be Sam as Kelly and it worked much as I'd hoped. As we were friends there was already an robust emotional framework upon which to lay out this other relationship. The existing familiarity meant the two of us could relate to one another as our characters without having to worry about being self-conscious or the awkwardness around personal space. It made it easier to embrace the mind-set of the character. I imagine this would be different for other people depending on how open they are with others or how good an actor they are but as a fairly private individual it made an enormous difference for me. Yet again I must give my thanks to Sam for helping me to have such a great experience and also thanks to Paul for suggesting the pairing.
The other reason it made such an impact was that I had such an emotionally charged goal for the evening but it wasn't one of the ones that was written on my character sheet. My only real objective that evening was simple; do whatever I could to make Kelly happy. Everything else I did, whether intervening in squabbles or preventing an apocalypse, was in service of that. Being so focused meant I always had something to do, whether just checking in with how she was doing or tackling the next obstacle.
So for those who made it this far, thanks for reading and I'd be keen for any insight you might have here.