A Sprinkle of Varying Things

[jpegghost]

Is it May 4th already? Shit! Time flies.

I spend all my time studying. My life is very shallow in that regard; Studying, corpses and studying corpses. When I'm not doing that I watch Alex play Bloodborne or I play Animal Crossing or watch Trailer Park Boys lol.

Alex picked up my Embalming textbook and saw a degloved leg (don't google that) and he was very upset. EVERY page is a nightmare if you're squeamish enough!

What Alex and I have recently gotten into lately, though, is planning on LARPing. We hit the highest echelons of geekdom by wanting to do this, and lucky for us, there's a few groups nearby. We have been slowly figuring out our characters over the past few days: Mine is a primadonna fortune teller named Ludwig who wants to win the affections of any prince, marry rich, and never work a day in his life. Alex's is a former royal doctor named Sasha who is quite batty now after operating on himself on a dare and thinks that he's missing random organs that don't exist ("My squigglyspooch!"). He is more than willing to hack up a few things to get a spare organ for his collection... Even though it will be a while before we can play, we are very excited to play our characters and even more excited to work on their costumes. We will probably be the goofiest idiots in that group.

I'm pretty amped for the makeup portion of it all. Men wearing makeup isn't really a thing that's allowed too often, and I'm excited to do makeup for my very prissy and pretty character. I've done it before and enjoyed it, but I could work on my contouring and blending... I'll have plenty of time to practice, and I'll be sure to give you guys photos of Ludwig when I work on his costume.

I was going to post about urban legends, but I guess I'll save that for tomorrow ... I really didn't think I had anything else to talk about but I suppose I was more excited about LARPing than I thought.

Comments

[dark_phoenix54]

Degloving is one of those things that I think squicks most folks out... it even bothers me (I've seen pics) and I'm normally un-gross-out-able. I assume when that happens you just keep the lower part of the casket shut? I can't imagine putting the skin back on...

[jpegghost]

Depending on how badly de-gloved the person is it varies ... sometimes you can roll it back on if its very fresh but more often than not it's dead tissue sloughing off and it's to be excised. We can recreate facial features and such with wax, so if its on the face or neck we will do that but for degloved limbs we generally advise against a viewing without some sort of covering, like a jacket or gloves or long pants. Most caskets are "couch" caskets, which means anything lower than the diaphragm usually isn't visible so it's not something worth much worry, but some families want to see the WHOLE body... which can be a problem in an event like that.

[annofowlshire]

LARPing is much fun. That’s how me and my partner met and one of our central interests ^_^ We even take the child with us now ;)

[jpegghost]

I'm so excited to start -- Tell me about your characters for it!

[annofowlshire]

We aren’t currently in an ongoing game, but recent ones included a full weekend LARP set in 1920s Tutmania where I played the notorious Alice Black. (I was at that one solo.)

We were in an ongoing Deadlands Noir (1930s Depression New Orleans with supernatural stuff) LARP late last year but sadly it died from OOC drama. I was playing a back alley “weird science” doctor who made prosthetics, etc. while caring for her “nephew” (IE, why I had my toddler running about the venue).

We go to a small convention called Consequences each November in which we play several different 4 hour games through the weekend, so countless characters there played over the last few years.

Played an eccentric baby-wearing wife/professional partner of the Austrian Ambassador (my husband) for a 1850s European revolution (non historical) full weekend LARP. (Again, basically written so we could provide childcare while playing.)

I played an alienist/bar tender in an ongoing Rippers (think Victorian monster hunters) game for a year or so. It wrapped up, classically, on the day my son was born. (Apparently there was a betting pool about why we hadn’t shown.) XD At least I made the big weekend finale the month earlier and just missed the “epilogue.”

The ongoing game before that was a post-Apocalyptic alternate Victorian America Steampunk game, which is where I met my now husband XD I played an Indiana Jones archaeologist who then wrote sensational fictionalized penny dreadfuls about her digs ;)

And previous to that was nearly a decade before when I played in the Camarilla (late ‘90s, because I’m old.) XD

We’re now looking into what we call festival LARPs in the UK—a thousand costumed characters out in a field having various shenanigans within the fictional world (some melee fighting, doing politics, more social activities, etc.) which are reputed to be child-friendly. And we still do Consequences, we just alternate slots so each of us can play unhindered. Of course, that’s all going to need to wait until Lockdown/moving is done.

We’ve staffed and written some of the LARPs I mentioned, and are hoping we can run some smaller ones when we get our new place.

[jpegghost]

Wow! So much...! Looks like you're very seasoned. The boyfriend and I are quite new and excited about it all; A lot of the people in our group seem quite serious so we will probably be a bunch of idiots compared to them. Your characters seem fun, especially the archaelogist and Alice Black. I hope you can LARP more when the time comes and Covid dies down.

[annofowlshire]

Both of us have been LARPing since we were teenagers and now we’re... um, shall we say, “middle aged” now XD

What’s the setting? Keenness is good. Be keen ^_^

[jpegghost]

The setting is vague forest and countryside fantasy. I noticed that European LARPing is quite well thought out in terms of backstory, but US based is very much combat focused with some other things thrown in. Ours is general, boring pseudo-Tolkien. The nearest LARP group other than that is a Vampire one, which I have no interest in. I'm not a fighter, so I'll be there to deal with the puzzles and such that our barbarians don't want to bother with.
One of the main reasons we joined this group despite its lackluster story is that it's one of few in Texas that allow LGBT in. Since me and Alex are a male-male couple, we'd likely get problems anywhere else. I've read stories about how bad it can get and I don't feel like ruining my LARP experience with idiots like that.

[annofowlshire]

Ye Olde Fantasy can be fun, though, and has a lot of room for costuming shenanigans.

In my 25 years of LARPing, I can’t think of a single group (US or UK) I played with where the preferred gender (or lack thereof) of your partner was even relevant. I’m appalled to hear that it’s something you have to (still!) deal with. :(