Wonderkarin

"Ett litet förslag of reproduktion" - Gästpost av Julia Greip

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 13:00:00 +0000

Det finns en rad olika sätt att förhålla sig till kön och genus i lajvdesign - alltifrån strikta, historiska könsroller och påhittade, omvända könsroller till fullkomligt könsneutral funktion. Det finns få felaktiga sätt att göra könsroller, så länge det görs med stor medvetenhet om hur det påverkar karaktärerna, spelarna och deras upplevelser, och man kommunicerar tydligt kring detta. Detta är alltså inte ett inlägg där jag propagerar för att all fiktion borde vara fullkomligt jämställd. Däremot vill jag titta närmare på ett problem, och en lösning, när man skapar jämställd fiktion.

Innan vi tittar på problemet vill jag dock förtydliga vad jag menar med en jämställd fiktion. För att en fiktion ska räknas som jämställd krävs mer än ”kvinnor kan också vara krigare och ha byxor”. Det krävs en hyfsat jämn fördelning mellan män och kvinnor i alla sorters roller, oavsett om det gäller stereotypt ”manliga” eller ”kvinnliga” roller. Det krävs att manligt och kvinnligt kodade kläder kan bäras av alla kön/genus på ett självklart sätt, eller att alla oavsett genus bär likartad dräkt. Det krävs att inget spel baseras på sexism, eller att man på annat sätt fokuserar spelet på skillnader mellan genus och kön.

Det kan vara värt att säga några ord om fiktioner som är till största delen jämställda enligt ovan, men har avvikande kulturer som inte passar in i denna ram. Exempel på detta är t.ex. Krigshjärta, där den jorgalska kulturen gör tydlig skillnad mellan män och kvinnor. I fall som dessa, där könssegregation förekommer men är en minoritet, räknas fiktionen fortfarande som jämställd, åtminstone inom ramen för det resonemang jag för här. Dock ligger fokus på de jämställda kulturerna i dessa fall.

Om man spelar i en jämställd fiktion, torde man alltså kunna spela på precis samma vilkor, med samma uttryck och samma teman, oavsett om man är man, kvinna, ickebinär eller något annat. Så vad är då problemet?

Problemet är reproduktion. När det kommer till våra kroppar, och deras biologiska funktioner, är biologiska binära kön fortfarande ofta ett faktum. Barn skapas genom heterosexuella samlag, och de bärs och föds av kvinnor. Många av de problem som drabbar kvinnor till följd av detta kan tonas ner - i Krigshjärta kan kvinnor arbeta och strida under hela sina graviditet utan större besvär, de dör sällan i barnsäng, och kan snabbt återuppta arbete/strid efter sin förlossning. På samma sätt är det t.ex. i Cordovien vanligt att uppfostran av barn delas av alla i byn eller hushållet, så att ingen tvingas ensam in i föräldrarollen även om man bidrar till den stadiga barnproduktionen. För den som inte vill bli gravid kan det finnas pålitliga preventivmedel och säkra aborter i fiktionen. På så sätt kan man undvika mycket av de element som historiskt sett utsatt kvinnor för fara och förpassat dem till passiva roller.

Vad som däremot är svårt att råda ”bot” på, är tematiken och narrativen som omgärdar reproduktion, barnafödande och att ha fött ett barn. Dessa narrativ är förstås otaliga, men för att nämna ett axplock: Tänk om du är gravid. Kanske vill du verkligen vara det. Kanske har du längtat och väntat, och känner kärlek till den person som växer inom dig. Kanske kommer du, trots denna kärlek, inte att få behålla ditt barn när det väl har fötts. Eller, kanske är du tvärt om ovillig att bära ett barn, men gör det ändå på grund av tvång, eller samhällets förväntningar. Och senare, när barnet är fött - är det ditt eget, din familj, eller är det en främling långt borta från dig själv? Hur förhåller du dig till att det finns en människa som en gång var del av dig själv? Hur förhåller du dig till den person som skapade barnet tillsammans med dig, om du vet vem det är?

Som synes finns det så många känslor, narrativ och teman kopplade till moderns roll, och givetvis många andra kopplade till faderskap. Och dessa är till stor del olika beroende på karaktärens kön. Detta innebär alltså att det finns upplevelser och berättelser som är exklusiva för kvinnliga och manliga roller. På samma sätt finns det vissa narrativ som blir än mer exklusiva för personer som spelar homosexuella roller.

Här kanske man kan argumentera för att det inte behöver vara så, att dessa upplevelser kan göras jämställda, att man kan ha exakt samma tankar och känslor kring dessa upplevelser. Och visst, i någon mån kan man säkert bearbeta och jämka. Men det som berör kroppen, och upplevelser av den egna kroppens roll i situationen, kan knappast förändras. Förutom upplevelsen av att vara gravid, är det ju också alltid känt vem som är ett barns mor, men kan vara känt eller okänt vem som är far.

Alternativet till att göra spelet kring föräldraskap jämställt är att tona ner, att inte fokusera spelet på dessa teman. Men det är i mitt tycke inte ett tillfredsställande alternativ, av två huvudsakliga anledningar: dels motar man undan de narrativ som traditionellt hört kvinnlighet till, ofta till förmån för mer traditionellt manliga narrativ, som t.ex. om krig och maktkamper. Dels har narrativ om reproduktion ofta en viktig roll att spela i många berättelser. I en berättelse om krig och död blir det desto viktigare med teman om nytt liv och nära relationer.

Hur ska man handskas med det här problemet? Den lösning jag vill föreslå är enkel, men hyfsat kontroversiell: låt män kunna vara gravida på lajv som eftersträvar en jämställd fiktion. På så sätt får både män och kvinnor tillgång till båda sidor av reproduktionsnarrativ, kan både vara den som befruktar och den som blir gravid. All eventuell “press” kring reproduktion faller inte längre enbart på kvinnors lott.

Jag kan givetvis föreställa mig en rad olika invändningar mot detta förslag. Den första är förstås att det skulle vara orealistiskt. Men häri ligger ju lajvandets största styrka: vi kan utforska alternativa verkligheter, och få dem att kännas självklara inom ramen för vår upplevelse.

Ett annat argument kan vara att det inte faller sig naturligt för män att vilja utforska graviditet och barnafödande, eftersom det inte är något de upplevt eller önskar uppleva utanför lajv. Men detsamma är sant för många kvinnor. Jag själv har inget intresse alls av att bli gravid eller ha barn, och har aldrig varit gravid, men har ändå spelat både gravid och förälder några gånger. Ändå är jag inte direkt tvungen att göra detta, och det kommer givetvis inte heller män att vara.

Ett annat argument kanske gäller det rent fysiska. “En man kan väl knappast föda barn genom sin penis?” kanske någon indignerat vill fnysa. Och nej, det fungerar inte så bra för hyenor, och skulle nog inte funka för människor heller. Här vill jag först och främst påpeka att de exakta detaljerna kring hur det går till inte nödvändigtvis behöver förklaras i detalj - hur ett sexuellt möte med någon, oavsett kön, kan leda till befruktning - för att det ska vara spelbart. Men vad gäller förlossning tänker jag mig helt enkelt en slidöppning på mellangården, bakom scrotum. Kanske relevant som sexualorgan om man vill det, eller bara till för förlossning. Förhoppningsvis ska denna föreställda förändring av manskroppar inte vara alltför krävande att förhålla sig till, särskilt som man överlag inte behöver tänka speciellt aktivt på den.

Så, för att sammanfatta mina ståndpunkter: nej, alla fiktioner behöver inte vara jämställda, tvärtom finns det stort värde i att utforska könsroller på lajv. Men om man eftersträvar ett lajv med fullkomlig jämställdhet (mer jämställd än verkligheten vi lever i, där könsroller fortfarande har en tydlig roll), bör man överväga en lösning för de biologiska skillnader som reproduktionen innebär. Man bör också betänka om denna lösning marginaliserar eller främjar traditionellt kvinnliga narrativ, och gör dem tillgängliga för alla oavsett genus. Och att skriva in manlig graviditet i sin fiktion skulle vara en heltäckande lösning på detta problem.

Wonderkarins theory of Larp Alientation

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 09:39:00 +0000

[Context: I'm a Swedish larper turned larp designer and runner. I started in Vampire larp, moved on to Swedish Boffer Fantasy Larp and then started going to Knutpunkt, a Scandinavian larp conference which is often cited as the Nordic Larp Conference. I've worked in mental health for over 10 years and have a master in Library and Information science. I usually prefer to keep the language in these posts to medium level English and avoid long explanations. I know this sometimes make things I write sound harsher than they are meant as I try to just deliver the information and leave reflection and opinions to the discussion of the posts.]

What is Larp Alienation?

When I write Larp Alienation I mean something that happens out of game, to individuals in the Community and not passing experiences of alienation in game. Out of game alienation can however both be felt and manifested during a game, but it is an out of game problem.

Larp Alienation is mostly a feeling of not belonging or being on the outskirts of your larp community no matter your actual status or placement in the community social network. You can have many social strong bonds within the community and still feel alienation from the community. (Subjective feeling of larp alienation)

It can also be a practical problem making it hard to find other larpers to collaborate with for your larp projects, be invited to collaborate with others or get larpers to come to your games due to everything from geographical placement or a subject or form that your community are uncertain about. (Objective larp alienation)

Why is Larp Alienation a problem?

For healthy communities the members need to feel wanted and integrated. They should have their social needs reasonably met. But there is a discreprancy in what people mean and expect when they call something a community. Alienated members of a community can both suffer higher levels of mental health problems and begin to act out in disruptive ways because they already assume they are unwanted by other members.

Game runners most often say they feel can't make anyone happy with their event. Intellectually they know a majority of the players enjoy the game but sometimes feedback from the community in total is confusing and contradictory (due to it coming from different people).
Players who exclusively play larps and don't design or run games are more worried no one will want to play with them at games.

The main theory

My theory on larp alienation is inspired by writing about the Master Suppression technique of The Double Bind. The Double bind punishes and ridicules a person no matter what action they choose to take. No action is "the right action". It is also inspired by social alienation theory, especially that there is a low degree of integration of common values in Nordic Larp and a distance and isolation between individuals in the community. Increasingly so, Nordic Larp and Larp has become a work environment which fluctuates between being a friendship based network dependent on whether people are able to form social bonds (like each other) and a professional network (collaborate on paid larp work).

I pose Larp Alienation happens because Larp and the sub category Nordic larp has few common values globally while at the same time members think they have common values which leads to a miss-match between individual expectations on the community and what the community actually produces for these individuals. I pose Larp Alienation is bigger problem to the parts of the community that does their social relationships online, due to both the exposure to public critizism from people you have both strong and weak social ties to and the distance between the individuals and lower to groups that spend more time together physically.

Larp Creators and Runners also possibly face punishment and ridicule no matter what design choices they make, because there will always be disappointed people expressing their opinions in the online forums of the community. Expression themselves is their right, and many larp runners also appreciate being able to read reactions online, while to others it causes negative emotions.

This can result in feelings of being attacked, that no choice is a good choice, that the best course of action is no action and in the end: larp alienation.

Players feel alienated from the larp creators, and larp creators feel alienated from the players.

Now this double bind happens because there are many different viewpoints in larp critique as we have few to no frame work in place in what constitutes a good larp design. This will then be arbitrary and up to individual tastes. Individual tastes that will be expressed on individual larpers social media accounts.

This is not a problem to many designers, as it has to do with how much weight you put into the public opinions of others.

Larp Alienation at specific games or events

If an individual suffers larp alienation at a larp event there are some things that are possible to do, because many larps these days have a higher degree of integration of the players and game runners often make public before the event what common values will be in effect at the game. Also at a on site larp (as opposed to Digital larp) there will also be less isolation between individuals. Social events can be designed to lessen the degree of larp alienation.

Communicate what common values are wished for, and might be enforced when you come to the game.
Place lone players with other players, so that everyone has a social circle in and/or out of game.
Encourage positive social and inclusive behaviors, even by holding up good examples and letting game runners and volunteers model these behaviors.
Let people help out, especially if they offer, feeling useful and needed is a powerful antidote.
Ask consent before coming with "helpful" advice as some people when feeling alienated can feel attacked even if you are just trying to help.
As a fellow participants, be open to meeting and playing with new people. Like the open chair policy of Knutpunkt.
Check in on your friends (yes, especially the "strong friend")

Alienation
Social alienation is "a condition in social relationships reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment". It is a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists, The concept has many discipline-specific uses, and can refer both to a personal psychological state (subjectively) and to a type of social relationship (objectively).(1)

Master Suppression Technique no 3 "Double Bind"

To punish or otherwise belittle the actions of a person, regardless of how they act. (2)

Examples:
When you describe your larp scenario thoroughly, you receive complaints for having to much materials for the players to read before the game, thus making it less accesible to people from another language background or with reading disabilities. When you post only brief bullet point concepts, you're critiqued for being sloppy, not taking the subject seriously and/or demanding to much previous knowledge from players.

(1) Social Alienation at Wikipedia
(2) Double Bind Master Suppression Technique

Interacting with Antagonists at Larps. - social bid theory.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 25 May 2018 10:33:00 +0000

War Criminal Alldis (Krigshjärta)

[Disclaimer and context: this is written for Nordic larp, and I as the writer learned to larp specifically in some of the Swedish larp cultures. When looking at the characters I've played a fair deal of them have been antagonists and dedicated to destruction, disruption and punishment of other.]

Have you ever played an evil character and the other player characters end up avoiding you, leaving you sad and alone at the larp?

Or have you planned some really nasty interaction with a co-player and then after the game realizing you both missed out because once in character it felt only logical to avoid the nasty interaction because that is what your character would do?

Here is some information that might help, both on how to proceed as the player of the evil character and how to initiate interaction with evil characters.

So first, some framwork:

Storytelling:
In a lot of the storytelling we interact with, there is some protagonist characters, and some antagonist characters. Avenger vs Thanos for example or Sherlock vs Moriaty. In most larps the "evil character" will be the antagonist and try to get in the way of or hinder the progress, wishes and wants of the protagonists.

Social interaction:
I'm going to be talking about making a "Social bid" or answering one. Social bid is something I read about in a article about couples who stay married for a long time and what makes them happy in the relationship (1). That article said it came down to how many social bids they did towards each other each day and if and how they responded to their partners bid. An example can be "oh dear, there is a bluejay in the garden" and the response can either be "that's lovely dear, you love blue jays" (responding) or the partner just going on reading their book (ignoring).
Social bids are very close to so called "play signals" but I think play signals in larp deserve a post of their own. They called this "turning towards" and "turning away". I'm going to call it "answering" and "ignoring" as even a "turning away" can still be "answering" in a larp setting.

This also builds on something Anna-Karin Linder(2) taught me about playing antagonists: One thing you can do to make your character seem less nice and cozy is to avoid giving of these little encouraging sounds to show that you are listening while the other person speaks. Be very conservative with how you express that you are listening.

I try to say that a larp protagonist is never cooler or harder than the level of resistance that they get from the larp antagonist. Sometimes the antagonist isn't a person but nature it self or an opposing army.

Another problem for those of you who are not playing the unpleasant character: sometimes we get a feeling in our gut that we need to stay away from the other player due to their in game behavior. I say it's ok to listen to that feeling but then remind yourself that this is what you are here for. Your character might be scared, but this isn't real. The behavior is only acting and it is an invitation to negative play (type B fun/ type II fun). You came to the larp for this. I sometimes as a player find myself feeling scared of the person who is supposed to play my antagonist, and then I circle away from them. I take a deep breath, remind myself it's not real and then I come up with a reason to go back and "larp in their vicinity". Maybe they are standing close to the coffee? Or they control the in game shop? We can't interact if we are not in the same area.

Some way's to listen as an antagonist:

If you look directly at the other player, don't do so nodding or humming. Hone your cold stare in a mirror. You want your eyes to look dead or at least dispassionate.
Don't accept being talked to just anywhere. Express you expect people to come to you or organize a space to your character liking.
Remember what they are saying, but don't repeat it imediatly. Keep them sweating. Ponder your answer, take things slow.
Remember what they said and use it against them at a later time at the larp. But preferably at that larp, and not the next one.

So now I will go into some social bids with some suggestions on how to initiate them and how to answer them. A problem that sometimes comes it is hard to act on in negative ways when other people are playing their characters as kind or subservient. But there are ways.

"Get them coffee"

The antagonist gets brought coffee. This is a social bid.
Ignoring the social bid: just accept the coffee. Drink it.
Answering the social bid: taste the coffee. Look at the person delivering it. Either say something with words about the coffee or with your face. Dump the coffee in front of the person. Look them in the eye.

"Serve them dinner"

Everyone is supposed to stand in line for dinner.
The antagonist instead sits down that their favorite spot at the table, looks at someone and tells them to bring them dinner. This is a social bid.
Ignoring the social bid: either not answering at all or giving them food without any invitation to further interaction.
Answering the social bid: bring them their dinner either perfectly organized or messy and unappetizing. Serve them in a clearly submissive way or if you wish to be provocative, plonk it down hard in front of them.

"the knowing insult"

For common interaction, casual conversation gone bad.
Social bid: a protagonist states liking/disliking a phenomenon or action. "I don't like when you tell me what to do"
Answering the social bid: Move in close and, depending on physical interaction rules of the larp grab them a bit to hard on the wrist or other neutral body part. Stand in their personal space and look them in the eye. Calmly reflect what they said either enforcing or contradicting it "Oh but I think you actually do like it." Give them your full attention. To do intimate things like this it is best if you have read up on their character.

P.S Avoid playing a psychopath. I often say that psychopaths are boring characters. Because while we often play them as evil, if they do not have wants, needs and emotions of their own there will be no emotional resonance to play them either. People can be harsh, cold, violent and manipulative without being psychopaths or sociopaths.

References:

1. Masters of Love (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/)

2. Linder, Anna-Karin - Writer and narrative designer http://annakarinlinder.se/
http://annakarinlinder.se/

Suffering bragging block

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Tue, 08 May 2018 11:35:00 +0000

For different reasons I was thinking I'm suffering a block against bragging about my artistic accomplishments and my skills. Not about showing them one by one, but all of them together.

The set up:
I've been having bad moods late at night when I'm tired, and sometimes my mood is so bad that I have trouble falling asleep before really hashing the issue over with a friend in private. Sometimes on chat and sometimes on phone. It's mostly negative talk and I mostly do it with my male friends because I don't want to dump on women who usually have to do the majority of emotional labor anyway and I have some guy friends who have had to share the burden instead. I try to not feel bad about doing this as I have supported them as well from time to time and they want to be good at emotional labor.

The problem:
I don't want to be this negative. I don't think it's good for me and I don't think it's good for my communities. Also negativity says very little about what I want to do about the problem I see and about the way we can move forward. If I instead could point at good examples, at how I solve problems and model good enough problem solving design for larps and other event then others can learn from me.

The goal:
I want to find joy again and I want to look forward to happenings and be exited about my own projects and other peoples projects. And I know so many creative people and I'm creative myself. Also, if I'm able to talk about what I'm good at and find joy from I will be asked to do more of what I'm good at. If I get to do what I'm good at other people will gain benefit from that as well. And it will also keep me from being destructive and disruptive.

How?
So how do I inform others about what I'm good at? And what I find joy in doing? Is that bragging? Is that ok? I sometimes see people with way less skill or experience than me promote themselves with very big words in the community. I think it's both a case of gendered expectations (men should be confident in their abilities, women should be humble) and of different cultural spheres and expectations.
I'm scared of the criticism, the "she just wants attention" and the "she thinks she's so good but she sucks" the "she's so full of herself". I will have to think about this for some time. I don't know what I will arrive at.

Who do you organize your larp with?

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 19:41:00 +0000

[Disclaimer: I work within a Swedish context. I'm mostly writing this post to get my thought down and onto the internet, in case this becomes a discussion further on. I'm not writing this to harm or criticize individuals. These are just my observations and even if I have a very straight forward language I am almost always open to being wrong. No observation I make will ever account for all cases.]

I sometimes get the impression that male larp organizers mainly organize their games with men they "drink beer with" (socialize in a public or semi public setting, drinking alcoholic beverages). Women can be part of this group under a flag of being "one of the boys".
They also organize with women they have a close, sometimes even intimate relationship and once in a while they organize together with a woman who they find to be absolutely brilliant.
But to find a woman they don't drink beer with or have a close relationship with absolutely brilliant they also have to be reminded of her again and again and how good she is at what she does. Maybe she has a lively larp related Instagram? Maybe they are friends on Facebook? Maybe she is involved in several other larp projects this year? She must also not be scared of self promoting herself, something women are often not used to and sometimes think is shameful.

If you find you are a male organizer who might be in this pattern here are some suggestions:

Look around at who is active or about to go active in your neighborhood. At least ask them if they are interested in collaborating.
Take risks with collaborating with young women and non-binary people. Under 25, or with no larp organizing experiences?
Actively ask women and non binary people if they have any ideas or are already starting their own larp projects?
If your female and non binary friends are working away at their project, be the first one to contact them and ask once in a while how it's going. Larp organizers needs emotional support and you know this.
If you are methodical person, make a private inventory of "who you know" in your local larp scene. Look at how many are women/ non binary? What are they up to at the moment?
When you look at your social patterns and where you connect with people, are those arenas that are accessible to the people you want to organize with, or just to some kinds of people?

A male friend of mine (I can name you if you like) said that the project of organizing a larp can be used as an excuse to hang out and have an experience together. The larp organizing project helps you fulfill your emotional needs and need for feeling like a part of a community working towards a common goal. Instead of going "I like you and would like to spend more time together" - you organize a larp.

I have this theory that you can also sometimes choose to organize larps with people you already feel emotionally close with. Because you got drunk together and you became more social and outgoing and came up with a project to do together. Or maybe oxytocin played in?

I'm not saying this is the wrong way to organize larps, we organize in different ways, but sometimes our methods doesn't wield the results we wish for and maybe an inventory of who we organize with can show us other ways to do it?

Next thought: If you are a woman setting out to organize a larp, who do you ask? If you are non-binary, has that affected who you ask?

The "physicality of larp" manifesto

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 10:56:00 +0000

In which I argue that without physicality a role playing event is not a larp.

Background to the manifesto: I have come across larpers who design games and then call them larps, because this is the gaming culture they grew up in and learned their trade. Calling it a larp they might get acknowledgement from their peers and also makes it easier to make other larpers try their game. I find this lacks a connection with gaming and role playing history as we rename and rebrand other games or forms of role play as larp. We don’t need to call a game or a role playing event a larp to make it valid. Other forms of role play is valid and entertaining and can tell a variety of stories. But they are not larps and don’t need to be larps.

Intro to the manifesto: Not all good things are larps, larps are not inherently good things. People can larp their way through things that are not larps, or even role playing games. A Role playing experience does not need to be a larp to be valid. Not every role playing experience a larper creates is a larp.

Larp will not save the world.

The Manifesto

A larp is an live action role play event that uses physicality as a way to tell a story and/or give the participants a physical experience. Physical experiences can teach on multiple levels, beyond the cerebral stimulation of an intellectual exercise.
Just as cooking a meal for the first time teaches us things about the recipe using more channels than reading the recipe or talking to a chef or a friend about cooking the meal.

To larp something is to use physicality and role play as a way to enact something.

A larp does not have to involve more than one person, but it needs to involve at least one person, who uses physicality to explore and experience.

“Internal play” might happen at larps, but is not an essential part of larping. Internal play lacks the physicality I argue is an essential part of larping. Without external expression of internal play there is no physicality.

What is physicality?

Physicality is experiencing things first and foremost with your body and senses and not only with your mind. Physical interaction between human beings also takes more than mere communicating information through speech or written information.

The physicality of a larp will not be and on/off switch but a sliding scale. I am arguing a larp needs have enough physicality for it to even be a larp, but I am not saying it needs to have everything listed below.

I will now give examples of physicality.

Physicality of the senses, sensuality.

Looking at many different things and people, not merely pictures or representations of these things or people. Perceiving them with your eyes.
Touching objects and people, perceiving them with touch. Being touched by objects and people, perceiving them as pressure, heat, cold, movement, vibration, texture, pain.
Tasting things and people, perceiving them with taste buds.
Hearing sounds made by objects or by other people or animals, perceiving them with your ears. Acceleration and falling might also fall into this category due to the workings of the inner ear.

Physicality of physical expression:

Relating information about in game events and facts through speech that is formed by what kind of character you are playing. Speaking as your character and not as yourself. Using a body language designed for the character that is not your own.

Physicality of bodily functions:

Eating in game food fitting the setting and the character you play when your character is hungry or choosing to stay hungry because it connects you more with your character. Eating food that fits the larp event. If the participants cook their own food it can be an exercise in physicality to cook the food using fitting methods and utensils.

Going to your characters in game bed when they are tired or postponing going to bed due to the characters having duties. Bathing and showering as your character in a bathroom that is in game or choosing to stay dirty because this is what the character would do.

Physicality of the expression of emotions.
Crying with fluid leaving the eye. Laughing audibly. Showing emotions with your face, relating feelings your character is having or is trying to make other character believe they are having. Showing that your character is experiencing a stomach ache or shaking hands of excitement or anxiety. Having cold sweats or simulating these with other liquids. Being drunk or simulating drunkedness.

Physicality of the body.

Either playing your body type or using physical representations that other players are is sensually able to experience. Such as using pads or prosthetics or a binder to change the gender expression, perceived weight or mimicking a pregnancy of a certain stage. Also simulating a menstrual cycle or tending to a real menstrual cycle using “in game methods” could fall under this.

Physicality of intimacy: Playing on attraction and desire for a character that fit your character sexuality, their sexdrive and their social standing. Seeking physical closeness with the person they desire and striving to enact (out of game consensual) intimate acts using the systems in place for doing so (these might however be void of physicality).

What is not the physicality of larp?

Any meta technique that removes the physical element of an interaction. (this can still be a part of the larp but not the physicality of it) such as resolving conflict through rolling dice or exchanging battle values or playing out intimacy between characters using a non touch technique.
Eating food that is not a part of the larp event, such as power bars at a dark ages fantasy larp.

Finding your out of game partner and being intimate with them when your characters are not intimate.

The grey areas of physicality.

Being dressed as your character if the clothes are something you would normally wear.
Being dressed as your character in clothes so comfortable you forget about wearing them.

Saying things your character would say, but without emoting them differently than you yourself would.

Any visible disability that you might have that you choose to not incorporate into the character. It will affect your own experience of the physicality of a larp while others will attempt to see it as an out of game circumstance.

Addendum:

Larping outside of larp

To larp something is to use the physicality of the body in a physical space and use role play as a way to enact something as someone other than yourself. You can larp your way through menial tasks of your everyday life, imagining you are a maid in another age and adopting the physical characteristics of the character.

You can also larp your way through some board games, although parts will still be representative and not larped.

Non larp role playing events might contain parts that are “larping” without that making the whole event into a larp.Larping can be an ingredient that does not turn the whole event into a larp.

There is also the larping happening outside of larps that is done at so called pervasive games. A larp can also have a possibility for the larpers to leave the larp event and go out into a non larping area for some pervasive gaming. This happens at city based larps such as Vampire where a venue might be fully in game but you can take your character out on the town and play with a smaller group of larpers.

Also there is Alternate Reality Gaming in which might fall under this or under the next title.

Being at a larp without larping

I argue that if a person is merely looking at other people larping, even while dressed in character clothing (clothes donned for the event that are not a part of your everyday clothing) then they are not larping. This is because this lacks the element of role playing. Internal play does not count, as it is merely Shrödingers larper.

At games where certain bodily needs are cared for out of game, I argue that a person seeing to that need, is at a larp but is not currently larping, because of the agreement that such bodily needs are managed out of game.

At Alternative Reality Games, you are usually not donning a character, and is not role playing and I would say not larping. But you might commit to doing physical actions that you would not do outside of the missions of the ARG , making the game have the element of physicality, if not role play.

Larping is something that some participants do during the whole larp event and that some participants start and stop, even if they are not removing themselves to an out of game area. I think this is the reason why some people have a need for out of game spaces while others find them less needful even if they might be practical for other reasons.

A brain in a jar has no physicality in its experiences.

Support your local larp feminist

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 12:30:00 +0000

So after over three years of working with Larp Women Unite I notice and come in contact with other female outspoken larp feminists who have hit the same wall as I have done and suffered.

The first part of this post will be about recognizing some of the symptoms and to get some researchable names for different conditions and phenomenon. The other part is what you can do for yourself, some advice from me and finally what you can do for a friend who is suffering from feminist burnout. Here and there throughout the text I will refer to the local larp feminist as "she" but the content is for any gender identity.

Part one - Recognizing what is happening

Feminist Burnout: You can suffer burn out symptoms from doing activist work. You spend a lot of time on it. You might not notice the change you are causing. You might feel alone, shunned and hopeless. Symptoms can come in all kinds of forms but usually you suffer anxiety, have trouble sleeping or are dead tired all the time. There can be bouts of crying and feeling really hopeless about everything. You might wish you never became a feminist an long for days when larp was just "something fun" for you. You might need a break from the fight and that is ok. Make sure you have some other things to do that is not tied into you activism and maybe tell your close friends that you are "off duty". I even have people who fill in for me in the admin groups I'm in.

Compassion fatigue
One day you feel meh. Or you feel anger that you are doing "all the work" while "no one else is listening or fighting their own fight". You feel "screw them" and "whatever". At the same time you can feel deep shame that you really don't care and you no longer feel pleasure from doing what you used to love. Compassion fatigue was originally researched in nurses and social workers. It mainly manifests in larp feminists that work with traumatic episodes, such as workings with victims of trauma such as out of game rape in a larp context or a former abusive spouse. It is also known as secondary traumatic stress.

Wikipedia says:

"Persons who are overly conscientious, perfectionists and self-giving are more likely to suffer from secondary traumatic stress. Those who have low levels of social support or high levels of stress in personal life are also more likely to develop STS. In addition, previous histories of trauma that led to negative coping skills, such as bottling up or avoiding emotions, having small support systems, increase the risk for developing STS.^"

The Female Gender RoleIn most countries women are expected to make others feel loved, accepted and welcome. If they are granted power they are more expected to use that power fairly and justly and to be more informed about social justice politics. Women are supposed to be both knowledgeable and skilled in the so called "soft values". A woman is expected to suggest and not demand and to be modest and if she is sure of herself, not show it. A woman is expected to smile more than a man, and to show at all times that she is not angry and that she is no threat.

Emotional labour / Emotion workWikipedia says this:

"Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers and superiors. This includes analysis and decision making in terms of the expression of emotion, whether actually felt or not, as well as its opposite: the suppression of emotions that are felt but not expressed." (read more here)

When the same thing is done privately it is called emotion work, but in the larp community a lot of functions can be seen as jobs. Larp Organizer, community organizer, safety host, ombudsman etc. When you are the local larp feminist, over time people might see you less as a human being and more a s a person who has the "job" of being the local larp feminist. This can be especially difficult because if you are a woman, then you are fighting for your own rights to participate fully in the larp hobby, so you WILL have a lot of emotions on the subject.

Genderlect and sociolect.There is a thing called sociolect , it's about how members of different groups speak or are expected to speak. A common clash is when neurotyphical middle class white feminists encounter members of the working class and or feminists from other ethnicities. Often they are very preoccupied with the "correct" way so things and might feel attacked and uncomfortable with other ways of speaking and writing, even when it is done in the same language. They might want to "help" you by correcting you language so that it becomes more "effective at conveying you message". What really should happen is them learning that there are many ways to communicate.
Genderlect is when you look at how different genders are expected to sound and write. In many cultures women are supposed to use more softening words and speak about how they "feel" and not about how things "are". If you deviate from you genderlect people might see you as being aggressive or timid depending. People deviating from their genderlect will suffer social punishments for this.

Social media overwhelming / entering radio silenceYou might feel your heart race every time you phone says it has a message for you. Or you dread what the person you are having an online discussion with will say next. Maybe you start feeling like you don't "deserve" to be seen on social media. You stop posting and start lurking. Maybe you stop using your accounts at all. Maybe you close them down. Sometimes this is a good coping strategy, like the "Tap Out" described below. But if you notice that you or a friends suddenly dramatically changes their online behaviour, something might very well be up with them emotionally.
Or they could just be at a larp.

Part two - Supporting yourself / supporting the suffering

Radical acceptanceThis is a technique I didn't want to use at first. But I have found that sometimes it is the only thing that works. I stop what I'm doing and I kind of "look up" either mentally or physically. Then I say to myself: "It is what it is". Then I make a decision if it is something I have the time and energy to work on right now or if I should just go do something else. The something else is sometimes a simpler project, sometimes something that recharges my batteries. I've used radial acceptance for my body issues, for relatives illnesses, for bleed after larps, for doing a brain scan or a breast scan or for going into doing a test I am afraid I will fail. Or simply accepting that there are people out there who hate me and want to harm me. Some for valid reasons, some not so valid.

Take care of the bodySleep, eat things you enjoy, work out by doing cardio or lifting heavy weights. Also drink a glass of water when you get overwhelmed, maybe a cup of tea if that is you thing. A very basic thing can be go take a pee.
Taking a hot showing or a long bath might make muscles you didn't even recognize were tense lighten up. If you have energy to be social, call a friend or meet some people over a board game.

Tap outYou never have to stay online. You never have to hang around a space that feels unsafe for you. You don't need to go to a specific larp if it's not giving you what you need. You don't exist for any one else's pleasure. When the dark wave hits of self loathing, confusion, anger and maybe even flash backs for those of you who have suffered trauma like sexual abuse, rape and or/being beaten. You can practise self care and unfollow that thread o facebook, leave that instagram beef or quite simply ask the person talking to you to please leave you alone. If the interaction is online you don't even have to say you are leaving, you can just leave after you said your piece. (I call those "post and run" for those days when I don't have the energy.)

Choose a small, measurable goalI chose to work with larp feminism to follow the principle of "think globally, act locally" or the Swedish proverb "dig where you stand". Sure it's hard to be a prophet in my own home town, having heated discussions with people that could probably help me with my "larp career". To do this I often try to write down or say to myself what I want to achieve and what I will count as success.
"I want them to add a ingredient list to the home page" or "I want at least two other people to mail them about removing the rape joke" "I will go get the guard if there is another issue".

Ask for and accept helpIf you feel all alone in a discussion but maybe you notice you are getting some likes. You can maybe PM those people and say that you do feel alone. Beware of not starting a so called "dog pile" where there suddenly are a lot of people against one other.
Or maybe you are feeling like the worst person ever after having a disheartening back and forth with the organizer to your favourite larp. PM a friend you trust and ask to vent. Don't carry it all inside of you. Maybe write on your FB wall that you are having a bad day and would like some kind of encouragement. I often ask for "describe me with a gif" of "give me weird compliment".

Using mantrasHere are some mantras I use to self soothe or disengage and manage my energy.

"What other people say about you does not define who you are." I've also used this one to comfort people who have been threatened to that rumours will be spread about them
"People have many opinions" - just a statement to remind myself that is just all it is. Opinions.
"He's just wrong." - I use this when someone is using a clearly faulty logic or fact. I try to not engage or just engage on a basic level, like countering them. You can't join every argument and when people are wrong some other larper will often engage them.
"But he has a JOB!" This one I credit Christina Bodling. This is when others claim we can't expect some guy to act as a human being because he doesn't know better. If this individual has an employment he clearly knows enough to get hired and acts well enough at work to not get fired. So he should be able to act well enough even in the larp community.
"If they want to stop me, they are going to have to stop me." This isn't so much for when I'm nearing burn out, but more for when I'm getting back up. This is for handling people who are "warning" me about doing something that I truly believe is the right thing. I often use this mantra to give myself courage to ask for straight answers like: "What are your rules about male and female toplessness at the larp?" or "can you explain to me exactly why you don't think me, Johanna or Mia who applied for the character of the General would do the role well enough. Can you be concrete and specific?".

Focusing on your ethics

When there is a lot of critique against you and you are feeling the pressure pound down on you, walk trough your ethics in your head. You can understand and sympathize with the feelings others are having, while still following your own ethics. Maybe go through your ethics again. Are they still your ethics.

Forgiving yourself
So maybe you fucked up, I truly and deeply have from time to time. And maybe you feel like you don't deserve love. But a lot of feminists have very high demands they place on themselves. If you are also raised as a girl you are also under pressure to please other people and make them feel good about themselves. When demanding change in tightly knit communities you will often be seen as a trouble maker and sometimes you will be a trouble maker. Even if you have a set of ethics you are pleased with there will come times where you afterwards look back at your actions and feel shame of what you have done. When this happens, see that you stop the behaviour, back off, offer an apology and if welcome offer reparations that a possible for you to do. But try to move on. Maybe not immediately, but sooner or later. Especially if the people you acted badly towards have moved on.

Helping your friend

Let them know you are thinking of them.
Recognize when they seem tired and hopeless and express this online or in body language. Don't wait for your friend to ask for help. Throw them a PM or a text message mentioning "hey I saw what you wrote on FB, how are you holding up" or if you know they don't mind the phone, call them. Maybe offer to feed them their favourite food, at their home or at a restaurant.
Don't think they know you like them, tell them, especially when times are grim. Some people really really appreciate silly little gifts. Send them something nice in the mail. Named or anonymous.

Explicitly invite them to things.
When you are the local, vocal, larp feminist you can often feel like a hated outcast in your own community. Sure a lot of people send love your way but it can be hard to take that to heart when there is so many aggressive messages sent your way. You are made feel unwelcome and that you are "destroying the community" and "hurting people". This can lead to a reaction where you withdraw from even the social circle's where you are welcome by the organizers. So it can be nice and validated to be told "we especially want you to be here/there" even if they might not be able to make it due to time or exhaustion.

Don't hold them to impossible standards.None of us truly know everything that happens to another person. So when you local larp feminist either messes up, seems to be overreacting, seems to crack from something "small" happening, that can probably come from being under a lot of pressure for a long time. She might be getting straight up hate mail and threaths. Maybe she recently lost a close friend who said she was to "angry" these days or that they were "afraid" of her. Or maybe when she stays friends with "the wrong person".
Remember that she to grew up in the patriarchy, she didn't come to you from an alien planet where all genders were treated equal. Getting rid of internal misogyny is an on-going work and I don't know if there is a human born today that will get there in their life time.

Don't overestimate their strength
We have a cultural narrative of the "strong female protagonist". And I myself have often been told that the people who hurt me the most had no idea they even could hurt me, because I seem like such a bad ass. This is in spite of me being very open with being a vulnerable, emotional human being. They will crack and they will stumble and they will have bad days when they never want to larp again, or talk to another larper ever again. That is not because they hate you specifically, but because hey have been lead to belive "everyone" in the larp community hates them.

You don't need my approval

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 19:23:00 +0000

Hi, I'm one of the highest ranking larp feminist in Sweden*. And you don't need my approval to be a larp feminist. You can do your own thing and that thing is very seldom reliant on whether I like it or not. Do you take a risk of me disapproving if you don't check with me? Sure. But you are a grown up and you will just have to take your chances. I'm not your feminist mom (ok maybe to some of you I am).
Wanna check with me anyway? I have a donations account. All donations go towards a full plate armor, and maybe coffee now and then.
You mainly need my enthusiastic consent if you wanna to do stuff to my body (or my body of work), because bodily integrity is totally a thing.
To quote Elin Dalstål, take risks, play boldly.***

I don't wanna be friends**

I think we try a little too hard to all be friends in the larp sphere. And we really don't need to be. Now, not needing to be friends with a another larper, another larp critic or another larp feminist does not mean we have to be enemies either. Sure it's a human instinct to want to have friends that share some of our passions. But that does not mean we need to be friends with everyone who shares our passions. Few things can be as grating as someone who shares our passions "the wrong way".

I think that diversity in feminism is sometimes hindered by us wanting to be liked by our peers, maybe even be friends with them and how we sometimes mistake the social fall outs as being the same as ideological fall outs. Social fall outs happen because if life.
But feminism is not about being part of a special social circle made up of other feminists. Some changes sure are easier to make happen if you are part of a group, but to engage in group actions, you don't really need the group to be made up out of your personal friends. You don't even need to like the other people as long as you agree on ideological principles.

I have friends I disagree with on an ideological level (as long as they are not racists, transphobes or woman haters) and we are still friends. I have people who I agree with on a ideological level but that I don't have the energy to have any kind of relations with. I'm one of those people that don't see love or care as an unlimited resource. There are only so many hours to a day, days to a year and there are only so many social energy points I can give out in a day. First and foremost I owe those points to my children and my partner. I have a line of work that take a lot of my social energy points since I work with humans. Then I have close friends, and some people who I've taken a special interest in.
When those social energy points are gone, they are gone until they are refuel.

The demands for emotional work are already high on women.
The demand is even higher on emotional work and ideological "purity" on female feminists.

I am not pure

We can demand that to be a feminist you need to be in favor of the equal rights of women (since that is the basis of feminism). But to demand that female feminists are absolutely adherent to a standard, they might not even know you are holding them to, will end up with you punishing them for existing and surviving in a patriarchy. This is in part linked to my term PreUtopian Feminism which has to do with merging ideals and Utopian dreams and utilizing practical pragmatism to get forward towards a better tomorrow without burning out. This can be a way to avoid being crushed by demands to live like you are already in the utopian tomorrow. PreUtopian feminists believe in a better tomorrow but they allow themselves to live today and utilize tools and accept that they will find them self in circumstances that might be less than perfect.

And also like Elin Dalstål says "Self Care comes first"****.

I'm not here to be pleasant. And neither are you.

I'm just a person, a woman in the patriarchy. Basically surviving can be kind of activism some days and often leaves me grumpy and unpleasant. Every other kind of activism is extra. And I don't like when I have higher demands placed on me to also be emotionally available to a wide network of friends, to stay very informed on all kind of social justice categories outside of intersectional feminism (which are valid and important but there are other activist that are better at them.) I don't even know if I'm a intersectional feminist since I focus on such a narrow field as larp feminism, and by proxy those hobbies near larp. Well that and countering ableism as much as I can.

So how do I handle these perceived higher and higher demands, and from in my turn putting too high demands on my fellow larp feminists? How do I release them from the fear that I might disapprove of something they do or don't do?

By running away from them.

I feel some are trying to make me play nice and adhere to the way they think I should be. And I will probably never be that.
They are welcome to my events, they are welcome to take part my freely published thoughts (I'll try to be better at not just having them on social media). But maybe they don't need access to me on my private social media. Maybe they don't need to know the ups and downs of my daily personal life. I don't hate them. Some have disappointed me, but that probably had to do with me having the wrong expectations on them, and I will get over it as bleakness and time creeps in.

Let's just be feminist colleagues? Ok?

* The way to be highest ranking is by inventing your own category and ranking system.
** Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
*** Elin Dalstål Play Boldly
**** Elin Dalstål Self Care Comes first

Facebook groups for larp activism

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 09:28:00 +0000

This post is just a list of different facebook groups where different kinds of activism is done in the larp sphere.

You feel weak, like you need support.
You need to unite, but with whom?

Gender Separatist groups

Larp Women Unite - International

This is primarily a group for Nordic larpers, but all nationalities are welcome. The main purpose of this group is to be a place for people who in part or completely identifies as women or who are interpreted as women by society.

Your are welcome regardless if you are a larper or thinking about joining the community. The group is a feminist group but does not demand that its members see themselves as feminists.

If you are trans or non-binary and your pronouns or name could be misinterpreted, you may find it easier to contact an admin or admins with a request to join the group - just to avoid confusion. You are welcome here.

National Groups:
Larp Women Unite - Sverige (Sweden)
Larp Women Unite - Danmark (Denmark)
Larp Women Unite - Norge (Norway)
Larp Women Unite - Suomi (Finland)
Larp Women Unite - France (France)

Larperinnen aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum (Germany, not a LWU group)

Non gender separatist group

But what if I don't fit the demographic for any of the LWU-groups or if I want/need to join a group which is not gender separatist?

Larp Feminists Unite - International

This is primarily a group for Nordic larpers, but all nationalities are welcome. The main purpose of this group is to be a place for people who in part or completely identifies as feminists.
Your are welcome regardless if you are a larper or thinking about joining the community but you need to be interested in larp.

Larp Feminists Unite - Sverige (Sweden)

Swedish version of the above. Started first by Karin Edman and Bim Åkesson Schär.

"Ett support och planeringsforum för lajvfeminister av alla kön. ...Karin Edman är huvudadmin och sköter administreringen av sidan tillsammans med Bim Åkesson Schär. Föreslå gärna medlemmar, men fråga dem först om de vill bli medlemmar.

Efter en idé av Bim Åkesson Schär i april 2017."

Larpers BFF (International, Knutpunkts-based, not an LWU group)

"What if, discussions on difficult issues started with the intention of creating solutions and understanding, maybe even friendship, rather than to sort out who's "right" ? Maybe that's a tall order as forums on the net fairly often tend to bring out the worst in people, the ones focused on the grand activity/hobby/interest of larp not being an exception. But still - on the official No hate day - This is what we propose.
The goal of this group is to take on the life and death questions of love, sex, life, despair, abuse, violence, gender, norms and much more.
The deal is this: Any person can become a member. Your gender, nationality, skin colour, function variations, socio economic background, sexual orientation and all that are totally uninteresting for your application.
Awareness of the sometimes stigmatised, under privileged and triggering aspects of some of these things (and what they entail) is very much of interest. Not that you need to know anything about it really. As long as you are willing do be kind and openminded and here to share and learn along with equals."

HBTQ- groups for larpers

Larp Women Who Likes Larp Women
For female identified larpers who are interested in dating other female identified larping women.
H*bbits and Other Fagg*ts

"A group for Nordic larpers who aren't the gender their parents first assumed, who (among other things do or would) enjoy fucking people of the same sex, or who don't want to fuck anyone at all."

Leaving someone alone.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 11:17:00 +0000

[the following blog post relates to social interaction and can be very relevant for those of us who do a lot of activism or are very passionate about a subject]

I was asked today what my thought are about when I have a falling out with someone in the social circles of larp and get asked to leave them alone. After how long time would it be ok to send the other person a message? Would it be ok for example to send an email after two years?

I initially misunderstood the question, which we discovered after a while but I find this to be an interesting subject. I have, in the course of my feminist activism on social media have people ask me to leave them alone, or to have minimal contact with them, or to not speak to them at all. This does not mean that they are anti-feminist or anything, usually it has more to do with personalities or methods clashing or me doing things I felt were right and just but which hurt them on a personal level. The more you interact with people, the more likely it is you will also have had negative interactions with them.

Now, unless they are a member of a forum I admin and my job as an admin warrants contact with them I have this approach to respecting the request of no contact:

I will not initiate any contact with them, not in public spaces, not at parties or conferences. I will not send them messages in social media or via mail. I will avoid commenting on their comments in social media. I will not let outsiders mediate between us, unless I am certain the offer to mediate is made on request on the person who requested to have no Contact with me.

If I am invited to a larp Group with the person, I will decline, possibly giving an explanation to the person inviting me of where me and the other person stand at the moment. I would possibly go to the same larp as the other person, depending on how large the larp was and the physical space where it would be held. I would however not leave a larp if the other person signed on later than me. But I would be very aware of respecting the physical space of the other person and not engage in contact.

If the other person was forced to have Contact with me I would try to keep that Contact brief, non dramatic and to the point. I would try to not take advantage of the situation to sort out our differences. If the other person said that they would like to use the contact to also work on our relationship I would try to be empathetic towards them, if I had the emotional and mental energy for them, otherwise tell them I was happy to do so at another time.

If the other person sent me some kind of message online or sent a mutual friend I would try to be in a good headspace when accepting the message and if the content was that they were ready to end the "no contact" I would try to find out if they wanted to talk about what happened or just move on with our lives. If they wanted to talk I would be honest with what I would need for it to be a good talk.

I find to be asked to leave someone alone to be a very reasonable request. There are very few people that we absolutely have to be in contact with. To respect someone's request to not contact them is to give them space and time. You might think that if you just got to talk to them and explain what you really meant or what you really think they might be able to see you differently. But by respecting their request for no contact or minimal contact you are giving them the gift of having a bit of integrity.

When they feel ready, they might contact you.

Now my brain does work in the way that if there has been enough time and the person I'm leaving alone isn't someone I had a lot of contact with it is very possible that I might get an email after two years and be like "who...is...this?" I'm sorry for that but we all age and my memory isn't what it used to be. Which can be a good thing for some people.

Now I know it can be rough to know as a larper and/or a nerd that out there is someone who dislikes you. And it's ok to mourn the relationship if you had a really good friendship going. But the way I see it ignoring their request is about you and not them. And you can handle it. It will all work out in the end.

It has to.

Agressive feminism

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 15:53:00 +0000

I'm sometimes accused of spreading aggressive feminism. Depending on what you count as aggressive, you wouldn't exactly be wrong. There is a lot of anger and negative emotion that drives me forward, but I try to use those emotions to make real change, material and practical change in the communities where I am active, which is mostly "Nordic Larp" and the Swedish larp scene. I myself don't really care about why people do things as long as the end result is beneficial to as many as possible. Some of us are driven by love, some by anger, some just cant stand the situation as it is any more. I'm driven by mixed emotions but negative emotions sure is what gives this engine it's turbo setting.

I've been wronged. And so have so many of my friends.

Growing up as a woman in the patriarchy is rough, and I often feel that the bullying I went through as a child has made me involuntarily masculinized, in such a way that I brought negative macho traits into my personality. I had to find a way to get through my early years and survive physically and mentally. Reading a lot helped, as did watching fantasy and science fictions shows and movies. But growing up nerd without any close female friends also landed me in male dominated environments most of the time. I saw myself as a feminist early on and did hang out as much as I could with the few women I could find in the computer nerd environments where I did find a few friends in my late teens.

I don't think I made a lot of new female friends until I started larping in 2002 and in the beginning I was an odd bird out in the local Vampire larp. I looked like a woman but I acted a lot like stereotypical man. And female presenting individuals are not supposed to act like that.
I have felt many times that what I have done that lead to me being called aggressive would not have been judged as harshly if I had been perceived as a man by my peers. But as I am a woman I am expected to do emotional labour among other things. I am supposed to care about other peoples emotions and reactions to what I say. I am supposed to adapt my language to who might be listening. If someone tells me my opinions hurt or upset them, I am supposed to say sorry and soften my opinion and redact what I said.

Some of the most physcally threatening situations I have ended up in have been because I have refused to back down in defending myself and my integrity or the integrity of another person. It seems a lot of people of all genders think that if me and them just talk things out in private, I will see their point and change my mind and tell them so. But I see what I see, I know what I know and I will tell it like it is.

It reminds me of the Star Trek Captain Picard who when interrogated for days and asked how many lights he saw.

"There are four lights"

And if that is aggressive feminism, I can't help you.

And for all those women out there who are like me, don't let people calling you aggressive stop you. If they want to stop you, they have to actually stop you. Think through what you said or what you did and imagine the same words or actions coming from someone who is seen as male. Think, would your peers call him aggressive?

A critique of "gender neutral larps"

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 19 May 2017 12:08:00 +0000

Original Swedish text below.

Some larps and larp designers try to "solve" gender equality by making their larps gender neutral in one way or another. Some examples of solutions I have seen have been the following:

Women and men exist in the game World, but they all have the exact same resources and face the exact same challenges as a member of any other gender.
There are no genders, or only one gender in the game World.
There are men and women in the game World, but all the written roles are written as gender neutrals without reference to their gender identity, pronoun or any specific reproductive organs, such as an uterus. This does not mean they are agender, mostly once they are cast they get the same gender as the player in the Eyes of the other players.

My critique is this: With these methods it becomes harder to tell stories about real World sexism and feminism and that erases not only womens experiences and historic roles but also the stories of anyone who is trans and/or non-binary and has had to struggle with the gender binary wiev of the real World.

The gender Neutral character also becomes mostly "male" because we were all raised in a World where the cis-man (also, a White cis-man) is the norm.

I have tried to work with this by either Writing character who have a gender identity of their own or what I did for Witches of Ästad Farm, where I wrote all the characters as female and then rewrote them after casting, having a look at what "social gender" the player had asked for their role. I did demand of the players that they choose female or male, because I wanted to portray the way the society of Swedish 1940-ies desperatly pressed everyone into those strict gender roles.

"Könsneutralt"
En del lajv och lajvarrangörer i Sverige "löser" jämställdhet genom att införa könsneutrala lösningar. Exempel på sådana lösningar kan vara att kvinnor och män förvisso finns i lajvvärlden, men har tillgång till exakt samma resurser och ställs inför samma utmaningar.
Andra kör med att det inte finns några kön i världen, eller bara ett kön.
Ytterligare andra kör att det finns både män och kvinnor i spelvärlden men att de skrivna roller som skrivs skrivs könsneutralt och att inget rollerna varken hänvisar till en könsidentitet eller till reproduktiva könsdelar som rollen ska ha (som tex livmoder).

Jag har dock kritik: att det med dessa metoder kan bli svårt att göra berättelser just OM sexism och feminism och att det inte bara raderar kvinnors livsvillkor utan även raderar de med transerfarenhet och ickebinära och deras upplevelser av att möta ett binärt könsrollstänkande.
Den "neutrala" karaktären blir oftast "som en man" i mina ögon då vi är uppväxta i ett samhälle med cis-mannen som norm.
Jag har försökt lösa det genom att antingen skriva roller med en bestämd könsidentitet eller som till "Häxorna på Ästad gård" skriva alla roller som kvinnor och skriva om dem efter castingen utifrån vilket kön spelaren önskat på sin roll.
Vilka är era egna tankar?
Vilka olika lösningar har ni sett?

Anmälan till Häxorna på Ästad gård är öppen till den 7 maj.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 09:46:00 +0000

Jag och Linda har nu öppnat anmälan till mitt lajv Häxorna på Ästad Gård.

Här finns anmälningsformuläret: Anmälan Häxorna på Ästad Gård 2017
Här finns hemsidan: Häxorna på Ästad gård
Här är hur vi jobbar med funktionsnedsättningar och tillgänglighet: Tillgänglighet

Anmälan går till så att man fyller i en anmälan och skickar in. Den 7 maj på kvällen stänger vi den egentliga anmälan. Har vi då fått fler anmälda än sovplatser på Ästad 4H kommer vi att lotta med så kallad "viktning". Detta innebär att dels kommer de som anmält sig under första veckan (innan söndagen den 30 april) samt internationella gäster att ha större chans att bli dragna i lotteriet. Detta då vi dels vill premiera de som är entusiastiska och anmäler sig första veckan utan att utestänga folk som fått höra om lajvet först nu och att vi vill kunna ge internationella gäster svar så tidigt som möjligt om de behöver göra resplaner och beställa biljetter.

Vi kommer att kontakta både de som fått och de som inte fått plats så snart som vi gjort lottningen. Vi förväntar oss svar från er på det kontaktförsöket. Själva castingen kommer att gå långsammare men man kommer inte behöva betala 1100 kr förrän man har sin roll.

Tveka inte om ni har bekymmer, ju tidigare vi vet desto lättare är det att lösa. Vi håller på med en ansökan till Larpfund om vi kan få ca 5 biljetter för halva priset.

Some arguments for more lesbian romance in larp

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 18:41:00 +0000

I want to write about one of my favorite subjects: Lesbian romance.
And I want to connect it to my main hobby. So I will try to write a little bit about why there should be more lesbian romance in Nordic Larp, or in any kind of larp.

Although I have encountered lesbian romance in the 1980 is Just a little lovin'(1) , after the catastrophy at Landsväg(2) and in another world during the height of armed conflict at WarHeart(3) I still think there is too little lesbian romance and lesbian eroticism in the larps I play. So to encourage more lesbian romance in larp I organize larps which feature lesbianism and I write about it and make it a subject to explore by other designers and players.

I enjoy the company of women. I think women are sexy and exciting and intelligent.
Here are some good things about larping lesbian romance:

Inclusion: Lesbians are larpers too, so it's nice to feel normal, wanted and included in your hobby.
Shared experiences: Many women enjoy playing closely with people of the same gender.
Emotional labour: Many women have been brought up to be able to speak about emotions which makes consent negotiation much smoother between them.
Trust: Many women have an easier time trusting other women which makes intimate play much easier.
Counters hetersoexism: Since we are brought up in societies that expect heterosexuality from us, larping lesbianism can be a way to explore other romantic and sexual feeling within ourselves and broaden our alternatives.
A sensory experience: larping lesbian relationships can mean a chance to experience a romantical closeness with other female bodied individuals.
For straight male larpers who try crossplaying(4) lesbian romance can both feel more relaxed and also frees them from the stereotype that a female character is defined by her relationship to a man.

Some arguments for designers to include lesbianism in their writing

Women's stories are important and valid.
Lesbian stories are important, valid and relevant. In our world lesbians are oppressed both as women and as homosexuals. Larp stories can both touch upon this oppression or choose to leave both the patriachy and heterosexism behind.
It can be a way to explore deeply feminist subjects.
Have a presence of lesbian characters in works of fiction opens us up to understanding and compassion for a marginalized group.
Lesbian designers get to write about sexuality and relationships who are relevant to them.
Every time you include lesbian characters there is a chance you might at least educate a larper about lesbianism, and you might even help someone come out of the closet.
When you are writing larps about historical events the inclusion of lesbianism will both increase the your knowledge of the history of lesbianism and will also give a more true reflection of the era you are writing about.

#thelesbianagenda

(1) Grasmo & Edland https://nordiclarp.org/event/just-a-little-lovin/
(2) Sortti, Carlslund & Sjöberg http://beratta.org/landsvag/
(3) Berglund et al https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Krigshj%C3%A4rta_(Campaign)

(4) Playing a character of another gender than your regular one.

A swedish sex-ed magazine from 1933.
This issue is about homosexuality.

En lite guide till kvinnlig nördvänskap

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 09:29:00 +0000

Jag och Susanne Vejdemo på "Thule: Skuggor i snön"

Många så kallade nördhobbys är mansdominerade även om mycket gjorts de senaste åren för att bredda nördbegreppet så att även mer traditionellt kvinnodominerade hobbys ska ses som nördiga. Detta leder till att många kvinnliga nördar "vuxit upp" i en nördhobby omgiven av män med ett fåtal andra kvinnor som de ibland dessutom förhindrats från att skapa egna relationer till och/eller sett som hot och konkurrans.

Som kvinnliga(1) nördar vill jag föreslå att vi behöver aktivt bestämma oss för att ha en grundläggande lojalitet till varandra. Vi behöver göra ett aktivt val att känna igen oss själva i andra kvinnor, att sätta oss in i andra kvinnliga nördars erfarenheter. Vi behöver också träna på att göra detta över tid. Då vi har vuxit upp i en mansdominerat samhälle har många av oss internaliserat att det är vad män tycker om oss och andra som har ett högre värde.

Vi kan både rekrytera andra kvinnor in i våra hobbys genom att visa och berätta för de som är intresserade och se till att när det kommer nya kvinnor till våra kretsar, gå fram och presentera oss och visa ett intresse för dem som personer.
Vi måste stoppa oss själva när vi märker att vi ser andra kvinnor som hot eller konkurrenter. Konkurrenter om vad? Vilka begränsade resurser är det vi tror att de kan ta ifrån oss som inte andra nördar kan ta ifrån oss. Försök att utvärdera situationen och se om ni kan bli vänner istället.
Vi måste se upp så att vi inte dömer kvinnliga nördar hårdare än vad vi dömer andra människor.
Vi måste se till att inte ha högre ideal för nördkvinnor att leva upp till än vad vi har för andra nördar.
Vi ska inte kräva mer av en vänskap med en kvinna än vad vi kräver av våra vänskaper med män.
Vi ska inte förvänta oss att kvinnliga nördar ska vara bättre på att utföra emotionellt arbete (2).
Vi ska inte bedöma eller kritisera andra kvinnors utseende, kroppar eller klädstilar.
Om en kvinna kommer in som partner till någon vi redan känner och den relationen sedan tar slut är det lättare för henne att fortsätta i hobbyn om vi inte behandlat henne som person X partner utan bekantat oss med henne. Om hon slutar komma till evenemang kan det vara schyst att höra av sig och visa att hon fortfarande är välkommen och att hennes hobbyutövande inte behöver hänga ihop med hennes relationsstatus.
Det finns även nördhobbys där det görs intiativ med separatistiska träffar, antingen bara för kvinnor eller för kvinnor och ickebinära (3). Dessa träffar är jättebra tillfällen att möta andra, bygga relationer och lyssna på varandra utan att män kommer "i vägen".
Försök se till att bereda plats och talutrymme även för nykomlingar och andra kvinnor så att inte samma personer som brukar ta upp mycket av taltiden (oftast samma män/pojkar) dominerar.
Jag vill också slå ett slag för att inte förutsätta könet, alla transfeminina kan behöva din grundläggande lojalitet oavsett om deras könsidentitet är kvinnlig eller ej.
Förutsätt inte heterosexualitet. Försök inte genast sammanföra singeltjejer med singelkillar i hobbyn. Dels är inte ett hot mot dig eller din eventuella relation med en man för att hon är singel, det är en sak mellan dig och din eventuella partner. Dessutom, om du är kvinna kanske hon är intresserad av dig? #thelesbianagenda

Vi ska dessutom inte låta vad männen i vår omgivnings säger om andra kvinnor påverka vår egen syn på de nördkvinnorna. Istället ska skapa oss vår egen uppfattning om dem. Vi ska anstränga oss för att bygga våra egna relationer som inte går via män.

(1) Transkvinnor är kvinnor.

(2) http://www.arsinoe.se/jamstalldhetsarbete-i-relationer/

(3) Ickebinär: kan den person kalla sig som identifierar sig som mellan eller bortom kvinna–man-uppdelningen av kön. Ibland används ”ickebinär” som ett paraplybegrepp för olika könsidentiteter som inte följer tvåkönsnormen. Ickebinär betyder inte samma sak för alla som definierar sig som det. En del är både tjej och kille. Andra befinner sig mellan de kategorierna. Många ickebinära är inget kön. En del ickebinära vill förändra kroppen med hormoner och/eller kirurgi. (http://www.transformering.se/vad-ar-trans/ordlista)

Elaine Boström: Den osynliga sexismen

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 12:13:00 +0000

Detta är en gästpost.

Om den största betydelsen för män i mitt sociala liv är vilka romantiska möjligheter de har med mig. Vad för feminister är då egentligen mina manliga vänner?

Vi lever i ett patriarkat där männen sätter reglerna och dikterar hur saker (och kvinnor) skall se ut. Ett patriarkat där jag känner mig sexig i en klänning men tvekar att ta på mig min kostym för att jag kanske framstår som för bossig, såvida jag inte har en snygg urringning.

Ett patriarkat innebär att män är normen och får makt av sina egna stereotyper. Om en man är kvinnlig anses han som udda och bryter mot normen, eftersom kvinnlighet är något undergivet och svagt. Något hos män som skall ses ned på och skrattas åt, medan manlighet hos kvinnor anses som tufft och tomboys är något bra. Så länge männen gillar det. Så länge det bara är lite trotsigt, för är det makt inblandat blir det för farligt och måste spottas på. Det är en struktur som skadar både män och kvinnor.

Det här pratar vi redan om, både i sociala medier och i fikarum, och en del män (och de flesta kvinnor) jag känner arbetar med att förändra det.

Men det finns en del av patriarkatet som vi inte pratar om så ofta, ibland känns det nästan som att det finns ett slutet avtal där allt annat inom feminismen är accepterat men att just prata med män om kvinnors sociala makt kontra deras tillgänglighet är tabu. Ursäkterna haglar och de går in i defensivt läge. “Ja, men så illa är det inte”, “Jag vill bara ligga” och “Det är väl inget fel med att jag tycker hon är attraktiv” är några av argumenten jag fått höra. Och nej, det är inget fel, men när det byggs upp en social struktur kring vem som är liggbar eller tillgänglig där män ger den individen bonusar och tillgång till sociala event, då är det det ett problem. Speciellt i fall där mer etablerade kvinnor blir ratade, även av monogama män.

Det här är en del av patriarkatet som även det angår mina vänner och allierade, för det är fortfarande patriarkatet som styr de icke-separatistiska sociala kretsarna och nätverken genom social agens.

Jag var till patriarkatets gunst senast för några år sedan, jag hade just flyttat till Göteborg. Jag var fräsch, ny och intressant. Ung, snygg och knullbar. Jag blev inbjuden till allt, fick romantiska inviter. Jag fick njuta lite av att patriarkatet gillade mig. Gratis drinkar, fikor och massvis av spel i lajvet jag var med i.

Det finns ytterligare exempel från andra kvinnor i mitt nätverk som visar på detta som ett faktum, att "nya" och "tillgängliga" tjejer i olika kretsar får alla de goa bonusarna som patriarkatet så fint bjuder på. Bjuden på fika, inbjuden till fest, meddragen i sociala sammanhang och lajvgrupper, inbjudan till spel och lajvplotter. Gärna romantiska.

Men så snart du som kvinna får lite makt byts du ofta ut mot mot en ny kvinna och göms i ett skåp. Om du som kvinna har makt eller är "uttjänt" så blir du utskuffad och (medvetet eller omedvetet) mindre uppmärksammad och får inte de goa bonusarna. Det hände när jag började vara feminist.

Jag började bråka, ifrågasätta, säga att saker inte var rätt. Jag blev inte lika liggbar. Det läskigaste av allt för dem var väl att jag hade all rätt att ifrågasätta och även hade makten att göra det. Jag slutade få inbjudningar till fester, inte heller blev jag meddragen på lajv. Romantiska inviter och plotter var inte att tala om längre.

Och det var inte random douchebags eller sexister som behandlade mig så här. Det var hela mitt nätverk. Både lajvare och vänner. Allierade och bekanta.

Män som kanske då, men främst idag kallar sig själva feminister. Män som jag nu kallar mina vänner och allierade. Som är uppe på murarna och skriker, men skulle behöva glasögon för att se de strukturer som de är så inkletade i. Män som fortfarande inte ser vilken makt de sitter på och hur de liksom resten av samhället förbrukar “nya” och “unga” kvinnor. Män som tydligt avvisar etablerade kvinnor till förmån för nya och tillgängliga. Män med social agens som utesluter sina upptagna, osnygga och besvärliga kvinnliga vänner och ersätter dem med potentiella tillmötesgående älskarinnor och flickvänner. Män som inte vill förstå eller se att de har den sociala agensen i större delen av mitt nätverk. Män som klagar och ser ned på andra män, men själva begår förtryck i patriarkatets namn.

Männen som jag mötte när jag var ny i Göteborg finns kvar, fler av dem kallar jag mina vänner. De har större nätverk och nya kvinnor.

Men jag är inte tillgänglig längre. Enligt patriarkatet uttjänt och makten över mitt egna liv slåss jag för varje dag. En kamp som kommer att bli svårare nu inför mitt kommande moderskap, det kommer trots allt vara synligt att jag redan är tagen. Jag har redan märkt skillnad på mängden kommunikation som jag får driva jämfört med hur mycket jag fick gratis innan. Det får mig ibland att undra om det enda jag var bra till var att vara en potentiell älskarinna och inte en vän som många uttryckte.

Den enda patriarkala bonusen jag har att se fram emot är att jag kanske har lättare att få vårdnaden i en eventuell vårdnadstvist, tack vare att stereotyper säger att män borde jobba och inte anses lämpliga att ta hand om barn. Det är ju trots allt kvinnans roll.

Det står en stor jävla elefant i mitt eget vardagsrum och den heter patriarkatet.

Vi skall inte prata om alla elefanter i världen, just nu det räcker med den här. Vi behöver ta bort känslan av tabu kring ämnet och prata om rädslan många känner över att ens ta upp detta med sina manliga vänner. Och vi måste göra det. I våra egna kretsar. Som kvinna skall du inte behöva vara rädd för nästa kvinna som kommer in i din krets, den rädslan kväver kampen om lika stor agens och skapar en fiendskap mellan kvinnor. Som man skall du inte ens tänka tanken att skapa denna typ av socialt förtryck. Vi måste tillsammans våga ifrågasätta de sociala strukturerna som i många fall är satta av män med hög agens, även om det blir jobbigt, även om vi får ligga mindre. Vi måste våga förändra och ifrågasätta våra sociala normer, för förtryck kräver strukturer och skapar makt för de som tillhör normen men behöver också någon som är tyst och inte säger emot.

Och till er män som läser det här och känner igen er, ni kanske rent av får en liten klump i magen. Sluta sopa den osynliga sexismen ni utsätter era kvinnliga vänner och bekanta för. Vi är mer än objekt för er uppskattning. Vi är mer än våra kroppar.

Och jag tänker inte hålla käften längre.

Do you want to date my character? About sexual in game relationships at larps.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 08:07:00 +0000

Background and disclaimer:
This is a translation and repost of "Får min karaktär chans på din karaktär?" Om sexuella relationer på lajv." The original post was written i Marsh 2015. I have a background in mainly Swedish larping and have mostly been to Vampire, Low and high Fantasy and post apocalyptic games. I have been to some Nordic Larps and participated in both the swedish larp con Prolog and Knutpunkt. I larp mainly at games where, if you want to have an in game relationship you have to go and get your coplayer on your own, where most larp organizers will find it an odd question to help out with. I also find that the swedish tradition is pretty "What you see is what you get" compared to some other larp traditions.

Do you want to date my character? About sexual in game relationships at larps.

Sometimes when I am building my character for a game I'm going to, I start thinking about my characters intimate relationships and what they look like. That it would be nice if there was another character present at the game that meant something extra to my character. Someone my character had a relationship with. A sexual relationship.

What are the pros with playing a character who has a in game sex partner present at the larp?

Sexuality is a large part of the life of many humans identites and lives, and to include sexuality into the character can make it into a more complete character.
Having the in game sex partner present can give the character more reasons for performing different actions.
A sexual relationship is a kind of relationship and I think relationships add a lot to your larp.
Things can become complicated in interesting ways if other characters meddle with the relationship.
A positive sexual relationship can give many opportunities at positive experiences, which might contrast nicely to the rest of the larp.
Equally a negative sexual relationship can give many opportunities at negative experiences, which might contrast nicely to the rest of the larp.
It gives many chances for the character to experience strong emotions.
Love triangles can be fun.
Sometimes who you are having sex with goes again the moral grain of the character or causes moral outrage in their social arena and that can give a nice dramatic curve.

But I still need to get at least one player who would want to play such a relationship. Most larp that allows characters to have in game sex uses different representational techniques to symbolize that characters are performing a sexual act during the larp. Or you go out of game together and talk about what you did in game while they where away from the others. I can tell you more about these techniques in another post. So, it's not like your are asking someone to engage in real sexual acts with you and it shouldn't feel awkward to ask?

But it does feel akward.

I've talked to a lot of larpers about this, both face to face, on the phone and in several facebook groups. A problem that came to light was that several men who wanted to do "the right thing" said they rather not ask women if their characters could have a sexual relationship. Some men said it was because they did not want to be seen as creeps/creepers and some men where worried about making the woman they asked uncomfortable. Some men said they were just shy or that they feared getting a no.

To me, gender matters as well. I have no problem at all with asking women, both women I know really well, and women I'm just acquainted with but that I thought about wanting to larp more with in the future. It usually runs very smoothly once we get to the larp and are trying the sexual relationship out. One man I talked to said he felt them same when he asked other men, and that he worried less when asking men.

To me it's always a little tricky to ask men. I'm almost always the one to ask and extremely rarely get asked. I can only have theories about what that is about. It can because I'm assertive and not very shy about a lot of subjects that other people find difficult to talk about. But I also belive that there are larping men that think I would be offended by the question because I'm a feminist. I would not, and honestly I would probably be flattered as long as I get to feel it is fine to turn the man down based on my own preferences and my thoughts about my own character. There are people I really don't want asking me, but most of those people know who they are. And if I've been in a fight or disagreement with someone doesn't have to be an end all. To play a positive relationship with each other, or play people who would do anything for each other can have an incredibly healing effect that can bleed over into your real life.

During these talks what crystalized was that is that you can ask/need to ask before the larp but that the situation can need to be adressed during a game where something changes or where a new relationship starts. Check in to find out what kind of relationship the players want to play now. Several told me that it had been a grand revelation to them the day they realized it was ok to go out of game for shorter or longer meeting about what they wanted and what their coplayer wanted. Other just wanted to play prepared and rehearsed sexual relationship where consent was already established because they found it really hard to get back to immersion after being interrupted. Instead they chose a safer router of not having that kind of in game relationships or kept all in game interaction very platonic.

Several people told me that it was very important to them to know what the other larper was thinking and feeling about the relationship, both the one who asked and the one who got asked. They wanted to avoid hidden intentions. I myself has an ethic that is more conserned with consequenses and less with intent. I don't care or judge so much based on hidden inten. I'm ok as long as the other person is happy and treats me right out of game, no matter why they are happy or treats me right.

After you asked another larper the question about having an in game sexual relationship and you found someone who said yes, it's really important to talk consent, wants and needs. You can approach this in a number of different ways.

You can start with yourself, modeling what kind of subjects can be discussed: "I would like if you hugged me and stroked my back." I'm saying "me" and "my" here, because even if you play a character, that is your body.
You can start with asking the other person what they are comfortable with: "Are kisses on the lips ok, if there is no tongue?"
You can start with asking what hard limits the other person har: "is there anything I absolutely can't do with you?"
You can start with what you're not comfortable with: "Never touch my neck, it's very sensitive."

Several women and men I spoke to declined having in game sexual relationships. Why? Well they had different reasons.

As I wrote above, some men answered they were afraid to be seen as creeps.
It is a difficult question to get a no on.
Not interested, as in "I'm not interested in that kind of relationships when I larp"
They had real life partner who was not comfortable with them larping that kind of relationship and they chose to honor that wish.
Both men and women where afraid that if they asked the question they would be misunderstood.
It was mostly women who were afraid that there would be rumours started that they were having out of game sex with their in game partner or that they wanted to have out of game sex.
Both women and men who only wanted to ask larpers that they had chemistry with battled with themselves if it was ok that they were feeling this way. They felt they were discriminating other larpers.
Some had never met a larper they wanted to larp having a sexual relationship with.

Anyway, this is an existing topic that we will probably return to in the future. I would love if both men, women and non binary people start thinking about if in game sexual relationships is something that they would like to play, and how they would get around to finding coplayers in the future. How they talk consent and what they really want to get out of the relationship. But if you want this type of play, please work on asking in a way that makes the other person comfortable with both saying yes and saying no. I felt it was sad that so many men that said they would like this kind of play felt it was so scary to ask that they didn't. If you ask in a nice and respectful way, you are not oppressing anyone.

But if you are very much older, maybe you shouldn't ask a much much younger larper, and this goes a lot for older men, due to us living in a patriarchy.

Sensually enjoying larps

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 11:26:00 +0000

Background
In my experience a lot of people who write about larp approach it in an intellectual way, while people who are more interested in the physicality and/or sensuality of larp instead organize work shops where they instead show other larpers what they mean. I enjoy doing both, an also I reach different people in organizing work shops and writing in the blog. I have also spent a lot of time since the summer of 2014 to battle sexual harassment and rape cases on a policy level and to support victims on a community and on a personal level. That has taken a toll and I would like to explore and celebrate the more positive sides of larp as well. Less focus on what we don't want and more focus and what we do want.

My name is Karin and I have organized sensual workshops both about the positive end of the spectrum with Asmr for larp, the negative end with my Torture Workshop and the more neutral workshop about using Tactile Touch in larp. Tactile touch is when information is transmitted by touching some thing or person or being touched by a thing or person. Tactile massage is a Swedish massage form that is very light and soothing.

As you might realize I'm a sensual larper. You might not think so if you have met me as a sniper staking out a small village, covered in mud, reporting in after my four hour shared shift with my team mate. But what is a sensual experience? The night chill, the straining of the eye to see movement down in the village and the feeling of cold mud against my skin that dries and cracks is also a sensual.

Disclaimer

This blog post can apply to other genders but I myself am woman and I also enjoy writing about and for women. The blog post does not apply to all women. If you are not a woman and still identify with what I write, I think that is great.
I come from a Swedish larp tradition where we mainly write our own characters and decide our own relationships. The few larps with prewritten and casted characters I have been to have been so called Nordic Larps such as Just a Little Lovin' (2011) and Coven (2014).

The validity of enjoying yourself
We all have our own reasons for enjoying larp. Some of these reasons that have to do with how our bodies relate to interaction with others seems to be taboo to talk about, or if you talk about them you are not supposed to do so in a public or semi public space. Sexuality, sensuality and even the physicality of larp seems to be some of these taboos to some people.

I am interested in sensuality at larps. I think there are valid and useful things about sensual larping, sexually charged larping, erotically charged larping and romantically charged larping. I think that there is no shame in also experiencing an echo of what you are playing in your own body. Some some like to play sexual characters and map that characters sexuality away from their own, some map it after their own sexuality. Most Swedish larpers I have talked to about this subject never even thought about having a character with another sexuality than their own before I asked. And all of this is ok and valid.

To me the whole selling point of larping is the physicality of the experience. There are other ways to role play that are less physical than larp. Certainly there is still a sliding scale of how physical different larps are, and the same goes for sensual romantic play. It can be as unphysical as letter writing and long bouts of eye contact that still leaves you tingly all over. Or it can be as physical as real making out, tongue and all. And it is not unheard of that larpers then moved into the realm of real sex and even having long committed relationships after meeting at a larp. And as long as this happens with enthusiastic consent I am fine with it. We only have one life and we deserve to enjoy it.

Now I would like to say something about how women are more often than not raised to put the needs and wishes of others before their own needs and wishes. We are taught that to indulge in what makes us happy and tingly all over should come with a tint of shame. This manifests in many ways and when it comes to physicality it also comes with how the female body is critiqued and must be constrained, covered and controlled. Women are held to higher moral standard than men and their behavior and words are very closely monitored.

Another thing I have realized is that a lot of men, and some others as well, confuse experiencing sensuality and romantic or sexual tension with another larper has to do if that larper is conventionally good looking or even exeptionally good looking, I have found that this is often not the case. It can be easier if the other persons looks are acceptable to you but to me and many women I have talked to it has more to do with how you play the character, smell, eye contact, how the physical interaction is working out, how the larpers do their characters body language. To me it can be a certain swagger to the shoulders, a way to clench a jaw line, an arm around my waist, calling me an in game pet name.

And I want to say:

You deserve to have more than an ok larp when you spend time, work and money on larping. I think it is ok to leave gameplay that is not enjoyable for you, steering away from it. If you choose to off game with the people it is not working out for and you find another way that is more enjoyable to you, that's great but I know it is not possible for all larps. It's ok to choose to steer towards the kind of things you like. It is ok to put yourself first.
It is ok to state your wishes and preferences clearly, because how would you otherwise attain them. If you can accept a no you don't need to apologize for your desires.
It is ok to want to touch other larpers and to do so according to consent and it's ok to want to be touched and experience that. You play at being a goddess, a concubine, a lover, a fearless warrior queen and you can find and deserve to find coplayers who will move with you to attain that which you truly enjoy. And I know we can both have that play with each other and we can help members of all genders to both explore their own desire and acquire the skill to play these kind of relationships at a desired physical level at larps that allow it. I know I enjoy the prolonged,
For a woman in a patriachy it can be a very liberating thing to ask for one what one wants and then greatly enjoy herself, and I as a feminist celebrate that.

Further subjects for the future

About larp attraction and how it correlates with beauty norms.
Prolonged romantic tension and bleedhunt.
Bleed during the game as a desired state.
Norms about hooking up with coplayers.
"It's even more intense because we know its not real"
Getting to experience deep emotions without having to be responsible.
Sexually charged larping and feminism
"Romantic play as a gendered phenomenon"
Have a finnish person guest post about norms about romantic play as pre-written characters in Finland.
Have some guy guest post about body image.

Some hints for male larpers who wants to larp relationships.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 14:55:00 +0000

"The Horny Druid went on Tinder"

I wrote an earlier blog post about how larps are too short to larp with unattractive guys.
Afterwards I asked the Swedish Larp Women Unite Group on facebook about what they think makes a male larper more attractive to play romantically with. This blogpost is a follow up on that post.

What do I mean with romantic or intimate play?

Romantic or intimate play does not have to has as its main goal that the characters will end up happy, or even together. It is a type of play that can be used to tell any story but due to what it entails more often than not needs more communication between the players before the larp game.
Part of this is because it more often than not means you will be touching each other in ways that demand a little bit of trust. Even touch that would otherwise be innocent can be very loaded in a romantic or erotic setting. Themes that have to do with intimate relationships, sex and romance are given a lot of weight in current literature, music, movies and other art and there is no reason it shouldn't also be present in larp.

Remember, the following hints I have gathered from different people who belong to the Swedish Larp Women Unite, and this can mean that they can contradict, be very specific or be repeated. The hints are not primarily from me, but gathered from a Facebook group.
You can't change yourself to fulfill all of these demands, but even those you can't fulfill can give valuable clues about what other people think about or are looking for.

I will be dividing the answers into categories.

Hygien

Have a pleasent smell. The absense of bad smells and odors. What is a bad odor is very individual, but basically: wash yourself and brush your teeth.
Body odour. Everyone has a different one, and if your body odor is compatible with what the other person enjoys, that makes things easier.
Brush your teeth, don't smell of sweat.
Eliminate a bad breath.
Smell nice/ be clean.
I don't mind sweat unless it's very old or the person is sick.
Dirt is fine, but wash your hands.

Looks

Have a nice haircut.
I like tattoos and piercings.
Brown, emotional eyes.
Don't be more than 5-10 years younger than me.

Negotiating

Take the initiative and talk about limits.
Think through and formulate your own limits.
Off course, stay within the limits we agreed upon.
Don't say "I don't have any limits" or "I'm up for anything with you." I don't believe you and I will be careful with your body and your ego.
Do a lot of check ins during game.
Take the initiative and ask for the characters to have a relationship, but offer me an easy way to say no in case I don't take you up on the offer.
Be ready to negotiate and talk through limits.
I like if we have an idea about what the relationship will lead to in game for both of us. I want a goal with the relationship at the larp, whether it's romantic or not.

Is it a safe haven to retreat to after the adventures of the day.
Will it end in tears and misery?
Will it start out carefully and end on a happy note, offer something exiting but still feel cosy?
Will it tie two groups who otherwise would not see eye to eye closer toghether?
Is it just to cover up our evil plans!?

Out of game interaction.

Say no if what is suggested does not suit you. This makes it possible for the other player to find someone else or suggest something else.
Say no if you do not want to do what is suggested with the person who suggests it. This makes it possible for the other player to find someone else or suggest something else.
Be a reasonable person: Be or give the appearance of being on the same ethical page as the other player. Have the tools to talk about limits, consent, the setting the larp is in and how you want the game to play out.
Be calm or project calmness when speaking about the setting of the game even if you do not agree.
Project confidence and that you are a good listener.
Before the larp - show that you want to play out the relationship. Be involved in suggesting how the relationship was before the game started and describe how you would like it to play out during the game. Show enthusiasm in front of your game partner even if in game you will play estranged and possibly murderous.
Help out by being creative in coming up with scenes that relate to the relationship. It is scary to play a romantic relationship, and it can become really scary if the person who promised to play that they were in love with your character doesn't even say hello before the game.
Don't be a sleaze.
Don't talk shit about women, we can hear you.
Act mature, be calm and secure.
Listen.
Don't assume a suggestion for romantic or intimate relationships between chacters means anything in the real world. But don't assume it doesn't either. Make a risk/reward - call. No shame.

Style of play/ larp-style

Show me you are willing to co create our larp experience with me.
Show me you see me. Realize even the smallest gesture can give as much emotion as something more grand.
Talk to my character in game and not just about my character.
Involve me in the creation of storylines, don't just deliver them as the finished product at expect me to enjoy them.
Allow us to have a, eye for detail. Barely touching hands can feel like an electrical jolt if done right.
Be prepared to at least take half of the initiative both in and out of game. It is possible to be adversaries in game and still invite the other person to larp with you as long as you keep it active. It is passive play that is so hard to keep up with.
Be active in playing out the relationship during the larp. Keep an eye out for your in game partner if you are near each other. Check in with them out of game if needed if you need to know more about ideeas or wishes. If your partner seems unresponsive or tense, find out why.
Roleplay in a convincing way.
Be perceptive of how the game is going and try to be objectively analytical. Ask yourself "is this working out?"
If you can, check in to see if both of you are having fun and feel the relationship is adding to the larp experience.
Don't be afraid of taking people you are playing a relationship with to the side and ask how's it going. Accept if it's not working out and help them end your relationship a in game way that works out for all of you.
When it comes to show physical affection, do it clearly and directly. Don't cop a feel on someones bum or start making out without warning. Instead you can stroke a piece of hair behind the ear and look the coplayer in the eye.
Think in opposites. Post apocalyptic: give your partner something for nothing. Hight society hiostorical larps: Break the norms for your love. Forbidden love: Write love notes that can be found.
NEVER improvise anything about pregnancy/abortion/dead infants without clear consent!
When choosing what compliments to use, primarily compliment in game and not out of game characteristics.
I we negotiated consent and limits before the game, I prefer if you don't check in very often during the game. I don't want my game to be disturbed if not needed. I promise to tell you if anything changes if you promise to tell me the same.
I don't like compliments out of game, but at larps I don't mind being complimented for my out of game appearance.

Other

Dancing. Its good no matter what dance you know, and you don't need to know it better than you are able to dance without harming your partner.
If you can express emotion through dance that is extremely attractive. Dancing complements larping beautifully.
Well made gear. Having good looking and realistic gear.
Bring an extra blanket.
Bring chocolate.
Write me letters before the game - I'm delighted if you show this intiative and show that you want to build up a back story to the relationship.
If fitting the scenario, ask for a photo of me to carry around in game.

Tips för manliga lajvare som vill ha intimt och/eller romantiskt spel.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:40:00 +0000

"The Horny Druid went on Tinder"

Efter blogginlägget "Lajvet är för kort för att lajva med "fula" killar" frågade jag i Larp Women Unite vad folk där inne tycker gör en manlig motspelare mer attraktiv för att dem att spela mot när det kommer till mer intimt eller romantiskt spel.

Vad menar jag med romantiskt eller intimt spel?
Romantiskt eller intimt spel behöver inte innebära att det är spel som syftar till att göra ens karaktärer lyckliga genom att man spelar ut en lyckad relation. Det är en typ av spel som oavsett vad det används till för att berätta för historia ofta behöver lite mer förhandling innan lajvet.
Dels för att det väldigt ofta innebär att man rör vid varandras kroppar på sätt som kräver en tillit, även beröring som är relativt oskyldig kan behöva förhandlas fram när den sätt i en kontext som är romantisk eller sexuell för rollerna. Teman som rör intima relationer, sex och romantik ges i vår kultur en extra tyngd och har varit ett av de största temana i litteratur, musik och film och annan konst.

Tänk på att de tips jag har fått in kommer från olika personer som passar in på Larp Women Unites målgrupp, vilket innebär att olika svar kan krocka med varandra. Tipsen är alltså inte främst från mig utan ihopsamlade i LWU.
Alla tipsen är inte sådant som man kan påverka hos en själv, men det kan ändå vara intressant då det kan berätta lite om varför det kanske inte funkat att spela nära ihop med en annan spelare.

Jag delar upp svaren i några kategorier:

Hygien

Lukta gott. Med detta menas frånvaron av dålig lukt. Dålig kan vara väldigt personligt, men i grunden; tvätta dig och borsta tänderna.
Grundlukt, alla personer doftar olika, det är ett plus om personens grundlukt funkar bra med vad den andres näsa tycker är najs.
Var tandborstad och lukta inte svett.
Ha inte dålig andedräkt.
Lukta gott/var ren
Och så hygienbiten. Se till att inte lukta svett eller ha dålig andedräkt.

Utseende

Ha en snygg frisyr.
Tatueringar och piercings gillar jag.
Uttrycksfulla (gärna bruna) ögon.

Förhandling

Var den som tar initiativ till att prata om gränser.
Tänk igenom och formulera dina egna gränser.
Håll dig naturligtvis till de fysiska gränser vi kommer överens om.Säg inte "jag har inga gränser" eller "gör vad du vill med mig". Jag tror dig inte och kommer vara väldigt försiktig med din kropp och med ditt ego.
Kolla av mycket.
Tar initiativ till relation men ger mig samtidigt en värdig väg ut om jag inte vill.
Var med på att göra en gemensam gränsgenomgång
Jag gillar om man har en tanke om vad en relation kan leda till för spel för oss båda. Jag vill gärna ha ett syfte med relationer på lajv, romantiska och andra.

- Ska det vara en relation som erbjuder en trygg hamn efter/under dagens äventyr?
- Ska den sluta i tårar och erbjuda misärspel?
- Ska den börja trevande och sluta lyckligt, erbjuda en spännande men mysig story arc?
- Ska den knyta samman två grupper som annars kanske inte hade haft anledning att mötas?
- Ska den vara en täckmantel för onda plotter?

Tydlighet och konkretion om fysiska gränser och om spel han gillar/ogillar. Kan man prata om sånt på ett öppet och avdramatiserat sätt blir man mer attraktiv för mig.
Ett aktivt initiativtagande till att prata om gränser i fysiskt spel.
Kommunikation om karaktärernas relation i allmänhet och om hur vi vill lajva och vad vi vill få ut av spelet.
Ett växeldragande i kommunikationen så att det inte bara är jag som tar upp saker, utan att han också tar ansvar för relationer - både den mellan karaktärerna och att skapa en bra kommunikation mellan oss som spelare.
Genomtänkt vad relationen är tänkt att leda till tycker jag är viktigt. Detsamma med sexscener, spelar dem jättegärns men bara när de makes sense för intrig, story arc eller karaktärsutveckling (eller om jag och den andra spelaren är vansinnigt tända på varandra off men då föredrar jag vanligt off-sex).

Interaktion utanför spelvärlden.

Tacka nej om det som föreslås inte passar dig. På så vis kan personen som föreslog det hitta någon annan innan lajvet.
Tacka nej om du inte vill ha nära spel med den som föreslår det på så vis kan den som föreslår det hitta en person som vill det.
Var vettig: Var eller ge intryck av att vara på samma etiska och moraliska nivå som motspelaren. Se till att du kan föra ett fungerande samtal om gränser, lajvvärden och spelförlopp. Ha en förmåga att framstå som lugn, i alla fall när det gäller diskussion om spelet.
Var gärna både självsäker och lyssnande.
Innan lajvet - visa att du är intresserad av att spela på relationen. Var med och föreslå hur den sett ut tidigare eller vilket slags spel du vill ha under lajvet. Visa entusiasm för din lajvpartner även om ni kommit överens om att ni är bittra expartners som helst vill dräpa varandra.
Hjälp till med att spåna möjliga scener eller liknande. Det är läskigt att spela någons kärleksintresse, det är ännu läskigare om den som ska låtsas vara kär i en inte över huvud taget säger hej innan lajvet eller tar sig tid att prata med en.
Var inte inställsam / sliskig.
Uttryckt dig inte nedvärderande om kvinnor, vi hör dig.
Ge ett moget intryck, var lugn och trygg i dig själv.
Var inte mer än 5-10 år yngre än mig.
Var lyhörd.
Ta inte ett förslag om intimt eller romantiskt spel som ett off-intresse, men uteslut det inte heller helt. Väg med det i beräkningen till om du vill tacka nej eller ja. Det är ingen skam i det.
Absolut inga sexuella skämt eller anspelningar off - om vi inte känner varandra väldigt väl.
En tydligt visad prestigelöshet/ödmjukhet/brist på ego, där han kan kompromissa och be om ursäkt om något blir fel.
Ett lyssnande på och intresse för vad jag vill och behöver.
Jag blir mycket mer positiv till förslaget "jag skulle vilja spela en relation där min aragorn-roll får en chans att utveckla sina svaga sidor och släppa någon nära, är du på?" än "vill du spela ihop med mig på lajvet?" eller "Jag skulle vilja spela en riktigt rå och utlämnande sexscen för min roll är ute och letar kickar" är en mycket bättre raggningsreplik än "tja snygging vill du knulla?". Jag förutsätter då alltså att man har möjlighet att prata off om romantiskt och sexuellt spel.

Spelstil

Visa lyhördhet för att forma spelet ihop med mig.
Visa uppmärksamhet. Inse att små gester är minst lika känsloladdade som massor med fysiskt spel.
Prata med min karaktär inlajv och inte bara om min karaktär.
Involverar mig i skapandet av spel och leverera inte bara färdigt spel i mitt knä.
Spela högupplöst, att nudda en hand kan nästan ge en elektrisk stöt.
Var beredd på att ta i alla fall hälften av initiativet, både in och off. Man kan spela avståndstagande men ändå bjuda in till spel så länge man är aktivt avståndstagande, men passivitet är så hopplöst spelblockande.
Var aktiv i relationen på lajvet. Ha ett halvt öga på din partner om ni spelar i närheten av varandra. Gå gärna off vid behov och stäm av idéer eller spelönskemål. Om din spelpartner verkar ointresserad eller obekväm, kolla av varför?
Rollspela snyggt och realistiskt.
En annan sak är att vara lyhörd och försöka vara objektivt analyserande under spel. Fråga sig själv, funkar det här bra?
Försök kolla om båda verkar ha roligt och få ut något av relationen?
Våga ta personer off lite kort och stämma av hur det går, och så klart acceptera och vara hjälpsam att spela sig ur en relation som båda eller någon upplever inte funkar.
Om man ska ge fysiska tecken på kärlek, gör det tydligt och rakt: tafsa inte på baken eller börja hångla direkt, utan titta i ögonen och lägg en slinga hår bakom mitt öra i stället.
Tänk tvärtemot. Postapo: ge något för inget. Historiska med mycket etikett: bryt en norm /spricka i fasad för min karaktärs skull. Förbjuden kärlek: Skicka lappar/brev
Improvisera aldrig fram min "graviditet/abort/döda spädbarn utan att jag är MED på det off!
När komplimanger ska ges, gå på inlajv-attribut, inte på off-utseende.
Om vi förhandlat fram speciella gränser innan lajvet, håll inte på och kolla av dem hela tiden under lajvet. Jag vill inte få mitt spel stört mer än nödvändigt. Vi kan dock lova att säga till varandra direkt om något inte funkar.
Genomtänkt vad eventuella sexscener är tänkt att leda till tycker jag är viktigt, spelar dem jättegärns men bara när de makes sense för intrig, story arc eller karaktärsutveckling (eller om jag och den andra spelaren är vansinnigt tända på varandra off men då föredrar jag vanligt off-sex).

Övrigt

Kunna dansa: När det gäller dans går alla danser bra, och på nivån att man inte skadar den man dansar med off. Det är väldigt attraktivt att kunna lajva ut känslor i dans. Dans är ett underbart komplement till lajv.
Välgjord lajvutrustning. Har snygg och realistisk utrustning.
Ha en extra filt..
Ha choklad.
Brevväxla gärna innan lajvet -jag blir glad om du tar initiativ och visar att du vill bygga lite historik.
Be om ett foto av mig i roll som du kan bära på din roll om det är ett lajv med fotografier.
Min största turn-off är tyvärr helt ärligt dålig personkemi och den är svår som sjutton att ringa in. Det känns tråkigt men det är svårt att göra någonting åt personlighetsmässig osynk.
Jag tycker mest det känns surt när jag tycker att våra karaktärer skulle matcha så bra / det skulle tillföra spelet/ min lajvupplevelse något, samtidigt som jag väldigt starkt känner att jag inte är bekväm på rätt sätt med den personen.

Triggered at a larp.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 08:43:00 +0000

This post mostly focuses on larp participants but can be of interest to organizers as well.

What is a Trigger? Usually, what we mean with a trigger is something that for a PTSD sufferer sets off a flashback of their trauma. These days we also often mean it is something that sets of a phobic reaction for a phobia sufferer or a panic attack for a person who sufferers from anxiety.

When talking about triggers one can also mean allergies, although that is less common, migraines or epileptic seizures. I will however not focus on these in this blog post but more on the acute physiological reactions and how to handle them.

Having triggers does not mean you can't go to possibly triggering games. Most of the times that is up to you and what you know about your current mental health. Here are some tools to help you gauge under what conditions you can participate.

Innehållsförteckning (list of ingredients)
Usually you don't know all your triggers, but you might know what has triggered you in the past. It can be easier to handle your mental health if the larp has some kind of easily available summary of what themes are present at the larp. Going through the summary you can gauge how likely it is you will be triggered at the larp. This can be called the following:

Trigger warnings
Content warnings
My suggestion is the swedish "Innehållsförteckningar" which translates into:
List of ingredients or
Table of content.

In my experience the most common triggering themes are sexual harassment, rape, incest and domestic abuse. If many of the larpers have war time experience, unexpected sounds that imitate shots, visceral depictions of wound, war time torture and so on are also common triggers.

So you might have known and unknown triggers

Opt in and opt out of triggering play.
Some games who are aware that their themes are triggering for a lot of players have either stated opt in mechanics or opt out mechanics. Opt in means that if you want certain play, the player has to actively ask in some way to be included in that. For example, only marked players are up for being kidnapped by the special forces and having a bag put over their head. In an opt out mechanic, instead it is assumed everyone at the game want the stated game and if you do not you instead have to state that.

Also! If you suffer from PTSD or Anxiety attacks it is double important to really rehearse using the safety words and insisting on everyone knowing them. If you become triggered it can be really hard to remember you are safe and can break the scene at any time.

Self Care always comes first

Elin Dalstål has written an article focusing specifically on this subject and I will probably link it when I come around to it.
You can lessen the chance of being triggered by coming prepared. Eat enough, drink enough, and sleep enough. Most PTSD or Anxiety sufferers feel it helps if they utilize the buddy system and have a friend who will leave everything to take care of them.
Leave any scene that you feel is becoming too much for you. There is no shame in seeing to your own basic needs, no matter if others are not. Larping is not a race.

Triggered!
What to do if you are triggered in a really bad way, that flashback starts playing or your fight of flight reflexes go haywire?

What I do is:

I immediately leave the scene if possible. I'm most comfortable not calling attention to myself.
If I can't leave I try to alert the attention of the other players that I am distress. Sometimes this means using safety words that break the scene.
Find a secluded spot, not to far away from the others, where I feel safer.
Do a calming exercise, such as a breathing exercise.
If anyone come to check on me I ask for my "buddy" or if the game has a safety host I ask for them. I am not comfortable talking to anyone, or the busy main organizer. But I can't always talk when I'm triggered.
If anyone want to be nice to me I instead ask for a hot beverage or a blanket.

What you can try to do for a triggered larper if you want to.

If they run, let them run, but remember what way they went.
If you are their buddy, calmly walk after them.
Accept if they can't talk immediately.
If they are hyperventilating, help them steady their breath.
The best thing is if someone can stay in their vicinity while someone else gets a blanket and something to drink.
Some are very embarrassed from being triggered and might not want to talk about it afterwards.
Don't make a big deal about it.
Ask them when everything has calmed down if they need help getting back into the game or if they want to go to their bed and take a nap.

And, I can't believe I have to write this but never have sex with a larper who you helped get through being triggered immediately after you helped them. They are in a vulnerable position.

I'm organizing a nordic larp and I can't handle critique.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 08:09:00 +0000

I can't handle critique when I'm not paid to handle the critique or am in school intent on learning something.

I've helped in organizing Berättelsefrämjandet larps Landsväg in 2014 and Hinterland in 2015. I've volunteered to do character coaching in other games. I organized two small fantasy games in 2005 and 2006. But the fantasy games were made in a tradition and at a time where the main part of the feedback an organizer got was positive and bubbly.
We also did not have social media in the way the we do today, so actually giving the organizer feedback and critique had to be done in an more active and directed way. You knew that if you wrote it, it would be meant for the organizers eyes. With social media you can be talking with your friends about what you were doing this weekend and then Facebook makes it possible for the organizer to stumble over that conversation.

Nordic Larp is a movement that in part moves towards larp as art, and art can be critiqued. And as I said before I can't handle critique. So while I do want to do my larp Witches of Ästad Farm in November I still don't have much of a plan for what I will do with the feedback afterwards.
I'm pretty sure that some will adore the game, while others will be disappointed. And I fear my reaction to that. I don't want to go "I'll never organize again and I hate all larpers". I'm prone to hyperbole when I am upset.

I think the thing is this:

I don't mind critique of my larps being out there. It is very important that other people get to express themselves, and talking about your experiences is part of self expression.

I don't mind others asking respectfully for what they want or need before or during a game. As long as they can divide between need and want and is ok with me saying no to a want and being truthful about not being able to fulfil a need.

What I do mind is that when critique is delivered directly to me I feel like there is a strong demand from me to respond and to respond in a certain way. To fix the perceived problem. And I have trouble with that because I am to damn truthful and I really struggle with that. I need to repeat to myself that it's fine to say.

"I hear what you are saying and recognize this was a problem for you."

Instead I blurt out "I can't really do anything about that, because the game is over." or "It was clearly stated in the list of content for the larp that this could happen, did you not read the content list?"

I'm thinking to myself that there also is a formula most organizers of Nordic larps use in which they say to their participants that they are very open to critique and that participants can contact them at any time. That they can inform the organizing team if there is anything they need to participate in the game. And after games there more often than not are organized feed back forms that they send out and encourage participants to fill in, saying they need the feed back to get better.
But I don't get better when I get a lot of feedback at once or feel critiqued from several people. I respond better to being mentored by people I have developed a personal relationship with and who I trust. I'll write about "Karins octagonal feedback model" some other time.

Final thoughts
I'm thinking that I wouldn't want to impose "The week of stories" as I have understood the concept. I understood it as asking participants to only talk about the good things with the game the week following the game and leave critiques for the time after that week.
I don't think I as an organizer of a larp game can ask of my players to do anything special once they have left the venue. Their social media interaction belongs to them and if they are disappointed in the game they have a right to express that to their friends, which today is often done in social media. It is also in the hearts and minds of the larpers that the game will live on and what they don't talk about or write about they most often do not remember.

So I'll probably get off social media in the weeks (2-3 weeks) following the game. Or at least get off Facebook. Or have a designated hour of day when I log on, check it out and then log off.
I have my co-organizer who can do the administration and moderation on Facebook where such is needed. I'll take care of my needs to withdraw a little when a project is done and I am in an emotionally vulnerable spot.

If we make a feedback form I will be careful with what kind of feedback I'll ask for, and only ask about things I feel I'll know what to do with. And I will probably have my coorganizer go through the answers before I do. And then the same as with social media, I go through them after 2-3 weeks.

I'll give myself some "weeks of no stories" to create a distance between myself and my creation.

Att hinna tänka egna tankar.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:30:00 +0000

Att hinna tänka egna tankar.

Filosoferandet fortsätter.
Jag har nog alltid sett mig som en motvalls kärring samtidigt som jag både försökt förstå varför majoriteten säger att de tycker som de tycker. Eller inte säger vad de tycker. Jag har också försökt att inte säga emot bara för att utan för att jag har ett syfte med att säga emot det jag upplever bli sagt. Eller jag har strävat mot det, det är inte alltid jag har lyckats. Ibland har jag redan varit uppe i varv och varit onödigt konfrontativ och sårande och i alldeles för liten utsträckning visat att jag visst förstod vad den andra personen menade.
Jag gör så mycket dumt när jag är arg, när jag låter mig själv bli provocerad. Vissa konflikter är inte värda min tid och vissa konflikter är inte värda att riva upp andra människors sår över. Jag önskar att jag alltid hade den klarheten och sinnesron att kunna analysera konflikter jag håller på att hamna i innan de blir konflikter.

Jag säger ibland att allt inte måste vara en debatt heller, utan många gånger hade det räckt att ha ett samtal. Med det menar jag inte att vi ska sluta debattera, men varje utbyte av åsikter är inte en inbjudan till att diskutera eller debattera med den andre. Ibland är andra människor aningslösa om att de vandrat rakt in i en debatt, de tror att de bara kom med ett instick i ett samtal.

En nackdel med att dra sig undan och bygga mitt eget reflekterande rum, i mitt hem, ute i löpspåret och ute i skogen är att det blir mindre tid med vänner. Jag har ett socialt heltidsarbete och ägnar fritiden åt familj och hobby. De vänner jag träffar ägnar jag mig oftast åt att sitta tyst i samma rum med, medan vi pysslar med var sin sak. Eller så tittar jag på någon enklare underhållning på tvn och kommenterar då och då till vännen vad jag ser på skärmen. Igår tog en vän med mig ut i skogen. Vi satt på en häll och tog in naturen. Vardag. Sakta lunk, ett fåtal löv som redan fallit till marken. Att det kan vara så skönt både att samtala och att vara tyst. Jag känner kravlöshet i tystnaden, att i tystnaden så slipper jag mina egna krav på att prestera något. Hinna tänka mina egna tankar.

Jag låste en gång upp min kreativa förmåga. Att uttrycka mig blev för mig naturligt. Allt jag gör är gott nog. Men därför har jag inga hinder för att producera, jag kan inte sluta producera och påverka min omvärld. Men ibland så straffar det sig. Men jag kan ändå inte sluta för jag vet inte riktigt hur jag gör för att sluta. Det är det jag funderar på.

Har du lätt eller svårt för att uttrycka dig utanför din innersta krets?

Lajvet är för kort för att lajva med "fula" killar.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 14:30:00 +0000

"Jag kommer in på caféet där de lokala vampire-lajvarna hänger och går fram till folket jag lärt känna de senaste veckorna genom lajvet. Några reser sig upp och hälsar mig med kramar. När de börjar sätta sig ner går en kille som bara är vagt bekant in nära och kramar mig också. Jag är djupt obekväm och vet inte vad jag ska säga.
När jag säger till vid ett annat tillfälle, att jag inte vill kramas ser han ut som att jag slagit honom i magen. Han är inte den ende som vill kramas oavsett vad jag vill. Jag börjar säga att jag inte gillar kramar. Att jag inte är en sån som kramas. Bara jag får slippa kramen och att få de ledsna hundögonen från någon av nördkillarna här inne."

En sidoeffekt att backa bort från sociala media så som facebook och twitter är tid att tänka mina egna tankar under längre sammanhängande tid utan att bli avbruten utifrån för att läsa vad andra människor tänker. Jag blir mindre reaktiv i mitt tänkande. Reaktiv är när man främst reagerar på sådant som händer runt omkring en.

En sak jag tänkt på tidigare och som nu bubblade upp inom mig är en tanke om (främst) kvinnors kroppar och andra kvinnifierade kroppar*. Det är också en tanke på hur vi tänker om erfarenheter av mobbing, om oss själva som snälla människor och om nörden som en icke maskulin man. Det är också en tanke på attraktion och lust. Jag kommer som vanligt att förenkla det hela för att inlägget ska vara lättläst. Det går självklart att göra en ännu djupare genomskådning.

Vi kommer att gå vidare från exemplet med kramarna ovanifrån. Det jag kommer att skriva om kan för vissa upplevas som helt sjukt och det kan finnas en önskan om att ifrågasätta eller säga "jag skulle aldrig göra så". Men jag har både gjort det själv och fått berättat för mig om det av andra kvinnor. Även icke-kvinnor har berättat liknande.

* Många lajvare är nördar.
* Många nördar har blivit mobbade.
* Många nördar upplever sig själva som romantiskt eller sexuellt ointressanta.
* De flesta människor har en självbild av sig själva som goda och vill verkligen inte mobba andra då mobbare ses som onda.
* Många kvinnor har uppfostrats att ta socialt ansvar för hur andra människor mår i en möjligt pinsam situation.

Dessa och några andra ingredienser som ni läsare kanske kan komma på leder ibland till den absurda situationen att till exempel en kvinna låter en man de tycker är obehaglig ta på deras kropp på ett sätt de är djupt obekväma med. De säger inte ifrån, de konfronterar inte utan de kanske "spelar sig ifrån" situationen de råkat hamna i. Efteråt är det vanligaste att de skyller den uppkomna situationen på sig själva, att de måste ha kommunicerat otydligt att det inte var ok att ta på dem på ett sådant sätt. Ofta kan där även finnas en känsla av skam för att man kanske hade accepterat samma beröring av en man man funnit attraktiv och man vill inte vara en sån där mobbare som undviker "fula" människor. Resten av lajvet finns hela tiden en tanke i bakhuvudet om att man så smidigt som möjligt ska hålla sig borta från mannen som väckt de obehagliga känslorna istället för att kunna slappna av helt och njuta av lajvet på samma villkor som de andra deltagarna.

Tänkandet verkar gå

"Lajv är till för alla."
"Då jag gillar fysiskt lajvande så borde jag också acceptera att alla på lajvet kan lajva fysiskt mot mig."
"Jag anmälde mig ju till det här lajvet trots att ett tema var sexuellt våld, han ger mig det creeps men jag får väl stå ut."

Att man åkt på ett lajv med fysisk inriktning, eller till och med på ett lajv med ett erotiskt eller fysiskt romantiskt tema och att man bara ska tåla då man gav sig in i leken.

Jag vill även bena lite i skammen över att man tror att det är fel att vissa människors beröring vill man ha och strävar efter, medans andra människors beröring vill man inte ha och försöker undvika. Skillnaden kan beror på avsmak, acceptans, bekvämlighet och ibland på viss attraktion så som de känns i kroppen. Men det är så attraktion fungerar och det är ok. Det behöver inte ens handla om att personen man inte vill spela mot är objektivt ful, då det utseende man själv ser som fult ser någon annan som extremt attraktivt. Attraktion handlar dessutom ofta om röst, intonation, tillfälle, avslappning och anspänning, doft, frånvaro av distraktioner, miljö och hur icke-sexuell beröring från personen känns. Det behöver inte heller handla om att personer man känner attraktion till at faktiskt vilja spela fysiskt nära med är någon man är det minsta intresserad av att ha någon sorts relation med utanför lajvet. Det kan vara rollerna som blir det som gör en ointressant person till attraktiv i ens egna roller när ni väl iklätt er rollerna.

Det är inte skamligt och inte fel att man föredrar vissa människors beröring framför andra människors beröring. Speciellt intim beröring, för även om du spelar en roll på lajv, så spelar du den med din egen kropp. Lajv är för korta för att man bara ska behöva stå ut.

Lajv kan vara till för alla. Men alla lajv är inte till för alla. På samma sätt kan fysiskt, romantiskt eller erotiskt laddat spel vara till för alla, men att röra vid just din kropp är inte till för alla.

Som min vän Elin Dalstål alldeles snart ska skriva i "Self Care Comes First" så kommer självvård först, även på lajv. För mig ingår att själv få bestämma över min kroppsliga integritet i självvård. När jag ger upp det självbestämmandet behöver jag ifrågasätta om jag gör det för min egen eller för andras skull.

*En kvinnifierad kropp är en kropp som andra tolkar som "en kvinnlig kropp eller en kvinnas kropp" oavsett om kroppen tillhör en kvinna eller någon annan.

Lajvfeministen som inte duger i andras ögon.

wonderkarin@gmail.com (Wonderkarin) — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 14:30:00 +0000

Jag har ett fåtal personer jag bollar det som pågår inne i mitt huvud med. Det är mycket som jag behöver bena ut.

Jag har tänkt att jag hela tiden i mitt sociala liv online och ansikte mot ansikte försökt att inte hamna på någon sorts piedestal. Att i min aktivism inte framhålla mig själv som ett perfekt föredöme utan snarare som en komplex person med både trevliga och irriterande sidor. Det jag gör är att skriva praktiska texter om hur man kan försöka ta tag i komplexa problem i lajvhobbyn, ge enskilt stöd till kvinnor och ickebinära som blivit utsatta för sexuella övergrepp och ta initiativ till och vara med och driva den separatistiska Facebookgruppen Larp Women Unite - Sverige och Larp Women Unite - International.

Men på något vänster har jag ändå blivit någon sorts feministisk förebild för vissa människor. Och jag upplever en oerhörd press då jag inte kan göra de här personerna annat än besvikna. Jag är inte intelligent nog, kunnig nog eller stresstålig nog för att hålla alla rättvisefrågor i huvudet samtidigt. Dessutom har jag en materiell världssyn och antar att man oftast måste prioritera vad man jobbar med i stunden, vilket då av sig själv innebär att andra frågor kommer hamna i bakgrunden.

Jag upplever dessutom att kraven ständigt ökar. Lever jag inte upp till de nya ställda kraven har jag börjar frukta de sociala konsekvenserna. Så jag drar mig undan från de här människorna som antagligen någonstans tror att vi för samma kamp.

Jag har varit i situationer där det hela känts som kvinnohat förklätt som rättighetskamp. Att jag som kvinna, speciellt som feminist, förväntas vara den perfekta intersektionella feministen och ägna exakt lika mycket mental fokus åt just den personens egen hjärtefråga. Och de orden jag kan få kastade på mig när jag inte klarar det utan att få totalt kaos i hjärnan är ord som på riktigt gör ont. Jag kanske ska upp dem här nu, men det är många som har åsikten att "kallar någon en det ordet så är man det, för dom har tolkningsföreträde om vem som är det."

Det här får mig inte längre att kämpa hårdare för att vara "en bättre intersektionell feminist" utan det knäcker mig och har redan fått mig att ge upp. Jag fortsätter med mina saker, för att jag känner en plikt att fortsätta med dem och inte överge dem. Jag arbetar vidare med att arrangera ett lajv enligt mina principer.
Men mitt hjärta känns krossat och uppgivet. Hastigheten är nere på 1/10. Jag hoppar över chansen att skriva om dem antologier. Jag tackar nej till att hålla föreläsningar i ämnet. Jag tackar nej till möjligheten att resa till konferenser och prata om vad jag lärt mig om offer och förövare i lajvhobbyn (alltså inte om individer utan om mönster och sociologin/etnologin i lajvkretsar).

Jag sitter på enorma kunskaper, men jag orkar knappt, vågar knappt sprida dem.

Jag vet att fenomenet kallas för feminist burnout och compassion fatigue. Men att veta namnet hjälper bara lite marginellt. Jag vill nog att vi egentligen börjar prata om de orimliga krav som ställs på feministiska aktivister utan att vi börjar förlämpa varandra direkt.

Jag vet att det anses vara fint att bjuda in andra att kritisera ens arbete och att det anses att man ska använda kritik på konstruktiva sätt. Men för mig har det blivit för mycket oinbjuden kritik, från för många människor, för ofta och på grund av internet, vid alla tider på dygnet. Ett sätt jag försöker jobba med det är att dels inte be om kritik (men folk skickar den ändå) och dels dra ner på sociala media så att jag inte råkar snubbla över den på slump.

Jag vill se mer praktiskt utförd feminism utan att den överhopas av kritik från icke inblandade om hur projektet, texten, lajvet skulle kunna ha utförts. Sen finns det folk som utvecklas jättebra av att få specifik oombedd kritik. Jag är inte en av dem. Jag har tillgång till en hel del människor som är duktiga på olika områden och om jag har tid och ork över att jobba med ett problemområde i mig själv eller i något jag skapat så kan jag ta det med den personen.