October Review Challenge, #13 - Old shame

2020-10-13T13:38:30Z

October Review Challenge, #13 - "What’s an old shame in your writing past?"

So I have only recently gotten to the point in my writing career where I can stand anything I wrote from more than a year or two ago. I suppose it’s a good thing that I’ve grown and improved as a writer as time goes on, but my natural tendency to be ashamed of all my imperfections means a lot of my earlier work is intensely embarrassing for me to look back at. I’m the kind of person who at least once a day thinks of some stupid thing I did when I was a kid and cringes, so you can imagine how painful my more recent bad art is to me.

Most of the stuff I’ve made, at least as an adult— I don’t even try to look at anything made before college —there’s at least something about it that was okay. Even if it was only the idea. But the stuff I included thinking it was good sometimes is intensely embarrassing, like, WHAT WAS I THINKING? THAT IS OBVIOUSLY A DUMB SONG LYRIC YOU STOLE WHAT WAS WRONG WITH YOU?

I can’t bear to look back at my first real play, To Think of Nothing. It’s wordy, it’s a little overwrought with its pseudo-classical diction. I recently looked at Mrs. Loring, the play I wrote for my thesis, and... ugh. The idea’s okay, and there’s some okay moments. But it would need a complete overhaul to not be embarrassing. Even the first Mrs. Hawking play I think needs to be rewritten. It’s not all bad, obviously, but... it’s from eight years ago and it can just be so much better with our current level of skill. But I think the thing I’d have to pick is my first larp, Alice.

Photo by Mark Edwards

It was my goth reinterpretation of Alice in Wonderland. And again, it’s not all bad, and for a first larp, it’s got a lot going for it. But it was written during a really bad period and I put a ton of negativity into it, so it’s a bit on the ridiculous side of grimdark. It has too many characters, some of whom either didn’t get enough plot or got plots that I wasn’t sophisticated enough to realize were not compelling. And I didn’t know enough about content notes and that sort of thing to properly label it for some of the themes and subject matter. I exposed larpers to stuff they probably didn’t necessarily sign up for. I really didn’t know what I was doing, as writer and as GM, in a lot of ways.

I know it’s all a process. I know you have to move through the bad stuff to do the good stuff, that practice and learning from failure is the only way you get better. But still, UGH WHAT WAS I THINKING WHY DID I DO SUCH DUMB STUFF???

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Festival of the Larps 2017 con report

2017-05-04T20:51:10Z

Festival of the Larps 2017 happened this past weekend, and I wanted to note down a few things.

I very much enjoyed my time there, like I always do. I've never had a bad time at Festival. It's a very special weekend for me, as it's Brandeis's home larp con and I've not only been attending it for over ten years now, I've been involved in its organization for a lot of that time. I really love larping at this event.

But this time around I was so tired that I didn't get quite as much out of it as I usually do. I had periods where I would mentally check out of my games where I was a player just because I was so exhausted. I liked everything I played, but wasn't quite as sharp and on the ball as I usually am. Still, it was all good, and I don't think I ruined anything for not being at my best.

Friday night I played Alleged Entertainment's The Day We Came Home. I generated a handful of character sheets for this game, but I knew little enough (remembered less) that I could play without being spoiled. It's basically examining issues around immigration in a sci fi setting with the format of a political game. Not my usual style of larp, but it's a good example of its genre, and I'm glad I gave it a try. Also Tegan, one of the writers and GMs, totally blew my mind with her advice for how to address missing PCs due to drops: "If you need something from someone who isn't here... get it from someone else." A revolutionary and practical shift in mindset when cast issues arise!

Saturday afternoon I played Primal Spirits, where everyone is the innocent avatars of animal creatures in the early days of the world. I was Rabbit, which pleased me, as I applied a lot of my theory of rabbithood from my favorite novel, Watership Down. All the world was my enemy, and when they caught me, they would kill me-- but first they must catch me. I had a rather primitive sense of justice and had to come to terms with my children's status as ultimate prey animal. Again, my tiredness curtailed my play a little, but in collaboration with Peter Litwack I came up with a pretty clever trick to make myself come out on top in a race with Horse-- the winner would be the fastest to reach an apple, which I buried in the ground at the other end of the track. Because I was the faster digger, I won! Frith, a rabbit trick!

That night I ran the larp version of Silver Lines. I love, love, love that game. It's a very solid mystery, and physicalizing the various in-game locations with props translates it nicely from the tabletop form to the live-action one. I missed having Jenn as my co-GM, like I had at Intercon, but it's manageable with only one person; you just have to play all the NPCs. It really makes me want to write more games in this style, set at other points in the Hawking story timeline.

I did have one problem post-game that I didn't handle well. I had one player who had a stronger than usual emotional reaction to her journey in the game. I should have just shut my dumb mouth and listened, but she kept relating it back to how the game was written. Even though I knew better, I kept trying to interrogate her to see if she had legitimate criticism I needed to incorporate into an edit, but I think it just made her feel judged. I should have just listened and let her express herself. As it was, I felt kind of like a bully.

The last thing I played was supposed to be a cowboy game called Once Upon a Time in the Wild West, a prepackaged game from a professional larprunning company called Questoria. Sadly they had a lot of players not show up, so they had to sub in a short, smaller parlor game in its place. That was actually fine by me, because being so tired, I didn't mind a quicker larp. The new one turned out to be a murder mystery set at a seance, which I enjoyed enormously-- not least because I was the only one who solved it correctly! I love mysteries; I've been studying them and writing them a lot lately, so I'm actually glad the game turned out the way it did.

So yeah, overall, good weekend, though I was sorry my overall dragginess, particularly mentally, made me less sharp than I usually am. Thank you to everyone, particularly con chair Adina Shreiber, for all the hard work to make it happen!

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All Eyes on Me

October Review Challenge, #13 - Old shame

Festival of the Larps 2017 con report