Honestly, what’s nerdier – boffing or relating your date to classic romantic tropes? The concept of real-life NPCs lends well to the Yelper/sevice worker dynamic of today. |
octopus pie by meredith gran is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-share alike 3.0 united states license. |
2021 appearances None! |
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I'm not certain where my LARPing story fits in the grand scheme of nerdiness. When I was attending UNL, I went along with my D&D group to a LARPing event at a Boy Scout camp in eastern Colorado. It was also the middle of winter, and the nighttime temps were below freezing. The bathrooms were outdoors (although thankfully they were proper plumbing and not outhouses), and the cabin was only slightly warmer.
And I made the mistake of borrowing clothing for the event from my cosplayer friend who was notorious for wearing a bikini and a thin cape all around campus on Halloween (there was snow on the ground and the temp was freezing), so needless to say I was woefully underdressed for someone with normal cold tolerances.
On the last morning was the epic battle with boffers. I woke up, noticed how cold the air outside my cozy sleeping bag was, and decided that I would pretend to sleep through the battle, because it was too cold for me to bother with that crap. I decided to stay in my cozy sleeping bag until it was time to put on normal clothes and leave.
I used to go to the Maryland Renaissance Festival every year when I was a kid until some time in high school, and some ten years later it finally occurred to me to go again. I was pretty excited for jousts, turkey legs, and blacksmithing demonstrations, but was totally unprepared for a solid half of the stuff on sale being explicitly LOTR, Harry Potter, or otherwise geek-branded. It was all there when I was a kid, I just didn't notice it as all that distinct from historical stuff
It's funny how people are all too ready to laugh at the nerdiness of LARPing, and then go off for one of these "Murder Mystery Weekends", the main point of which is, from many positions, live-action roleplay…
(Not that I LARP. I prefer my roleplay sitting down at a table with snacks…)
Ew, wtf is Aimee talking about…