martinemonster

I've only just unpacked my bags from the larpconvention I attend almost every year and now I'm packing again. This time to go to Bologna with my mom. We usually take a trip together every other year and this time we decided it'd be to a place with a bit more sun and heat than Norway (even though we're not complaining about the spring weather here, after all it is pretty awesome as well). In my head I'm already drinking coffee at a small sidewalk cafe and writing on my laptop. Which I think I'll bring. I didn't bring it to the convention and I bitterly regretted it, and I think I feel inspiration calling (or it could be the wine, I never can tell) so I might actually get some writing done even though it's my vacation.

So this is it folks *waves* See you next week!

So, I was at this larp set in Britain 1792. I played a desperate woman who needed to find a fiancee by Thursday or the control of all my money would go to my uncle. In addition, I was a lesbian and madly in love with one of the servants, a lovely woman named Gabrielle. During the larp I not only found a fiancee, made a lot of important friends and gambled and drank to my hearts desire, I also became the queen of the masque ball. And, as I´m sure you all know, even though we all say that it´s not important to be queen of the ball, we all secretly want it...

( pictures!!! )

I'm getting a cold. Or, to be more precise, I've been getting a cold for more than a week now. I'm fighting it in the old-fashioned way of the Svanevikian clan; by ignoring it and going to work of course. And it's been working out pretty good. I'm dead tired, my throat is sore and I have headaches and dizzy spells all the time, but I'm not completely dead yet. But I'm not completely recovered either, and now, there's only a few days left before the larp I've been looking forward to for ages and I really don't wanna be sick while I'm there.

So what should I do?

I'm a strong believer in the helpfulness of working in stressful working environments so I'm going to continue doing that, but I need more good tips. Right now, the only thing my body seems to be telling me is that I would get massively better if I eat an enormous amount of chocolate and wasabi peas. I kid you not, I have an intense craving for dark chocolate and wasabi coated green peas. Preferably together. And I cannot shake it. Should I listen to my body? Is it telling me the truth, or is this some sort of sick joke where I eat everything it tells me to and I still get sick? It seems like something my body would do... Do you guys have other good tips on how to shake a cold that does not include resting ('cause I really don't have time for that guys)?

*fingers crossed*

I just quickly checked my flist this morning before work, and suddenly, I was mentioned in somebody else's lj (and that always makes me happy). Not only that, but I made someone's day. That made this shitty start of a day ever so much better.

In other news, the work with KP09 -the Nordic larp festival, has started and I've managed to no longer be the chieftain. Nope, I'm head of the info committee. And I'm okay with that. It would be nice to have even less responsibility, but this is something I can do and that I like doing, so I think it'll be fun. Now, to pick my team of info-people *rubs hands together*

You make my day:

aj_stalin
sandchigger
sortkatt
45hasle
a_stoolpidgeon
sjokoladepiken
lurvelille
abigor60
dm_hpcrazy
and Guri! My little anonymous commenter! :D

You guys are duly invited to pick the people who make your day and post it on your journals.

And just for fun:

I went Fabler, Frender og Fiender (Fables, Friends and Foes), a one night larp with a little more than 25 players and a lot of food yesterday. Set in the fables comic universe we were in the Norwegian fable town to celebrate Rememberance Day. I was Briar Rose from New York and was part of the American group of fables come to secure good friendship with the Norwegian fables. So far so good, right? Now comes the problems:

1. I was invited along by Prince Charming, who at the time was shacking up with me, and the other people in the traveling party was Bigby, Snow White and Cinderella. The problem with this is that they all have functions, they have plans and they have reasons for being there. My character is a side kick in the comic, when she's there at all, and the character they gave me was little more than that. She was secretly in love with Prince Charming and she wanted to live happily ever after. That's it.

And of course that worked at this one night larp, but the rest of my known players had plots and schemes and reasons for being there, while all I had was a love-sick side kick character with no job and very little personality. I decided to make her very interested in politics, which was fun since all my heartfelt sentiments were taken up and incorporated in Prince Charming's political platform so suddenly I was standing there defending him and helping him win the election of Fabletown North. And I made her smart, but idealistic. All that was fun to play, but again, if I hadn't been larping for more than 8 years and known that basically, if you don't have a character that works you've got to develop it by yourself, I would have been bored.

Now, instead, I threw tantrums whenever someone tried to use me as a pawn in their scheme (which happened surprisingly often), demanded to speak with whomever I wanted to speak to, discussed stuff that wasn't supposed to be openly discussed, and forced my way in on secret meetings.

2. The second problem is a much more general one, but still important for me as well: The problem with larps with big players, secrets and plots is that the people in charge; Snow White, Bigby, Askeladden and a few others, ended up locking themselves in a room and doing the important stuff, leaving most of the larp in the dark as to what was really going on, and amputating the game for most of us. It happens often, and it hardly ever works. The game seems important for all the people in on the secret meetings, and kinda dull and annoying for the people who have to wait for someone else to decide what they're supposed to do and what's going on.

3. The organizers decided to throw in the adversary and his men in black. I think it was a problem because it led to much more of problem 2, and it made everybody else's very real and, prior to the attack, important plots uninteresting because we were all going to die. Also, most of us weren't even let in on the important conversations of how we were going to defend ourselves and were stuck in the room outside. Basically, it crippled the game for me, and I think for a few others. I thought it took away more than it gave back to the game and would have liked it better without the big scary bad guy showing up at the end and killing us all (more or less).

When that is said: I had a lot of fun. I got my heart broken, I was betrayed by all my friends and I got to fall asleep and take most of the larp with me. Oh, and I got to say stuff like "I demand to be here. I'm the real victim here!" or "Cindy, I'm not talking to you right now. I'm just telling you, so you'll stop trying to make me feel better." and "I want you out of my house! Out of my life you bastard!" and of course: "Even when I get pricked in the finger, causing everyone to fall asleep it's not even about me. I'm fucking tired of being used all the time!"

Yesterday I went to the start up meeting for Knutepunkt 09, a Nordic larp conference that is hosted once every year. I has about 200 participants and is a great way to meet the übergeeks of the larping community. And I might have said that I could possibly be the boss of the 2009 conference in Norway. And I kinda want to. I have a lot of ideas on how to make it awesome, and if I get the people I want to join in and make it with me, it could be great. But on the other hand it is a daunting task, and it's kinda chilling that none of the big bosses from last time want to ever do it again. Also, it doesn't really work well with my new rule of never doing too much, since it's going to be a lot of work. And with a budget of 200.000 Norwegian crowns, it is scary to be the main girl behind it.

I can still back out. Should I?

So, this Friday I went to see Nils Petter Molvær with mirazandar at her suggestion. And it was the best concert I've been to in my life. When we entered the concert hall, the place was half-full and we got two seats down on the dance floor. Slowly the place filled up with the young and hip crowd of Norway and the two of us felt slightly out of place. The sound-guy insisted on playing what turned out to be a sort of beat in the background instead of music for about an hour and a half while we waited for the band. But, just as I thought I was entering hell, it turned out that this was done to make the concert experience all the sweeter. Not that we needed two hours of hell to feel the absolute sweetness that is Molvær, but it didn't hurt. They entered the stage, lights dimmed and suddenly this amazing techno beat started, the light shows behind the band was spectacular in a Zeromancer-style and the music, the music made you forget where you were, who you were and how much time had passed. It was an experience I'm not able to describe in words without sounding melodramatic, so I will quit trying.

Unfortunately, when me and mirazandar exited the concert we decided to go out and meet people. Giddy from the experience we entered a small pub called Cacadou, and let the magic of the concert be replaced by the questionable "magic" of watching extremely drunk old men attempt to hit on us, with loud music banging in our ears and with too many people crushed into to little space. Redeeming factors: lazerjulie and aj_stalin. Safe to say we went home a little early (2 am) and talked into the night. But parts of me wished we'd gone home straight after the concert.

Saturday was a lovely day of Jenter, øl og sigarer (Girls, beer and cigars) an arragement this year hosted by me where larp-girl go to chat about important things with pizza, chocolate, chips and obscene amounts of alcohol. Safe to say it was super.

Sunday I spent waking up, enjoying my headache from the day before, then cleaned up after it and went to aj_stalins mum's place where we watched Carnivale and drank whisky till the early hours of the morning. Or, that is what we would have done if I hadn't thrown the first glass of whisky of the evening on my computer much like chicks in chickflicks and soap operas throw on male characters. My computer luckily mostly recovered the next day and so it works, if parts of the screen is irredeemably damaged. The world sucks! Instead we drank a smaller amount of whisky and watched old Friends episodes till the early hours of morning, so it was still nice.

Why is this the ultimate weekend post? I don't know, maybe because it includes drinking on both Friday, Saturday and Sunday? Or maybe because it is so long? I don't know, you tell me. Still tired...

Oh, and look at my new icon. Isn't it smashing?

Remind me to never ever be economically in charge of anything ever again. I am so bored...also, I'm stuck with a fictional surplus of 5200kr, when in fact we're lacking 1000kr. Some of this is due to the fact that I lost some of the recipts, but most of it is due to the people who didn't give me their recipts. I wanna be done with this, but gooooood am I bored.

Yesterday I and arne finished the Konstantinopel-page. It is now operative. http://home.no/frosken/events/konstantinopel/ Go see! And don't forget to sign up for the game... ;)

btw. I'm at work and the cutest old man just asked me for a dildo. He said: I need a dildo, isn't that what they call those things shaped like male organs? Rather roundish, old, whitehaired, smiling and in need of a dildo. I'm charmed!

Limbo

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Limbo was a larp where you played someone who had died and was caught between life and death in Limbo. A white being would come in occationally and offer the eight characters tickets to different places like the gates of heaven, or reincarnation. Other than that we were in a 25. squaremeters room with weird music in the background. Oh, and you could choose to either play a character or a future version of yourself.

Limbo was a larp I was afraid of entering. I felt that the idea of sitting alone in a room with seven other people, just talking, would be difficult to do for 2.5hours. No input from the outside would make us fall out of character, I thought.

My experiences however, was that the physical size of the room, the music, the intro and outro, and the white being together helped drive the larp forward in a wholly different way than I had expected. The other players, asking questions and starting conversations that made me ask other questions, and find other answers than I thought I would find.

I chose to play myself, something I realized after the larp had started was a decition I maybe should not have made. It was difficult and the feeling of spilling your innermost fears and feelings to people who were playing fictional characters on a larp was both hard and painful. On the other hand I learned a lot about myself and the way I view life/death/the afterlife. I entered the larp thinking I had all the answers, but by the end I realized that I had found a whole set of new ones. It was both interesting and painful to realise. At the same time I'm having a guilt/sorrow reaction because of the larp that I can't really shake. I think the reason why it hit me so hard was because I played myself. I don't know if I could have done it again, at least not on a larp where other people played characters.

It was one of the hardest things I've experienced ever, and I'm not done grieving yet, but I would not have missed it for the world.

I posted this on "terningkast på forum" Marthe, so get your ass over there and post as well! :)