This might be just a caveat emptor - but when dealing with a more realistic scenario, it's easier to overwhelm people. We'll never be amnesiac in space: but we might have memories of violence or tragedy that too easily arise.
It's easy to say "people who have those memories will avoid this LARP", but I'm certain that's not always true. People who have traumatic memories and who cannot relinquish them, are SOMETIMES over-attracted to opportunities to revisit them. (Example: my mother, who was in a concentration camp, obsessively read books about WW-II, the Nazi's, and similar camp-like experiences like "One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch" or "King Rat" by Clavell.)
I wonder (but I speculate and reach a bit far) what might happen to a person who participates in this LARP, and later has a realistic traumatic event of a similar nature. Given the immersive nature of the experience, it might make such a situation harder.
4 and last. LARP is its own thing.
I recognize that you are deeply invested in immersive literature and LARP. But I think we both recognize that it is not a particularly well regarded or popular medium.
You won't take kindly to this, and I'm sorry: but in a very real sense LARP is limited to a rather small sector of the population: nerdy, educated, literate, with money and free time. I'm not just saying that it lacks the wide net of other media: I'm saying that it is, by its nature, a narrow medium for a narrow pool of people.
In that sense, your particular story smacks to me of a sort of nerd-voyeurism, a desire to create and share a lightweight window into other people's real trauma. An arm-chair disaster tourism of the tragedy of others.
The very thing that makes LARP different (experiential role-playing which produce a close simulacra of real emotion), well: that's the heart of my unhappiness. It's a small audience of insulated people, using the real tragedy that others have experienced for the benefit of having a fun weekend.
That it happens to be close to some of my own experiences, means that the trivialization of other people's tragedy feels more personal than it should.
no subject
3. There is actual potential harm here.
This might be just a caveat emptor - but when dealing with a more realistic scenario, it's easier to overwhelm people. We'll never be amnesiac in space: but we might have memories of violence or tragedy that too easily arise.
It's easy to say "people who have those memories will avoid this LARP", but I'm certain that's not always true. People who have traumatic memories and who cannot relinquish them, are SOMETIMES over-attracted to opportunities to revisit them. (Example: my mother, who was in a concentration camp, obsessively read books about WW-II, the Nazi's, and similar camp-like experiences like "One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch" or "King Rat" by Clavell.)
I wonder (but I speculate and reach a bit far) what might happen to a person who participates in this LARP, and later has a realistic traumatic event of a similar nature. Given the immersive nature of the experience, it might make such a situation harder.
4 and last. LARP is its own thing.
I recognize that you are deeply invested in immersive literature and LARP. But I think we both recognize that it is not a particularly well regarded or popular medium.
You won't take kindly to this, and I'm sorry: but in a very real sense LARP is limited to a rather small sector of the population: nerdy, educated, literate, with money and free time. I'm not just saying that it lacks the wide net of other media: I'm saying that it is, by its nature, a narrow medium for a narrow pool of people.
In that sense, your particular story smacks to me of a sort of nerd-voyeurism, a desire to create and share a lightweight window into other people's real trauma. An arm-chair disaster tourism of the tragedy of others.
The very thing that makes LARP different (experiential role-playing which produce a close simulacra of real emotion), well: that's the heart of my unhappiness. It's a small audience of insulated people, using the real tragedy that others have experienced for the benefit of having a fun weekend.
That it happens to be close to some of my own experiences, means that the trivialization of other people's tragedy feels more personal than it should.
[End part 2 of 2]