Because Folklore is More Fun Than a Cognitive Assessment Protocol
So I have finally started actually writing stuff down for the LARP that I've been wanting to write for a few years now. It is something of a literary exercise because really the idea grew out of a lit paper I wrote many years ago. I am conceptualizing it at an atmospheric game with potential (at least for some characters) for deep roleplay. It is also something of a fandom game, though the fandom is one that doesn't have too many fans in the LARP circles. This is a game set in medieval pagan Russia, and the source material is Russian, Ural, and possibly Ukranian folklore. I am calling it Night of Ivana Kupala (though that's grammatically odd), which is the old Russian summer solstice celebration/fertility festival. Ideally I would really love to run it on June 24th and run it at night, outside, and somewhere wooded. I'd love to build a fire to jump over. Not sure how realistic that is, where I can find a place that would let me do that, but it would be so very awesome. I realize that there is no way I'll get it written by June, but
As I am writing, I am re-reading some of the stories and legends. It's a little troubling because, now I am reminded that Russian folklore like the rest of Russia's literary tradition, is very romantic, but horribly depressing. Russians love tragedy. This is all well and good, but this is now coming out to be a pretty depressing game. Not dark really (I haven't mixed in any of the Ukranian lore yet), but heartbreak is the name of the game in Russian legends, and if I stay true to the spirit of the thing, there will be a lot of really miserable players who feel that they have lost the game.
I know I keep coming back to this issue, because being at least in some way Russian, I don't consider a happy ending always a good ending or the right ending. Dramatic tragedy appeals to me on a very deep level. As a player it is more important for me to carry through my character's faults to their logical conclusion than it is to have my character learn a lesson and become a better person and get a reward for it. Case in point, in one of my games at Intercon this year I played a deeply flawed, typecastingly deranged and delusional character. She spent about half of the game running around terrorizing everyone in the game until they'd had enough and murdered her slowly and painfully. People kept coming up to me afterwards apologizing for killing me. They expected me to be upset, I guess, because I "lost." But to me, the game was a total win. I got to explore the character's simple, child-like, unrestrained glee at causing things pain. I got to play out her complete lack of impulse control or foresight. I got to re-live the characters central conflict in life, the clash between her desires, her (sociopathic) view of the world and societal constraints, disapproval, and refusal to understand her and leave a place for her. I lived the only way I knew how to live. I died inevitably, because there was no place for me in the world. And I died the best way I could have imagined, at the hand of the one person I thought understood me. It was tragic. It was beautiful. It was a win.
I find that when writing I am always warned off of building characters for whom dying or being abandoned by their loved ones is a game win. Because people get attached to their characters and then are sad when they die, because they feel helpless and as though their characters weren't given a choice, because it means they are out of the game or have to get a backup character, and because people who grew up with the Disney version of the Little Mermaid expect a happy ending. In this game especially, I just don't know what to do about that.
Oh, also, methinks I could use another writer on this project, preferably one who is into the source material or has interest in folklore in general. I tend to work better in collaboration, if only to have someone to talk things through with and someone to check my flights of fancy. Any interest?
As I am writing, I am re-reading some of the stories and legends. It's a little troubling because, now I am reminded that Russian folklore like the rest of Russia's literary tradition, is very romantic, but horribly depressing. Russians love tragedy. This is all well and good, but this is now coming out to be a pretty depressing game. Not dark really (I haven't mixed in any of the Ukranian lore yet), but heartbreak is the name of the game in Russian legends, and if I stay true to the spirit of the thing, there will be a lot of really miserable players who feel that they have lost the game.
I know I keep coming back to this issue, because being at least in some way Russian, I don't consider a happy ending always a good ending or the right ending. Dramatic tragedy appeals to me on a very deep level. As a player it is more important for me to carry through my character's faults to their logical conclusion than it is to have my character learn a lesson and become a better person and get a reward for it. Case in point, in one of my games at Intercon this year I played a deeply flawed, typecastingly deranged and delusional character. She spent about half of the game running around terrorizing everyone in the game until they'd had enough and murdered her slowly and painfully. People kept coming up to me afterwards apologizing for killing me. They expected me to be upset, I guess, because I "lost." But to me, the game was a total win. I got to explore the character's simple, child-like, unrestrained glee at causing things pain. I got to play out her complete lack of impulse control or foresight. I got to re-live the characters central conflict in life, the clash between her desires, her (sociopathic) view of the world and societal constraints, disapproval, and refusal to understand her and leave a place for her. I lived the only way I knew how to live. I died inevitably, because there was no place for me in the world. And I died the best way I could have imagined, at the hand of the one person I thought understood me. It was tragic. It was beautiful. It was a win.
I find that when writing I am always warned off of building characters for whom dying or being abandoned by their loved ones is a game win. Because people get attached to their characters and then are sad when they die, because they feel helpless and as though their characters weren't given a choice, because it means they are out of the game or have to get a backup character, and because people who grew up with the Disney version of the Little Mermaid expect a happy ending. In this game especially, I just don't know what to do about that.
Oh, also, methinks I could use another writer on this project, preferably one who is into the source material or has interest in folklore in general. I tend to work better in collaboration, if only to have someone to talk things through with and someone to check my flights of fancy. Any interest?