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Feel the Sting of My Foam SwordA must-see documentary about LARPing.

By Grady Hendrix
Updated Monday, Nov. 12, 2007, at 4:03 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Play is as necessary to civic health as dreaming is to mental health, but playing makes Americans suspicious. We measure our worth by our jobs, but what happens when there are fewer and fewer meaningful jobs? Many of the Darkon players are trapped in the classic nerd conundrum: They don't find the corporate track fulfilling, and so they wind up working as Starbucks baristas and office administrators. At the same time, they're smart enough to know that being called a Starbucks "team member" is just a nicer way of being called a Starbucks slave. "Everything is gone," Andrew of Laconia says. "Everything that was once noble and good in this world is gone and it's been replaced by Wal-Mart. And McDonald's. And Burger King. Some people just want more. They're tired of working their ass off for material goods. You could just stay home and watch TV, or you could work for adventure, you know?"

So what happened in Darkon when the adventure was over and the moviemakers went home? It all depends on whom you ask. According to Wells, "Winning all the time was beginning to become a chore. Mordom dominated the game for two decades and every battle was becoming more and more stressful to us because we had to be perfect. So we decided to abandon our empire and focus on wandering the land." But according to Lipman, "Mordom spent more fighting this war than on any war in the past, there was internal strife, they had nothing more to gain and everything to lose and so, amazingly, like the Soviet Union, they folded. Also," he says, referring to a LARPer whose quest for his first girlfriend figures in the documentary, "Danny got laid. That's another really good thing that's come out of the movie."

But no matter how many people it helps to get laid, Americans will always be suspicious of adults playing a game of make-believe as gloriously and goofily unself-conscious as Darkon. Maybe if it used a ball or a racquet people could accept it but, as it is, Darkon makes outsiders cringe. So, why do these weird people in Maryland and Virginia keep playing it? "The game isn't an escape," Wells says. "It's a hobby and a sport. If other people had the guts to try it, they would love it."

Darkon players are social creatures by necessity—they can't play their game alone—and in a country where socializing is endangered, that's a sterling recommendation. But there's something else at work, too. In Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut writes: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Darkon is made up of hundreds of people who spend the majority of their lives pretending to be high-school students, soldiers back from Iraq, administrative assistants, waiters, project managers, probate lawyers, retail clerks, and textile buyers. But Darkon shows them for who they really are: warriors, princesses, magicians, kings and queens. They're hacking reality, creating a social system where the part of their lives that matters isn't the part that stresses over a PowerPoint presentation, but the part that charges into battle and does great things. They're careful about what they pretend to be, but to them, what they need to be careful about is pretending too hard that their jobs are all that they can be.

Or not.

"Darkon is an enclosed social environment. It's its own little Lord of the Flies with subcultures and cults and religions," Lipman says. "It's an excellent microcosm of the world. But mostly, we do it because we like to run around and hit each other."

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Grady Hendrix, a New York writer, runs the New York Asian Film Festival.
Still from Darkon © 2007 The Independent Film Channel LLC. All rights reserved.
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Remarks from the Fray Editor

In general this was a very sympathetic Fray: the worst criticism came for the use of the word 'dweebs.' "I don't think I've ever see a headline that so completely contradicted the tone of an article" Oakenguy said, and Ziggytosh replied "Still, whatever. The headline got me to read the article and the article was great. Also, the headline is just being honest. That's the starting point for 99% of Americans: 'hey, check out the dweebs.' But by linking their struggle to mine (I hate my job too) and talking about what the game means to these guys, it quickly took them beyond dweebhood and made me (and others too, I'd guess) respect them and stop to wonder whether these LARPers are onto something here."

There's a discussion on how the game works here, including a contribution from one Iskander of Mordom, and jwschmidt's verdict on another group: "Oh I can riff on civil war reenactors. But that would just be too easy."

Our favourite response came from Spud, below. He's raised his standard: if you want to volunteer, answer his post in the Fray.

Remarks from the Fray

Maybe I am one of the bigger goofballs reading this article or it could be my love of a 15 year underdog who just keeps fighting, but I'm ready to recruit 50 guys, come to the aid of Laconia, and kick Mordom's butt. Thank God I live in Idaho or I might be out there with them. Maybe I could take up bowling instead...

--spud

(To reply, click here)

The article on the LARP groups fascinated me. While they tout groups that have been around for 15+ years, the Society for Creative Anachronism has been around for 42 years, and is still going strong. I find it depressing that researchers unanimously decree that we are losing our social networks and societal groups when in fact, those "traditional" groups have been morphing into new ways of socializing all along. I don't think the USA has any less "community" than we did 50 years ago--I do think, however, that the community has changed from a localized, geographic entity into a far larger, more individualized-focus oriented sphere.

--Vicontessa13

The difference between the 'new' societies and the 'old' societies is that with the old method, you got drawn in without much effort on your part. You automatically attended the local Church, joined the local PTA, and so forth. In contrast, to join an organization such as the SCA you have to go out of your way to join up. The result is a fair number of people left on the sidelines who are either too timid to make the leap or ignorant of where to jump.

--Xando

(To reply, click here)

We pack theaters and pay outrageous prices for popcorn to watch a film edited to a story, where these people are acting out fantasies in real time.

--Liberal Patriot

(To reply, click here)

(11/14)

Washington Post