Comments on: (Fantasy) Role (Playing) Models

By: pete

pete — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 01:41:18 +0000

Sorry Matthew, my line on LARPing has always seen it as an inapproapriate rump of role-playing. The point, as far as I understood when I did it as a teen, of playing role-playing games was to imagine a world where you playing a character wholly unlike yourself (or some sort of Mary-Sue hero if you will). LARPing brings this into harsh relief, you may still be pretending to be the most skilled elven warrior in the land, but you are still the spotty teen with a foam sword, whose actual physical lack of prowess will mark against the awesomeness of the elven warrior. I see LARPing as anti-imagination, turning one of the few truly intellectually creative passtimes into another battle of jocks and nerds.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:41:06 +0000

Also, I simply can’t believe you’ve dissed getting dressed up as a fantasy hero and brandishing rubber weapons at people in the same week that everyone is raving about “Stand and Deliver” making it to #1 in the charts. The irony!

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:03:36 +0000

As a committed LARPer in my university days I think I resent your tone! LARPing may be a pretty silly activity, but let’s face it, it’s not much sillier than kicking a ball around for 90 minutes while dressed in a pair of shorts. Bookish nerds need exercise too.

By: Pete Baran

Pete Baran — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:51:22 +0000

True. Role Models does give him his best stab at this just because he is as blackly cynical and borderline depressed as the worst of a British sitcom character. This makes his redemption unrealistic and cheesy and would sink the whole film if said redemption did not involve hitting nerds with swords whilst dressed as Kiss.

By: logged out Tracer Hand

logged out Tracer Hand — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:45:48 +0000

Also he’s not sufficiently haunted. Every leading man should look as though he has a secret, hopefully more painful than a habit of doing the whites and the darks in the same laundry load.