Knutepunkt 2013 – A subjective recap – Part 2

Note: if I forgot your name or you want it removed etc, please let me know, in general all corrections welcome (contact form or comments).

Thursday was the day of migration to the official convention site, KP magic proving that dragging a suitcase in cold weather and a 1h30-long bus ride can fly by in charming company. There was more saying hello to people I saw at last KP, this time without the mild faux pas of kissing a German guy on the cheek like the night before. While I have your attention, please allow me a little tangent.

Rules for francophone larper cheek kissing

French male larper: if you’re a man, 2 kisses in most regions (larp is one of those scenes were straight men kiss each other in France). If unsure and when in doubt, if you’re a man, just shake hands with French men. If you’re a woman, just  kiss French larpers, whatever their gender.

French female larper: 2 kisses in most regions.

Belgian larper: 1 kiss (for all gender combinations if people know each other).

Swiss larper: shake hands if you’re both men, 3 kisses if at least one of you is a woman

Non-francophone KP larper: shake hands if unsure, otherwise hug. (I normally don’t hug since I left the USA so it’s really hard for me to re-adjust everytime I go to KP. And I don’t shake hands with women outside of business meetings)

So the location, dammit!

Forest, cabins, a frozen lake: the camp site was everything I would have expected from a Nordic camp site. The antlers on the front door made me think of Canadian larp movie The Wild Hunt (which I haven’t seen yet). Ran into the French crew at check in: the electro-larp crew fresh from attending GN’Idée, my Swiss larp con a few days before, some met at the GNiales French larp con and some I met for the first time. I was wearing a french hip-hop t-shirt and one larper made disparaging comments on hip-hop, thus confirming the whole point of my program item on Saturday (no offense and we worked it out, but it confirmed I’m not paranoid). I got my books, a badge, a room, a sandwich, a nap: everything was falling into place.

Opening ceremony

We were warned there would be strobe lights in the opening ceremony, given a ticket to hold on to dearly and asked to write on it something that was preventing us from crossing a personal border. My initial internal reaction was “Damn Nords and their close-to-home-ritual-bullshit!” I later learned rituals are a particularly Norwegian thing. It will take me ages to work out those peculiarities. But I really just hoped we wouldn’t have to dance. Instead we got an amazing play-skit-thingie reworked Twin Peaks into KP goodness. Twin Peaks is on my top 3 shows favorite in television history, so I really, really felt welcome. The skit was beautiful, and funny, and… even the log lady did a great job at chewing as we dropped the little papers in her egg. (I need to find the link again so that you can enjoy it too) People then split up in groups of 8 for the opening game.

Opening game

We played Crossing borders, the remake of a Fastaval scenario. You can download this freeform game about 4 pairs of neighbors who hate each other so much that the situations will escalate to murder here. This was very basic and outrageously played, but a lot of fun, if only for the nationality mix in our group: Nords, Americans, Palestinian, Dutch and French. The last international jeepform game I played in English was very emotional and heavy (The kick inside at the GNiales) so it was fun to use similar techniques but for the lulz. I loved the part where we had to stop and explain the concept of bail, and the overall creativity and physical comedy with cocaine-pillows, milk carton-mace etc. Playing a passive-aggressive paranoid old man getting shot dead during a homeowners association meeting is a great way to start a con.

The toolbox of pay and play corporate larp

More Court of Moravia magic, this time on their corporate game set in a scientific submarine rescue mission, full of tension, international politics and some tech. They explained very well what they were offering to companies, how different it was from teambuilding or assessment activities. I really liked when they went into the practicalities of it, where the game was held physically (e.g. on company premises or not), whether the HR manager was present etc. I originally intended to leave before the end to go to the Hour of the Rant, but it was so interesting that I stayed (and it was shortened a bit from the theoretical duration to allow people to relocate).

Hour of the rant

Two years in a row, my KP items had been placed in front of the Hour or the Rant. Obviously some sort of hazing rituals from the organizers. I escaped the curse this time and got to see larpers get on stage and bitch about stuff, and/or make jokes. It’s actually quite important to be there because controversies that are raised during the session usually color the discussions of the rest of the con… and this one was no exception.

I am not sure how much of it I missed, but I just caught the end of a piece by Emma Wieslander with something about people showing love to each other at KP and this sounded really nice. Sure, not ranty, but nice. Karsten Dombrowski basically told Nords to stop brainwashing innocent French-German TV people into thinking that Nordic larp is the good real larp as opposed to the lame regular larp that non-Nords play (for my French side of the story, check out this post). There was an anti-“keeping new larp info to facebook” rant (fair point), something about 40ish larp luminaries having sex with people 15 years younger and therefore spoiling the scene renewal. Not being exactly part of the Nordic larp scene I don’t know how much of an issue that is, but it was rather exotic to listen to. And funny.

The longest piece was probably Ars Lautus, a really skilled take on how to simulate sex in larp with toilet brushes and other utensils tied to your back, using every single definition, buzzword and controversy possible in the Nordic larp scene. Toilet humor for sure, and great physical comedy and satire. So it’s nice to see that people can go to extreme intellectual heights at KP and still make fools of themselves in the hour of the rant.

The fucking rulebook (edited thanks to comment below): Solveig Rydland took a comment by Lizzie Stark complaining that there was too much literature to read before understanding Nordic larp and asking for “the fucking rulebook” of Nordic larp… and had the great idea of taking the phrase literally. End result: Trine Lise  Lindhal, Elin Nilsen and Katrin Førde  gave a very, very smart talk holding copies of “the fucking rulebook”, i.e. sex etiquette at KP. You can actually download said fucking rulebook right here (2 hilarious pages). “Fistbump” was just perfect and I nearly peed myself when they actually showed the fuck sock box.

At some point Claus Raasted and a bunch of Danish men went on stage in a mock protest/victim testimonial to ask KP women to stop using Danish men as sex objects. It was really funny for everyone until they actually started listing real women who had had Danish husbands, boyfriends or just sex with Danish men and showing their faces. Yes, technically this was a slut shaming mechanism, and triggered outrage (and apologies) later in the con. Now practically, last time I checked, there’s nothing wrong with having consensual sex with another individual. And the KP scene is definitely rather open about this. So I didn’t see shaming there. To me these women were not shown in a negative light. They were not called sluts. Is it OK to use someone’s image without their consent? No. Was the whole thing smart and subtle? No. This was a pure example of Pierre Desproges’ “one can laugh about anything, but not with everyone”. I come from a culture of dark humor, sarcasm, dissing, but have only ever used the word slut in a positive way. So yeah, mixed feelings. This triggered some sort of poster war that I mostly missed, and a lot of discussion on facebook about freedom of speech, humor, feminism, and providing a safe space for everyone at KP. And discussion is good.

Edit following such discussion: Claus confirmed there was never any shaming intent. And when I say mixed I really mean “mixed”, and not “all bad”. 1/3rd of me didn’t even see a problem at the time and just laughed, 1/3rd feels bad for empathic/ethical/political reasons and 1/3rd thinks that humor and art are sacred and should never be trumped by political correctedness.

It was then on for drinks and discussions with random people with weird accents, like you do at KP.

Next in part 3: Shotgun-wielding philosophers! A badass castle you can actually play in! Celestra! Augmented reality ipads!