Thursday, June 14, 2012

On Repulsion...

Recently, I got into a conversation with a group of LARPers about "gross-out" techniques: LARP mechanics and special effects meant to elicit a visceral reaction-- generally one of repulsion. I wanted to mull over it a bit, and then present some questions to readers.

Repulsion is a powerful emotion/reaction. It borders somewhere between hatred, fear, and, if the offensive subject is done well, pity. (In my anthropological work, repulsion and disgust is actually something that I have studied quite a bit-- I apologize, in advance, for pedantic babbling.)  For those familiar with Julia Kristeva's work on the abject, repulsion is the reaction that protects us-- the vulnerable viewer, the subject-- from a thing that threatens our personhood and identity. The most obvious example is a corpse (especially one that is visibly decaying): a corpse reminds us, the living observer, of our own mortality. By rejecting it-- through a wave of nausea, discomfort, and/or outright fear--, we reject, on some level, our own mortality. Our human weakness. The reality that, wriggling inside us, is the potential for decay. Of course, repulsion doesn't need to be directed at a corpse specifically: rotten food, vermin, insects, and disease all elicit powerful reactions of disgust. However, some would argue, and I don't necessarily disagree, that all repulsion stems from fear of the corpse and, more specifically, dying things.

To blather for a moment, to me, as someone who uses a significant amount of gore in her writing, art, and performance, there is a big difference to "repulsing" people and simply "grossing people out." Repulsion involves fear, and, to me, a confrontation with things we realize we never wanted to reconcile-- repulsion involves a recognition of a taboo intellectual curiosity. Gross-out moments involve a simpler visceral reaction: nausea or a clenched chest, without any sort of intellectual investment, as reaction to something that is simply disgusting to our senses. Both have their moments, though repulsion is more powerful. Repulsion taps into fear and, more importantly, intelligence.

To move on to LARPing, the power of repulsion is legendary. We have all probably had at least one moment, in-game, where our characters encounter something that is, simply put, repulsive. To give an example-- mine comes from Mirror, Mirror: At the tail end of a grueling 6-hour grinder, we had to reclaim orbs. The trouble was, we had to reclaim orbs from a vat of viscous goo (some sort of xanthan gum creation). It was utmost import that we, brave champions that we were, quickly and efficiently reclaim the orbs, and make a dash for it. Easier said than done: the goo was pretty disgusting. Beyond the slimy feel, the goo (which we couldn't see clearly due to the darkened module space) was disconcertingly tepid: it was warm enough to suggest something was wriggling and/or living within it. It was simple, repulsive, and, most importantly, really upped the intensity of the module. It was a good example, I feel, of the "repulsion component" used appropriately.

Repulsing people is a subtle art. As in a film, in a LARP it's easy to go over board: lots of gore, over-selling special effects, too many added sounds, and layering rotting-corpse-upon-rotting-corpse. For squeamish players, it becomes obnoxious to have to deal with excessive attempts at gore. For players who enjoy gore, excessive amounts become silly and laughable. Depending on the tone of your campaign, laughable gore might be perfect. However, if you're going for severity and mystery, less is more.

Repulsion, as I discussed, involves fear. That means it inherently involves manipulation. In order to repulse people, manipulate their expectations. Look at standard things in your game that players take for granted: safe spaces like taverns, standard attacks, and friendly, visiting NPCs. All of these things can be carefully tweaked to elicit fear. Consider the following examples...

1) Taverns: I, like many players, use taverns as places where I can feel safe. While I would never want it to be an all-the-time thing, careful toying with the Tavern, especially at "spooky" events, can be really powerful. For instance, many taverns have beds across which players stretch themselves. As part of a horror-based plot line, stick a disembodied hand under a pillow. When the players find it, it will be scary-- all the more so because a safe space has been invaded. Finding an unwelcome guest (such as insects, vermin, or, well, a hand) is much scarier in your own home than in some abandoned ruin.

2) Standard Attacks: Flavor attacks can go a long way to repulse people. Accelerant uses a standard call, "[Attack] [by Trait]" leading to calls like simply "Agony" or "Agony by Light" ("Agony" being seized by some sort of pain to the extent where you can only block). If hit by something like an "Agony by Fire," players generally roleplay the fiery pain. "Agony by Light" elicits players rping a blinding light. Accordingly, a well-placed Trait on this sort of call can easily repulse players. To again borrow from Mirror, Mirror, I give you the infamous "Agony by Maggots." Just think about it. Yes, that's right. Maggots squirming everywhere. When I was first hit by that Agony attack, as soon as my brain registered the nature of the trait, I was so repulsed that I almost dropped my weapon. It was brilliant and disgusting. Also, most importantly, it was subtle.

3) Friendly NPCs: We all expect unfriendly NPCs to be ugly and heinous, but what about friendly ones? Try this: send an rp-heavy NPC into town. The goal of this NPC should basically be to chat up players, get to know them, and help them out. However, make this NPC hideously ugly-- perhaps gaping sores or something similar. In any case, make the NPC truly difficult to look at. This will no doubt repulse players, but in a very powerful way: it will force them to reconcile any biases they may have based on the physical appearance of an individual. That's the power of repulsion: it forces us into an internal debate with our values and prejudices.

So, these are just a few ideas, and urge you to pursue your own. What have been particularly repulsive moments in campaigns? Is there anything that you would want to try? Is there anything that has failed? Where do people need to draw the line?

4 comments:

  1. Zoe, we invaded each other's brain space again. . . This is a really awesome post.

    My biggest repulsion moment this weekend involved zero gross-out effects, but was all about Bef's amazing acting-- sounds, gestures, movement, and the contrast she created between this image of aesthete highborn dignity and this horrific creature. I think I threw up a little in my mouth. o_O

    Though a thing Esme conveyed to a certain person also created a rather strong visceral reaction, somewhere between stomach-turning and oh-no-he'd-better-not! <3

    In my case, the line is kind of drawn for me. I agree that too much buckets-of-blood too often can yield diminishing returns, but I'm also a fainter. So if the gross-out stuff gets too, um, medically specific, I'm out. Literally. >_<

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    1. It's scary sometimes. :-p

      I wish, wish, wish I had seen that.

      And... hahahahahaha.

      I think people's relative limits are important things of which staff needs to be aware. For instance, phobias, especially ones of seemingly innocuous things like cats or birds, are things people take for granted. You don't want to design a really cool module for somebody, only to have them lose it because it's bothering them on an OoG level. Similarly, I'm someone who enjoys the creep factor, a lot, but I understand many people don't like it. I think pre-play surveys (Endgame uses one) are a great idea. You can ask things like, "What do you like?" and "If you want to share, is there anything that really bothers you OoG?" That way, if people are willing to be forthcoming, awkward situations can be avoided. Similarly, if somebody is thinking of running horror stuff, they need to check in with players if at all possible. I tend to run fairly high-horror stuff that's emotionally intense: I wouldn't want people involved, however, who would be having a miserable time.

      Damn. I wish I had seen that vampire.

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  2. I think the most repulsive a LARP scene was meant to be (that I've been in) was in Lost Eidolons. The doctors were learning new medical techniques, and it involved brain surgery, which was mimicked by a plastic skull casing that contained a jello brain filled with all sorts of... bits we had to pry out. (There was a second surgery module later which involved amputating an arm and affixing tentacles- extremely cool, but not so gross since the materials were wood, plastic, and fabric instead of jello.)

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  3. Jyn: awww! <3


    Personally, I am not a huge fan of relying on props for repulsion - while they can be VERY effective in a module setting (Endgame does a great job with that stuff, for example), since a majority of my encounters are me-vs-PCs, I've had to work more on coming up with things I can do physically to elicit reactions.

    I'm lucky enough to have a decent amount of control over my voice, and am pretty shame-free when it comes to unnatural body postures and "ugly" faces. Since we humans are generally wired to react to fast or jerky movements, body postures that read as "diseased" or "sick", and sudden loud noises as a "threat", you can usually rely on an abrupt change in physical behavior to freak *most* PCs out.

    What Jyn saw was a great example: the NPC I played was Terribly Civilized for 75% of the encounter, and had been so for 100% of the prior encounters with the PCs - physically, I costumed in a flowing silk dress and corset and fluttered a fan constantly, maintained a prettily modulated "cultured" voice, and engaged in nonthreatening, fluttery, feminine movements (the fan helped, as did constant "social touching" of the PCs seated near me).

    The length of the encounter helped as well - since the PCs entertained the NPC for 10+ minutes, that gave them an extended baseline with those behaviors and actions, and made them "normal". This meant that, despite the PCs knowing they were going to trap/attack me, they were still unprepared for the sudden moment when I contorted my face into a fanged snarl, dropped into a low crouch, and snarled at the PCs as loud as I could in my most guttural, animalistic shriek.


    Zeddy: Agreed. I had to worry about this when I was staffing NERO, in fact, as we had a PC who was exceptionally phobic of clowns (or anything which could be mistaken for them in the dark). On several occasions we would specifically send someone out to warn said PC / take her out of play before encounters hit the field (which was a bit easier in NERO than Accelerant, since that system had a clearly defined out-of-game state). I'd love to see that sort of a question added to all game registrations, frankly.

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