A Reflection

Hello everyone,

Josée here.

I don't usually post publically about things like this, because there are certain aspects of my life I tend to want to keep private from the internet...but...I don't know. I feel like now is as good a time as any to write a piece here about some stuff that...made me who I am today...and lead me to be the gamer I am. So I apologise in advance if this post rambles, because I am writing down exactly what enters my head...as it enters.

Here, I should probably announce that there is minor description of sexual assault on a minor in this post. Consider this something of a trigger warning.


Today, I found out that due to some stuff happening (I don't know the details and I'm not sure I would want to anyway) the group I widely regard as being responsible for my entrance into live-gaming and LARPing is...we're not sure if the social presence is being withdrawn or if the group itself is being forced to stop existing. Either way...it's hit me, as it would. And there are so many reasons for this.

When I was thirteen, I joined a tabletop Dungeons and Dragons group. It was a group that was comprised of older gamers than myself, and because there were few women, there was definite sexual innuendo and double entendre that flew around. I was mature for my age and didn't mind the attention. Until the guy running the group got a little too...physical for my liking. I was a close friend of his, and he was several years older than me. He groped me, over my clothes. Nothing more...but it continued over each session we had. We ran the game in a public place, and no-one seemed to notice. I disliked it, but felt that as no-one else had an issue with him doing it, that it must have just been me...I was considered a bit of a "prude" by my friends, and so I thought it was my fault it felt wrong...no-one else seemed bothered. But I didn't leave the group. They were my friends - none of the others did anything to me - and I enjoyed being around other people who didn't think my gaming was strange or weird.

I left the group when I was sixteen. Me and the guy running it fell out and I cut myself off from everyone. I found myself alone, with few friends, and my life became that almost of a hermit. I went to school, I came home. That was my life.

And then one of the old Dungeons and Dragons group (one who had stood by me, unlike most of the others when things went wrong) suggested I go check out this other group...I decided not to for a year (the leader of the Dungeons and Dragons group claimed he had friends there, which scared me away from going) and then...at seventeen...I bit the bullet.

I turned up to one of their live Vampire games. I was just shy of my eighteenth birthday, and I built my character on that night, and went. My first ever livegame character. Emily Richards, was created that night, and...

And to this day I admire that character. I might write a post about that later.

I loved the game. I loved the people. I felt so welcome, so accepted. My past wasn't relevant. For a year, almost two, I had hidden away from gaming because I was scared I would meet more people like the leader of that Dungeons and Dragons group. And I was so wrong. I met people there I am sure will be my lifelong friends. I met people I fell in love with, even if it was not to last. I met people who accepted me for all my faults and flaws, and some who even thought they were somewhat "charming"!

I met people who saw me for me. I wasn't just a pretty pair of boobs. I wasn't just something to be admired for gratification, or the token woman who could handle innuendo and double entendre aimed at her. I was one of a number of women - all of whom could hold their own when they wanted! I was acknowledged as having a brain, not just a body. My characters stood tall and proud, and so could I, I flourished in that group. I learnt. I could be who I was, love the things I loved, and be damned proud of it.

In that group, I met people who encouraged me to stop seeing LARP as "crosscountry with swords" and to give it a shot. Now, I have a character at Empire who's about to get married after a year of personal plot leading up to it, and a Resurgence character who has made a choice that has lead her on a very different path to other characters. I played Vampire the Requiem for the first time (with truly amazing STs - I can't praise them highly enough!) and felt confident enough that I used that system as my introduction to roleplaying to my housemates at Uni. I joined homebrew systems (Godshock - what a game, if only it had continued!) and adored the 24 hour events. (Seriously, where else would you play Live Paranoia and get dressed up in Santa costumes, parading around the building at 2 in the morning?!) I would not be looking to do the dissertation I intend to without the people I met there. My whole life...would be so different...so...empty...without them.

In this group...I got to be whoever I wanted. It's the beauty of gaming. You lose yourself in the narrative you build with those around you. you build friendships, enmities, rivalries, loves, hatreds and comforts with people you might never have met before. And out of those in-character interactions, are built relationships and friendships in reality.

I hope the group isn't ending. I fear it is. And it makes me so sad. Because I know, without the group...I wouldn't be writing this now. I would probably not know some of you who are reading this right now. And it hurts. I would never claim it was perfect...but it has helped shape me into...well...me. And it's a shame the group is ending like this.

So all I have left to say feels like something of a eulogy. Thank you, group, for making me feel worth something when others had left me feeling worthless. Thank you for reminding me that one bad experience, no matter how prolonged, does not mean every experience will be the same. Thank you for encouraging me to try new things. Thank you for letting me be me, when I thought being me was a bad thing, and for letting me be someone else when I needed to escape being me for a while. Thank you for giving me the best friends I could ever have hoped for, and for leading me to love I never expected to find, no matter how shortlived. Thank you for nurturing me as I grew up, and for still being there for me no matter how far away I travelled.

Thank you for just being, when I needed you the most.