I DO NOT LARP!

As I have stated before this blog has become a broken record when it comes to martial arts and I will be soon blogging more about other things. Some of those things are gaming related topics as I am a founding member of the Game Arts Guild, so I want to clarify something here loud and clear: there is no overlap between my gaming and my martial arts, I DO NOT LARP!

LARP refers to a type of game, specifically a type of Role-Playing Game, where people dress up as characters and play the game in a live action sort of way. Sometimes there is overlap between LARP and martial arts, most famously and explicitly in the SCA, where they sometimes simulate large dark ages battles that even include arrows:

But as you may have noticed, that kind of fighting on a massive scale the way the SCA does it involves stop-and-go fighting. It may be a necessary evil to pull off the battles they have safely which sometimes involves thousands of fighters at once, but the over all effect is throughout the organization they simply have no continuous sparring what so ever. There are competent martial artists involved, but the LARP aspect limits the transmission of the martial art skills within the organization.

In general I am unconformable with people dressing up in costumes. Halloween is fine, but when I see adults dressed in costume off stage for any other reason I find it unnerving. The few times I attended SCA events, I was not enthusiastic about the costume element, and it showed. I find PAX uncomfortable and Sakura-Kan unbearable. But it goes much farther than that for me, I don't like to work out in martial arts uniforms - I don't like Gis in Judo, Karate or BJJ, I hate monkey suits in Kung Fu. I don't even like to wear workout clothes with the name of my martial arts school on them - or even  Muay Thai shorts with Thai or Chinese writing on them.

In the mid 90's I had an internet moniker that wasn't my real name, and I was trying to get some business done with people you have heard of before, big names in the 90's gaming industry. I was late on getting a reply, (and this was the difference between getting a product out for Christmas shopping season vs getting it out in January,) and I have always wondered how much me using a moniker complicated that communication, when I could have used my real name instead. Monikers were common back then and internet culture was in its infancy, but in general, I don't like pen names, masks, monikers, costumes, martial arts uniforms, etc.

I am uncomfortable with pretense. I try to slightly understate my martial arts skills, experience, etc. every time I comment about it. This is me in the red in 2019 sparring with a 3rd degree blackbelt in Ninjitsu at the Bremerton Martial Arts Center:
What you don't see in this video is sometimes that guy gets the better of me in sparring, even if he didn't on that day, but do not doubt the modest claims I have made about my martial arts training. I have no plans to make money off of martial arts, but perhaps unlike most martial arts consumers I have needs to actually use martial arts I learn. I am skill oriented, not status oriented. I don't want or need or like belts, rank, recognition, uniforms, etc.

I DO NOT LARP!