Rachel is a Jewish bisexual autistic woman (she/her) with ADHD in her twenties. She loves writing and can always be found with her nose in a book! Her plan for the future is to earn her Psy. D. in clinical psychology. This interested in psychology started as a way to help her understand people better and to figure out what it was about others I kept not getting. It is also something deeply linked with her self-advocacy. There is a gap in communication between the autistic community and providers, and she want to help bridge it and challenge others to see things from different perspectives.
View all postsHow LARPing Taught me Networking
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Back when I was a teenager, I began attending anime conventions. First with my dad, who took me to my very first one before I even knew what a convention was, and then with friends my age. At first, I’d go for a day, usually on the weekend. I’d check out any panels or other events that looked interesting on the schedule and spend the rest of my time shopping around the dealer’s hall or artist alley. One of my aunts even liked to make cosplays for me to wear, a tradition that had graduated from her love of making me a Halloween costume each year.
Then, one year, I noticed a particular event listed on the schedule; the LARP. LARP stands for Live Action Roleplaying. Think D&D, but it involves a lot more action than sitting around the table rolling dice. Those who know more about it will imagine costumed people running around a campground hitting each other with foam swords and little bean bags meant to represent spells. In the anime convention circuit, however, a LARP is more like a happy medium between these two. Costumes are optional, play happens inside a single room (or more if the con organizers like you), and most of the physical activity required just involves moving from one table to another. It’s essentially one big collaborative fanfiction where everyone roleplays as their favorite anime characters.
When my friends and I decided to go to one of these LARPs, it was on a pure whim. Yet, from just a few hours of play, we became hooked. It’s hard to say what exactly drew us to it, but maybe we were simply fortunate enough that we managed to find something fun and mostly unconnected to the larger story so that we felt satisfied from only those few hours. We eventually learned over time that to experience a LARP’s story properly you needed to be there from start to finish. This turned the conventions we attended into multiday affairs. Our main concern was staying as involved in the LARP as possible while occasionally stealing some free time to eat or check out the dealer’s hall for con merch.
My dad supported me in doing this with my friends, even when it involved taking time off from school to attend all three convention days. He paid for hotel rooms and drove us all there before my friends had their own cars. He did all this even before he started to join in on the LARPs themselves (though he eventually did). Why? Because he felt the LARPs were good for me.
Becoming involved with a LARP’s plot, especially its main plotline, was never easy. The game was often dominated by players the most at ease with taking control of any scene they were in. These were people who could effortlessly navigate any social situation in a way I never could. While there were people who tried to look out for shy or less experienced players, most tended to focus on their own goals even to the detriment of other’s fun or involvement in the story. Not out of malice but just a focus on what they wanted to do. In smaller roleplaying games, a game master (person who controls the plot) could curtail such instances of “main character syndrome.” But in a game with so many players, it is inevitable that some characters will end up more important to the plot than others. So, it becomes a kind of struggle for plot relevancy, where there is always a risk of following a hook only to end up stuck in a side plot that others have little reason to help you out of. I’m probably not making it sound fun. I won’t lie, there were many times I struggled during LARPs. I think I usually had at least one meltdown from pure frustration per LARP each year. Yet, somehow, the fun I still had made me determined to come back and do better next time. It pushed me to push myself. I had to take more initiative, interact with people more, work harder to forge a connection with others even over a very short period, and manage my frustrations.
My dad and I realized that part of what made LARPing so valuable to me was that it provided a safe environment for me to do all this. It was a sort of social interaction training ground. One where there were no true stakes to failure (other than my own negative emotions). It also eased any sense of social anxiety because when you are in a LARP you know other people want to interact with you. Interacting with you (and by extension your character) is a core part of the experience they’re there for! There are also more detailed and openly discussed rules for how things are supposed to go, something anyone on the spectrum can appreciate. To this day, I am a big believer in the value LARPing held to my social development.
That all being said, I haven’t done any LARPing in several years. When COVID hit in 2020, it was curtains for any hobby that involved a bunch of people being crammed together indoors. I actually have a vivid memory of lockdown being declared just a week before a con I was planning to go to and my dad’s relief that the decision to go or not had been taken out of his hands. Since then, I haven’t really had a good opportunity to dive back into LARPing. Especially since my friends have drifted away from it as well. Even so, I still have many fond memories of it.
At the beginning of August, I attended a research conference in Chicago after being invited to participate in a presentation by a researcher I’d been working with. Going to such a conference included a steep financial cost, even if I received payment. But I knew it would be a valuable networking opportunity, so I went.
Over the 4 days of that research conference, I worked hard to make the most of this opportunity. I’ve mentioned before that networking doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’ve learned to push myself to interact with people more. Even when sometimes I get brushed off, or when I know most people who take my business card will never contact me again. It’s hard to ignore that fear of rejection, but I do it.
It was on the second day that I realized all of this felt familiar to me. It was during that evening’s inclusive research roundtable. I was able to provide a lot of input and share my perspective as someone who collaborates with researchers on autism-focused projects. I was glad I’d picked this one, confident in the opportunities it would give me to connect further with the researchers there. And then it hit me: this reminded me of how I felt during a LARP. The desire to maximize the impact I could have and the connections I could form was a surprisingly similar experience to my previous struggles to get involved with the main plot of a LARP.
But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is what LARPing had been preparing me for, after all. How to speak up for myself and advocate for my causes even with no one around to support me. It taught me how to take chances on a connection, and to bounce back from failed attempts. How to learn from those failures. I’ve been proud of the progress I’ve made in improving my ability to network, but now I’ve realized I may never have made those strides without the bedrock of the skills LARPing taught me.
Not bad for silly little games of pretend.