Franziska Burstyn’s paper at Ill Met By Moonlight included a little discussion in the chat sidebar. A little group of LARPers gathered to talk about how we can ‘rewild’ the experience of being an adult and connect with the enchantment fairies and magic presented to us as children. Suggestions on D&D, LARP, and other kinds of ‘shared fantasy’ popped up. Burstyn talked about children’s literature (specifically Peter Pan) and how we engage with it as adults, and the idea of adulthood being another country, one not easily traversed, struck a chord with me.
Whilst LARP and D&D are both escapism, I think escapism is not re-creating childhood so much as taking shared experiences and creating a fun, dynamic space for a more structured kind of play. I actually think some amount of adulthood is required for a good D&D game or LARP, as both pastimes have complex systems (read: rules) within the fantasy, and these rules must be followed to maximise the enjoyment of participants. Whilst this echoes how children play, for our younger selves there are no rules – Barbie cars fly if you want them to, cats and dinosaurs can talk, worlds of fantasy and reality combine in a way that only makes sense in childhood. A child’s thought processes make no sense to even an adult who knows them well, whereas in adult fantasy worlds of D&D and LARP there must be character consistency, relationships, limitations – that’s where half the fun is. As an adult, fantasy games are somewhere between an escape and a satisfying puzzle: we inhabit a world other than our own, a character other than ourselves, and might dress and act the part, but if there are no stakes and we can simply blast the wizard with infinite power and no questions, the way children vanquish the baddies in their own games, it simply ceases to be fun. There is a reason video games usually follow a narrative and increase in difficulty as the game goes on, and it’s because it compels us to continue forward, and satisfies us when we reach the conclusion.
Instead, we should turn to the big differences between the way children and adults play to establish where and how we ‘rewild’ ourselves. Not only do children lack coherent narrative or rules in their play, they also find entertainment in the mundane. Children imitate their parents in play, whether it’s on the phone, in playhouses, or in fantasy games of mummy and daddy. Things that are chores to adults – cooking, grocery shopping, washing – are games in the minds of children, and there are infinite playsets, made by companies like Early Learning Centre and Klein, that allow them to imitate the adults in their lives with low stakes. Dolls are babies who must be cared for, or else teens or adults with rich relationships, fashions, and jobs or school. Whether it’s a fake vacuum or a wendy-house (there, again, is Peter Pan), children’s toy manufacturers know that the childhood experience of play involves an imitation of the life they will lead as adults. Where in adulthood do we find this heady mix of chaos and the mundane?
I would say that the secret to re-enchanting adulthood is cottagecore. Cottagecore is an aesthetic, not a game, and as such has no rules. What for one person is about baking and gardening is, for another, about plaits and fashion. What for one person is about butterflies and wild mushrooms can be, for another, pastel coloured clothes and manicured gardens. Every cottagecore account on instagram has its own relationship with the genre, and every participant in cottagecore marries aspects of their own life and interests with the hobby. In this game, when we play we don’t think about bills or jobs, we think about living in a house and gardening or cooking. Cottagecore is playing house when you already have a house, making aesthetics into a game that is accessible regardless of budget: by using dried flowers, cross stitches, chipped or mismatched pottery, wild and homemade décor, cottagecore is something close to the chaos of childhood escapism writ upon the adult world.
We find the same idea in Lolita fashion, or dark academia. Whilst there are staples within each subculture, not everybody who participates wears the same shape silhouette or colour palette. Not everybody practices the same activity or engages with the same media, not everybody commits to the same extent, but what they do all have in common is that, although ‘playing dress-up’, the activities themselves are the end goal. Rather than a campaign in a game, which must be structured and within a defined world for the fun to be shared, the disparate aspects of collecting old books, braiding your hair, curating an aesthetic are where the fun is located for the cottagecore participant, and the culture is built around engaging with each image or aspect individually. Many of the activities even echo a child’s conception of adult life: for Lolitas, it is meeting for tea; for Dark Academia devotees, it is work and study. For cottagecore, part-time housewives, furries, and all the subcultures one can find on instagram, the way their hobbies intersect with the mundane aspects of their lives is very much the point. In a LARP, you dress up in order to better participate in the game, and cease to be yourself for the duration. In cottagecore, dressing up IS the game, you are the character, and other people don’t need to play.
For anybody seeking to enchant their adult life, aesthetic is the way forward. Weaving together the pandemonium that is life under late capitalism in threads of colours you enjoy doesn’t have to have meaning, or an end goal, or even a coherence between the threads. It is a childlike experience of imitation applied to the adult existence.
NB – it’s worth mentioning that most of the participants of these subcultures appear to be teenagers, who are just bigger children, whereas observational evidence tells me that most LARPers and D&D players are adults. Maybe the others in the chat were right, but I just wanted to throw in my two pennies because they got me thinking.
To-Do:
- Mail wifi contract cancellation to o2
- Respond to fb messages
- Swiffer floors
Today’s Culture:
- The return of You Must Remember This, the best podcast available. Lord bless Karina Longworth
- Trying to buy an authentic dirndl on German eBay before I leave the country
- Weird food combos – trying to eat everything before I leave has led to some odd meals, but I’m considering it a game of Ready, Steady, Cook
Late Romantic 
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