'Speed' 'Dating'

So today my brain is tackling a process that amuses it (and at my request to, good brain). The concept of time in LARP relationships.

Let me be honest about this now, I enjoy relationships in LARP, they give me things that basic friendships and family ties don't often come with.

1. A serious reason for angst when it goes wrong. You can argue with friends and family, but at the end of the day they are stuck with you and you with them.
2. What's mine is yours and whats yours is mine. This means allies you wouldn't normally have, resources and money that you may need and also another brain to share the plot with, or just to ask if any of their friends know where the magic knife is supposed to go, because it means nothing to your friends.
3. Other stuffs. So my brain may not be holding the information it started with, but IC relationships are the gift that keep on giving, after all, how else will your good girl/boy character who has behaved and towed the line all their lives, trauma a large number of people in terms of making bad choices.

I have also been through most of the IC types of relationships, some better or worse than others,

• The romance chaser - These ones always start believe in true love, and fail to have any relationships, I don't produce them any more.
• The accidental relationships - These characters start out against relationships, they don't want them, and maybe if I had an OC drive to keep them single and miserable then I would absolutely stop any romance, but I have a tendancy to try and not think too hard about IC choices (at least until after the fact)
• The planned ones - Either I've started out with them, or long conversations have been had. I find these mostly fulfil a purpose which mostly limits my interactions with others... kind of like saying to someone, can you pretend we're together for 5 minutes while I get away from the creepy guy who doesn't take no for an answer. 

The main thing that strikes most people about larp relationships is the speed at which things tend to happen. For example - If a friend of mine came up to me one month and said, so I met this guy and we've been writing, I think we're going to be great friends, I'd be pretty cool about that. If 4 and a half months later she said, so I married that guy I told you about, I'd start thinking about calling the doctors or the police because something is very wrong with that (I know it happens, I still find it weird).  Larp is, however, a cauldron of catalytic by-products (at least to me).  It is helped by the fact that if you screw it up, the only person who gets hurt is a fictional character you created, so the self preservation breaks come off a little. It also makes game for people, secret trysts, sneaking about, trying to stop your friend seeing that the dodgy necromancer she's got a crush on is in the bar and sneaking her away before he comes over..... Or in some cases just ruining a secret meeting because you a re worried that the dodgy necromancer is going to eat his own bastard child.... I think I digress, though I have many happy memories of game made because my characters made some really bad choices and I just let them, while my OC and IC friends rolled their eyes at me.

Speed.... Speed of development.  LARP is kind of a vacuum, it is separate from the real world, so the relationships carry fewer risks for those taking part (The characters). Next thing that i think helps is time scales. Not that they are shorter or longer but more the imminent feeling of death that occurs, so why not fall for the charming man who write you poetry (unless you are dating the evil necromancer who happens to be the jealous type) how could it possibly go badly (poetry guy did then while dying proceed to be overly anxious for my safety in front of the necromancers family >.< ).  I did have a lot to say on this topic while I was driving..... Trust, trust is another thing, it is rare to get into IC relationships that have any real meaning to them without at least being friends first, sometimes the friendship and the relationship grow together (friendship first to get the oc trust thing), but there is a point where you are putting some of your OC time and effort into a fictional thing, and you need to trust that they aren't going to screw you over while it happens (been there, done that, not fun on any level).  Erm... steam going from the brain mush.... 

I am pretty sure I have rambled away from any point, I'm not even sure it made sense, of even any form of valid argument, but it's late in the day and there has been a demon child involved in making my brain mushy.... I may go source pudding options....