Knutpunkt survived. Yay.
Planning
I was the Finnish country contact, so I was responsible for our group trip by ferry. Not only did I manage to make a better deal at Viking Line that we’d deserve, but also took care of bunch of other things from buffet dinner to group payment of the event itself. Multis calling me and asking what he should wear at the Saturday’s ball made me understand that I’m not even their secretary, I’m their mother. 😉
But everything went smoothly with organising. Only moment when I was worried was when the ferry back was leaving in three minutes, but the bus hasn’t yet arrived. Leaving late and stucked in the traffic jam, but surprisingly we all made on the ferry on time and had even 30 secs extra.
Still if I organise something like this again, I guess I should change my organizing style more like Perv’s style of organising things: Less flexibility, more professionalism.
But to the event itself:
Disclaimer: We had the pre-event “a-week-not-in-sweden” on Tuesday, so when we got into the boat Wednesday, we were already hangoverish. And unfortunately they sell cheap booze on ferry too. And I won 50 euros at the Blackjack, so I had “some” extra money to drink. 😉
Thursday
For some odd reason I wasn’t sharing room with my boyfriend. This being first time ever I’ve asked same room with him (this is the fourth time I’m there with my bf though it hasn’t always been Miika) and not getting it I was kinda surprised but instead of making all the drama out from it, we just carried his mattress on our room, and changed Jo to Massi, so at the end the room included me, Massi, Miika, Aarne and Ellis.
On Thursday there was opening ceremony and after it the kickstart game. I skipped it and finished my presentation, as I was holding it at that same evening. Considering how much we had problems communicating beforehand with other speakers, everything went fine. My presentation supported by Jukka and Ellis was mostly same as held at the ELC, so was Anna’s. Unfortunately Elin’s PP-slides could not be shown from my computer, which is a pity as the stuff she talked was interesting but it would have been easier to follow, when you can read the main points from the screen. And I was glad that the Danish part was held by someone else than Claus to get at least a bit different point of view than he had. If we believe Søren, Kasper was chosen because of his looks, but he funny and informative too.
Program also revealed the worst part of Fiskeboda; there were no big lecture rooms, that was biggest and as I let everybody in who wanted, we had to keep the windows and the door open to be able to breathe there.
As there has been some talk about the numbers I gave, specially about the 67% of the larpers are girls and “it’s common that girls play male characters to get into games.
First one isn’t really taken by counting three larpers I shared my room with. It’s a number counted from the player lists of the Finnish games in larp calendar at the summer 2008 excluding those whose first name doesn’t tell if they’re male or female. That and other numbers I usually use as facts can now be read (in finnish) from the larp.fi. Most of the “research” or counting there is done by Juho Reivo. And I know they weren’t there during Knutpunkt, but now they are.
And about commonness about girls playing male characters. It’s common in the sense that in more than half of the games I’ve been in last four years, there has been girls playing guys. But it’s not common in that sense that every girl would have to play a male every now and then. I personally haven’t played male even once.
I wished somebody would have asked these in the convention instead of reading the debate about it after KP from Facebook. I personally don’t feel like wasting my KP on hanging on Facebook. 😉
Friday
Luckily there was an article about Larp in Russia in the Knutbook, as the lecture was at 9 am. Although we made it to the breakfast both on Friday and saturday, it was impossible to get up so early that you’d eaten your breakfast before that.
Massi’s eye infection and a trip with Larson to pharmacy kept us busy on the morning, so I missed a couple of interesting sounding program items (luckily we had experienced Armageddon already at ELC) but had time to socialize with others while waiting for the doctor to call back. On the evening we went to see Claus’s Larp Revolution, which had its points. It’s nice to hear it occasionally out loud that more you do and organize stuff, more you get enemies. So technically it’s not my fault. On the other hand, when it’s said out loud, it a good excuse not to do anything.
The night we spent at the Danish Bar. Which was one of the best concepts of the event. A cottage ment for partying and a bar desk with the idea “bring booze so you can take booze”. So almost everybody were there. The Danes also repeated their Pl’unch ritual, which was funny and filled the “you must participate on one ritual”-part of KP.
Saturday
The idea of Larp Plaza was wonderful, people presenting their own projects (and some also offering cookies) in the program rooms of the Mansion. As I couldn’t decide if I’d go to listen re-runnable larps of the vision for next years Knudepunkt, I went to bake a cake for evening’s party.
This year there were no attempt to add gala dinner to the party, which worked very well. The tent was slightly too cold, so only way to keep yourself warm was dancing or going to private parties at the hotel rooms. To make this sound less suspicious, I was at Laura’s room party. After the disco ended, we head to the Danish Bar again. This night I was less easy than the night before as it would have not been cost-conscious. I went to sleep around 3 am. Miika had gotten sleep even earlier and Aarne for instance came sleeping around 6. 😛
Sunday
Sunday was the first day we couldn’t make it to the breakfast. not only were we tired, but also because the program had two different times for breakfast and we of course looked the wrong one. I left with Jukkarainen before the ending ceremony to claim the boat tickets from VL which later when bus timetables failed, turned out to be most clever thing to do.
Heidi out. I did participate in more program items, but as I’ll write something about KP on Ropecon webpages too, I put that “official” stuff there. Still tired, still happy. One of the best Knutpunkt ever, possibly the best. 🙂
Heidi larpwise 