Not a real doctor

@simonb

Lapsed-writer, ex-DJ, erstwhile larper, wants to be an academic again (is, in fact a real doctor) , old goth, larp designer, neurodiverse like light through a prism, poet before sunrise. Poster-child for burnout (Complex, Brooding, Challenging)

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Not a real doctor@simonb· 16d

I spent most of the weekend inside InDesign, I am still muttering eldritch phrases about the function that AI tags all of the images automatically. I do it manually and then check for anything that is missing; nothing is missing because it is overflowing with slop. My work is harder now.

A screen capture showing thumbnails of three two page spreads from a book being laid out in indesign. The first spread is four columns of text. They are too small to read. The second spread is two and a half columns of text and a stylised image of a woman sitting beneath a tree. The tree fills the whole side of the page as if it is growing out of the book. The third spread has four green playing cards, three dark, one light, and some text and icons next to each one. The text is not readable.

Not a real doctor@simonb· 25d

Half of the tickets for the re-run of the larp B-Movie have already gone in only a couple of weeks! If you want to join us next summer you might want to grab your place soon .... www.bmovie.org

A still from a b&w movie that appears to have been made in the 1950s. A woman screams in terror, either at some looming space monster or at the idea that the tickets for a larp about B Movies have half sold out!

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jul 7

Can you find the most elusive magic Hollywood has to offer and play your way to a Happy Ending? Join our movie-making adventure larp at B movie dot org

A woman makes adjustments to a monster costume on a movie set.

A glamorous actress in 1950s clothing wears sunglasses and smokes a cigarette as she examines costume fabric on a movie set. The cigarette is not real. She is not real. This is a larp

A man in 1950s clothing walks with speed and intent towards the camera. He looks busy and important and has a fine hat.

A script writer types on a mechanical keyboard. The image is in black and white. The Typewriter is surrounded by half written pages, notes and scribbles.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jul 7

B Movie is a bittersweet love letter to 1950s Hollywood, to the stars who faded from public memory, and to the stories that never made it. Come and spend some time with us in this sci-fi dream of tinsel town and make a low budget film for real!

1950s a man operating a movie camera on the set of a film. The background appears to be some UFO control room

Movie still 1954 a decorated soldier leans on a desk with a US flag behind him. Serious men with hats lean in to give him a briefing. They are worried.

A blonde woman with a 1950s hairstyle operating a movie camera. The image is black and white. She is lost in the image that she is capturing just as the photographer is lost in the image that they are capturing of her. It is recursive.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jul 7

A stunt goes wrong during the filming of 'Invasion of the Atomic Space Witches' (1954) Here we have actress Tallulah Falls showing her emotional range as she flees a building that has exploded. (I have no idea why it exploded.)

Two women are on a fire escape leaing a buidling that appears to be on fire. Smoke is billowing out and they look in a panic. The image is in black and white and they are wearing clothes from the 1950s. It could be a still from a movie.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jul 1

|First in an occasional series of photos from the larp B Movie. This one showing a still from the film that the players actually shot.

A black and white image that shows three atomic space witches and their evil genuis scientist Dr Zarkon at the controls of their flying saucer. It is a supposed movie still from a low budget sci-fi movie. One of the space witches is pressing buttons on the console infront of her while the others look on with concern.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jun 22

The arrival of the first batch of photos for a larp is always exciting. (Even though the ones of me are terrible: "I look like The Queen, and she's dead!")

An outdoor movie screen with a sunset behind it, the picture showing on the screen is the title for 'Invasion of the Atomic Space Witches'.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jun 13

A few behind the scenes introductions from the larp, B Movie. (Although I missed the instruction to wave at the camera)

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jun 12

The primary antagonist from the animated TV show Dungeons and Dragons mounted on a black horse which is carrying a single-decker bus between its legs. Venger (the force of evil) has massive wings that have lifted both the horse and the bus into the doomed cloudy sky.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Feb 21

In June we are running a larp about making a movie. Specifically this movie:

Not a real doctor@simonb· Feb 15

Who on my feed shall I see at Knutpunkt in Gothenburg? If I do not know you already, do you want to say hello?

A superimposed image of Paul Simonon from The Clash smashing his guitar at the Palladium in New York City in 1979, and a couple of walnuts

Not a real doctor@simonb· Feb 15

Yesterday we released the teasers for our pre-written characters for the larp B Movie, which is the story of a low budget film being made in Hollywood in 1954. We went through a design phase - identifying character archetypes and concetps - and then wrote a brief (300 word) Blurb about each one.

Five pages from a magazine rendered in a 1950s style that appears to have something to do with movies and move making. The font is too small to read, but one page has the headline FAIRFAX PICTURES and an icon of a movie camera. The Magazine title is B Movie and the logos for Wonderlarp and Avalon larp studio are visible.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jan 31

My typing speed this morning has reduced. I can’t work out why. Perhaps I am just tired?

A computer keyboard - black, Alienware, UK layout - with the back legs of a domestic cat - semi-feral, tabby, short hair - covering the keys in the bottom left hand corner.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jan 28

In January 2009, in the days before Emjois had entered the mainstream (outside of Japan, obvs) , I invented the Real World Mood Icon. Here is a rare photo from that time.

A crudely drawn sad face on a piece of A4 paper that has been atached to a piece of wood in the corner of a desk in a corporate office space. The image is low resolution as though taken on an early Blackberry

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jan 18

The wonderful people at NotOnlyLarp in Spain are re-running L'Inconscience. Thematically Westworld meets Musketeers, but mainly a piece that interrogates humanity and free will.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Jan 10

We sometimes hack about with them to automate some of the more repetitative parts

A fragment of googlescript that is entirely useless on its own, but as a part of the whole function can be used to create a google document containing data based on the cells of a google sheet.

The code is well commentedwhilst also being a bit of a hack.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Dec 28

The maximum word count for this article, including all references, footnotes, and the abstract is 7,000 words. This is one of those moments where I think real world Achievement badges should pop up

Zoomed in on the Page and Word Count from a MS Word document. The text reads "Page 1 of 19 7000 words"

Not a real doctor@simonb· Dec 16

There are — quite correctly — two spaces after each full stop in the image below. (As a part of the SoMe around the larp B Movie we're releasing odd snippets of text like this; I am rather fond of this one.)

An image of a page of a supposed movie script on faded paper with ring binder holes:

Text Reads As Follows

SCENE:12 Writer Where Art Thou?

FADE IN

EXT. A CONDO IN LOS ANGELES, WINTER - NIGHT

The city sleeps. It is cold enough outside that even the frost on the ground huddles together for warmth.

The camera pans up to see a cloudless sky, the stars reach out to one another, stretching their light across infinity to try to make a connection; their desperate loneliness the gravity that holds the universe together.

Carlton Mahoney stands looking at the sky smoking a cigarette in a way that’d make Freud’s Mommy Blush. It is all he has and he ain’t letting go.

CARLTON
The thing about being a writer is you either are
Or you ain’t. There is no middle ground. I don’t think you choose it either. Who would volunteer for this life; selling the words that come from your very soul.

And then they ain’t yours any more. I made more money testing parachutes for the US Army. Fifty dollars every time I walked away.

DOROTHY
(From the shadows)
Oh but you have to write, Carlton; you simply must!

CARLTON
Don’t you think I don’t know that? I know I got no choice.

Dorothy walks into the light. She might have sounded like a simple farm-girl from Kansas, but this broad is more Queen of Mars than Yellow Brick Road, she points her DISINTEGRATOR RAY at Carlton and smiles a cruel smile - too many teeth and not an ounce of pity

DOROTHY
Venus demands Characters, Earth Man, so our robot army
Will go undetected.

Carlton takes one last desperate drag on his cigarette and, with the ray gun trained on him, goes back inside.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Nov 19

A photo taken at Conscience. It was a difficult larp for me to play but I learned so much from it. (There's pretty much a chapter on it in my thesis.) It contained one of the best and one of the worst scenes of my 40+ year larping career.

A town that looks like the Old West (although actually a movie set in Spain) a dusty man in a black hat walks up the deserted street. His shirt sleeves are rolled up and he has six guns in holsters at his waist. In the background are mountains. There is something about his approach that suggests trouble is coming...

Not a real doctor@simonb· Oct 31

Happy Halloween. One day remaining for a chance to get a physical copy of the Scriptbook for the larp Gothic for only €22 www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

Not a real doctor@simonb· Oct 29

offered without context

A scone, cut in half. One side has the jam first and the clotted cream on top. The other half has the clotted cream on first like butter and the jam on top. There is half a strawberry lying off to one side. The caption reads 'An eternal question, answered.'

Not a real doctor@simonb· Oct 28

One of the scenography twists from Gothic was replacing some of the props with others when the players were not looking. Everything here is edible, including the worms!

A fruit bowl that appears to show rotten fruit witg maggots on them

Not a real doctor@simonb· Oct 4

We've cut the price of the the script book for Gothic to approx €22 (that is €10 off) until November 1st. In order to get a copy though you have to perform a strange ritual. This involves being signed in to DriveThruRPG AND setting the sinister sigil that shows adult content.

A black and white photograph showing a young woman in Regency-era dress trying to escape through the window of a haunted mansion. Alas, her attempt is doomed.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Aug 24

There is only one week left to sign-up for the B Movie larp. Come and make movie magic with us next summer. www.bmovie.org

Not a real doctor@simonb· Aug 22

The KP Book 2026 needs you! We’re seeking contributions for the book that will accompany this year’s Knutpunkt conference, and we need your help! (KP is the annual Nordic larp gathering, this year it will be hosted in Sweden)

Not a real doctor@simonb· Aug 6

Larper bookshelves, a study in storage and taxonomy

A set of overfull bookshelves with a lot of books ranging from fantasy to classics with a few texts like Lacan’s Ecrits and Joyce’s Ulysses that have been put there like the image has been curated.) On top of the books, a set of Viking Age larp weapons and what seems to be a flintlock pistol. These people are dangerous

Not a real doctor@simonb· May 21

Not a real doctor@simonb· May 4

Happy Star Trek Day!

The image of two people in white armed with futuristic weaponry is intended to evoke memories of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, but it is in fact a promo image for Buck Rodgers in the 25th century. You can see the robot 'Twiki' standing behind them. It has nothing to do with Star Trek at all. This seems appropriate as May 4th is Star Wars day. Even my cats know that.

Not a real doctor@simonb· Apr 12

The @avalonlarpstudio.bsky.social crew are heading to Poland next month to meet up with our friends at @wonderlarp.bsky.social to start work on a new project for next year! We've actually been working on it since 2020!

Not a real doctor@simonb· Apr 12

In parallel we are looking for locations in Scandinavia (ideally Sweden) that would work as a 360° representation of a detention centre. Somewhere with a bleak institutional vibe. I'm not sure if we can find anywhere like the Gaol in the UK though