Escape
/By Erin Phillips, produced by Out There Podcast
Released on March 31, 2022
Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.
(sound of wind blowing)
WILLOW BELDEN: Alright, I am out for a bike ride, and I’m in a spot here where I can see three different mountain ranges. And I only know what one of them is. And I’m always curious what the other two are.
WILLOW: Lucky for me, there’s an app called PeakVisor that can help.
Peak Visor is one of our sponsors. Their app tells you what mountains you’re looking at, wherever you are in the world.
They also have intricate 3D maps, to help you plan out your adventures. And you can keep track of your accomplishments with their peak bagging feature.
If you’d like your own personal mountain guide, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
(Out There theme music begins to play)
Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.
First things first — our open mic night is TONIGHT, and I would love for you to come. We’re co-hosting it with our friends at Kula Cloth, and we have an amazing lineup of performers. There will be comedy, poetry, storytelling, music…
It’s at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time / 8:30 p.m. Eastern, and it’s online, so you can join from anywhere. Grab your favorite beverage, curl up on your couch, and get ready to be dazzled.
Oh, and it’s free to attend!
To save your spot and read about the performers, go to outtherepodcast.com/openmic. That’s outtherepodcast.com/openmic.
(theme music ends)
This season, we’re exploring the theme “Things I Thought I Knew.” Each episode we’re sharing a story about an outdoor experience that changed someone’s understanding.
Today, it’s a story about escape.
For many of us, the outdoors is a refuge — a place where we can get away from the problems we’re facing. But escapism has its limits. At what point do you need to turn around and face your problems head on?
Our guest today is Paris McMillian, a live action roleplayer, or LARPer. Erin Phillips has the story.
ERIN PHILLIPS: I think we can all agree high school is hard.
(soft music begins)
It was particularly hard for Paris McMillian.
PARIS MCMILLIAN: So I mean I had really low self esteem. Being neurodivergent, I was like getting pretty badly bullied in school…(laughs) Like for…and I didn’t realize it, but it was taking like an emotional toll.
ERIN: Paris didn’t know it at the time, but she was neurodivergent. She had undiagnosed ADHD, which changed the way her brain interacted with the world around her. It often left her feeling misunderstood and isolated.
(music slowly fades out)
PARIS: I felt like I didn’t really have, y’know, a lot of people that were like really my friend. I didn’t really…I felt really like lonely in myself, y’know unsure of myself.
ERIN: Paris spent a lot of time alone. And one day, alone in her house, she happened to catch the movie Role Models on TV.
(epic fantasy music begins)
She watched in awe as Paul Rudd played a mentor to a kid who was obsessed with Live Action Role Playing or LARP.
PARIS: And they had LARPers in the movie, and it just looked really exciting. It was like kind of played as a joke in it, but I thought it looked cool. But I was too young and my mom was like, “Absolutely not.”
(music ends)
ERIN: But Paris didn’t forget about LARP. When she turned 17 she convinced her mom to take her to a local meeting of a medieval fantasy LARP called Amtgard.
(lighthearted music begins)
She set about visiting local thrift stores to find the perfect costume.
PARIS: Yeah I remember getting ready for my first day. I was like thrifting way before, so I thrifted my whole first outfit. I knew it was gonna be freezing. I was so excited. I wore like a long like floor-length wool skirt and like a giant like little sweater…(laughs) It was comfy, but it wasn’t very practical for fighting. (laughs) And when I left the whole costume was pretty much like destroyed, cause I couldn’t like wash it cause it was wool and weird.
ERIN: Like a lot of newbies, Paris had done tons of preparation…and then realized things were completely different than she’d thought.
PARIS: I came with like a whole persona, and then when I got there they were like, “You don’t really need a persona; you just need like a name.” (chuckles) I had like a backstory.
It was fun anyway. Like I definitely had a different idea of how it was gonna be than what it turned out to be. Like I brought like little props cause I was gonna be a healer, so I brought like a little healer kit that I had made with like gauze bandages, cause I said like I watched like all these LARP YouTube videos and they were like, “You need this and this and this to play a LARP healer” (laughs).
And they were like, “You don’t need that.” (laughter)
So it was fun, it was like a little…people were really helpful. They really wanted to… they really seemed like they wanted to help me get into the game.
(music fades out)
ERIN: Paris was feeling so welcome in this new fantasy world, until one well-meaning stranger said something that caught her off guard.
PARIS: It’s just a really classic someone telling me, y’know, that it’s nice that I’m out here cause people like me don’t LARP. lack people don’t do this stuff. And I was like, “Well I do.” And it’s like, “Well you’re different.”
(quiet music begins)
ERIN: The comment broke Paris’s immersion in the game. Here she was, supposedly in the Kingdom of Crystal Groves, fighting bandits and fire giants with an eclectic band of heroes, who she was already starting to feel at home with.And in walks casual racism in a baseball cap, reminding her that she was different, that she couldn’t even fit in in an imaginary world.
PARIS: In hindsight it was like the first thing that was like, ‘Oh gosh.’ I was kind of…I remember kind of looking around expecting there to be a different reaction from people and there wasn’t.
ERIN: The comment made her uncomfortable: it made her feel different, like she stuck out among all these white players. But at the same time, it made her feel like a token, “Black Player Number 1.” She asked herself: Do they not want me here? Or do they only want me here to say, “See, we’re diverse?”
(music ends)
After some thought though, she decided to laugh the comment off, and assume it was made with good intentions. The game was everything she wanted, and most of the players had seemed genuinely encouraging. So Paris became an official LARPer. For four years, she attended almost weekly park days and quarterly weekend campouts. But for all the friends she made, things kept popping up that she couldn’t ignore.
(somber music begins)
PARIS: There was a lot of different problems that needed — in my head — addressing.
ERIN: Like the comment Paris had received on day one, or players who would make racist or sexist jokes when they thought no one could hear them.
PARIS: A lot of them were like game structural problems.
ERIN: The process for reporting those racist or sexist jokes was slow and difficult. And the players who made those jokes were sometimes the ones who voted on whether you could receive an award or rank.
PARIS: And the interpersonal issues and stuff…
ERIN: Debates about game issues were hashed out in Facebook groups that could get nasty.
PARIS: But all of them were highly detrimental to my personal like mental health.
(music fades out)
ERIN: Paris was convinced if she could just fix these underlying problems, she could get back to the escapism, the magic. She fought hard on the Facebook front lines, and even tried to start conversations in person at events. But the more she tried to speak out about the problems she was seeing, the more other players — even her friends — started to drift away.
PARIS: People just didn’t know what was going on because there weren’t enough players of color speaking out on their own behalf, so they were genuinely ignorant.
I felt it more like as I was becoming more like loud and open in Amtgard about y’know my feelings and my struggles and stuff. It just became..it seemed like it became a chore to talk to me, or to hang out with me, and I felt people starting to y’know tiptoe around me. Even people who were my friends, because y’know at any point I might just like break out into a tirade.
And to me I was just talking about my experiences y’know, but it became something that I was seen as like negative. And that manifests as y’know a lot of feelings of isolation and otherness. (chuckles)Like even attempting to bridge that gap is like causing me to be shunned, not by everyone, but it happened enough that it became exhausting.
ERIN: Every time something troubling would happen, Paris would think ‘That’s it, that’s the last straw.’ Then Sunday would come around, and she’d find herself in the car, in costume, foam swords in the trunk, on her way to another day at the park.
PARIS: I felt this loyalty. I felt this responsibility. I was like, ‘Y’know I have to stay and fix it.’ And I was kind of tanking for y’know the other, the new 17-year-old Black girl that was gonna come and maybe I could like jump in front of a bullet for her, y’know?
(piano music begins)
ERIN: Three years into LARPing, Paris needed a change of pace. She agreed to attend a new LARP with a few friends from Amtgard. It was a week-long standalone festival, kind of a Coachella for roleplaying. It was…
PARIS: Absolutely horrible. And it was the first time that I think someone said the quiet part out loud which was like, “We don’t want you here.”
(music fades out)
ERIN: As shocking as this was, to Paris it actually felt similar to what she had experienced in Amtgard. In the end, she felt like neither of these LARPs ended up comprehensively addressing the concerns of players like her. They just went about it with different degrees of bluntness. It got her thinking that at Amtgard:
PARIS: Oh they just aren’t saying the things that these people are willing to say, but they think them, y’know? They must, because I’m being treated the same way, like kind of like a nuisance or a loud-mouth or a rabble-rouser.
ERIN: The realization shifted Paris’s whole experience, but she still wasn’t ready to quit. Pretty much all her friends were ones she had met through LARP, and she did have some that were still supportive.
(hushed, rhythmic music begins)
And then, at the festival, one of them came up to her and mentioned a new LARP that was forming called Dammerung.
PARIS: I didn’t have really high hopes, honestly. I really didn’t. That first game I really did not have that high of hopes. So I was like, ‘Okay I’m gonna go and it’s gonna be a LARP,’ and I was bracing myself to deal with all the normal things that came with it.
(music ends)
WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear the rest of the story in a moment. But first, I want to tell you about another podcast you might like. It’s called [Un] Natural Selection, and it’s about the benefits and pitfalls of humans tinkering with the environment.
Morgan Springer is the show’s cohost. She says one of her favorite episodes illustrates a pattern of hubris.
MORGAN SPRINGER: We see environmental problems, and we’re just totally convinced we can fix it, and then we mess it up. And the example of that is we brought in this foregin weevil, which is this little beetle, to beat back invasive thistles that were just wreaking havoc in farmland pastures. It didn’t work, because we had overlooked this major thing about how thistles actually grow. And now that weevil that we brought in is actually hurting a native thistle that’s really, really important to dune ecosystems, and they’re at risk of extinction.
WILLOW: It’s not all doom and gloom, though — there are also stories about how humans have HELPED the natural world.
[Un] Natural Selection is one of our sponsors. It’s a new season of Points North. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or visit pointsnorthradio.org.
Support for Out There also comes from Powder7.
Powder7 is a full-service ski shop and online retailer based in Golden, Colorado. They have a classic ski shop vibe with the convenience, fast shipping, and great prices of a leading online retailer.
Powder7 only sells ski gear, and they do it year-round. The folks who work there are avid skiers, and they really know their stuff.
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Shop online at Powder7.com, or feel free to call or email them and chat with their team of experts. That’s Powder, the number 7, dot com.
And now, back to the story.
ERIN: So Paris is in the middle of a really uncomfortable LARP experience, when her friend tells her about a new LARP event called Dammerung. Apparently, it was talking a big game about being a safe space, and was trying to take a different approach to role-playing. They decided to give it a try.
(renaissance style music begins)
PARIS: The setting is like 10th century, like roughly like northern...like Nordic Europe. Right now it’s held on like a boy scout camp with like a castle and a pirate ship…(laughs)…and like a fort.
And…but y’know there’s a bunch of different cultures kind of from all around like flocking to this like northerner place because like the world is ending. (chuckles)And it’s like the goal is to play out the last 100 years of humanity, I guess, in this really awesome game world and story.
ERIN: A couple months later, Paris packed a bag of warm winter costumes and piled into the car with her friends. For all her trepidation, she was excited about the concept and the story of the game.
(music fades out)
When they finally arrived after hours of driving, Paris was ready to dive in. But the game organizers had other plans.
PARIS: The first — like it starts at nine — and the first few hours of the event until like midnight are just like workshops, y’know making sure that everyone knows each others’ triggers, pronouns, like everything. Like their characters intimately, so they can engage them in plots. A bunch of safety workshops too, which I was completely surprised by, because that was never a thing I had engaged in in a LARP space.
ERIN: The safety mechanics were a set of hand symbols designed to help roleplayers communicate with each other about their level of comfort, without disrupting a scene. Paris thought they were cool, but she couldn’t see herself needing them. She was playing a light, funny character. What could possibly get so real, so heavy that she’d need to stop an encounter with a thumbs down or a hand shaded over her eyes?
(whimsical music begins)
But as Paris got into the game, her character, a nun named Hannah, took on new layers she couldn’t have predicted. At first, she played Hannah for laughs, running around chastising other players for being heathens.
PARIS: I was just kind of just taking cues from around me, y’know like building the character. Thinking in her head like what she would do.
I got to play with some…on the surface it seems like religious trauma stuff, but it was more so like personal agency like trauma. Like having that taken from you. Y’know she was very much reliant on religious dogma as a way to kind of direct her life, and kind of relied on that to the end, to her own demise. (laughs) So I was able to kind of, when that story was over, look back and realize the ironies and the connections to my own life, and kind of use that as a lesson going forward.
(music ends)
ERIN: As the weekend unfolded, Hannah became a character who couldn’t make her own decisions. She was wholly reliant on an institution — her church — that did not have her best interests at heart. Paris realized how closely Hannah’s struggle matched her own reliance on a LARP system that did not have her best interests at heart. She’d let it rob her of her own agency.
(contemplative music begins)
In Amtgard, encountering real-world problems was frustrating. The whole point was to escape those problems, and other players got to, so why couldn’t Paris?
But when Paris’s real-world problems showed up at Dammerung, it was all part of the plan. The system, with its safety mechanics, was designed to help her work through those problems, to find solutions or achieve growth. That kind of roleplay felt productive, even hopeful. Almost like therapy. She thought, ‘This is what everyone should be doing!’
So when she went back to Amtgard, she suggested they try some of Dammerung’s techniques.
(music fades out)
PARIS: And it got a lot of pushback because it was like, “Well we can’t do any like deep RP. Y’know blah blah blah, we can’t do anything risky if it’s just gonna be…we can’t do anything like real.”
But the safety mechanics make it so that you can do so much more exploration of character and so much more like deep cutting roleplay in a much more safe and productive manner. Because it’s just a quick flash of a symbol and then you know you can keep like digging deeper into the topic. Y’know, it enables you to have much deeper and more impactful roleplay.
ERIN: The roleplay groups at Amtgard had told her: “We can’t do anything real.” A totally valid response if your main goal is pure escapism. But that’s when Paris realized that wasn’t her main goal anymore. She had tapped into hard truths at Dammerung, ones she hadn’t seen until then. She wanted to explore those truths, and she couldn’t go back to ignoring them.
(soft, gentle music begins)
Dammerung only happens a few times a year, but Paris made it a habit to go to as many events as she could. Each time she went, she found herself confronting new pieces of herself and her life — pieces she used to try desperately to escape from, but now was facing head on.
PARIS: I have kind of been like slowly testing the bounds of like what I think like my brain is telling me I can like get away with with my own like personal advocacy. But it’s something I struggle with everyday outside of LARP — like I struggle with self advocacy and with prioritizing myself. But it’s interesting because Dammerung is kind of the place that I am the most…that I feel the most able to express those things and to like be myself and really play with those themes.
(music fades out)
ERIN: The more Paris explored themes like personal advocacy and prioritizing her needs, she started to feel the effects outside the game in surprising ways.
PARIS: LARP has really helped me be able to put on this like persona of like Work Paris, who has all her stuff together. And like yeah it helps me go through my day feeling much more competent, I guess, with all of the things that I have to do and all the things that I’m trying to juggle in my day-to-day life. Like I can put on this persona of the type of person that you know is doing everything that she’s supposed to do, and kind of knows what she’s doing y’know. And then I end up doing that after a while, that ends up being the reality of things cause I have this persona, but it really is just me.
(piano music begins)
ERIN: As she incorporated lessons from her trips to Dammerung, Paris underwent another even more elemental shift: redefining her relationship with her birth name.
Since she started LARPing at 17, Paris had introduced herself to almost everyone — in game and out of game — as Kai, the name of her Amtgard persona. That’s because for years, she associated the name Paris with the specific brand of hyperfemininity associated with Paris Hilton and her celebrity image.
PARIS: I was very disconnected with y’know the things that like…that her like famous persona and like me being me led me to, which I now realize was a lot of me experiencing like racism as a child because I felt very disconnected from like femininity and girlhood and like pink…(laughs)
and like all that stuff. And that is dealing with like sexism stuff, but like also Black women are not allowed to be all these different feminine things, so it was like a double whammy.
(music ends)
ERIN: So Paris took her challenges with femininity and girlhood to Dammerung. And while LARP wasn’t solely responsible for the shift, between playing challengingly feminine characters on the weekends, and some regular old-fashioned therapy, Paris decided she was ready to reclaim her name.
PARIS: I introduce myself as Paris, and I really see myself as that, and I feel like it’s this full circle moment because I have never felt — and I’m still working on it — but I’ve never felt more like self-actualized than I do right now. And I feel very like sure of myself and like very confident in myself like bodily and y’know mentally. And I never thought I would be…I never thought I would get there. It didn’t seem like something that was in the cards for me, but it happened, and I feel like I was able at that point to really carry my name for the first time in my life.
ERIN: Paris has worked through so many of her biggest blocks through LARP, and even though she feels self-actualized, she’s excited to keep digging deeper. She recently got back from the first in-person Dammerung since COVID, and she’s excited about how her latest character is helping her tackle more subtle challenges.
(dainty piano music begins)
PARIS: Her name is Jamilla. She’s a princess. Her lands have been destroyed — she’s in like a foreign place having to marry someone she barely knows. And I don’t know, I don’t know, I got to play her and she’s just so…delicate.
The world, like meaning the other players, react to that in a way that I’ve never gotten in any other… and I never really felt like I would get in any other, in any other environment. They…I really felt like y’know I was this like princess.
I felt beautiful, and that’s not a thing I feel often as a Black woman. I don’t feel beautiful. I don’t feel…I’m not made to feel graceful or cared for or desired. I didn’t know I was capable of it. And being allowed to kind of explore that as concepts as a Black woman was interesting. (laughs) I’m excited to do it again. I really am.
ERIN: When she started, Paris had been seeking escapism. But as she shifted her perspective and began confronting problems head on, she found herself with less to escape from.
(music fades out)
She thinks this approach can be particularly helpful for people who experience racism or other marginalization. You can’t always make those problems go away, but you can find an outlet to practice coping with them, thriving despite them, and safely building agency and identity.
PARIS: That can be really valuable to marginalized people. For us to be able to tell stories that don’t get told in media, and like develop our own representation from our own life experiences, to process through traumas and to bring about catharsis.
(cheery guitar music begins)
WILLOW: That story was reported and written by Erin Phillips. Erin is an audio storyteller living in northern Virginia. She's the lead producer of The Tent, a weekly progressive politics and policy podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. She also creates narrative stories for a variety of shows on religion, art, and the human experience. To hear more of her work, you can follow her on Twitter @phillips_ek.
(music ends after a few moments and Out There Favorites music begins)
It’s time now for Out There Favorites. This is the part of the show where we share some of our favorite resources. Favorite apps, favorite books, favorite podcasts, gear…
These are not ads — we’re not getting any money from the things we recommend. It’s just a chance for us to spread the love.
SHEEBA JOSEPH: Hi, this is Sheeba, the audience growth director here at Out There podcast. Today’s recommendations are inspired by the fact that March is women’s month. So I’ll be highlighting three podcasts, by and about women, that I hope you check out.
The first is for science lovers who love untold stories. Check out The Lost Women of Science. They’re both a podcast and a nonprofit dedicated to sharing stories of female scientists who remain largely unknown until now, who have made groundbreaking achievements in their fields. They’re also on a mission to inspire girls and young women to embrace careers in STEM, which is really cool.
The next one is for all those true crime lovers out there — you know who you are. Believe Her is a true crime podcast that takes the genre and flips the script. On this six-part series instead of hearing a story about a woman who winds up dead, this is a story about a woman who survives, and what happens next. Trigger warning for the domestic and sexual abuse that is described, so if you’re sensitive, please proceed with caution.
My last recommendation hits on a much lighter note, and is for anyone who loves introspective, thoughtful moments — like all of you Out There listeners. I came across this creative artist and fellow podcaster last month on Apple Podcasts during Black History Month. Her show, the Morgan Harper Nichols Show, features short, bite-sized reflective clips with episode titles like “Small Animals and Welcoming Humans”, “Thorn-Covered Roses”, and “Light Support.” Pick any title that interests you, and take a breath, slow down, and I hope you enjoy.
WILLOW: Again, that was Sheeba Joseph, the audience growth director for Out There.
I have links to all the podcasts she recommended in the show notes at outtherepodcast.com.
(music ends)
Coming up next time on Out There, we have a story about a woman who always struggled to keep up. Whether it was hiking, or backpacking, or running, her body always seemed to let her down.
CHRISTINE REED: Every time I would tell myself that it would be different. I wanted so badly for it to be different. But it was always the same — the same pounding heart, the same ragged breath, the same red face and disappointment.
WILLOW: What do you do if you’re always fighting your body — if exercise is always, always hard? Can you still be a rugged outdoorswoman?
Tune in on April 14 for that story.
Before you go, don’t forget to register for our open mic night tonight! It’s free to attend, and I think it’s going to be a blast. Go to outtherepodcast.com/openmic to save your seat. That’s outtherepodcast.com/openmic. I really hope to see you there!
(sound of wind blowing)
WILLOW: Alright, so I’ve opened up PeakVisor. It’s thinking.
WILLOW: PeakVisor is one of our sponsors. When you open up their app, it figures out where you are, and then it shows you a panoramic image of what you’re seeing, with all the peaks labeled.
WILLOW: Oh wow, ok. So I am looking all the way down into Rocky Mountain National Park. Like, I can see Long’s Peak from here. That’s pretty cool.
(wind sounds end)
Peak Visor has info on more than a million summits all over the world. Plus, they have detailed 3D maps to help you with your planning. And they have a peak bagging feature that lets you keep track of your accomplishments.
Check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
(Out There theme music beings to play)
If you’re new to Out There, check out the Best of Out There playlist. This is a collection of some of our favorite episodes of all time — and it’s a great introduction to the range of stories we do on the show. You can find Best of Out There on Spotify, and at our website outtherepodcast.com.
Today’s story was reported and written by Erin Phillips. Story editing and sound design by me, Willow Belden. Out There’s advertising manager is Jessica Taylor. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Cara Schaefer is our print content coordinator. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold.
Have a beautiful day, and we’ll see you in two weeks.
(theme music ends on a last whistling note)
