Bridging Historical and Present-Day Queer Community Through Embodied Role-playing

This article examines Just a Little Lovin' (JaLL), a Nordic live action role-playing game set in New York during the HIV/AIDS crisis, and asks what participants can learn from embodying queer history. Its central argument is that the affirmative frame of the larp, supported by metareflection and transformational containers, allows players to explore marginalized aspects of their identity through emotional, emancipatory, and ego bleed. The author contends that sustained personal growth, however, requires integration work that extends well beyond the game itself, and that community building among players is a crucial part of that process.

The work draws on the author's own experience playing the larp in 2016 and organizing it in 2022, alongside accounts from participants and a range of Nordic larp scholarship. Its evidence is largely qualitative and reflective rather than statistical: it relies on participant observations, off-game conversations, and the design features of a game run across Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the USA, Finland, the UK, and France since 2011. No survey sample or systematic data collection is reported.

Key observations include the claim that the larp's "alibi" lets players try out behaviors such as wearing leather, same-sex flirting, or drag performance, with some reporting continued exploration of gender and sexual identity afterward. The article also describes how the larp has fostered ongoing community, including international Facebook groups, room parties and queer subgroups at the Knutpunkt conference, and increased participation in Pride events. A central finding is that the author's own integration of a marginalized identity was slow and depended on finding lasting queer communities rather than on the larp alone.