Will Scott Biff the Boss

I want to tell you about someone I admire. Someone who I strangely connect with on multiple levels. His character on LARPs is named Will/Biff. On Twitch he is known as BiffTheBawss. His name is Scott Humphrey.

LARPs is a show about Live Action Role Playing. It is a subculture in the Role-Playing Game (RPG) community. These are people who dress in costume, carry around props and act out their characters in the physical world. Adults playing pretend. It is not for everyone. But the LARPs cast made an interesting story out of it.

I relate to the character Will, played by Scott Humphrey. He is a closet LARP geek, just as I was a closet game geek as a teen. For me it was more than just video games, it was board games, card games, and RPGs. My RPG of choice was Robotech. I mostly played solo for years. Scott’s character, Will, is the awkward cool acting guy that pretends to not be into LARPing. A guy who just wants to hang out with his friends. That mentality is the way I acted about my RPG and board games, pretending it was no big deal to me. For my friends, if it was not a video game, it was not cool.

BiffTheBawss, a Twitch channel, is Scott being a true actor, a storyteller exploring new ideas and approaches then sharing them with the world. He draws inspiration from any game he is currently interested in. He creates and role plays that character while playing the game that inspired it. He streams this all online and I applaud him for it. Again, I can relate to this somewhat; I draw inspiration from things that matter to me and write about them to share them online too.

Watching BiffTheBawss has been fun and amazing at times while a rare few times he has been a little off. However those few times Scott maybe off do not matter, I always admire watching someone loving what they are doing. This is how I look at my writing. Sometimes I am proud of what I have posted, other times is a gooey mess. Like Scott, I enjoy exploring and sharing what I find interesting regardless of audience opinion.

I have watched him as much as I could throughout the years, popping up under a variety of different names. I always feel the need to shed my digital skin by changing my identity every time I go through a major transition with my mental health. Twitch was the only place I felt comfortable enough to be my mentally ill self with others. I was literally just a sentence on a screen and was always treated the same as everyone else by Scott and his small community. It was perfect. Typing a word or sentience in chat made me feel accepted for who I was. That was one of those important small baby steps allowing me to become comfortable with who I am.

Anyone can be a role model. For me, Scott Humphrey is one of my role models. He has entertained me, shown me that there is no shame in doing something you like, and most important, he inspires me. If you want to see creative low budget content, watch LARPs with Amazon Prime or on YouTube. Watch RPG Clinic on Twitch. Check out Scott’s significant other, Elizabeth Neale, aka Punchy who is also on Twitch. Scott and his friends are real people, enjoying what they do regardless of who is watching, and they are amazing.

Thank you, Scott Humphrey