moment of zen

[ironymaiden]

it's damn cold for Seattle in the springtime, and after freezing yesterday, today i was at the bus stop swaddled in wool coat and scoodie. so it took a moment for me to notice the cosplayers.

of course. this weekend is Sakuracon. all eight of them got on my bus. at first i assumed that they were neighborhood kids, skipping class at Ballard High. cute.

one of them was a loud-talker, so she reshaped the narrative. she and at least one other are from Portland. (blah blah blah streetcar.) she is telling the group about her friends "on the internet" so i don't think they all knew each other IRL before they came to the con. they must be staying all in one or two rooms at the Starlight Hotel, which is a residency hotel and the sort of place that broke kids from out of town would find on the internet and organize a share via bulletin board or livejournal community. definitely broke. the girl with the flowing white wig sports a bow made of glued felt, not bicolored ribbon or fabric. two have fading or failed blue/purple hair dye that was definitely done at home and not refreshed for the trip. the costumes look more homemade than handmade in general. the one with the cat theme has a camera around her neck that is an SLR, but looks elderly enough to be a family castoff.

i wonder if this is something they look forward to all year, or something they are trying for the first time.

i can tell that everyone is getting uncomfortable around loud-talker. she hasn't learned the lesson about choosing where to admit that you like to talk with your friend over Skype while you watch the same anime at the same time in your respective homes. the other seven start to get that look, the "don't mind me, i'm not really with her, i'm not just like her". loud-talker is starting to get the hint by the time we reach Lower Queen Anne.

i realize that i'm getting that look too. maybe i'm even sliding my hand over my I Matched it for Pratchett button. part of me is glad that she can be so joyful about her pursuits and feel so safe, wondering what it would have been like to be able to find friends with common interests online when everyone around me was obsessing over boy bands and football. the rest of me is falling into memories of being the weird kid and all i want to do is shut her up before someone notices her.

Comments

[refractednotion.livejournal.com]

Mmm, yes. Closet gamer/fanboy/fangirl/geek syndrome. Closet otaku. Whatever.

Should probably have a name for too-much-out-of-the-closet gamer/fanboy/fangirl/geek. Indiscreet geek syndrome? Meh, it's almost a moot point in these parts -- compared to what I'm used to back east, anyway.

I appreciate your eye for detail, by the way. You do a good job of capturing a moment with your words. :)

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

part of me is glad that she can be so joyful about her pursuits and feel so safe, wondering what it would have been like to be able to find friends with common interests online when everyone around me was obsessing over boy bands and football. the rest of me is falling into memories of being the weird kid and all i want to do is shut her up before someone notices her.

It's only in recent years since my early teens where my local, in-person social network is larger or equal to my close Internet social network (and I still follow a lot of my local social network online, and I met them because we were online in the first place, so...), so I can see where this excitement comes from. I don't have any preference either way. I never felt I lacked anything having most of my friends online, and I still don't today even though that's changed. Day to day, a lot of hardcore-but alone or closet geeks/fans don't necessarily have friends in person to geek with, so they get very excited when they are around other people in person.

There's the conflict of "let your freak flag fly" and "be socially proper," but listening to someone talk loudly about watching anime with Skype is going to be the same level of annoying to me as listening to people talk loudly in public about politics, religion, sports, current events, their daiting/sex life or anything else in a public place, all of which certainly happens more often.

Of course, I often shock people at work that I "admit" (is it supposed to be a dirty secret?) that I play D&D, even though the company has a pretty high geek streak in it. So.

[ironymaiden]

Of course, I often shock people at work that I "admit" (is it supposed to be a dirty secret?) that I play D&D, even though the company has a pretty high geek streak in it. So.

My Corporate Masters' geek streak is so wide that WoW is the new golf. we had a (now released) product codenamed Voldemort. the guy down the hall one way runs an X-Men website, the other way has a Halo helmet. there are Darth Vader and Star Trek cutouts, ninja tape...IT does posters that either feature pulp SF covers or old video games. it's a safe place.

this is completely and entirely different from my life before 2002. up until i moved to Washington, people thought it was strange that i liked to read books - never mind what the books were about. i had no regular internet access before 1997 (i was out of college); i ache to think about what it would have been like to have more than letters to keep me in contact with my friends from CTY. (i don't want to think about what would have happened to me if i never went to CTY.)

You write well

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Very evocative post. Nice details. I can practically smell the diesel fumes.