thread: 2005-11-28 : Closeted
On 2005-11-29, Brand Robins wrote:
Vincent,
I have been playing RPGs for 26 years, since I was 5 years old. I played with my brothers growing up, I even played with my parents. Almost all my friends have been gamers—either when I met them or after I 'converted' them. (I once had a bishop tell me he wished I'd convert people to the church as fast as I converted them to gaming.) I also write for RPGs, and am currently helping my wife design one.
The result is that I've spent a lot of my life and a lot of my self in gaming. I don't think I've pushed as far or done one half as much as someone like Ron, for example, but gaming has been a big thing in my life. It is also something that has occasionally cost me in my life, that I have had to give up other things in order to keep at.
So why do I care what people think of my hobby?
Because I'm a human being. A needy, clingy human being at that. I spend so much time doing this, loving this, that if others spit on it then, no matter how wrong it might be, I feel as though they are spitting on me. When they look blankly it tells me very clearly that the sky in my world is not the same color as the one in theirs.
I want people to like me, or at least to respect me. I want to feel connected with other people, and like I and they are close enough to understand each other. When those things seem to be taken away, I care.
It is, ironically, similar to (though generally less than) the feeling I have about the church after growing up Mormon in South Texas.
This makes Dave go "A closer analogy"
This, for me, is a much closer analogy than the gay/gamer paradigm. Everyone understands what being gay is. But being Mormon or a Gamer has a whole set of misconceptions attached that lend it a socially awkward air. Maybe less, now, but I felt it growing up, too.
