Cerise Magazine

I started gaming while at MIT. Please don’t stop reading just yet. I don’t think you’ve heard this story before. I will not speak of how, in going to the land of math, science, Assassin’s Guild, and hacking, I finally found my true niche. I will not speak of my brothers and sisters in geekdom and finally finding a place I belonged after the torment of middle school and high school. I appreciate those who can tell such stories, and I count some of them among my friends. But, I did not visit MIT as a shy high school senior and feel instantly at home for the first time. I wasn’t even a geek. I was just stubborn. To me, MIT represented the worst possible baptism into academia I could imagine — a land without the grade inflation of the Ivy Leagues, without the caring professors of the prestigious liberal arts colleges, without the whole range of ordinary kids who would make me look better by comparison, and, most importantly, without even a subdivision of the humanities. If I went there, and if I failed at math and science, I had no recourse. I did not even have the fallback of a liberal arts degree. All that was left for the “fallen” was a generic major in course 21 (“Humanities”). Obviously, if such a trial by fire existed, it was the best. If it was the best, then, to prove to myself I really belonged in science at all, I had to go there. Anything less was failure already.

I wasn’t going to fail. I was going to set myself up with the choice to succeed at a science major or accept defeat and obscurity. I visited the school prior to the admitted students’ weekend, and I talked only with faculty. I met only one undergraduate. The following fall I went off to MIT with all the sterling credentials of one meant for academia, and the complete lack of cultural knowledge — from anime to Zardoz — associated with MIT graduates. To me, MIT was a pinnacle, not a group of people.

I was a geek ethnographer. I studied geeks in their unusual, secluded habitat and derived much joy from the mental models of geek life I developed.

My first year at MIT I submerged myself in “sketchiness.” I attended parties with themes like “ooh, shiny!” My fellow students in the Experimental Studies Group kept the introduction picture of me in sedate khaki shorts and striped Gap top, hands behind my back and smiling up at the camera on my first day of classes. That photo was later labeled “before ESG.” They dressed me up later in a bizarre cross of Goth industrial and Victorian Goth, took a second Polaroid, slapped “After ESG” on it, and proudly displayed it the following year to try and entice the right sort of new froshlings into the program. But, the vicarious sketch never quite stuck. Indeed, if they had bothered to ask me what I was thinking while parading around in my one-woman Goth fashion show, I would have been ashamed to admit it. The clothes were not even my own. Those clothes belonged to the skinniest, most elven-looking girl in the group, and, I could fit into them. Somewhere deep in my mind, I was preening, and I would never have admitted to such mundane thoughts. I still wasn’t a geek. I was a geek ethnographer. I studied geeks in their unusual, secluded habitat and derived much joy from the mental models of geek life I developed. And, like a good ethnographer, I tried to minimize the impact of my experiments on the native environment. I dove into the culture in a subconscious attempt to minimize the impact of my mental observations on the ecology of MIT.

And perhaps I could have continued that way for another four years. However, the problem with living amongst geeks is the necessity of dating geeks. Even when I didn’t know I was dating geeks, I was dating geeks. I could not date geeks and not step across the great divide, becoming a subject in one of my own “studies.” There came a point where I had to put up or shut up, become a geek — and a gamer, and an anime fan, a sci-fi fantasy fan and a — well, no, not a Zardoz fan yet — or run away screaming in fear.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that that point came from a boyfriend involved in another great geek ecological study of humans (and elves, and dwarves, and frost giants and halflings) in “ecologically valid” setting — gaming!

I’m a female plant shaman! Felix is my mentor. He’s also female. We had a girl’s night out last time. We hunted triceratops.

We met innocently enough. A birthday party thrown for one of the more outgoing girls I had met at the school. He seemed mundane enough at first glance. He was a frat boy, and the cutest boy in the room. He was the cutest boy in the room — and he was more interested in talking to me than in joining the growing train of male birthday-girl admirers. We discussed his budding interest in break dancing, and he offered private lessons. By our third date, things were going well. Then he called to ask if we could reschedule our Saturday night outing. He mentioned that he had some plans with a few fraternity brother friends. Given how infrequent the time they had to spend together, he was unwilling to cancel. I really didn’t mind, but curiosity got the better of me. I asked about the plans. He began with the classic, single line least likely to draw someone into gaming — “So, have you ever heard of Dungeons & Dragons?” And then it continued. “We don’t play that. No, that system is kind of limiting. We play Rifts — it’s like D&D, only better! They have everything, and it’s set on Earth with magic and weird creatures from other dimensions! I’m a female plant shaman! Felix is my mentor. He’s also female. We had a girl’s night out last time. We hunted triceratops.”

He spoke in first person. Now that I’m a gamer, I know about this strange phenomenon of referring to the events of game as though they had happened to us directly. How we can in a single contiguous utterance speak words like “I aim for the jewel in the lich’s heart. Look at that; I crit!” We seamlessly switch between the viewpoint of our characters and ourselves at the table. Back then, I just wondered if Matt would be undergoing hormone therapy in the next couple of years. I told my friends he rescheduled because of a fraternity ritual. To my credit, I did not break up with him. I am still surprised Matt took my mundane virginity with an introduction such as his. Somehow he did, with a little help from his GM, who played to my amused immersive tendencies. They convinced me to play in a space opera campaign as a one of a group of mentally disturbed orphans raised to be hunted in a commercial big game hunt. I still had a learning curve; I showed up in black leather and heels for the first session. (I had yet to grasp the real difference between LARPing and tabletop. I blame Matt; I don’t know how I blame him. I still do.) I incurred strange looks from the less-geeky of the fraternity brothers for that one.

I babbled happily about the character — forgetting that “sadist,” while written on Roidy’s character sheet, was not something appropriate for polite conversation.

More importantly, I truly became “one of us.” My black leather ensemble earned Matt a few serious questions about whether he was the dominant, the subordinate or a switch. I moved on from gaming toward the great wide world of geekdom. I babbled happily about the character — forgetting that “sadist,” while written on Roidy’s character sheet, was not something appropriate for polite conversation.

After several years, Matt and I broke up. I moved to graduate housing my final year at MIT. I mingled among the graduate students at our first floor dinner. I think by that point I had forgotten what life away from MIT was like. Mingling with those who had spent their formative geek years elsewhere reminded me. I felt immeasurable joy when I finally found someone who started our conversation discussing USA’s The Dead Zone and George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice Series. When “the new boy” did not react with immediate horror when I first mentioned being a gamer (though he expressed some confusion over what it was) I felt I had found a new project. I had toned down Roidy’s description to fit into a more Charlie’s Angels mode when I finally did mention her on — oh dear! — about our third date. I had other characters by that point — but Roidy was my first. I had to tell the new boy about her. I was deeply hooked and needed to proselytize the wonderful wide world of GURPs. I even had my niche of the gaming world worked out. Like Matt before me, I never stopped to consider that describing how I had “simulationist” tendencies (courtesy of www.indie-rpgs.com, for those who don’t know it) and then describing playing a character who must make will rolls against her sadistic tendencies — is intimidating. To hear Nick tell it, “Well, we were on a boat in the middle of Boston Harbor. There was nowhere else to escape to, so I figured I’d hear you out.”

Matt told me his story in my dorm room — there was ample room to run. Nick’s been gaming about two and half years now.

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I’m a Female Plant Shaman: A Crash Course in Geekdom

August 2007 Issue

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