Realm: F-List Essays - Subrealm: Sigerson
Mar. 28th, 2008 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshLet’s start with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sigerson.
sigerson is a pagan, studying what it means to be a pagan at one of Boston’s pernumerous universities. (This is a theme among my friends: they either come from, or migrate to, greater Boston. And no wonder. But anyway.) I was going to say, "In her spare time she is an avid and expert dressmaker/costumer," but that’s really incorrect: doing things with fabric is part of her work, of her life; and she’s always looking for ways to integrate it into her theological interests, through projects like the Faith Quilt. She’s also an extremely warm-hearted and loving individual, which is wonderful for all who know her, but especially for the ever-eccentric sen_no_ongaku (of whom more later), who’s now married to her. In addition to him, she loves DM’ing, and also bacon.
Bacon is very important.
But you want to know how we met, and how all these crazy people interrelate, and how I became the person that I am. Which is why we’re beginning withsigerson: Not so much because she played a key role, but because symbolizes a lot of the culture of WARP at the time.
When I first metsigerson, she was treasurer of WARP, which is the Williams Association of Role Players, ie the geekiest people on campus. [Maybe]. I suppose I must have seen her first at the campus activities fair, presumably wearing a medieval-style dress (tailored herself) abd waving a sword made from foam and duct tape. That tells you a lot about her, and about the organization. I certainly met her at the organizational meeting (the one, campus-required meeting per year) a few days later. By this method I also met her clone, and thus avoided the mistake that many people made of assuming there was only one of them.
For identical twins, they're really remarkably dissimilar. Even dressed alike, their faces are fairly distinctive, to say nothing of the fact thatsigerson wears glasses and parts her hair in the middle, whereas stealthmuffin parts hers to one side. It does further: sigerson identifies as bisexual, whereas stealthmuffin (to my knowledge) does not. And sigerson is interested, as I've said, in costume design and religion and academics; stealthmuffin focuses more on writing. Or as their friends put it once, "stealthmuffin put all her skill points into the ability to live with wavyarms without going stark raving mad."
[No, I don't know what aboutwavyarms was supposed to be corrosive of one's sanity]
WARP, though, was much more than a forum for D&D players and assorted crazies; it was also a social group, though the latter had boundaries slightly different from those of the official membership of the org. I learned this, ironically, shiefly as a result of my crap financial-aid-provided student job, which had assigned me (purely on the basis of last nameO to work at Driscoll Dining Hall. Williams has (or had) five dining halls; the Drisc was widely regarded as the worst, though its consistent denizens swore it was superior to all the others. Myself, I could never tell much difference in the way the (campus-wide) menu was prepared there one way or the other; though it did more reliably have non-iceberg lettuce on the salad bar. Anyway, my job meant that it abruptly started to make sense for me to eat meals there; and being but a callow first-year (or frosh), I feared that I wouldn't know anyone in the place. The first time I ate there, though, I recognized some faces from the aforesaid organizational meeting,* and so sidled over and plonked down my tray.
"Greetings," I said. "My name is Josh. I am a frosh."
"Would that make you Josh the Frosh?" someone inquired.
"Errr..."
Inevitably, the name stuck, even after I became a sophomore. As I discovered later, I was joinging the nickname ranks of Josh With the Beard (long-graduated, and shaved, by that point), and his successor Josh Without the Beard (who I believe currently has facial hair. And is marryingstealthmuffin. Yes, we’re a somewhat incestuous social group.)
(Though that’s pretty common, with Williams people.)
In this case, though, I think some of the org-incest** is simply the result of the fact that they’re a very warm and welcoming group. Certainly they welcomed me; and underneath the banter (and there was a lot of banter) there was a real sense that they cared about and for each other. Geeks they were, but emotionally distant they were not. I associate this in particular with the Twins. And I think my memory is probably playing me false, for I feel as thoughsigerson was the first person at Williams who hugged me, though I can't remember any specific instance, and we weren't that close at that point (though it IS the sort of thing that she might have done). It's probably all symbolic, 'cause WARP was the one place I could open up and be myself--my geeky, random self.*** I'd spent most of high school trying to get away from being a social outcast, trying to fit in, trying to be a person I wasn't; and I remember saying to someone or other, during a bout of depressed philosophizing during my first few weeks at Williams, that I felt like I was wearing a mask. With the Warpies, I could take that mask off, and yet not be excluded; and so eventually I stopped putting it back on, and started the long, slow trek towards opening up, and toward figuring out who Josh Burson is.
Hm. On reflection, I seem to have used talking aboutsigerson as a springboard to reflect at length about myself. Which is rather unfair, especially since there's a great deal that I could say about philosophical herself. How she got me addicted to Xena and to webcomics, for instance; or the famous night of the out-Breathed contest; or how she became, for me, a hint of the existence of God. (Or I could talk about Ives.) But still more I am sure that there is much in her (gasp!) post-college life that should be told, and yet I cannot tell it: not only because this entry is already Way Too Long, but because I have not seen her face to face since Trivia in '02. That's the blessing and the curse of LJ: you don't lose people altogether, but you can still be "in touch" with people you haven't had a real conversation with in most of a decade.
Clearly I need to go to Boston more.
* Warpies inevitably ate in Driscoll, and generally ate together. This became something of a point of honor, so you would often have nine people sitting around a table that really only had space for six. This kind of behavior evolved its own terminology: "de-traying" to make more room, endless comments about colonizing adjacent territories, and of course the slogan "N+1!" (A formula for the number of people that it is possible to fit around one Driscoll table, where N was the number already there.)
Cases like the time we had twenty people (nominally) at the table, though, were reserved for special occasions.
** Being a somewhat self-contained community, Williams defines lots of forms of “incest”. The original version is Entry Incest (having a relationship with a member of your surrogate “family” freshman year. This is strongly frowned upon (although it does happen); less of a taboo, though still the subject of jokes, are a capella group incest, rugby team incest, WARP incest, usw. usf. ad infinitum.
*** OK, yeah, having a (geeky) girlfriend helped too.
sigerson.sigerson is a pagan, studying what it means to be a pagan at one of Boston’s pernumerous universities. (This is a theme among my friends: they either come from, or migrate to, greater Boston. And no wonder. But anyway.) I was going to say, "In her spare time she is an avid and expert dressmaker/costumer," but that’s really incorrect: doing things with fabric is part of her work, of her life; and she’s always looking for ways to integrate it into her theological interests, through projects like the Faith Quilt. She’s also an extremely warm-hearted and loving individual, which is wonderful for all who know her, but especially for the ever-eccentric sen_no_ongaku (of whom more later), who’s now married to her. In addition to him, she loves DM’ing, and also bacon.Bacon is very important.
But you want to know how we met, and how all these crazy people interrelate, and how I became the person that I am. Which is why we’re beginning with
sigerson: Not so much because she played a key role, but because symbolizes a lot of the culture of WARP at the time. When I first met
sigerson, she was treasurer of WARP, which is the Williams Association of Role Players, ie the geekiest people on campus. [Maybe]. I suppose I must have seen her first at the campus activities fair, presumably wearing a medieval-style dress (tailored herself) abd waving a sword made from foam and duct tape. That tells you a lot about her, and about the organization. I certainly met her at the organizational meeting (the one, campus-required meeting per year) a few days later. By this method I also met her clone, and thus avoided the mistake that many people made of assuming there was only one of them.For identical twins, they're really remarkably dissimilar. Even dressed alike, their faces are fairly distinctive, to say nothing of the fact that
sigerson wears glasses and parts her hair in the middle, whereas stealthmuffin parts hers to one side. It does further: sigerson identifies as bisexual, whereas stealthmuffin (to my knowledge) does not. And sigerson is interested, as I've said, in costume design and religion and academics; stealthmuffin focuses more on writing. Or as their friends put it once, "stealthmuffin put all her skill points into the ability to live with wavyarms without going stark raving mad."[No, I don't know what about
wavyarms was supposed to be corrosive of one's sanity]WARP, though, was much more than a forum for D&D players and assorted crazies; it was also a social group, though the latter had boundaries slightly different from those of the official membership of the org. I learned this, ironically, shiefly as a result of my crap financial-aid-provided student job, which had assigned me (purely on the basis of last nameO to work at Driscoll Dining Hall. Williams has (or had) five dining halls; the Drisc was widely regarded as the worst, though its consistent denizens swore it was superior to all the others. Myself, I could never tell much difference in the way the (campus-wide) menu was prepared there one way or the other; though it did more reliably have non-iceberg lettuce on the salad bar. Anyway, my job meant that it abruptly started to make sense for me to eat meals there; and being but a callow first-year (or frosh), I feared that I wouldn't know anyone in the place. The first time I ate there, though, I recognized some faces from the aforesaid organizational meeting,* and so sidled over and plonked down my tray.
"Greetings," I said. "My name is Josh. I am a frosh."
"Would that make you Josh the Frosh?" someone inquired.
"Errr..."
Inevitably, the name stuck, even after I became a sophomore. As I discovered later, I was joinging the nickname ranks of Josh With the Beard (long-graduated, and shaved, by that point), and his successor Josh Without the Beard (who I believe currently has facial hair. And is marrying
stealthmuffin. Yes, we’re a somewhat incestuous social group.)(Though that’s pretty common, with Williams people.)
In this case, though, I think some of the org-incest** is simply the result of the fact that they’re a very warm and welcoming group. Certainly they welcomed me; and underneath the banter (and there was a lot of banter) there was a real sense that they cared about and for each other. Geeks they were, but emotionally distant they were not. I associate this in particular with the Twins. And I think my memory is probably playing me false, for I feel as though
sigerson was the first person at Williams who hugged me, though I can't remember any specific instance, and we weren't that close at that point (though it IS the sort of thing that she might have done). It's probably all symbolic, 'cause WARP was the one place I could open up and be myself--my geeky, random self.*** I'd spent most of high school trying to get away from being a social outcast, trying to fit in, trying to be a person I wasn't; and I remember saying to someone or other, during a bout of depressed philosophizing during my first few weeks at Williams, that I felt like I was wearing a mask. With the Warpies, I could take that mask off, and yet not be excluded; and so eventually I stopped putting it back on, and started the long, slow trek towards opening up, and toward figuring out who Josh Burson is.Hm. On reflection, I seem to have used talking about
sigerson as a springboard to reflect at length about myself. Which is rather unfair, especially since there's a great deal that I could say about philosophical herself. How she got me addicted to Xena and to webcomics, for instance; or the famous night of the out-Breathed contest; or how she became, for me, a hint of the existence of God. (Or I could talk about Ives.) But still more I am sure that there is much in her (gasp!) post-college life that should be told, and yet I cannot tell it: not only because this entry is already Way Too Long, but because I have not seen her face to face since Trivia in '02. That's the blessing and the curse of LJ: you don't lose people altogether, but you can still be "in touch" with people you haven't had a real conversation with in most of a decade. Clearly I need to go to Boston more.
* Warpies inevitably ate in Driscoll, and generally ate together. This became something of a point of honor, so you would often have nine people sitting around a table that really only had space for six. This kind of behavior evolved its own terminology: "de-traying" to make more room, endless comments about colonizing adjacent territories, and of course the slogan "N+1!" (A formula for the number of people that it is possible to fit around one Driscoll table, where N was the number already there.)
Cases like the time we had twenty people (nominally) at the table, though, were reserved for special occasions.
** Being a somewhat self-contained community, Williams defines lots of forms of “incest”. The original version is Entry Incest (having a relationship with a member of your surrogate “family” freshman year. This is strongly frowned upon (although it does happen); less of a taboo, though still the subject of jokes, are a capella group incest, rugby team incest, WARP incest, usw. usf. ad infinitum.
*** OK, yeah, having a (geeky) girlfriend helped too.
