PaigeFTW: Wear Your Pride
I am a great lover of the subtle T-shirt reference.
Rather than donning a shirt with a big Pikachu and Pokemon logo, for instance, I much prefer subtler prints, like a shirt I once got off Kickstarter emblazoned with “Pallet Town University, Established 1996.” If you know it, you know it. If you don’t, then it just looks like an obscure school shirt.
At work, I also like to use a Dragon Age jacket that looks kind of like the Inquisitor’s armor if you squint, but mostly it looks like a gray jacket with geometric prints that is slightly too big for me. I also was keen for a Mass Effect hoodie that had Commander Shepard’s signature N7 logo on the chest with that clean red-and-black stripe. Next time it goes on sale, it’s mine.
I’ve got a pretty considerable number of other shirts that follow the same kind of subtle pattern.
But call it what it is: shame. I am ashamed to go out in public wearing my love for games in plain sight, and I’ve instead become a kind of smug hipster, wearing these elitist shirts to see if you “get” the reference.
There’s always that moment when someone looks at your clothes, then at you, and there’s that infinitesimal flash of judgment. “Ah, so you’re that kind of person,” they say with their eyes. And “that” kind of person is always weird.
I see it most prominently at conventions like last weekend’s Comic Con Honolulu, where people in cars glance at the cosplayers lining the sidewalks and look away quickly, smirks flitting across their face as they glance back again, slyly.
Why do I care what they think?
I don’t like that I sometimes feel ashamed of my greatest interest, or that I sometimes choose my T-shirts based on something other than aesthetic appeal. I am who I am, and before the world can accept that, so must I.
