I’m not sure if there is a Roleplayers Anonymous (there probably is, in the Bible Belt of America somewhere (I’ll explain later)), but even if there was, I wouldn’t attend. I’m a roleplayer, and proud!

I kind of forgot to add it to the categories on the right, and totally skipped over it in my earlier posts, but I should probably make up for the rather lame ‘more about me’ posts (that really didn’t say all that much about me…)

So, this is me coming out of the proverbial, non-gay closet. I’ve been an elf, a Jedi, a cowboy; an ancient Egyptian God (Osiris of course) and the king of England! I even spent a few hours a week tearing the heads off people, roleplaying a werewolf called Bacon. Yeah, Bacon.

These were just the formalised characters — around a table, with some dice, and other players. Or perhaps on stage, in some kind of play, or dialogue. Each and every one of them had a voice, an ideology, a back story, a way of carrying themselves, mannerisms: for all intents and purposes, I became those characters, if only for a few hours at a time.

Why do I do it? It’s fun. Acting was always a big thing at my school, and we’d all be encouraged to get up on stage and act from a young age, through until we graduated at 18. Combine the love of acting with oratory (speaking!) and someone that’s intensely interested in WHY and HOW things (people!) work, and you get a guy that is nearly always wearing the skin of another character.

That’s not say I’m never myself, but considering I only keep very few close friends, I imagine most people only know me as a certain character. Perhaps a few facets of Sebastian shine through the roleplayed persona. So I guess that makes about… 6 people that know the real me. Scary.

Having been online for so many years probably doesn’t help matters. I’ve created and cultivated different personalities for various online games, or communities. I have a ‘head-strong tyrannical self-righteous’ leadership persona which I use for World of Warcraft, but then I am much more self-effacing when it comes to other games. I’m almost… humble. I guess I develop a character that suits my needs.

Now, I’m writing about this because a) I haven’t roleplayed in a long time (my games master has been slacking…!), and b) my little Zombies rant got me thinking about a time at university, when a bunch of us stumbled around campus moaning and groaning ‘braaaains’. But that’s not the story I wanted to tell — I wanted to tell the story about our little ‘run in’ with the Christian Society.

Through some immensely clueless clerical error in the student union, some administrator had given the Christian Society some rooms very close to the Roleplaying Society, on the same days, and the same times. Now, I didn’t think this would be a problem at the time, but for some reason, because we were always down in ‘the dungeon’ (our affectionate name for the badly-maintained rooms right at the bottom of the campus, where no one else dared venture… except for us intrepid roleplayers), and the fact we were playing with dragons, and demons, and mighty magicians… they thought we were devil worshipers. I kind you not, they thought we were satanists. We got more heat from them than the Goth Society got, for Christ’s sake!

Anyway, that was the story I wanted to tell!

Now, on the topic of roleplaying, a (very tenous) link to some Middle-East propaganda that’s popped up recently. I give to you: the brown jacket guy. This guy on his own wouldn’t be all that chilling, but here’s a video from the second Lebanon War: green helmet guy. Staged propaganda, using a dead child as a prop. Chilling.

My circular polariser arrived today, so off to take some photos!

I’m pretty sure that by now, you are certain that I’m male, that I have a penis, and I most likely have hair covering the vast majority of my body. If you’re still uncertain, I definitely need to work on my roleplaying skills.

This is where I play with your conceptions and throw a curve ball, by telling you that I’ve portrayed myself, at other times and in other places, to be female. Successfully enough to have men fall for me, to receive gifts, to be brought into another girl’s circle of confidence.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never done this in real life. Being 6′5″ (196cm) with a goatee and vast amounts of body hair normally prevent all but lobotomised people from believing I’m a girl. I’m talking online — a few MUDs, and a couple of MMOs.  In the MUDs I played overtly female characters (it’s very easy, when you only have descriptive text to define who and what you are). I’ve always been gifted with words, so weaving them together to form a believable female persona wasn’t really a challenge. Normally the characters would start of androgynous and slowly develop a sexuality as I got a feel for how other girls (well, they might’ve been girls…) handled themselves.

This whole boys-playing-girls thing (which is/was very common with MUDs) can lead into some interesting and not-so-ideal situations. Take, for example, sexual interactions. I know on at least one occasion, I was seduced by another guy playing a female character. I don’t know to this day if he seduced me because he thought I was a hot girl, or because he had worked out I was a guy. The fact that he was playing a gay character probably suggests he knew I was a guy — but who knows. The other problem is when you finally have to ‘come out’, which is what happened with my WoW experiment:

I created my first WoW character back in 2005. At the time I’d just finished my degree, and a few weeks away from graduating. I’d successfully not started an MMO during my time at university (I’ll tell you some other stories about my gamer geek friends another day, and how they failed their degree…), but considering my degree title was ‘Computer Games’, I figured I should probably do some… research into the field of MMOs. Yes, I started WoW as a study to find out what made World of Warcraft dominate the market (and really, at 11.5 million subscribers, it’s MASSIVE).

With a new game, and a new level of understanding for how online communities work, I decided to up the challenge and roleplay a girl, playing a boy. It was a whole lot more delicate (and more fun), because I could outwardly be masculine, but have some deep-seated female traits that would only come out in quiet, private chats with other players. After 2 or 3 months, I had about 50% of my friends certain I was a girl, and the rest totally unsure about my gender.

The experiment came to an abrupt ending when I finally had to use my microphone (damn raiding!) and my squeeky falsetto voice wasn’t quite believable enough… I gave it my best shot though, but alas, the persona I’d worked so hard to develop came crumbling down around me.

So I’m a boy… at the moment.

Anyway! We’re off to London soon, to see a play. I’ll leave you with another nice photo that I took yesterday (and promptly submitted to National Geographic… well a man can dream, right?) It’s entitled ‘Sucks to be a Duck’…

It sure looks like my tiny little foray into audio blogging (or podcasting, which is audio blogging, but with more regularity, and some kind of RSS syndication) was a success. There was unprecedented activity on my blog today, so I can only assume that people really want to listen to some English beast babble on and on about… not much. Fortunately (well, for me), I’m not going to podcast just anything — no, I’m going to make it INTERESTING!

‘How is Seb going to make it interesting?’ I hear you ask. I’m not entirely sure yet, but I have a few ideas. They’ll probably be based on the normal podcast topics: geeky reviews (of games, music, films, hardware) and other esoteric stuff (like those chaps that record their roleplaying sessions). I will probably focus on the reviews (I tend to have strong opinions on all things geeky), and… perhaps perform some kind of audio drama. Yes, I’m going to create a story, along with characterisation and maybe some naff sound effects. You’d be right in saying that audio plays/dramas/books aren’t all that interactive (although they can be exciting, with the right narrator!), so I will spice it up a little to fit the whole ‘blog concept’, so that we have a dialogue  between the writer, and the readers. Or speaker and listeners, in this case.

What I’m going to do is act, perform and narrate an interactive story. A basic murder mystery to start with — a murder, some possible suspects (all with water-tight alibis of course!) and some motives. I’ll then give the listeners of this blog a chance to choose each step in the story (either via discussion consensus, or poll). It probably won’t be a huge story, but hopefully it’ll be interesting enough to keep people entertained, and interested in what direction the story takes! As an added bonus, it’ll also keep the British accent junkies sated too (and maybe some other accent addicts happy, if I can work some odd characters into the story). If I can be totally honest, the stalkeresque emails are… unnerving.

When will I do it? Let’s aim for the first episode to be… next week.

With that exciting news out of the way, I should probably focus on less-exciting things (so you go away thinking ‘Cool, that Seb guy’s gonna make a podcast!!), like… some chauvenistic flowcharts. Heck, while we’re on the topic of girls (the topic does say ‘Ga Ga’, and each and every man knows that all women are at least a little bit insane, even the ones they love dearly), here’s a chart that can help men read a girl’s face (dangerous at the best of times, castratingly hard at the worst of times). Being a worldly man that’s experienced a wide gamut of female emotions first-hand I don’t need such a chart, but perhaps it’s worth printing out and keeping in your wallet, for emergencies.

Finally, we have this: http://www.vimeo.com/2809991

I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, so I can’t really tell how accurate she is… but I have a suspicion that proper Star Wars geeks will be frothing and fuming at such… sacrilegious treatment of the Star Wars canon. Plus, she’s pretty cute, and I have a lot of time for cute girls.

Just before I finish, it’s just been brought to my attention that two pop starlets (is Justin Timberlake a full-blown star yet? I guess, grudgingly, he is) are destined to butcher one of the 90s most iconic love songs: I Will Always Love You (16 weeks at number 1 in the UK!). It’s heretical that such a cover could ever be produced. I can’t (I refuse to!) believe Dolly Parton needs the money — I mean, come on, she has her own amusement park for Christ’s sake! (OK, admittedly, it’s called Dollywood, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that she’s probably stinkin’ rich). Something sinister must be afoot. Maybe Whitney Houston needed more money to fuel her crack cocaine habit or something, and so she went crawling to Dolly for a quick and dirty bail-out. Maybe.

In case you were wondering about my sometimes seemingly-obtuse blog titles, the title is always a reference to something written or said in the blog entry! Perhaps I should run a points system, for those that work it out.

Today I have a lot to write about, but I don’t want to squeeze a bunch of eclectic thoughts into an entry that might not ‘gel’, and thus ruin the whole flow of the thing, so I’ll try to stick to just a couple of topics.

First, a pretty picture (everyone likes pretty pictures): [SinglePic not found]

I like this one because it has some COLOUR! England is awfully grey at the moment (except for the grass, that’s always green), so I was happy to capture a more lively moment, a hint of spring perhaps?

Second, is the fantastic political faux pas by the Czech Republic today. Apparently it’s customary for whoever’s holding the rolling EU presidency to create some piece of art to celebrate this fact. Or perhaps it’s just the way the Czech do things. Either way, it turns out that the artist had tricked everyone, convincing them all that he was collaborating with other artists to create this satirical masterpiece. What really happened? Apparently he was paid off by some private interest (this is coming from my friend who lives in Prague), who wanted him to embarass the nation, and upset a bunch of other EU members in the process.

The BBC have some great coverage of the exhibit, where you can see just how LARGE this thing is. I found a slideshow, where you can check the individual works out in detail — check out number 8, Bulgaria.This one has actually drawn ultimatums from the Bulgarian government, demanding it be taken down, lest further action be taken…

Squat toilets are obviously no laughing matter.

Moving a few thousand miles west, towards the land of opportunity, the inauguration of Mr Obama draws ever nearer.  Microsoft have developed a funky new technology called ‘Photosynth’. What it does (and I’m sure I’ve seen this done a couple of years ago, by Google) is compile thousands of user-submitted photos into one large collage of photos. It cleverly aligns each image so that you can move around, almost freely, almost as if you’re there. Be sure to check their site, after midday EST. If you want to see an example of it in action, check out this Photosynth of the Opening Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in DC.

Anyway! In a bit of slightly bad news, my interactive murder mystery won’t be ready to start until Wednesday (or even Thursday!) Who would’ve thought that writing a multiple-path story could be hard, huh!

But the good news is that I felt the need to warm up before I really start. I have to get back into acting, and characterisation, and accents! So I recorded a little opening sequence from another story I might do in the future — a wild west story  — a story that I have particular attachment to, from my roleplaying days at university. It really is just a rehearsal, an attempt to get into character, and switch character quickly. It was much harder than I thought it would be, to shift from accent to accent, and back to the narrator. There’s also a fan to be heard in the background, as I didn’t originally plan to make this public… It doesn’t get in the way much though!

It’s not too late to vote for the non-Slavic options in the poll, friends… have pity on me…

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Time and time again I see driven and excited people come together as a guild or clan, progress well but ultimately fizzle out and die.

Whether it’s because of loot drama or a tyrannical guild leader, the main thing stopping a guild from becoming successful is survival. As I’ve touched on before, World of Warcraft is an easy game. The thing holding you back from that elusive Server First is not player skills; it’s teamwork and logistics.

Now, teamwork and logistics are huge topics for another day. What I want to talk about today is something that you will need to develop and foster while your raid team or guild starts to coalesce. Alongside the implementation of a DKP system and a good raid schedule, you must also develop your community.

A good community is perhaps the main thing that holds back many new guilds. Many old guilds also take it for granted, letting it gradually waste away; a community can not be just left to hang, it must be gently cultivated, nurtured and looked after!

So, perhaps we should start with the definition of the term, and go from there:

What is a community?

A community is often defined as a group of people living in the same locality, governed by the same laws or rules. It could be as small as a group of friends that meet up at the same place and have their own ‘house rules’, or it could be as large as international ‘gaming community’ (although communities that span the globe don’t tend to have the same rules as localised ones). For the sake of this article I’m going to be talking about community sizes you often find in contemporary online games and virtual worlds; in clans, guilds and corporations.

Online communities tend to consist of 5 to 100 people. While some communities are larger, they often splinter into ‘cliques’ – groups of friends that stick very much together and don’t really add anything to the community itself. Generally, I wouldn’t recommend trying to run a online community that has more than 100 members, but if you’ve successfully grown a community and you see no reason to stop… see what you can do!

A community, then, in an online game, is a group of gamers that come together in the same place (albeit virtual, it’s still a place!) and live by the same rules, as laid down by the leader of the community (at the start, anyway!)

Creating a place for the community to exist

For an online community to come together, the members need somewhere to hang out! For an online game it’s obviously guild chat or a forum. For smaller clans it might be an IRC room, or a mailing list. As I already said, these are virtual places, but they are still places; places where thoughts and emotions can exist and run wild. A community needs a place where its members can be. It is vitally important if a thought needs sharing, or a question posed, that a place exists for that interchange.

Creating a place for the community to exist is as simple as creating a guild or chat room. A forum is also incredibly useful for the sharing of thoughts in larger communities (I’ve listed a few free forum providers at the end of this article).

The rules of the community

Once you’ve created a place, the next step is to define some common rules that everyone adheres to. I’m not talking here about draconian commandments, but I am talking about rules that add flavour, or define who you are. Perhaps a roleplaying guild might require all of its members to stay ‘in character’. Maybe you’re a player-killing clan that only has one rule: kill anything that breathes. It might just be as simple as ‘play your best and aim for server number one’.

It’s these rules that will bring your community together. Through common rites, rules and goals you will begin to trust each other; it’s only with that implicit trust and security that the community can continue its growth and become a ‘true community’.

The levels of community

M. Scott Peck was an American psychologist that had a huge body of work, but most importantly for this article, he focused a lot on communities, their characteristics, and how the phases they go through in their development.

He proposes 4 distinct stages that a community goes through (hopefully they make it to the end!):

• Pseudocommunity – As the name suggests, this isn’t really a community. Members often cover up their differences, for the sake of survival, or a common goal. This is very much a community of ’survival’; a group of players see an opportunity to improve their survival, so they group up!
• Chaos – When the psuedocommunity ultimately fails (and it will, given enough drama), the members start to go to each other for help, or guidance, or to vent their differences or grievances. This is the first stage of bonding, and trust-building! It goes beyond plain survival here — the members are trying to improve their survival!
• Emptiness – Eventually, differences are laid aside. Egos, or ego-related issues are suppressed. This is where the strong individual urges are destroyed and the community is actually born.
• True community – After making it through all of the previous stages, the members of the community are in complete empathy with one another. Arguments will arise, but they will be settled in a timely fashion without things becoming too heated. Motives are never called into question in a true community – it’s way beyond that point! – any members of the community that made it to this point are in it for the long run, perhaps until the day they die (or quit!)

These stages are very easily mapped onto online communities. Using World of Wacraft guilds as a base for the examples:

• Stage 1 – A guild forms. The leader has normally chosen a purpose for the guild’s existence, but that’s the only thing keeping the guild together. ‘A place to farm easy epics!’ or ‘Become number one on the server!’ are two common goals for a guild at this stage
• Stage 2 – It’s the guild leader’s job to get the guild to this stage as soon as possible! Stage 1 is quite destructive (and some guilds never leave it), and real progress and melding as a group can only occur once there is discourse and argument about how best to do things. Most WoW guilds that get to this stage can survive for a long time; simply getting the members to care enough and discuss issues or boss strategies is an achievement!
• Stage 3 – Once the rampant egos have been squashed, or removed, a guild might make it to this stage. This is when people start sharing real life issues and empathy starts popping up. People earnestly care for each other. It’s around this stage that people start turning up for every raid – and if they don’t, they’re very apologetic about it. Being let down by a member of the community is rare at this stage.
• Stage 4 – Often referred to as ‘spiritual community’, this is a stage that very few guilds will reach. This is where you start finishing each other’s sentences. There is an overwhelming feeling of inclusivity, commitment and consensus in a true community. A single leader also becomes less important at this stage; the community tends to govern itself through rational discussion that can only occur in a truly safe environment.

Peck defines true community with lots of shiny, happy terms, but the key values of a true community are: a safe place, a spirit (shared wisdom/love), and a place where everyone feels involved and included, without the fear that their feelings will be ignored, or attacked by other members.

Obviously, if an online community can reach the 4th and final stage, they’re going to be around for a long time, and perhaps span multiple games. The community transcends individual games; it becomes a lot more about the forum, voice coms, or even real-life meets!

Most guilds will only ever reach Stage 2 or 3 though, which is generally fine. A lot of progress will appear when people lay down their differences and egos, and focus on actually working together. If a community never progresses from Stage 1, you are in for a short, wild ride. There might be some progress, but it will be fleeting. Many flash-in-the-pan guilds recruit heavily, get bullied around by a guild leader, progress a bit, and ultimately dissipate to other guilds — these guilds serve a purpose though… they gear up people for other guilds with strong communities!

How to build a community — an example

Let me give you an example of a community that’s started from scratch. This could be a tiny fledgling guild started in The Barrens, or it could be a clan of Counter Strike players that bumped into each other in a random free-for-all game.

The first step is obviously to create a place to exist. This might be a forum, or a chat room, or just guild chat. It’s not hard to create a place! As long as the tools are there to facilitate communication, that’s all that matters. In general, though, a forum is the best solution for almost every kind of community — it allows real-time communication, and also threads of thought that can be answered at a later date. A forum also acts as a ‘group consciousness’, storing information from the past for future generations! Freedom of information is very important!

Once you have a place, you need some rules. This is the great part of online communities: your set of laws and rules can be incredibly flimsy, or very restrictive — whatever works! You might choose to have an almost non-existant rule set (our guild only has one rule, for example: ‘Don’t be an asshat’), or you might have a huge charter that lays down what you can and can’t do while in that community. I’ve seen roleplay guilds that have entire ‘rules of engagement’ laid out, that everyone must follow!

The most important thing is that these rules must be inclusive. Freedom of speech, as is the freedom of information. You are building a community not a tyranny. The members of the community must be able to speak their minds; they must be able to share their passions and concerns. It is only through concensus of opinion and inclusion that a community can grow upwards through the 4 stages!

The exception here is when someone (often the leader, although it could be by group agreement too) oversteps the line and needs correction, or removal. Racism is a common example of ‘excessive’ freedom of speech, as is misogyny in a community that includes girls. Religion might also be a sensitive subject in some cultures. Basically, any avenue of conversation that might push people out, rather than include. If a community reaches Stage 4 — true community — most codes of conduct are self-governing; it’s the early stages of a community that need the most hand-holding and guidance.

Once you have a place, and some rules, the community will begin to flourish. A little guidance might be necessary though! A community is nothing if it’s not used. What good is a forum, chat room or guild chat if no one actually uses it? I’ve seen WoW guilds with maybe 1 or 2 new forum posts every week; needless to say, their communities were incredibly weak — they just exist to raid, and never get past Stage 1.

It is someone’s (or everyone’s!) job to make sure the community grows. Encourage people to log into the forum and ask questions. Expect other people to assist you during your travels. If someone asks a question — answer it in a timely fashion!

You are trying to develop a group where everyone feels included, where you can put your entire soul into it without the fear that your investment won’t be returned. A community is only as strong as its members make it — if there is some rule, or some person (a tyrant!) that prevents people from dedicating themselves fully, your community may never get past Stage 1 or 2.

Notes

As with everything I’ve written, there’s always some exclusions or special cases that need mentioning. The common factor of Stage 3 and 4 communities is that they don’t have a tyrant leader — they have a shared leadership, with the members defining the rules and delivering justice. In fact, once a community progresses out of Stage 2, a leader might find himself with very little to do; problems seem to get solved on their own, and eventually problems just don’t arise!

Unfortunately, many online guilds tend to have tyrannical leaders. I’ve seen many guilds on the cusp of Stage 3 crushed by a tyrannical guild leader that’s afraid to lose his grip on control of the community. Some leaders are perhaps only playing to lead, rather than create a great and thriving community.

This isn’t to say that a leader has no place in Stage 3 or 4 communities! Their role tends to become more of a ’spiritual father’ (for want of a better term), guiding the community in times of unrest. As online communities are nearly always recruiting to replace quitters, it is also the leader’s job is to remove new members that don’t gel with the rest of the community; although the members themselves might force new people out, if they don’t fit.

I said I would provide a list of good, free forum providers, so here they are:

Free Forums/Guild Portals

• Guild Portal
• Guildomatic
• GamerDNA
• GuildLaunch

If on the other hand you are a smaller clan, how about getting an IRC room on QuakeNet? (It’s a very comprehensive guide!)

If you have any questions about the issues or topics raised here, I’m more than happy to answer them. You can ask them in a comment, or email me using this form.

I’ve talked about music before — musicals, really — but what I haven’t told you is that I, like most grown men, have dirty, dark secrets hidden away in my music collection.

Secreted away, in places that even a competent government agency would struggle to find, I have music by artists such as William Shatner, Meatloaf and even, though I hesitate to admit this, Dashboard Confessional (that folder is hidden and encrypted, for obvious reasons…)

If that wasn’t dank and disturbing enough, you could dig even deeper. Delving further, you would find another directory; a directory with just a single file in it. The file is ominously titled ‘Unimportant-Dont-Click-Me-Please.mp3′. If you’d found this file, and saw through my epic ruse, you’d be be greeted with this:

Yes, I love Beyonce’s ‘If I were a boy’. Don’t ask me why… I just do! I don’t really want to discuss it, so I’ll just move on to the actual point of this entry — I’ve re-written the lyric to ‘If I were a boy’. A cute little American songwriter, upon reading the re-worked lyric blurted out that: ‘You have talent, Seb!’

I’m not too sure about that, but if you even laugh once, I’ll consider it time well spent. As the lyric is, er, geeky, I’ve hyperlinked some of the more esoteric terms, so you an understand it fully!

Press play and try to sing along… it fits… just about!

If I were a geek — sung by Beyonce Knowles, written by Tony Gad & BC Jean

If I were a geek even just for a day
I’d roll out of bed in the evening
And throw on a black t-shirt
And go ‘round  Sheldon’s with dice

And chase after elves
I’d roll dice as much as I wanted
And I’d never get a girlfriend but it
Doesn’t matter ‘cause neither does he

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

If I were a geek
I would turn on my iPhone
Tell everyone it’s awesome
‘ Cause I can watch porn when I’m alone

I’d swing my sword first
And read the rules as I go
‘Cause really, no one questions
A geek with a sword, and lightning bolts, lightning bolt!

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

It’s never too late for you to go back
Say it’s just a mistake
You should take it right back
If you thought Hilton hotter than Leia
You thought wrong

But you’re just a geek
You don’t understand
(And put the Gaiman book down, oh)
How it feels to love a girl
Someday you wish you went out more

You don’t listen to her
You don’t care how it hurts
Until you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause you took the chinaman for granted
And everything you had got destroyed
But you’re just a geek

***

I am currently in talks with a talented singer to perform the song with my new lyric… I will of course post it, when she does so!

Here I stand on the precipice of a yawning chasm. I’m about to jump off the metaphorical edge and leap to my death. Will I be reborn a pariah of the geek community, or will I be forgotten like so many other dweebs that didn’t quite get it right?

Today I will address a topic that’s a little taboo. A topic that’s sat neatly just outside the periphery of popular culture. Star Trek and comics. Video games and roleplaying. The Big Bang Theory and Hackers. Geek chic is finally here — it’s cool to be a geek — but only for the boys. The geek girls are there, but they’re hiding, quietly biding their time. I’m not talking about those exhibitionist thrill-seeking cosplay geek girls that are obviously very much ‘out there’, I’m talking about the female equivalent of basement-dwelling male geeks. The female roleplayers, the non-bearded types that can speak Klingon or Quenya.

This guide would not have been possible without Heather and Eleni, both exemplar geek girls from the blogosphere. I’d also like to thank my platonic, real-life relationships with geeky girls for giving me an insight into how the female geek mind works.

Girl geeks exist, they’re multiplying, they’re becoming bolder and they have a plan.

Why geek girls are absolutely the best thing on this planet

Except for a younger Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears, geek girls are possibly the fairest of God’s children. When he wet his hands and fashioned the clay mold that would be used to create geek girls, he sat back with a content sigh and took a day off to celebrate such perfection.

I’m not talking about the freaky faux geek girls that are exhibitionists appealing to and feeding upon the weak and wimpy male geek populace. While geek girls might not be overflowing with confidence — much like their male counterparts — what they don’t have in brawn and balls they make up for with kindness. Geek girls are incredibly understanding. As I covered in my previous articles, geeks are interested instead of interesting. They are more interested in your well being than their own. It’s this basic trait which explains most geek behaviour (and one I will talk about in a future entry).

Live and let live

A geek girl, much like a geeky guy, is interested in whatever you want to share. In other words, geek girls aren’t clingy or needy. Geek girls have more important things to worry about than who you hung out with tonight, or if another girl was present. A geek girl would expect you to be interested in which game she’s playing, and which love interest she went for — the calloused, vile dwarf or the strapping, brave paladin.

Geek girls make great friends

Girls in general tend to have more of a ‘’social nature’ than boys. Couple this with their geeky tendencies and not only will a geek girl make a good girlfriend, she’ll be a good friend.

As an added bonus, if you get one of those geeky girls with real life girlfriends (as opposed to virtual ones, which they’ll have quite a few of), be prepared (and pleasantly surprised) to come home on a Friday night and find a bunch of girls in pyjamas watching old episodes of Buffy or Firefly. Or open your bedroom door and look out, if you’re not the going-out kind of geek…

Perhaps most importantly, a geek girl appreciates your foibles and rolls with it (she has issues too!) She’ll probably even learn to love your cuter oddities and gently encourage you to fix the creepy ones — like, really, stop collecting your toenail clippings and cease archiving your  Lindsay Lohan newspaper clippings.

In many relationships, the partners are completely disinterested in one another’s work or pastimes — not so with geeky relationships! — in theory, a geeky couple could probably avoid ever going out and meeting other people, or making new friends because they get everything they need from their friend and partner. In fact, that’s what a lot of geeky couples do…

Geek girls are exceptionally, um, interesting in the bedroom

If you’re a geeky guy, imagine all of the depraved things you’ve thought about doing to a girl. Dressing her up in a Japanese school-girl outfit. Princess Leia roleplay. Chewbacca roleplay. Cosplaying a 12 year old from some anime series.

Now… make sure you’re seated comfortably and your clothing is loosened… geek girls will let you do it. Of course, some might not let you penetrate them with prosthetic tentacles, candles or cucumbers (hentai…) but chances are, a geek girl is quite happy to go along with your weird, freaky fantasies because she’s fantasised about them too. The flip-side is of course (and most would say this is a good caveat) that you should be prepared to dress up as Han Solo or Jabba the Hut. And you should have a big, shiny lightsaber. With lots of battery power.

Previously mundane tasks can be steamily hot with a geek girl

Imagine organising your comics; with a girl sitting on your lap, bouncing. You could be cooking dinner, and she’ll crawl into the kitchen, grovelling before her slave driver, begging for her next meal. How about, every time she kills you in a video game, you owe her an orgasm? And vice versa. Button bashing has never been so romantic.

I’m not sure if Wii Fit calculates the calories burnt off during sex, but it’s worth a shot, right? Maybe that Wiimote controller fits… no, never mind, that’s a nasty, sacriligious thought. Don’t leave me, Princess Zelda, I didn’t mean it! Wait, it has a vibration function…

Great value for money

I almost went with ‘geek girls are cheap’ but I figured that might’ve been misinterpreted, even if it’s true. Unlike their vain, materialistic boring sisters, geek girls put an equal value on virtual and real goods. To a geek girl, a redesign of her website is more romantic than a box of chocolates. An animated e-card featuring your own awful singing voice is infinitely more sexy and loving than a bunch of flowers. Why take her out for dinner when you could stay home, order some Chinese food and serenade her with a new Guitar Hero song you’ve been practicing? Cheap AND infinitely more intimate.

A physical representation of love still goes a long way with geeky girls, but it’s certainly cheaper and more fun to please a geeky girl than a normal one. A signed first-edition Neil Gaiman book (and accompanying audio CD) will go a lot further than some jewellery… and you can read it too! She might give you odd looks if she catches you trying on her jewellery.

Finally, geek girls are really damn keen

Though shy and unassuming in real life, it’s very easy to get ‘in’ with a geek girl: rapid-fire email, seedy instant messaging or a romantic forum war — it’s all good!. She’s probably not going to walk up to you and suggest you go out for a drink somewhere — that’s just not how geeks operate — but chances are she’s incredibly eager to hook up.

Geek girls have probably spent the last few years dating the standard jocks: the sporty types, the guys that are only interested in her looks, the men that think it’s OK to date her and kiss other girls. With that avenue exhausted, geek girls are looking for geek guys. In fact, a geek girl will probably leap at the opportunity to date a geek guy — it’s a marriage made in heaven, and they know that — so they’ll probably make it really easy for you. They’ll do what every guy loves, the holy grail of boy/girl courting: they’ll make it obvious that they like you.

Thanks for reading! Perhaps, if you’re a geeky girl trying to attract a particuarly stubborn guy, send him a link to this page. If you’re a guy reading this, and you’re still single… what’re you waiting for?! Go and buy some tickets to the new Star Trek movie, equip some long, pointy plastic ears and see what happens!

Today, Tuesday, is the first of a few limited-edition one-off ’specials’. You know, like those episodes of Mythbusters where they go to Siberia, or borrow a bunch of high-grade military weapons. Each of these specials will focus on a particular aspect of I, Sebastian, normally featuring some kind of retarded dressing up.

You see, being a roleplayer and an actor, and having a mother that is also an actor and a massive, charismatic extrovert, I often end up in some pretty ridiculous predicaments. In a tutu, as Tinkerbell, or a fluffy bull-body suit as Nana the Dog. I’ve been cowboys (both gay and straight), a mouse in Cinderella, an extra from Dirty Dancing and, yes, I’ve been a pirate.

Quiet a few times, actually. I like wearing eye-liner, what can I say? Actually, I like the attention I get from girls when I wear eye-liner. I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the occasional camp dress-up (most men would be lying if they said that!) Since Pirates of the Caribbean I’ve had 3 chances to get out the smock and saber and taken advantage of every of them!

My first time… (dressing as a pirate)… was in 2004  just after the first film, back when the world was only talking about two things: ‘Isn’t Johnny Depp dreamy? I didn’t think I could love a camp drunk, but in his case…’ and ‘Cor, Orlando Bloom’s a bit of a girl, but damn… he’s cute.’ In fact, about 90% of all girls had a poster of one or the other on their wall. Not one to squander such potential pulling power, my first attempt at Orlando Bloom as Will Turner:

As you can see, I only managed a rapier that time — not quite the right kind of sword, but it did the job, as you can see from the rampant blonde attack. She was moving so quickly that she actually got in and out of the frame in the time it took the photographer to press the button. Drive-by kissing at its finest. This is also one of the very few photos with me wearing glasses and smiling.

Next, we have a fairly generic pirate. This was around the same time that I discovered eye-liner and started wearing it at every possible opportunity; well, whenever I was home alone, anyway. I wonder to this day if my mother noticed her eye-liner pencil going blunt without her use. Maybe she just kept it quiet, for my sake, and for my father’s blood pressure.

I actually wore my facial hair like that for quite some time — I quite liked it (and The American loved it, but that’s another tearjerker for another Time-Travel Thursday), but turns out I looked a bit old and, er, rapist’ish, so I finally stopped trimming my beard like that last year. I still think it’s pretty sexy though…

Finally, we have the new and improved Will Turner that I sported yesterday evening. I gave you a teaser yesterday, but now I’ll give you the other two photos… with a waistcoat and saber, the real deal! Eye-liner, waistcoat, slicked-back hair AND, most importantly, a big frickin’ phallic saber representing my overwhelmingly potent masculinity.

Christ, I think that’s quite enough photos for one day. I’m feeling all self-conscious now. Don’t tell me I messed up the make-up, please girls… my fragile ego just can’t take it.

Tomorrow, assuming the weather gets better, I should have coverage of Eric’s judicious winner-deciding ceremony. It was meant to be today, but it ended up pissing down; Eric doesn’t like rain, y’see…

Variety is the spice of life. A phrase used all too often by parents and grandparents, normally when something doesn’t go quite right. ‘Ah well, you didn’t get the girl and you ended up with a bruised knee, eye and chin AND a rash on your ass BUT… you know, variety is the spice of life!!!’

(Old people always talk with multiple exclamations, especially in emails…)

What the phrase really means is that doing things differently is the key to keeping life interesting. Don’t always drive the same route to work. Don’t always buy the same food while shopping. Watch a new TV show, read a new genre of book — whatever, just mix things up. There is more than one way to skin a cat — a really damn morbid phrase from the 1800s (I guess when tanning was all the rage — but did people really wear cat fur?) — but it’s true!

And with that mention of furry animals, I have the perfect segue: my love of dressing up. Last month, The Pirate Special. This month: The Animal Special. ‘Animal’ is a loose classification. Let’s call it ‘non-human dress-up’. I should also warn you that in the following photos I am actually depicted as a furry, a race of dorks despised by every other kind of cosplayer and convention-goer out there.

Without further ado, to start off gently, we have my friend and I dressed up (ish) as mice in Cinderella:

It was a bit of a rush job, thus the white pieces of cloth being the only actual part of our costume. But we looked funny amongst the kids, trust me. And we were meant to have a very simple costume, it was part of the plot (don’t question amateur dramatics, really…) Later in the show I realistically transformed into a horse for Cinderella’s carriage — amazing what you can do with a quick fade-to-black, cardboard cut-out and glitter.

On the back of my fantastic mice acting I was asked if I’d like to be in the next show: Peter Pan. By this stage, I’d already been Nana the Dog so I asked if I could be Tinker Bell. There was an uncomfortable pause.

‘Um… sure… but we’ll have to butch you up a little. We’re not sure if a guy playing a lithe, ballet-dancing fairy is really… you know, part of the show. But for you, Seb, we’ll make an exception.‘

And thus, I became Tinker Bell, fluttering around the stage with my long, flowingly balletic arm movements. Perhaps the best part about having a big Tinker was my ability to carry Peter around, instead of fitting him with a harness…

Note how I used my two years of ballet training to almost get onto the tips of my toes. He’s not a small boy either! Magic performed before the audience’s very eyes, MAGIC!

I fully expect to be asked to play Cinderella next year; I’ll be horribly disappointed if they give it to some stereotypically pretty blonde bimbo instead.

Finally, the cosplay that started it all: Nana the Dog. I was 18 — seven years ago now, Jesus — and naive. Oh so ignorant of the wiles my mother possessed. I was somewhere on campus, probably reclining on a sofa (that’s a tie-in to yesterday’s entry) when my mother phoned me:

‘Sebby, there’s a pantomime in a few weeks and we need more men.’ ‘Needing more men’ is a very, very common problem for amateur dramatics — it’s not unusual for a show to have only 1 or 2 old, greying impotent men and 20 women.

‘Sure… but I’ve got a pretty busy schedule at university…’ At that exact moment I had my hand locked behind my girlfriend’s head, holding her down. A busy schedule indeed.

‘Don’t worry, it’s not a very big part. Just chorus stuff.’ Notice the crafty subterfuge. Jewish mothers are sneaky. I fully expect my mother to forge my signature on a marriage certificate one day if she finds a ‘good, sturdy girl with fine hips’.

‘When is it?’

‘The day after your semester ends.’

And so there I found myself, rushing back from university, completely unaware of the sticky, synthetic-fur fate that awaited me. I knew the show was Peter Pan but beyond that I hadn’t a clue. I thought I’d be a pirate or perhaps a very, very large and exceedingly hairy Lost Boy. Maybe I’d just be standing in the wings singing; whatever, a local amateur dramatics group needed my help damnit, no matter the role, I’d give it my all!

I pulled up at the house and opened the front door only to be greeted by my mother rushing past me towards her car.

‘Come on! The show starts in 30 minutes!’ I started to protest: I wanted to eat, shower… shave!

‘Don’t worry.’ A mischievous twinkle in her eye. ‘You don’t need to shave.’

We arrive at the theatre with 15 minutes to spare and I’m pushed into the dressing room. I count all the pirates, Indians and Lost Boys; Peter, Hook, Tiger Lily and Tinker — they’re all accounted for — I glance around the room again, my gaze becoming frantic — all… but Nana. A large dog suit hangs from the wall. I stare at it, amazed by the success of my mother’s ruse. I notice a pretty girl smiling up at me with black face paint in one hand and some hair-ties in the other. Maybe it’s more of a smirk on her face. Yeah, definitely a smirk. I sigh,  accepting the imminent demise of my ‘cool kid’ reputation and begin to strip down, just 10 minutes away from curtain-up.

‘You’ll enter by crawling the length of the theatre auditorium with your cousin on your back. After that, just go with the flow.’ The director held me at arm’s length, assessing my get-up and make-up critically. Definitely the most minimal stage directions I’ve ever received before going on I thought to myself as stretched and limbered, preparing for my big entrance.

I guess when you’re a dog whose only lines are ‘woof’, ‘grrr’ and ‘purrr’ (it was pantomime after all) you can get away with just about anything. There’s something so incredibly unique about a 6′5″ beast zipped up in a fluffy dog suit with pigtails and one of his eyes painted black. I think the fact that I had my incredibly cute cousin on my back helped — sadly, only one photo exists of him riding on my back and I don’t have a copy of it. I must try to track it down!

The following image contains new and exclusive content of my head actually in the bowl. It’s a photo I’ve always wanted to share, but never found a suitable time to do so…

These are possibly two of the only photos with me actually smiling. That’s a bit sad.

Still, I can’t believe I didn’t score at the after-show party. Perhaps I should’ve taken the doggy suit off before flirting with Wendy and Tiger Lily.

‘You know, Sebby, you didn’t include the photos from after the Peter Pan show…’

That was my mother, rudely barging into my room. You know, the parental ‘Can I come in?’ manoeuvre, spoken as she opens the door.

Sometimes she takes a while to get to the point, but I already knew where she was going with this one.

‘But mum, I already embarrassed myself enough with the head-in-bowl photo.’

‘Those girls obviously loved you in that doggy outfit, Seb. You have to start thinking about getting a wife, and if that involves dressing up as a dog… I’m sure Moses would turn a blind eye if it meant you could find a nice wife. One that likes doggies.’

And so, through the undeniable power of motherly coercion, I bring you the photos from after the show. Out of the doggy suit and into the emo-kitchen-down-lights that you’re probably all used to by now.

Just remember, this Sunday, that no matter how bad a situation you’re in, how unfortunate circumstances might be, even when it seems like there’s no end to your suffering or sorrow — there’s a guy with pigtails, a blacked-out eye and beard pretending to look like a dog for your benefit.

And that’s Sebby’s Sunday Sermon. Have a nice day!