Coming Out (about mons)

I try to make it sound as serious and competitive as possible and people just tend to think I'm a very skilled person in such a niche field that I'm some sort of god at the game. Feels pretty good :]
 
In Italy the situation is quite terrible about it. A lot of people finds playing Pokèmon (regardless if competitive or not) just childish or nerd (and despite all cool things occured in these years and the fact that some games will be even E-sports, being a nerd is always seen as you are a "loser").
I never made a proper "coming out" but some people know I play competitive pokemon, for example my parents know this (because I took their car to go to VGC national in Milan and they wanted a reason), my sister asked what I was talkin durin some Skype calls, few friends know this, but despite this I'm not inclined to claim myself as a Pokèmon player with my friends cuz I'm not sure they all will understand the thing and I'm a bit afraid of prejudices about it (I know this is pretty stupid though).
The funnier thing happened exactly to a VGC National where I found two my IRL friends workin there as event staff (not Nintendo). One of them recognized me and started to call me, and after a moment where I pretended to not hear:
me: "why are you here?"
friend: "I'm workin for staff and you?"
me: "heh.. I'm here to watch friends playing"
just after I said this, one of my pokeweb friends come and shouted to me "we gotta play take your DS" so my cover had blown -.-
after that I said them I was actually playing and they found this a little strange but they didn't bother me at all so it was ok ^_^
 
I haven't really come out about mons. Some of my friends know that I have the most recent Pokemon games, but none of them know that I play competitive or how much time I invest in it. Currently in middle school, so I am kind of afraid of f*cking up my social status (it's not a lot, but I am not a complete loser at least). Currently I think I am doing a good job hiding it, and the few friends that kind of know about it don't give a shit because they are gamer nerds as well. Not sure about what I want to do in high school, but if I meet someone that like Pokemon there, my social status will be sold to Smogon. After high school idk what will happen tbh. Hoping that I will still find playing mons fun then, currently I seem to be trapped by a Wobbufet because Wynaut?
 
it comes out naturally

i have never given even the littlest of fucks about discussing it with friends if it's a relevant topic or bringing it up in appropriate situations. for example "what did you do this weekend?" "i honestly went to the pokemon world championships in DC." "really, tell me about that" or "hey what are you doing?" "nm, doing hw and playing pokemon" "huh? but you don't even have a ds out or something" "yeah it's a simulator, blah blah" or whatever. if it's a natural extension of a conversation it's entirely appropriate to bring up without any degree of fuss, and even if it's not, it's just like anything you do. if people are bringing up internet jokes in real life all the time, it's really irritating, regardless of the situation--reddit, LoL, whatever. if you do every once in a while, it's not a big deal, and if it's natural, it's natural.

everyone does nerdy shit and everyone has their hobbies. it doesn't matter if your hobby doesn't conform to what other people find "normal" as long as you're not hurting anyone. i've brought up pokemon a load of times and a lot of friends know i'm interested in it / play it competitively (or at least, when i was good enough to say that haha). granted, i don't explain it all that well so some people think i'm the next coming of christ with pokemon (and don't realize how large of a community it is) but that's another thing entirely.
 

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