Photo by Kyle Vertin
COLIN PERRY
News Editor
Everybody has secrets, but very few students at Fredonia likely have secret identities. An average sophomore named Sean (last name withheld upon request) has been appearing on social media and fighting with Nerf weapons at Extreme Sports of Fredonia meetings for four semesters now, donning a full-body costume and becoming someone else entirely.
“Almost half the Nerf team doesn’t know my real name,” Sean said. “They just call me ‘Deadpool.’”
To almost everyone at Fredonia, Sean is just a regular student. He has a fair amount of stubble on his face and dresses comfortably in a hoodie and sweatpants. He keeps busy with a few campus clubs and, most of all, his criminal justice degree. But what almost everybody at Fredonia would not realize is that on the weekends, and when there’s a big event, and sometimes if he just feels like it, Sean dresses like a superhero and sees what he can make happen.
Those who aren’t comic fans look at his costume, see the dominating red with black and white eyes, and immediately think of him as a Spider-Man, something that leaves Sean exasperated (“I have swords and a gun!” he said.)
Sean was drawn to the character because of Deadpool’s role as a madcap parody of other superheroes and his signature comedic style of always cracking jokes under the least appropriate circumstances. He first encountered Deadpool through a video game, “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.”
“It was so much fun to play [as Deadpool] that I decided to look into him a little more, and he was just awesome,” Sean said. “I realized I loved this character so much.”
In Deadpool, Sean saw a kindred soul, as the two share a devil-may-care philosophy and a similar sense of humor. It’s that last part that inspired Sean to dress up as the character for Halloween in high school, where he decided to take it one step further and behave like the “merc with a mouth,” too.
“It was just chaos,” Sean said. “The character Deadpool is known for having a large mouth and not shutting up, and I fully enveloped [myself] in that that concept. One of my teachers actually started cursing at me.”
While adults around him may not have appreciated the distraction, Sean’s peers loved his portrayal — it was a roaring success. So successful, in fact, was his shtick that he brought it with him when he traveled nine hours away a year later to begin his freshman year at Fredonia.
Like many of Fredonia’s newest residents, Sean attended Activities Night that Fall, looking for something to do. He knew he found his place in Extreme Sports of Fredonia when the club didn’t react to his costume during the group’s first meeting. Many of the club’s members had mixed feelings about Sean’s devotion to character.
“He’s way larger than life,” sophomore music education major Charlotte Giese said. “He embodies the character Deadpool on a daily basis, which can get quite annoying … He’s a cool guy, but sometimes he does need to tone it down a bit.”
Maybe the best way to describe Sean in the mask came from Zach Thomas, sophomore theater arts major and Extreme Sports of Fredonia vice president.
“Pros — he’s really into character. Cons — he’s really into character,” he said. “There’s a ‘rule zero’ for our club, and it’s basically don’t be a dick. And there are times where I’ll have to tell him, ‘Deadpool, no! There are normal people around! Don’t spook them in the library window!’”
Sean will not disagree.
“I have to be told constantly at Nerf to calm down before shooting somebody who’s not in [the club] and I hurt myself constantly,” he said.
On at least one occasion, he fell down the stairs from the top of the library all the way to the bottom. According to club treasurer and junior business administration major Phil Lavin, he flung one of his swords onto the roof during a game, where it presumably still lays today.
“He’s a little calmer [without the costume,] but he still acts like a nutjob,” Lavin said. “Sometimes I wonder if he’s really smart or really dumb because of it.”
For better or worse, Sean has found success wherever he goes in costume. Sometimes he will approach a random table at Starbucks and insult what students are reading; other times he decides to crash an off-campus house party and is heralded as its star.
“I’ve never not been wanted,” Sean said. “I’ve gotten laughs out of teachers just by walking by. They’re not used to seeing someone walking around in a bright-colored costume, dancing like an idiot.”
Some people laugh, too, when they find out the person who dresses up as a violent psychopath on a weekly basis is a criminal justice major (Lavin described the fact as “terrifying”), but his commitment to what’s right and wrong has always been with him.
In high school, he withdrew from participating in sports after seeing fellow players go unpunished for crimes ranging from being drunk at a game to assault. He’s also more than respectful when approached by campus police in costume, even if they ask him if his green foam sword is a weapon (but not, surprisingly, about his mask).
“I think he’s going to be a great cop if he’s definitely pursuing it,” Giese said. “He doesn’t care what people think about him.”
When he’s not playing his outsized role, Sean likes to ride his mountain bike and exercise, either when he feels “not too lazy or way too lazy.” Over the summer he does landscaping work, which for the last few years has consisted of riding on the back of a garbage truck, where he’s tempted to “just jump off and end up in the hospital for two weeks.”
But above all else, Sean loves to make people laugh, and getting those is his main goal when he dons his gear. One may think there would be a larger mission for a hobby on which Sean has spent well over $250 in costume additions, and replacements, and repairs, and more additions. But if they’re laughing, he’s laughing, and that’s all he needs.
Photo by Kyle Vertin