In Honour of Speak Out With Your Geek Out
So.
For the sake of geek solidarity, I wanted to make a Speak Out With Your Geek Out post, but find myself a bit stymied as this is, well, a fandom journal, which is to say a journal that is my expression of a geeky hobby. I spend hours each week reading and writing fanfiction, enough that I built a journal and an online persona to rec it, sharing the things I love.
Maybe instead I should talk about the ways in which I pretend to be normal? Not that there are many; as a child I took to heart the assertions of my authority figures that "it doesn't matter what other people think of you", somewhat more strongly (I suspect) than some of them intended.
(Why, yes, I do remember shooting down various "what will your peers think" attempts to make me conform to beauty standards and social situations, and the bewilderment my lack of caving induced.)
None of which is an attempt to say that the geek-shaming attitudes displayed by the obnoxious writer do me no harm or do not upset me. Those attitudes are why I consider myself lucky -- lucky that the worst I ever faced was verbal teasing, exclusion, lonership, refuge in adult companionship, reliance on the existence of one or two close friends, and (in retrospect) gladness for my asexuality. Many, many of my fellow geeks probably didn't have my luck.
This post is my way of saying: you guys, I wish I had been there to guard your backs, because safety in numbers is the best way to deal with the human herd. If I can guard your back in any way now, it would be my honour and privilege to do so; and I know I can count on you to guard mine. On a broader level, that's what this whole "fandom" thing is about: geeks coming together in numbers, doing what they love and having a group to do it in, a group they don't take for granted because they haven't always had it.
For the sake of geek solidarity, I wanted to make a Speak Out With Your Geek Out post, but find myself a bit stymied as this is, well, a fandom journal, which is to say a journal that is my expression of a geeky hobby. I spend hours each week reading and writing fanfiction, enough that I built a journal and an online persona to rec it, sharing the things I love.
Maybe instead I should talk about the ways in which I pretend to be normal? Not that there are many; as a child I took to heart the assertions of my authority figures that "it doesn't matter what other people think of you", somewhat more strongly (I suspect) than some of them intended.
(Why, yes, I do remember shooting down various "what will your peers think" attempts to make me conform to beauty standards and social situations, and the bewilderment my lack of caving induced.)
None of which is an attempt to say that the geek-shaming attitudes displayed by the obnoxious writer do me no harm or do not upset me. Those attitudes are why I consider myself lucky -- lucky that the worst I ever faced was verbal teasing, exclusion, lonership, refuge in adult companionship, reliance on the existence of one or two close friends, and (in retrospect) gladness for my asexuality. Many, many of my fellow geeks probably didn't have my luck.
This post is my way of saying: you guys, I wish I had been there to guard your backs, because safety in numbers is the best way to deal with the human herd. If I can guard your back in any way now, it would be my honour and privilege to do so; and I know I can count on you to guard mine. On a broader level, that's what this whole "fandom" thing is about: geeks coming together in numbers, doing what they love and having a group to do it in, a group they don't take for granted because they haven't always had it.