A Nerd Fallacy

[sistermagpie]

I threw out a little theory on Fandom!Secrets that had to do with something I've been thinking about lately...I hesitate to say it because it’s a simple answer for a complicated thing done by many different people, but I still wonder if there's not a strain of this in fandom.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

This is what competency porn is, people!

And that's why I love Leverage!

Honestly, I don't see this dynamic very much, but I'm not much of a shipper, so maybe that's why. Or maybe because I'm not American, and the nerd/jock thing isn't very important in Australia (at least, sports are very important, but they're played by adults, not high school kids, and there's no "college scholarships" on the line).

[sistermagpie]

It seems like it got important here in the past few decades. I mean, yeah, there's always been the idea of strong guys and weak guys or whatever, and socially competent people always had an edge in that area over socially incompetent. But it doesn't reflect my high school experience at all.

[jodel_from_aol]

I suspect that part of the reason it got so pervasive over here is that it's one of the fields in which minority kids can hope to become celebrities.

I mean, it's not like celebrities really have that much actual *power,* for all their visibility. But you can be puffed up as a "role model" *without* having some kind of rarified background that eliminated 98% of humanity.

[schmevil]

Sherlock Holmes and Bond would make a singularly terrible team! :)

I've seen this happen way too often, in everything from shipfic, to gen, to meta, to just prevailing attitudes about characters. Dick is the pretty boy. Tim is the obsessive, super-competent, Batman in training. Not to say that there aren't fans who appreciate all of Dick's talents and qualities, but what you've outlined here is all too common. Sometimes I wonder if it's (in addition to your excellent points), you know, bad writing and bad reading - a need to make one character worse, so your favourite is better, because you as a writer/reader can't juggle the awesome?

[sistermagpie]

I remember talking to somebody a few months ago who was explaining how Tim was just so superior and I just had to say look, this whole paragraph is just promoting your favorite character over others and putting them down to make him better. Which is so unnecessary. I don't mind the basic idea of "Tim might become Batman" because it can be an interesting dynamic to have the older kid be different from the dad etc. But sometimes it really quickly morphs into Dick being unnecessary, like a failed experiment on the way to Tim the True Heir and True Son.

It's not only dismissing Dick's character but Tim's too, really, just making him this hyper-competent robot that he isn't.

But exactly, sometimes it's like people can't juggle the awesome. And that just means less awesome for everyone and no one wants that.

[oselle]

You definitely see this dynamic in Supernatural. I mean, neither one of those guys could ever pass for "nerdy" but it's always been Sam who's been portrayed as the more intellectual one while Dean is the sort of dumbass who relies more on brawn and luck than brains. I thought this was even more noticeable in the first few seasons when Sam was still carrying around his college-boy vibe. There are times that both of them seem so dense that it's a miracle they aren't dead yet but it's usually Dean wearing the duhhh expression on his pretty, pretty face.

[sistermagpie]

Oh god, yeah. I can't believe I wasn't even thinking of that because I've seen that too. Dean very often has that dull expression on his face--and sometimes people freak out if he makes a reference to something, as if he's supposed to have been raised by wolves.

[oselle]

I still remember how annoyed I was when Dean couldn't remember more than three words of the exorcism ritual and I was like...this guy is supposed to be a skilled and competent hunter who, by that point in the show, had had significant contact with demons, you would THINK that memorizing this ritual would be a natural part of his arsenal but it was more common (and easier for the plot of that episode) for him to be stupid. Yet you know if SAM had been in the same situation, he would definitely have known that ritual backwards and forwards.

[savagedamsel10]

How funny I found this post right on the very same day I was going through old ferretbrain articles and found Kyra's Soon I Will Be Invincible review. In her review she was noting how a lot of comic book readers often end up kind of sympathising with the villain when superheroes start reminding them of the "cool kids in high school". And that made me think of all the times whenever I hear of people complaining about much-loved comic book villain Doctor Doom getting bested by a clearly silly joke-superheroine Squirrel Girl in a one-off humourous story written yonks ago.

I guess I could understand how fandom might relate towards obesessiveness, but it's really too bad everything becomes such a zero-sum game with lots of either/or. But then again, maybe a lot of writers are just too creatively lazy/unable to try writing stories where everyone is allowed to be competent and strong in different ways and still have drama so everything becomes a pissing match and it bleeds into fandom.

[sistermagpie]

It is too bad--but it really is something that comics, especially, need to do because they've got all these superhero stories that turn on the same neverending battle that the good guy has to win. Sometimes I forget how much some comic fans are into that whole aspect too, like the people who have conversations about who would beat who. Sometimes I get it--there are some heroes who are clearly ranked in terms of their ability at certain things. But most of the time it's more about what the story's about and what it's saying.

[jlh]

Obsessiveness and also social awkwardness or misanthropy generally. I think that's what actually separates Kirk and Spock, that Kirk is incredibly good at all social niceties. (The implication is that Bones can be but does not always choose to be.) Spock is the outsider, the one who isn't always sure about the unspoken in social situations. Kirk has an incredible social instinct, not just for picking up the ladies but for diplomacy in general. (Picard does too, of course, but he's not represented as a genius, but more a very good, experienced captain who can do all this shit blindfolded.) That's why Spock isn't captain yet

[sistermagpie]

I definitely think the social aspect is sometimes the most damning. And just that whole...what you totally describe here. First that there's a resentment of people putting their minds towards social situations at all, caring about those sorts of things. It's hard not to relate that to the many metas I've read about people who definitely want to be seen as the person who can't do that, who just doesn't have that ability (even though it's really not being presented as an ability but the sign of a weaker character), or claims that fandom social groups are based around completely different things that reject all of that. Which is why it's sometimes funny to read the many things about the first part, where people talk about BNFs in fandom being those cool kids because it's like some people need that story in their lives no matter what. Like it's more about their defining themselves as being shut out by this vague concept of "cool" than whatever is really going on. Heh. Like there was that one person who did a whole history of the BNF

Here via metafandom.

[baka_kit]

First that there's a resentment of people putting their minds towards social situations at all, caring about those sorts of things. It's hard not to relate that to the many metas I've read about people who definitely want to be seen as the person who can't do that, who just doesn't have that ability (even though it's really not being presented as an ability but the sign of a weaker character)

I'm trying -- and failing -- to figure this one out. Maybe because I don't see it as some magical ability that some people are granted and others aren't, but as a specific set of skills, which to some extent can be picked up by most people?

I was one of those poorly socialized fen. Ridiculously awkward and had a had time with social cues. But I made a conscious decision to learn to emulate proper social behavior. I'm still shy, especially around groups of new people, but I can handle myself

Re: Here via metafandom.

[sistermagpie]

I'm trying -- and failing -- to figure this one out. Maybe because I don't see it as some magical ability that some people are granted and others aren't, but as a specific set of skills, which to some extent can be picked up by most people?

That is a really good point. In a way sometimes intelligence gets seen the same way, where people want to make it a magical ability that appears in only certain ways. When really social ability is a combination of different things and is definitely something you can learn. Even people who would be considered good at it sometimes stumble if they're in a different social setting where they don't know the rules or the signals are different. But sometimes the people who want to define themselves as incapable of that sort of thing are really saying that they want to be the person who doesn't do it.