A Letter to Quell the Terror of the Nerds

I forgot to apologize last time for not posting for many moons. Mostly for me because I don't have an accurate idea of how many people actually read my nonsense. 501 people have seen the page though, so that's cool. I haven't been doing a whole bunch in the interim. I'm still single (guys) and I'm okay with that (ladies) but I'm feeling a tad lonely (guys). So I got that going on. I've also been feeling kinda low. Like life is poop kind of but with more actual feelings. I was trying to think about what I did last time I felt this way and I think what I did was start watching Doctor Who. Mostly because I ran out of things to watch on Netflix, and also because my giant nerdy friend Sarah (she's a literal giant) kept harping on it. So I said fuck it and watched the first episode of the new series. I didn't expect much, mostly because of my low opinion of British television. Not that it's bad, it just looks crap. Plus we had watched an episode in my theater class in high school but my teacher kept fast forwarding so all I saw were bad CGI aliens and Chris Eccleston's nose. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the first and only time I had seen that nose, it was being a terrifying asshole to pre-butt-of-every-joke Nicholas Cage in Gone in Sixty Seconds, so that kind of turned me off. It is also why I can't love him most as the Doctor because I was introduced to him at a young age as a scary, murderous villain.

Dude also had a weird thing for coffins and I had, what you might call, a phobia of death and dying.

Anyhoo, Doctor Who. Daleks, Cybermen, TARDIS, Sonic Screwdrivers. Fantastic. All of it. Like nothing you have known. I love the shit out of this show. And yes, I understand it is only a show, but here is the thing about Doctor Who: there is wisdom and grace and beauty and danger and excitement and tears and joy and love and compassion and a ridiculous amount of true and real humanity in the whole made-up world that is the Whovian universe. I was almost embarrassed for myself that I had put it down for so long. No, I take that back. I was embarrassed. And I still am. I am fairly new to a lot of the nerd culture. And with that, I have felt a bit of a stigma from people who have been immersed in the culture for a bit longer than me. This is probably an imagined stigma, but I wanted to write about things that are inherently geeky and how I feel like I have to apologize for coming in late to the game. Also, I figured this could help with some writer's block I have been battling. To begin...

I didn't have a childhood of Tolkein and comic books. I didn't watch a whole bunch of anime shows, although I did watch the shows that looked like the product of a perpetual acid-trip. I was a nerd in the sense that I read obsessively whenever I could. I was the kid in class that read between doing assignments and then was shocked when we were doing stuff again. I was in the outer circle of classmates with loose ties at best to the inner circles. And there was one friend whose house I would go to and we would play Age Of Empires for hours on end. I preferred being the Vikings, f.y.i. Oh, and a smattering of Pokemon, Crash Bandicoot, Mario, Donkey Kong, and Star Fox. And I waited for my acceptance letter to Hogwarts. The point is that I was a nerd or I was nerd-ish or nerdy or whatever is least offensive and I am recent to the inner circle of nerd-dom. That said, I feel guilty from time to time when I say that I adore the shit out of Firefly and I am angry that Fox cancelled it, but mostly because the story ended and there isn't anymore to it not because they took away what I loved. I get ridiculously excited about Doctor Who, but because it is a big ol' mindfuck of a puzzle and I like puzzles. I played AC Brotherhood because the idea of jumping off of the Coliseum in Renaissance Rome after having a chat with Da Vinci and Machiavelli was the greatest thing I had ever heard of and I didn't know about it before Brotherhood because I don't have any gaming platforms. Of course I'm not going to know about it if I have nothing to do with it. I like Minecraft because it's Legos without destroying your feet, and I play to create not fight the Creepers (don't hate me). I also have a lifelong fascination with digging.

 I was a weird kid, I cannot stress that enough. 

I did not read the Song of Ice and Fire series, mostly because I knew of George R.R. Martin's tendency to pull a Joss and kill beloved characters. I knew the books were long and I did not want to spend a whole bunch of time loving a character only to have them torn from me. I decided an hour of viewing time would suffice. Although now, I am going to be reading the books because I love the show. I never read any Tolkein as a child and knew that it would be lots of running, so I avoided that for fear of boredom. But I did read The Hobbit before seeing the movie, so you can't get me on that one. I read Watchmen after the movie and Scott Pilgrim before the movie. I shout at Andrea and worry about Daryl when I watch Walking Dead, but I have only read one of the books. I have seen all of the Batmen, X-Men, Iron Man, Marvel, DC movies there are, but have read none of the comics (this is also the same line of reasoning as not reading GoT by the way).  I half know a lot of these universes but know the sum total of only a few. It is because I am a recent nerd. Mea Culpa.  I try not to be grouped in with the other recent nerds that are hipster-y twats who saw something on the near fringes and thought it was mainstream enough to say it wasn't mainstream. I was just never exposed to a lot of that stuff and when I learn about it, I want to know as much as I can. I want to obsess over that universe and know every little nook and cranny there is to know so that I may know what it is the fans before me felt that make them want to protect it.

New or not, we can all agree this bitch is stupid.

It was the fierce loyalty that attracted me to those shows and books and movies, but it is the feeling of love and acceptance that keeps me there. Be it Rowling's or Whedon's or Moffat's (MOFFAT!!), those are universes made with love and care and come from the heart and someone felt a desire to share that love they felt with their characters with the rest of us. I am a recent nerd, but I am a nerd nonetheless. I understand all of the feelings that went into these creations and I understand the love that is given back. And if you understand that, it doesn't matter how long you've been a fan.

By the by, any comments are appreciated. I post a thing on Facebook about making a new blog entry and people just like it. I don't know if they are liking the post or the entry. I would also like that small bit of validation.

I can't say that word without thinking of this short, so this picture is really for the hell of it.