Recap 2013 (Another one?? Ugh.)

Yeah, I thought I would, then realized everyone was recapping 2013, and probably had better things to say about it than I would, so I'll refrain from a long look back.

As with any year, there were ups and downs, both on a personal level and Out There. The two geekiest things that happened for me were the amazing and life-changing Super MOOC: Gender Through Comic Books, and being able to attend Geek Girl Con.

All in all, 2013 was a pretty fantastically geeky year for me. I got to visit some of my awesome friends in Canada (that's geeky because I know them from playing WoW -- and because of a trip to the Silver Snail where I bought many action figures), I went to C2E2 and bought many (many) action figures, I took the Gender Through Comic Books class, and I went to GGC.

More personally (less geeky), I saw a neurologist and got an official diagnosis for migraines. (I knew they were migraines, but with docs, they want it on paper... and for me to spend money -- lots of it -- to get that Dx. Whatever.) The upside to that is a prescription that takes care of the pain, mostly, but not the unpleasant aura symptoms, which are legion for me. But you don't want to hear about that.

Exciting news for 2014: Christina Blanch (who taught the gender/comic books class) has a new class Social Issues Through Comic Books! Hell, yes, I enrolled. She's an amazing teacher, and you should absolutely take her class. I hope to attend GGC again as well, but that's 10 months away... anything could happen.

So this year I hope will be a continuation of the last year, with nerdy geek-time, filling in gaps in my comic collection, curating the collection of figures, hopefully another trip North and Northwest.

Until next time, here's my New Year's Eve TRU scores:

My first Transformer! I was actually looking for Arcee
but she was nowhere to be found.

I'd love to have the 12-inch figures, but they are cost prohibitive,
and size prohibitive... where the hell do you put an army of kaiju?!

"Geek" / Communication Issues, Part II

Now apparently I can't comment ANYwhere. WTF?*

This was supposed to go on Epbot, but it won't post, and since I put my heart into it, it's going up here with a link to what I'm blathering about.

Do we need a new word for geek?

My would-have-been reply:
It's the exclusionary stuff that makes me uncomfortable. There are far too many instances where I could be the "fake geek girl" poster child, because I don't specialize enough. I can't tell you what happened word-for-word in issue #87 on page 3 of whatever comic. I told my husband that I was just a general-purpose geek, because of my breadth - not depth - of knowledge. He was incredulous, and said I probably had one of the largest collections of female action figures anywhere (almost 360, with only a handful of male figures) -- BUT, I can't tell you the origin story of each character, so there ya go...

I like "geek" for a few reasons. I like it because it's become a little more accepted than it once was. I like it because you drop an R and suddenly I am a geek goddess. I like it because it's still not really ok to be a nerd, and that's what I have always been, whereas being a geek isn't quite so socially alienating. (8th grade nick: Wendy Webster, because I read the dictionary and can't stop using $5 words when 5¢ would suffice.)

How do I connect with friends? Online, because I have no nearby geeky OR nerdy friends. Or, when I'm incredibly lucky, driving the 560 miles to see them in Ontario - the only place I have ever felt completely comfortable with who I am, and completely at home... with people I met playing World of Warcraft.

I don't like labels, when they come so close to name-calling. The song Felicia recorded "I'm the One That's Cool" is something I love and hate simultaneously, because it just has not been long enough since those teen years (and I'm 42) to recover from that kind of ridicule. So just when I can call myself a geek and not feel shame for it, I'm justifying my existence to those who'd say I was fake, AND other geeks are trying to take that word away from me. THIS is why I never leave the house and don't socialize.

_______
* The commenting issue appears to be related to the embedded comment window. By switching the comments to Full Screen (from embedded), I am able to comment on my own blog again. Another blogger suggested this was an Apple issue. 

Semantics: You say "tomato", I say "nonpoisonous member of the nightshade family"

A woman I follow on Twitter (@honestlynina) asked

Anyone: Whats the difference between a geek and a nerd to you? 

I replied in two parts, because 140 characters just wouldn't cut it.

Geek = *serious* fan of pretty much anything; music geek, comics geek, science geek [con't]

Nerd = bookish, awkward, excessively knowledgeable (about anything). I am geeky about some things, & nerdy abt others 

I want to expand on that, though. There's more to it than just being a fan, or excessively knowledgeable.

These days, people use the phrase "geek out" pretty casually. (I don't have to get into the whole history of geeks/carnies, right? That's been done to death.) I think it's awesome that what was once reserved for gamers and Star Wars/Trek fanatics is now crossing into other fields of interest... and that's really what it amounts to for me. YMMV* I love comics, comic book movies, World of Warcraft, Star Trek and Star Wars, etc. etc. I cannot quote chapter and verse, issue and volume, episode and season. I haven't memorized the canon or the lore. And I'm not saying that people who do are bad or weird. They are the nerds, those people who have encyclopedic knowledge about their favorite things. But just because I can't quote Cassandra Cain from page 10 in issue 4, volume 2 doesn't mean I don't have sincere passion and appreciation for comics. It's what makes idiotic rants from people like Tony Harris so hurtful and baffling.

I am a casual gamer. True, I can spend hours and hours playing in a single sitting, playing until I can barely get out of my chair, but I have not memorized the loot tables. I hate raiding, and I don't like dungeons. I enjoy questing. Most of my toons have leveled almost exclusively through questing, so my gear ain't so great. I nearly made a guildmate cry because all my gear on a max-level character was green level from quest rewards, not blue or purple from dungeons. He decided that I needed better gear and started dragging me through dungeons. He is a WoW nerd, I am a WoW geek. I love the game, love the stories (seriously loved Golden's novel The Shattering), hoard various things in the bank because I might want them later... I can discuss story lines, but not mechanics of boss fights. I have all the soundtracks, and that is my preferred background music for long-distance driving, and think Cranius is a freakin' genius. (Oxhorn's good for comedy, but doesn't have the level of artistry that Cranius has, in my opinion.)

I suppose that's sort of where I draw the line between geek and nerd; nerds aren't casual. They are driven in their passion to know everything they can learn about something.

My nerdiness usually comes out as weird bits of stored scientific knowledge. The "classic" nerd, if you will; the studious and socially awkward kid who was the teacher's pet and got straight As. (I was a solid B student; studying was too much work.) I think that was how I was perceived, in part, by a lot of my classmates. One of my biggest hurdles, so to speak, to becoming a true nerd is my inability to devote the time to gaining that encyclopedia head. I bounce from interest to interest and back again, because there are a lot of things that interest me. It's hard to focus on one thing for a long time, because there's just so much more in the world to know and learn and try. A less kind person would call me (and I have done) a dilettante, a person of casual interests, without commitment to the subject(s). Oh, what a hateful, insulting and mean word... worse, because it's accurate. We should all be grateful that the Fake Geek Girl proponents haven't used the word, not that I've seen anyway. Perhaps it's because they're ignorant, sophomoric twits who have a less than stellar grasp of wordsmithing, hmm?

Anyway, that's how I look at the nuances between geeks and nerds. How do you use the words? Are they interchangeable?


*Your Mileage May Vary, or what is true for me, may not be true for someone else. My experience is mine; yours is yours.

Raising Geeky Daughters

Because this is something that has been on my mind a great deal lately, I started thinking that it might also be on other parents' minds as well. The situation doesn't really apply much to me and my family, because my teenage daughter is autistic. I do have friends with daughters, and the current climate of geek-girl bashing has me worried about what they might be facing now, or in the future.

In an attempt to get some idea of what other parents are thinking, and hopefully begin a discussion for solutions, I have a quick 10-question survey that I hope you'll consider putting in your own 2¢. Yes, this is primarily focused on daughters.

Where you have the option of writing a response, please do. Without your opinions and input, this won't mean much.

Please note: Even though the words mean different things to different people, I am using "geek" and "nerd" interchangeably, for the sake of simplicity.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Thanks for your input! When I make the results known will depend on the level of response I receive.

If there's an issue with the embedded survey, here's a link directly to the Survey Monkey website:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/MySurvey_EditorFull.aspx?sm=RdzG1XL95ou2fq0JHwmPSigQBPYYJcATtASk%2bqGjjuU%3d

THANKS!