Written by GeekGirlCon Manager of Editorial Services Winter Downs.
Like a lot of geeks, that self-knowledge crept up on me without my noticing, but looking back, there were many early warning signs.
The Nazgul: here to teach little hobbitses a valuable lesson about road safety. Image source: arwen-undomiel
It started with a love of reading, especially sci-fi and fantasy. My bookwormish nature led me quickly to classic British fantasy professors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I read The Lord of the Rings over and over. I was never seen without a book in hand–so much so that my Year 3 (2nd Grade) teacher called me “Nose-in-Book” as if it were part of my name. I was just lucky that most of my walk to school took me down pedestrian-only paths, or I’d probably have been run over while Frodo got stabbed by a Nazgûl on Weathertop. I wrote my first novella, a Narnia-inspired fantasy, at age 7. (Mercifully, no copies are still extant!)
I never realized exactly when I was a geek, but that’s like a tree trying to figure out what a city is. Old, bearded, freaky, geezer geek. Ample, scruffy, multi-media maven, publicizing new underground music and culturally provocative books and weird cool movies from my deep nerd-pit of pop culture obsession. When I interview bands for fanzines, I do it here: a one-bedroom piled-high apartment where it seems like Octavia Butler could hang out with Nardwuar and Elvira. Musicians always give better responses when they know how deep my crates go. If you can’t bond with someone over the ideas, characters, sounds, and images that give electric meaning to our lives, you’re not trying or they’re not really in the game.
Maybe it was the day I decided to sit at the “weird kid table” at middle school, with nine other girls whom I shared copies of Naruto, Fruits Basket, and Fullmetal Alchemist with.
Maybe it was when I identified so hard with Hermione and her frizzy, curly hair and reading books from the Restricted Section.
Maybe it was when I started entering bookstores with money already rationed out for certain books.
Maybe it was the time I picked out glasses because they resembled Zachary Quinto’s in the second season of American Horror Story.
Maybe it was the time I thrived when my eight grade teacher handed out a sheet to list the books we read for that semester. Maybe it was the time I filled it out in two months and asked for another.
Even though I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I knew, all my life I’ve been a geek.
Books, tales, stories, myths, character arcs, plot lines, motives, conflicting conflicts, paradoxes, dragons, superheroes, supervillians, questionable morals, the Oxford comma, and metafiction are all things I get very excited about.
I got into Star Trek when the second J.J. Abrams movie came out. Seeing “Star Trek: Into Darkness” once in theatres wasn’t enough. Three times was barely sufficient. This franchise has glued together generations, letting my dad and me bond over the original movies. Since then, I’ve read at least 20 Star Trek books (Spock’s World is my favorite), and I’ve been planning an original series marathon after I finish Supernatural.
Much like Star Trek, my creativity was set anew when The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug came out and I revisited Middle-earth. I made sure to buy a copy of “The Hobbit” with Smaug on the cover, along with five books of the Lord of the Rings series, until I found all three copies of my favorite cover style. I may be obsessed with cast interviews and behind the scenes videos I’ve viewed, but I’m resolved to own every super extended edition of each movie and learn Elvish.
Half of my Facebook posts and Tweets rage about Game of Thrones. I binge-watched the first two seasons On Demand and read all the books in half a year’s time. I’m in love with George R.R. Martin’s writing style, and my love for the Queen of Dragons is known all across the lands. My Twitter name is Hannah Targaryen, I was Daenerys this past Halloween, and am the owner of three dragon eggs.
I don’t need to mention Harry Potter since I’ve come to the decision that the world is the Harry Potter fandom. Also, if you brush my curly hair when it’s dry, I look exactly like Hermione in the first two years.
As aforementioned, pinpointing the exact starting moment of my geekiness is impossible, but it fuels who I am as a person. It’s a person I’ve struggled to accept over my long 21 years of life, due to teasing and self-doubt, but I’ve resolved to take part in things that make me happy. Being a “geek” makes me happy, no matter how many of my favorite characters die, or how many T.V. shows go bad or don’t get renewed for another season. Nor does it matter how slow George R.R. Martin writes.
In my opinion, the defining factor of a “geek” is not what we like, but how we like it. Geeks don’t like something half-assed. We adore that something with every minute, every breath, every thought and I know that part of me will never fade.
Guest post by Chemjobber (who was also one of the scientists in our hugely popular DIY Science Zone at GeekGirlCon ’13!)
Confessions of a Sneaky Geek
My family did not support television as a regular habit. Nights were for studying and for quiet reading. Because I am a sneaky sort, I figured out that I could watch television when my parents were away. Of all the things I could choose to watch, what did I happen upon Saturday nights at eight? Star Trek: The Next Generation, of course. I think that’s when my geekdom was cemented.
My memories of truly geeky 90s television are combined with the memories of listening for the sounds of the garage door creaking open, so that I could turn off the television and race upstairs to my room. Through my surreptitious TV watching, I was able to watch enough TNG episodes to learn to thrill to the sound of Majel Barrett’s voice saying “And now, the conclusion.” Secretly, I watched Agents Mulder and Scully chase a truck carrying an E.B.E. After that, I was really hooked. (One of my favorite teenage memories is sneaking downstairs late at night to watch TV. While I soon figured out that Lorenzo Lamas wasn’t a very good actor, I am proud to say that I started watching Highlander during its earlier seasons.)
When my parents moved me to college with my own computer and without my own television, I think they did not realize how much they were enabling my further move into science fiction geekdom. Routine access to the Internet (and USENET groups) were a great reminder that I wasn’t alone in being a total science fiction nerd. I have strong memories of reading a highly recommended X-Files fanfic until very, very late and immediately e-mailing the author and telling her what a powerful story it was.
Amidst all the classes, time in the research lab and bombing exams, I managed to make time to watch every single episode of Deep Space Nine—on someone else’s television, of course. When I graduated and moved to my first job, I had my own television (finally!) and was able to indulge my full geekiness, including multiple rewatchings of The Wrath of Khan and catching up on all the episodes of DS9 that I missed the first time around. I was also casting about for a replacement for that show, which I don’t think I ever really managed.
Since the end of Deep Space Nine, I confess that my geekdom has gone a bit fallow. In the meantime, I got married, managed to finish graduate school, and found work as a scientist. Between then and now, I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to consume science fiction and participate in geek culture as much as I’d like. Sure, there are the lost two hours here and there to Memory Alpha or Wookieepedia—who doesn’t want to know exactly what happened to Jacen Solo? And, of course, I’ve read every single novel in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series five times over.
But now that I have a tiny bit of spare time, I feel my geekdom coming back to me. Going to GeekGirlCon was rather a wonderful refresher in what I’ve missed in the years where my inner geek has been dormant. There’s a over a decade’s worth of science fiction and fantasy to catch up, not to mention all the webcomics I’ve missed.
Finally, now that I have two small children, I look forward to the day when they will have their own geeky pursuits. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll let them watch a little TV with me.
Guest post by GeekGirlCon Manager of Gaming Alyssa Jones
World of Warcraft: 4th place at the 3v3 PvP tourney!
My journey to Geekdom is perhaps slightly different than my fellow GeekGirlCon cronies. My story is about a shy girl looking in from the outside of the Geekverse.
Although I didn’t think so at the time, my family was actually incredibly geeky throughout my adolescence. We’d watch Next Generation every Sunday, played hours of Golden Eye, and fought over who got to be Storm when we were pretending to be X-Men (I won, by the way).
But my life at home did not reflect my time at school. In kindergarten (at the not-so-far-from-infancy age of 5), my classmate informed me that Power Rangers were for babies. I was Shy Level: Hinata (extremely shy), so finding new friends didn’t really seem like an option at the time.
Observing the effects of the Void on video games at PAX 2010
As I changed schools, I adjusted by finding other, more relatable interests. But I always had my eye on that table in the back of the library where the boys were playing Magic: The Gathering, discussing their D&D characters, or going on about how to get flame arrows in Ocarina of Time (which I already knew), but I was still too shy to join in.
Eventually, I felt so disconnected from Geekdom, that I started to feel unworthy of donning the title. I didn’t (and still don’t) know how to build a great Magic deck, I watched Dragon Ball Z, but not GT, and I could never remember how many sides my attack die had. Since video games were the only medium I felt I was decent at, I turned in my Nerd Badge for a Gaming License, and was known to all as a Gamer.
Sith happens.
In my freshman year of college, I hit level 60 with my priest in World of Warcraft. At the time, I played WoW a lot (as in, “I only know the day of the week because of the raiding schedule,” a lot). My dorm R.A. actually held a mini intervention one day when I neglected to walk to the cafeteria with the rest of the dorm. Naturally, I was excited to be level cap, but I didn’t expect any of my real life friends to care.
However, the next day, I walked into the common room after class to find that my friends had planned a party to congratulate me on getting to 60. There was even a cake (not a lie)! I was shocked that they cared about that part of my life. When I asked why they had decided to throw a party, they explained that since my birthday was in the summer, this was the closest way they could celebrate the passing on to another year/level.
Having way too much fun with paint. Moon Prism POWER!
And then they said it: “You’re a geek, Lyss. This is probably better than your birthday for you anyway.” This was the first time anyone had ever labeled me as Geek. I was surprised that the people whom I had excluded from my geeky side were well aware of it. Turns out, I couldn’t contain all the geek.
They say admittance is the first step to acceptance and in my case it was true. Since that day, I’ve let myself be more open about what I love. I don’t let the fear of being a total noob ruin my chance to learn something new. Now that I’m a staff member at GeekGirlCon, I love that I get to help others find and release their inner Geek.
