Someone introduced this YouTube series channel to me. 

And now I can’t stop watching. It’s so, so hilarious. 

I didn’t really have many while growing up, or at least not *really* geeky. 

I had one friend who liked comics but much less than he did military history, and while we had that in common, it eventually became most of it. We gamed together as well, but mostly just turned based strategy that I was less interested in. 

I didn’t have a problem of being bullied or anything, but for much of my life my geeky interests were a pleasure enjoyed almost entirely alone. 

I continue to have friends who share some of the same interests, but most of them only dabble in the waters where I’m already comfortable diving to the bottom. 

I’m not even saying that I don’t also like to get out and around, go to bars or go do active things… but that I also am quite happy chilling at home gaming or watching movies or sharing YouTube videos or blogging. 

It wasn’t until I got to college in the US that I met real geeks, and I wasn’t entirely acclimatized into it. I was into gaming and comics, but it was there that I met people into cult movies and DnD and all that. 

To this day I don’t really know what it’s like to hang out with people who really shared my interests. It’s rare, at the very least. 

I would love to find out. 

The one with the Star Trek: TNG cosplay and the girls reading comics. It made me feel very uncomfortable watching it. 

So the basic plot of the episode is that the guys get ready to go to a comic convention, and dress up in cosplay to go. The girls, after they leave, start to wonder if they should try reading comics to find out why their boyfriends are so into it. 

SPOILERS (but it ‘s a TV show), the guys drive by a desert area to take photos of themselves in their awesome cosplay but their car gets stolen. They get humiliated by people the whole way home for being in nerdy cosplay. The girls try reading a Thor comic and generally agree that it’s stupid, but have long, long arguments about the rules involving Thor’s hammer and who can lift it and when it works. 

So let’s go into why this makes me feel uncomfortable: 

It really, really felt like the humiliation being piled on the guys was supposed to be the funny part. They get stuff thrown at them, people make fun of them, their girlfriends still can’t take them seriously… It just feels like they’re the permanent butt of everyone’s jokes. No wonder they’re depressed by the end. No one, absolutely no one, in this episode, reassures them that it’s okay for them to love the things they love. They made amazing cosplay, so awesome I want to feel as awesome as they do about making awesome cosplay, but they’re ridiculed the whole time. They get home and feel somewhat gratified by the idea of their girlfriends having comic book arguments, but remember, their girlfriends STILL think it’s stupid and didn’t actually ENJOY the comic and apparently still don’t understand why they like them. 

The comic shop owner first recommends “Fables” as a graphic novel with less female objectification, better quality writing and good art, but the girls pick Thor, which is practically a different genre. After not enjoying the comic the girls try to analyse why the guys like comics, and come to the conclusion that it’s a mary sue thing, where the wanting to have superpowers is a reaction to being bullied and feeling helpless. And then the girls’ argument becomes an engine for criticism about the rules of Thor’s hammer. 

The girls never actually enjoy reading it, and they don’t read a better (and recommended) example. While I get it from a character standpoint, that it would be changing the show too much if the girls suddenly got really into it, they still never come around to understanding why their boyfriends like these things. This, again, feels like an engine for the writers to express their lack of understanding. 

Basically the whole episode felt like it was the writers making fun of nerds and geeks, unable to understand why anyone would want to cosplay, and that the only reason they can think of why people would like comic books is as a coping mechanism for bullying. It assumes that only a certain kind of person CAN be like this, and it’s embodied by all the terrible nerdy stereotypes of the male characters of this show. 

Sometimes the show hits the mark just perfectly. The previous episode was really funny, because it was about the characters and how they’re funny. There have been other ones where they examine geek culture and have fun with it, too. But this one… 

My mom asked me this last night. 

So my exams are over, for now, and I wanted to take the opportunity to spend a bit of time with my parents. We caught up on the shows that we watch together, and now that I know her laptop can handle it, I really wanted to show them Assassin’s Creed 2, just because of how pretty it is, and how accurately they model the various cities of Renaissance Italy. 

Within about 5 minutes of my showing them Florence, my mom asks me that. 

She suggests that if I’m gaming, I can’t be as interested in studying, or building a future for myself, or getting a girlfriend. 

I don’t know, guys. I watched Avatar: the Last Airbender with my parents, a lovely animated show. I’ve watched all the Marvel movies with them, with their superheroes and all that. I play Wii with them, occasionally. I have my huge collection of comic books. My favouite author writes Fantasy set on a flat world on top of four elephants on top of a turtle flying through space. I watch Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Star Wars with my dad. My dad himself watches Stargate: SG1 marathons on the local SyFy, even if they’re in German. 

And yet, somehow, gaming is the geeky hobby that can’t. I can’t even show them a game which is, in my personal opinion, an expression of art through gaming. 

My parents both enjoy watching The Big Bang Theory. Ideally it should show them how geek culture is celebrated these days, but BBT does do its fair share of laughing *at* geek culture. There’s this underlying assumption that while geek is cool, it still has a hard time getting laid and still gets bullied. I don’t know if my mother is interpreting it that way, or if it’s just a sitcom to her and she just always thought this way. 

Vlog - Thoughts on Old Things

This is less of a thoughts video as much as me just wanting to show the stuff I’m going through since my dad is getting things out of his old apartment. 

This includes my prodigious comic collection and some other stuff. 

Also, taking votes, who prefers me with facial hair? 

One thing I have noticed in my behaviour, though I noticed this some time ago, is that when I game I eat less but when I watch things I love to snack. 

It’s explained pretty simply with a convincing hypothesis: When I’m gaming I’m fully occupied, but when I’m watching something I still feel the need for something to do while I’m watching. 

This is slightly ironic because when it comes to some things I’m the kind of person who likes to devote my full attention towards watching something. I cannot watch something I love while multitasking. 

On the other hand, I can still watch things… while eating. Even when I’m not hungry. 

I don’t do this when I game for a few distinct reasons. 

1. My hands are usually occupied which makes simultaneous eating impractical, and therefore something to do very quickly and sparingly.
2. My brain is immersed and therefore not easily distracted by thoughts of food, not as easily as it is when simply watching something.
3. Usually if I’m immersed I don’t really want to leave my seat. Speaking as someone who really can game non-stop for hours, getting up to cook is time that I’m not spending in-game. 

This really came to a head late last year after I got into the SWTOR beta and later got the game itself. MMOs, especially ones with subscription fees, give you a sense that time not spent levelling or experiencing content is potentially wasted time and money. If you’re paying $15 per month just for access, you want to milk that $15 for all it’s worth. If you’re poor, like I usually am when I get in a gaming binge, you’re conscious that every month might well be the last month, so you really want to get your time in before you’re cut off. 

All this sums up to mean that when I stay up late watching things, I tend to want to snack. I can pause a movie, go get something, come back, and munch while watching. 

I can’t do this in a game. You can’t pause an online game either (a concept my mother still doesn’t understand). And so really, you start learning just how long you can game without eating. 

When I was deep into SWTOR I was in Malaysia, still backpacking/bumming. Without SWTOR I spent more time outside, usually trying out the excellent food in Penang in the large quantities made possible by low costs of food there. I got some exercise from going out a lot, but I also ate a lot. By the time I got SWTOR I was lower on cash, and suddenly highly committed to an online digital environment for a subscription fee. 

So I would seriously live on a few sandwiches a day, all day. I’d go out once in a few days to grab supplies, and that would be that. I always made sure I had fresh veggies for my sandwiches and after a while tended to buy tuna for health/convenience/cost instead of other stuff. 

The very nice thing about GW2 is that it has no subscription fee, so there is no monetary or time-limit pressure. But nevertheless, I find it a highly immersing world that has me pretty engaged… so I don’t snack. 

And that is why I think gaming is a healthier geek habit than movie/TV watching. You’re still sitting on your ass, but at least this way you’re not eating as much. 

Okay maybe not healthier. But I lost weight. To some people that’s the same thing, it’s not really, but in my case at the time (and usually) it was. And indeed, currently is. 

In anticipation for the upcoming start to Season 6 of “The Guild” I watched a little of previous seasons. An interview with Zachary Levi, who cameoed during Season 5, reminded me of Chuck, which I also let go in the background last weekend. 

Both remind me, more or less, of what bothers me about The Big Bang Theory. TBBT had a good premise, but its sense of humour, especially in the last season or so, has been pointing out just how nerdy and geeky all the guys are. It especially makes fun of how socially awkward and maladjusted they are, which strikes me as just wrong and inaccurate. In my experience relatively few geeks I’ve met have been so socially stunted that they’re still afraid of bullies in adulthood. 

Shows like “Chuck” and “The Guild” instead celebrate it. “Chuck” takes for granted that you, too, will see the significance in having a DeLorean, or playing Missile Command to the kill screen, and so many other things. The central character is a geek with an original Tron poster on his wall, and this is never seen as a bad thing. 

“The Guild” is significant because you will only really understand it if you are a gamer, and more significantly an online gamer. There’s so much jargon and humour that only gamers speak among themselves. The characters in particular are so interesting because, as experienced online gamers, we recognize them in people we had met or gamed with. It’s not “look at how weird they are!” it’s “Oh man I know people like that!” 

With “Chuck” and “The Guild” you’re laughing less at them and more with them, because you see where they’re going and they invite you to also love the things their characters are loving. TBBT is mostly laughing at them, which I find uncomfortable. 

So I checked out Roger Ebert’s review of “The Avengers.”

I don’t quite know why I bother, though. He’s an interesting read on some movies, but he’s never had a high regard for movies based on comics or on superheroes. He had huge props for “The Dark Knight” (but let’s be honest, it’s hard not to) but generally dislikes them. 

He preferred the Ang Lee version of “The Hulk” because, well, it was a deeper look into Banner’s family and father issues. Which is fair, but it wasn’t a well-put-together movie other than that. 

Nevertheless, I take it a little personally when he says: 

“Comic-Con nerds will have multiple orgasms,” predicts critic David Edelstein in New York magazine, confirming something I had vaguely suspected about them. If he is correct, it’s time for desperately needed movies to re-educate nerds in the joys of sex. “The Avengers” is done well by Joss Whedon, with style and energy. It provides its fans with exactly what they desire. Whether it is exactly what they deserve is arguable. 

Excuse me, but nerds (and geeks) know how to procreate. They’re not as sexless as stereotype would have one believe. 

Of course, he rated “The Phantom Menace” higher than “Avengers.” So…

I think it’s fair to say he’s anything but a reliable reviewer when it comes to extraordinary settings. 

spineless-laugh:

uncdan:

Ich habe vorher gesagt, dass meist meiner Kolleginnen der Klasse Spanisch oder Portuguesisch sind. Eine Italienerin, eine Spanierin, usw. Sie gehen immer zusammen beim Pause um zusammen zu sprechen oder Kaffee zu bestellen. 

Das kann ganz normal sein, dass Leute mit die gleiche Sprache oder Kultur zusammenbinden werden. Aber ich finde es immer komisch wenn die alle Deutsch sprechen. 

Das ist nicht schlecht, weil man muss die Fremdsprache üben. Aber sie sprechen nie oft mit anders, sowie eine kulturellisches Teillung, aber immer noch in Deutsch. 

Oh I bet my grammar still sucks. 

I’m not sure if Spanish and Portuguese - and certainly not Italian and Spanish - are mutually intelligible. I don’t think it’s weird that they’d speak German amongst each other.

And your grammar’s pretty good, but you need to check your cases and genders. ;) And remember, sentences starting with weil, da, dass, obwohl etc. (in lack of a precise English term) have reverse word order; the inflected verb goes at the end. “weil mann die Fremdsprache üben muss.”

xD

Well, I’m not sure about the Portuguese, but I do know the Italian and the Spanish both speak Spanish and English, better than they do German. I find it a little weird when even outside, they speak German to each other, despite that they have other languages mutually. I guess that’s the virtue of making friends in your language classes. 

I have German friends who I’d never speak German to on a regular basis, because our whole friendship formed in English. It would be weird, otherwise. So I guess I’m just surprised that they also don’t do this. 

Und ich danke dir! Ich wusste das schon, dass die Verben am ende steht. ;) Ein Fehler des Moments. :D 

So I just saw the recent Big Bang Theory episode where the guys all want to get together to marathon on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

It made me miss that game so much. That and having gamer geek friends.

The characters on the show wanted to do a 48 hour marathon of gaming… And this is not an unthinkable thing. I tell you, when I got into the TOR beta, I slept just a few hours over a weekend testing period, and every hour was precious. I had a couple of friends in the US who were also in the beta and we did it all together. I was exhausted, but it felt worth it.

Really, some of the friends I had in college in the US were the geekiest I’ve ever had, and it was great fun. There was a local comic book store, one had an old N64 and I finally got to try the classics I never did before. We watched cult movies, read comics and science fiction. One had a sword collection.

But I never learned DnD. As far as I was concerned that was an American hobby I would never touch.

As I get older I get a voice which whispers to me often that gaming gives you a false sense of accomplishment, that should be fulfilled by real accomplishments. That a great story is nice, but that I should be living my own.

And it’s true enough. You have to find a balance. But there’s just something incredibly fun about loving something to obsession for a while. About diving into a new game and immersing yourself entirely into everything. It’s hard to explain this to people who don’t see it like you do. I have lots of friends who aren’t geeks, and I love them too, but there’s just something special about people who will watch movie marathons, debate comic lore, and who will stay up for days straight for a special gaming event. It’s in finding in common with other people who love something as much as you do.

Clothing fashions worn by technology-obsessed internet junkies are now trickling down into closets across America.

At the recent Geek 2 Chic fashion show in the US state of Maryland, Microsoft and Bloomingdale’s department store took two dozen internet entrepreneurs and asked them to walk the catwalk.

Produced by the BBC’s Matt Danzico

subtlemag:

[Color Lines - By Jorge Rivas] Asian Americans are appearing in technology advertising more and more often and as a result creating a new stereotype, according to the Washington Post. When Asian Americans appear in advertising, they are typically presented as tech experts who are great at math. It’s an old stereotype that’s sadly made its way into consumer advertising.

SUBTLE posts important pieces of information on a variety of social issues from various media outlets, every Wednesday.  To pass on news to SUBTLE to be considered for publishing, go to: http://www.subtlemag.com/submit

Ever been to Hong Kong? Asians live up to this stereotype of being extremely tech-y. Everyone leaps onto the latest gadget fad. It doesn’t mean they’re savvy and have a lot of tech know-how, just that they like to get the new coolest thing. It’s a status symbol in the most developed parts of Asia that to have the most high tech gadget means you’re big in the social scene… for as long as it lasts. 

This doesn’t mean they’re necessarily productive with that tech, though. From what I could tell, a lot of people on Hong Kong’s MTR spend a lot of time just playing games on their phones and such. 

This is an old problem. Parents who fail to understand that sometimes a game is not that easy to abandon. 

My mother in particular never understood. She always took it personally, as if I were choosing a game over her, if I didn’t go right away. 

Eventually I learned that abandoning a battle was worth not having to go through the trouble of dealing with my mother’s lack of understanding. 

wilwheaton:

I don’t say things are teh sex very often … but holy christ, this is teh sex. There’s something in this picture for everyone.

It depends where you go in America, but given how many obese people there are, I’m not bad. 

In Europe, I’m a bit on the biggish side. 

In Asia… 

Hong Kong has generally been the worst about that. I’m used to parents or family making comments, because that’s how Asian families are. They will shamelessly comment on your gained weight, your acne breakout, or anything… but just as easily comment on your lost weight, your good looks, or anything. 

But from almost complete strangers? I’m sorry? 

For example, I was in a mall once, walking by an ice rink, with a close friend and a friend of his. I chat to the second guy, and ask him if he ever went ice skating. He said no, and asked me if I did. I said yeah, but just a little. And he motioned to the girls on the rink doing pirouettes* and everything else, and asked if I could do like them. I said of course not. 

And he said “Yeah, I can tell by your size!” 

He didn’t mean it in offense, but it was one in a series of comments ever since I got here, and it really started to get to me. No one means to be offensive, but they can’t help pointing it out at every opportunity and never quite realize that it could be taken the wrong way. 

I mentioned in a previous post that I met a guy who collects comics. He was big, no matter what country you’re in. He was still young, too, possibly younger than I am. 

I never really got from him whether he lives here, but I feel bad for him. He’s a comic geek, which doesn’t often give you social skills, and he’s fat to global standards. In Hong Kong, he must have a really hard time. 

No wonder he’d dive into comic geekdom as deeply as he does. 

—-

*There are a huge number of Chinese teenagers who seem to be extremely good at ice skating, if the rink is any indication. And this is just Hong Kong. The thing is that aside from teachers, none of the great skaters were over 20. 

A friend told me that eventually, 99% of people get normal office jobs, work all the time, get too tired to go into any kind of sport besides gym exercise, and… so they lose that. It’s a bit sad, but sadly reality.