Sunday, April 10, 2016

The Adventures of Nerd Boy and Geek Girl...

My last post in here still has me thinking about male and female realtions. No, this isn't what this blog is always going to be about, it's just the subject that's occupying my head space right now. I'm sure that tomorrow I'll be on to something else. Like wanting to talk about The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl or something like that. Hehe.
Anyway, like I said, I've spent the last couple of days thinking about the ways that guys and girls react to each other. This was touched off of course by the idiot male backlash to the Rogue One trailer where these creampuff milquetoast idiot men and Men's Rights advocates(By the way, one of the STUPIDEST "causes" in existence, but that's a rant for another time), were reacting to another Star Wars movie that had a strong female lead. Well, probably at least 2 if you count both Jyn and Mon Mothma. Anyway, not going to rehash that, you can read the last post if you want to see what I've said about that.

But once I closed the books on that particular rant, I found myself over the last couple of days thinking about relationships, and about what kind of head space you have to be in to get to the point where as a man, you're somehow "threatened" by a strong female, or become like one of the assholes I see on the Maury Povitch show who want to abuse and dominate their wives and girlfriends. Oh, and quick aside, yes I just mentioned the Maury show and I can see you shaking your heads. Quick explanation, I work at a TV station, where it's my job to make sure that the right things go on the air. Sadly, one of those things is Maury, so I have to see it every day. Yep. That's my life. I'll go into more detail in the future, since I have a whole rant about Maury, Jerry Springer and Steve Wilkos(all of which I have to at least pay some attention to for my job. Yeesh). But I digress.

I was talking about the types of guys who are actively angry about Jyn being a strong woman in Rogue One. I was thinking about the type of head space you'd have to live in to feel that way, and I realized that while yeah, I still had contempt for, and vehemently disagreed with those guys, I found myself feeling bad for them. I feel bad for them because after a good deal of thought the last couple of days, I realized that their lives must be not very awesome. Having gone through non-awesome times myself a lot through my life I can sympathize. Maybe these guys have had bad relationships or interactions with women. Certainly does happen, but it seems that the way they're reacting to it is to want to keep geekdom a Dudes Only sort of club, and I think that's just completely wrong. Geekdom should NOT be a Men Only club. But some of these guys seem to think that letting girls in is somehow going to wreck it, or make it lame or something, and to be honest, I don't get that, because I think about the relationship that I'm in right now with someone who is, I guess you could say, less experienced of a geek than I am. She came to it later in life than most geeks do.

Some background. My girlfriend, I'll call her Willow to protect the innocent. heh. Anyway, Willow and I don't have what I'd say is the most "traditional" of relationships. I mean, we love each other and enjoy spending time with each other but there aren't really gender roles in our house. At least not about who does the dishes or who cooks dinner and does chores and things like that.. Either one of us might do that, although to be honest, I do the dishes a lot more often than I cook because hey, doing the dishes never really changes, and cooking does. I do cook from time to time, but Willow's scorecard is WAY ahead of mine because my Cook Fu is very limited. Yeah, I don't have a lot of range. But hey, if Willow wants spaghetti or Chicken and Long Grain and Wild Rice she knows to hit the phone and say "Hey good lookin, get cookin!" Well, ok, she doesn't say that word for word, but, you know, that's basically what she says. Hehe.

Anyway, to keep going, Willow and I share things, chores lilke I mentioned, sometimes she'll drive, sometimes I'll drive. Sometimes she'll pay when we're out, sometimes I will. Nobody has a set role because we're a team. We're a partnership, and that's the way it should be. That should be how everyone is with their significant other. At least that's what I think. You are on a team. Backup your team mate, and you will in turn get backed up by her or him. And I have to tell you, that feels great.

Now you might be thinking that I wrote that last section just so I could brag on my girlfriend for a minute. *GASP* How DARE you?! I most certainly DID!

Anyway, the point I was getting to was to show that Willow and I are on equal grounds because she's a strong woman, and perfectly capable of getting along without my help in most areas. Now we come to the area where I'm way more leveled up than she is. Geekdom in general. I'm in my 40s now, and I've been a geek since way back in the day. First movie I was ever taken to was the original Star Wars back in 1977. Granted, I was 2 and I don't remember much about seeing it the first time, but that really started my geekdom forming, so since then I've been there for pretty much every geeky or nerdy thing since the late 70's. So yeah, my geek/nerd credentials are in good order, and I'm High Level. I've unlocked specializations and spent many bonus talent points. Basically, I'm close to Level Cap when it comes to geek/nerd-dom. Willow isn't nearly as high level as me because she came into being a nerd much later in her life. She didn't start reading fantasy or sci-fi as a teen like a lot of us did, she didn't grow up LOVING the Orginal Trilogy the same way many nerds did. But she is genuinely into nerdy/geeky things, and I'm doing my best to help her learn as much about geeky/nerdy things as she wants to. I'm helping her to level up.

According to the type of guys who are freaking out about the Rogue One trailer, I'm a traitor. I'm helping a GIRL get into the clubhouse. And my answer to them is simply... You're goddamn right I am. Guys, just learn to deal with it. Girls are part of fandom. They are part of gaming culture, they are part of fantasy, they are part of sci-fi. They're coming to the cons, they're buying the limited editions, they're standing in line to hear a panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic Con. They've already bought their tickets for Suicide Squad, and they'll be damn sure to get in line early for Captain America: Civil War. They're going out cosplaying and not just in the skimpy costumes that give you funny feelings in the bathing suit area. Women are in nerddom and geekdom now, guys. And you know what? That's awesome. Because I actually remember the days when nerd stuff was largely a male subculture. It was me and a bunch pf my other nerdy guy friends sitting around the table playing D&D. We couldn't get girls into playing D&D, they didn't give a shit about The X-Men, they wouldn't be caught dead at a screening of Empire Strikes Back. There were exceptions of course, but back when I was growing up nerd, girls were VERY few and far between. Nowadays, a LOT more girls are getting into the nerdy stuff, or maybe they're just coming out of the nerd closet, so to speak.

I don't know, and to be honest, I don't care. I think it's great that women are here. Really, I love the fact that last night at dinner, in the course of conversation with a couple of our friends Willow glared balefully at me and said "We are GOING to see the Warcraft movie when it comes out!" in a tone that allowed for NO dissent whatsoever. When I was 17 or so, a girl like Willow, an attractive girl who was into nerdy things that was DEMANDING that I take her to see a movie based on a video game? I thought that was a mythical creature!

I just don't get how these gamergate, and Men's Rights idiots can be so against women joining us in our hobby. I mean, don't you want Star Wars: Episode 8 to be a date night? Don't you want to spend your saturday wandering around a comic con in costume with your special lady? Don't you WANT to be with someone who can walk past a jewlery store with barely a second look, but when she walks past a weapons vendor shrieks "Oh look at all the PRETTIES!!!" and claps excitedly at the idea of that replica of Frostmourne hanging on your living room wall. Wouldn't you like to be with some who demands that you continue binge-watching Supernatural on Netflix while you eat dinner? Oh wait, that's MY relationship again. But if you read that and think "Well screw THAT guy. Lucky bastard!" Maybe you should pause for a second and think about what that means. Just an idea.

Carry on Smartly, My Friends.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Calm Down, Boys, It's Perfectly OK to Let Girls Into the Clubhouse...


Yesterday morning, the first trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was released. If you haven't already seen it, you can see it HERE. The fan reaction was swift, and most of it was in the territory of "YAAASSSS!!" Myself included. I watched that 2 minutes of footage and the grin just would not leave my face for a good hour afterwards. If we can judge from the trailer, Rogue One is going to be an awesome movie. It looks to me like we can look forward to a grittier movie than anything that we've seen before. Rogue One looks like it will be more of a Dirty Dozen in the Star Wars Universe. After my very positive experience with The Force Awakens, I was already excited to see Rogue One. Now that I've seen a trailer, I'm really chomping at the bit for December to arrive.

Of course, nothing good lasts forever, and in this case it didn't take long at all before the euphoria I felt from the trailer was tainted. In less than a day, the backlash started. The backlash coming from idiotic, small-minded jackasses who for whatever reason are absolutely FURIOUS at another damn GIRL coming to play in their beloved Star Wars Universe. I mean, seriously, I thought we'd gotten this all out of our systems last year when people were bitching about Rey in TFA. Of course, I should have remembered the wise words of Bullet Tooth Tony in Snatch: "You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity."

Don't get me wrong, I do have some sympathy for the "No Girls Allowed" attitude. I used to have it myself. Then, I left Elementary School and realized that girls are actually pretty damn awesome. The trailer wasn't even out for a DAY when it started. "Oh, man! ANOTHER Female-led Star Wars movie!" "WHAT?! ANOTHER female main character?! WTF?!" and the one that made me start banging my head on the desk, "Man, Han Solo will probably be a woman in that spinoff!"

Actually, that would be fantastic. Han Solo started out as a woman and became a man. Making him THE GREATEST TRANSGENDER CHARACTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE GALAXY! Ok, so that's really not likely. But you know what? There's also going to be a Boba Fett movie, and we've never seen underneath that armor. And we all know what happened the last time we had a "Greatest Bounty Hunter Ever" who was completely encased in armor, don't we? Two words: Samus Aran. Two more words: Justin Bailey. hehe.

Honestly, I don't get the hoopla about strong female characters in general, but I really don't get it when it comes to Star Wars. I mean, it's not like we've never had a strong female character in the SW universe before. Let's run a list, and yes, I'm going to dip into the Expanded Universe here, Rey, Leia, Mara Jade, Maz Kanata, Shada Dukal, Shalla Nelprin, Dia Passik, Mon Mothma who's also in Rogue One and who, oh I don't know, only LEADS THE WHOLE FREAKIN' REBELLION!

Seriously, boys, come out of the clubhouse. Click off of PornHub, put down your Boris Vallejo calendars and your Rob Liefeld comics. Women are SO Much more than damsels in distress and sex objects. A strong, capable woman is SO much more attractive than a vapid, bubble-headed Damsel in Distress. Honestly, a Real Man should not have anything to fear from a strong woman. Strong Women help make us strong, and they add so much more to a life than one who just needs to be rescued. Bascially, I think it's best summed up in this picture I saw online awhile back that I really want to blow up to full poster size...


Trust me guys. Give that a try. You'll ultimately be glad you did. Well, that is if you can get your head out of your ass and can join the rest of us in adulting.

Carry on Smartly, my Friends.