Disclaimer - we’re all reading and posting on a forum ostensibly dedicated to role-playing games, so it’s obvious each of us has a little nerd in there.
I was watching Deadliest Catch, and I saw a commercial for Shark Week starting August 2. My DVR is already programmed. That, coupled with my awesome trip to the Georgia Aquarium, my penchant for automatically clicking on any news link involving sea creatures, and my ability to spout random information regarding said sea creatures, further confirmed that I totally nerd out when it comes to ocean stuff.
What brings out the nerd in you guys? Gaming does not count this time.
Word games. Scrabble, anagrams, anything. To the extent that every time I see the name ‘Tom Cruise’ I think ‘costumier’. I convert numbers on licence plates into letters and if I can find a seven-letter word out of it, I’m happy for the rest of the day. I play ABY in Scrabble just so I can stick an S on the end to make ABYS, another S to make ABYSS and then turn that into ABYSSES. I do shit like this, and this and I am literally punching the air with delight.
Still though, it does make me (admittedly tiny amounts of) money from time to time.
Name any movie/cartoon/piece of fiction/whathaveyou and I’ll probably be able to recall some really bad fanfiction I’ve read or heard of about it. Heck, name a theme. I’ve seen everything from fluffy Berserk shounen-ai, to born-again-Christian Sailor Moon praying to a dress, to pregnant Dr. Jackal from GetBackers, to Josef Mengele romance. Oh, and molecule porn. But I think that was a parody. “You can’t get away from me, my dear! My neutrons spin 0.6 times faster than yours!”
The worst part is, I have frighteningly good memory when it comes to what I’ve read. D: I can’t unsee it!
I don’t even know. About 99-100% of my geek is in video games. If I didn’t play games, I would probably just do music all the time, all day. I dunno if that can really be considered geeking out, though.
Amanda Palmer (obsessed with her), Comic books and graphic novels, Rocky horror picture show, SAILOR MOON!, board games(Trivial Pursuit!), webcomics, books(Hitchikers Guide!!!), how could I forge mythology on my list?
Ugh, this is one of those cases where it probably would be games. Although it’d be more like old gaming (NES to Dreamcast). I could spend hours telling people what I know about those systems and games and shit.
Beyond that, I’m a big fan of tactical warfare and weaponry. Love watching those shows on TV where they go over groups and warfare along with the different types of weapons they use and how they fight. Very interesting stuff to be sure.
I would say gaming plays a very small role in my life now a days and you could pretty much lump me as a casual gamer now. I only stay here because of the community really.
But since this is about nerdiness outside of games…
The biggest thing I’m pretty nerdy about is the Godzilla series, and other Japanese science-fiction films. I own just about all of them on DVD (the ones released in region 1 at least), and can name tons of pointless trivia about it. Why? I don’t know. I tried justifying it with my love for dinosaurs (see next paragraph) but I think it goes beyond that, more primal. Something about the Godzilla series sparks some resonance in my being that draws me further. I think it’s the combination of naturalism, horror, visual art, music, and mythology.
Dinosaurs. I love them. Most people do when they’re kids, but I never grew out of that. I still dream of being a paleontologist some days. And in general, I would say I’m a big organism nerd in general. I can name plenty orders, species, extinct and living. Not to say I’m the best, but it can be pretty impressive sometimes (RE: Biology class). This influenced my switch from Fine Arts into an Ecology degree… so I have a better chance at having a job I’m passionate about. Well, I’m passionate about Fine Arts but it would be easier getting an Ecology related job with a Science degree than a Fine Arts job with a Fine Arts degree, aside form teaching.
Music and Art in general would be another thing, but I don’t really look to that as nerdy; more like pretentious and supremely awesome. I’m a strange one.
Video games is a no-brainer. I’ve developped and mastered the arts of seeming vaguely interested if the conversation drifts to such topic and not appear to be a complete fucking dork until I’ve made certain that whoever I am speaking to is at least as much a nerd as I am. This is usually accomplished by bringing up “quotes and funny shit I see in games” dropping a “What is a man” and seeing if the other party follow through with the dialogue. It’s surprisingly effective.
Anime is the same deal.
Any mention of mythology is likely to make me launch into a monologue of how totally awesome the dudes in China’s Three Kingdoms were (Especially Xiahou Dun), how ancient Greek history would have been far more peaceful if Zeus just fucking kept it in his pants, how Paris of Troy was a stupid little bitch and how Loki was the epitome of being a dick for the sake of being a dick.
Yeah, after games, Mythology is probably the only thing I nerd out over. It’s interesting to read up on the many forms of mythology and parallels between them. My favorite is mythical zoology, pertaining to what are considered holy creatures - the unicorns of each civilization, as it were. Followed closely by the study of Angels in judeochristian myth.
And as far as not considering music or art nerdy, I do depending on your depth of knowledge and obsession over it. If I spark a conversation with you and you can ramble on for hours about color/art theory or music theory or a whole entire music scene, then you are a nerd.
Books. It’s not so much the amount of reading, but if someone describes how he felt because of a certain book or why, I want to read that book. It may be years later, but should I find it in front of me… Another indicator is probably that I don’t care too much about the subject, i.e. an interesting book on an indifferent subject can keep me reeled in.
Will that be Dinosaur metal (role models: GWAR, Finntroll) or Ecology metal, putting in as many technical terms on ecology as some metal bands do as hobbyist-pathologists?
Please. He was the most modern of the bunch (having chosen love over power or wisdom) and was over his head, considering the demigods all around the place. He was a coward, but not battling when he knew he’d die is normal, just not very heroic. Taking down with him the whole of Troy was A)one of the possible outcomes and B) could be construed as tragic, depending on one’s point of view.
Music, of all kinds. Seriously, depending on my mood I’ll listen to anything from Heavy Metal to Barbershop Quartets. And the weird thing is, I’m no music collector; all the music in my PC is downloaded free from sites, or from game CDs, or sent to me by people like VE. I also have little memory for music, don’t ask me about titles or authors. And yet, with the right tune I can get all jazzed up, and in fact I have put together a list in my Windows Media Player specifically to cheer me up when I’m down or bored. The fact I have a great visual imagination - just listening to a song bring a whole, instant original “music video” to my mind’s eye- probably has a lot to do with it. Current favorite: Celtic music, especially ENYA.
Putting aside how the whole Apple shitstorm is really weird (since when does Athena give a flip about that stuff?), you have to consider the choices: Being given power was risky when he didn’t know what to do with it and who it could piss off, but still, chosing the love of a woman married to the brother of motherfucking Agamemnon was not a particularly bright thing to do. This is the kind of story where the hero choses Wisdom and uses it to become powerful and loved and you get a nice little message for the kids, but instead the little dipshit chose to pork Menelaus’ wife and throw his country into war with the biggest military force on the planet, after which he hid behind Hector’s ass.
