As a middle act Generation X-er, I feel confident to say that I witnessed the birth of the alternative pop culture phenomenon known as nerd-dom. Ever since those seeds were secretly planted in the back alleys of Neverwhere, the vines have grown, blossomed, and engulfed the mainstream; courtesy of out of control technological advances and the realization that the reality of the 1990's sucked quite a bit.
I was there for pre-A New Hope Star Wars, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, the first video game in color, and I even owned a John Denver 8-track cassette. I chose a side for the first console war (Atari, Odyssey, Intellivision, Colecovision) where everybody lost. I witnessed the birth, rise, and implosion of Tim Burton. I remember when it was possible to watch every single anime title available in a 63 mile radius. And to this day I carry the special memory of sending my first e-mail and feeling the giddiness of this new technology.
It's not to say out loud that I'm better than you, just that my life has coincidentally synchronized with the zeitgeist to which my generation was apparently so hostile. It's a strange sense to have grown up a nerd when the identity guaranteed one being outcast from social circles, to a world where we seem to have accidentally taken over.
This is Labor Day Weekend, the annual costumed gathering in Atlanta, for nerds who have more vacation time than me, known as Dragon Con. I used to go every year, back when I had stamina and knew someone who could sew. If you've never been, think of it as the Light Side of the Force's Adult Halloween (or Mardi Gras for people who'd prefer that exposed cleavage have a back story). I'm not there, and I'm a little sad. But after going on a press pass two years in a row, I got a little spoiled, and it's hard to go back to searching for a purpose.
Throughout my life I've been at least ten times, and there's always the excitement of seeing Sly Cooper share a beer with a Starship Trooper, and there's always the collection of meet and greet stories along the 'Eric Roberts is so charming' line, and it's always sad on Sunday afternoon when the world goes back to normal. But somehow I never had that ambiguous 'experience' that I always hoped to have at Dragon Con. I don't know what catharsis I was looking for. I just somehow felt that I was noticeably closer to it amongst other freaks in capes than I am at the mall.
Perhaps one of the factors is the way nerd culture has exploded beyond the scope of one measly blogger's ability to connect with everything that has a fandom. It's just too big now. Kind of like when the 2nd edition AD&D Monster's Manual skyrocketed out of control with endless variations on dragons themselves. We went from a simple dragon that breathed fire to the dichotomy of color vs, gem based dragons, and then into the endless stream of fanfiction dragons; Weather Dragons, Shallow Dragons, Trippy Dragons, the unidentifiable Adjective Dragons, and (my personal favorite) the Snide Dragons who can drain a character's charisma 1-4 points with their magical eye-roll.
So I think Dragon Con should consider reflecting the growing complexity of nerd culture. I can't think of a more traditionally appropriate method for celebrating diversity than partitioning off elements of the culture that I honestly couldn't care less about into a separate community, just like the dragons of yore. Here then are some of the most popular elements among my community that I have never been able to give a shit about.
1. Pokémon Dragon
Breath Weapon: Magical round cages
Habitat: Hotspots
Diet: Small inoffensive creatures and Mewtwo
It may have been my age, but I was starting to realize some part of me needed to grow up when Pikachu burst on the American scene reminding everyone of his name over and over. I have to admire Nintendo (and so do you) for the multi-media marketing management that manifested their mutinous menagerie. But the TV show was too kiddie for me, and I began to hate every teenager who came into Blockbuster asking if more trading cards had come in. I will say I love collecting things. There's an addictiveness to the sense of progress. But I like manageable levels of collecting, and Pokémon had about 127 more characters than I was willing to deal with.
2. Magic: The Gathering Dragon
Breath Weapon: A combination of Cheetos and Mountain Dew
Habitat: Comic book stores
Diet: (see breath weapon)
In addition to being another trading card gimmick, I have an aversion to rules. I like to be able to jump into a game with minimal effort. Rules are supposed to create fun, not hinder it, and I have no patience for card games more complicated than Phase 10. I don't like Magic because I don't get Magic and there doesn't seem to be a homework-free access point to the game. Hell, I don't even get into Munchkin. Spades, Uno, Old Maid, I'm there. I'm even willing to try out some basic accounting, but Magic just doesn't hold my attention.
3. Final Fantasy 7 Dragon
Breath Weapon: Any excuse to bash Nintendo
Habitat: Message boards
Diet: Announcements, screenshots, rumors
Pretty much any post-SNES Squaresoft is going to have to have Donald Duck in it to hold my attention, and even that's susceptible to ruination by card-based gameplay. But FF7 holds some personal animosity from me for two reasons. I allied with Nintendo during the N64 era, and had this game flaunted in front of me while Ocarina of Time got delayed for over a year and there was no sign of a single RPG. I also played the game. Good lord, it's boring! Cloud is so completely, utterly, tediously dull. Brooding is not a character, guys. Brooding is a character weakness. Cloud needs to go away and take all of his Cloud wannabes from countless other RPGs with him.
4. World of Warcraft Dragon
Breath Weapon: Insistence that the maxed out level is only the beginning of the game
Habitat: If you're at a computer, you're looking at it
Diet: Everquest enthusiasts, their own resources, each other, time itself
I've never played it and I never will. I hear it's fun, and it probably is, but I've had such a negative experience with the game from an outsider perspective that my answer is going to be a definitive 'no'. I'm all about gaming and escapism, but these things are supposed to compliment your life, not replace it. I've seen the latter happen with WOW, and I can't shake the suspicion that it's designed to consume your whole waking routine. And then some. I just can't fathom bending my whole work schedule around virtual raids.
5. Game of Thrones Dragon
Breath Weapon: Spoilers
Habitat: George R. R. Martin's front lawn
Diet: Heartbreak
First problem, it's HBO. I watched Rome, which was amazing, but the nudity and violence in it honestly crossed a line (here's the spectrum: necessity/atmosphere/fun/to get the R rating/because we're HBO). From what I hear, Game of Thrones deliberately caters to the audience's perversions. Secondly, the series seems to be about the seedy soap opera side of humanity, with constant back-stabbing and likable characters being murdered. I realize a lot of very vocal people like that kind of thing, but none of these elements are selling points for me. As an audience member, my fundamental question is always "Who am I supposed to be rooting for?" And if you leave it up to me to decide and then kill my preferred character off, I'm not going to stay with you. Everything about this series warns me 'Don't bother'.
6. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Dragon
Breath Weapon: Someone else's problem
Habitat: radio, stage shows, novels, comic book adaptations, a TV series, a computer game, a feature film
Diet: Esoteric quotes
My whole life, people have told me I HAVE to read this book. Now that I'm 43 and still alive, I think it's pretty safe to say that I don't have to, and when I die I seriously doubt it will be due to complications of not having read this book. The usually plugs are "it's funny" and "it's so you"; two declarations that never seem to bring about anything positive (for the record, Napoleon Dynamite makes my skin crawl). Now I don't have anything against Douglas Adams, I'm sure the book is amusing enough. I just honestly think I would be bored with it. And then I would turn around and hate everyone in my life who over-hyped it. And they would deserve it but then I'd just feel like a stuck-up jerk, and I have better stuck-up things to spend my time feeling like.
7. Joss Whedon Dragon
Breath Weapon: Buffyspeak
Habitat: uncredited
Diet: Anything starring Nathan Fillion
Ah, Joss Whedon. Okay, let me say upfront that I think he did a fantastic job on one of the two Avengers films he was in charge of. I also think he's a talented writer who handles ensembles well, and he excels at dialogue and nuance. But I don't get why people ever started wearing 'Joss Whedon is my Master Now' t-shirts. He does what he does decently. But that's it. I've never seen anything from him that comes across with the brilliance he's given credit for. I suspect he may have been in the right place at the right time. Buffy just happened to find a passionate audience that happened to develop its own subset of the culture, and by default everything else he touched MUST have been good enough to justify its fan base. But I continue to find the bulk of his work to be merely okay, and the fervor of his fans keeps me at a distance.
8. Harry Potter Dragon
Breath Weapon: Nonsense words
Habitat: Freaking everywhere!
Diet: The phrase "but she's such a good writer"
Dear God! If there is one damned franchise I could go the rest of my life never hearing about again, it's this one. Out of all eight films, I only started caring about any of the characters in film seven, and then I stopped again. I've never read the books. I'm never going to read the books. I don't care how much more there is in the books because I don't care about what I've seen through eight films, I'm not interested in more. Do I find anything wrong with the story? Honestly, no. But just like with Joss Whedon, Harry Potter fans irritate me to the point of strangulation fantasies that I can't help but lash back. Bottom line: stop putting it on the level of Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying Tolkien was definitively better than Rowling, I'm saying Harry Potter has not proven itself yet. It's too new. No matter how much you refuse to shut up about it right now, it is the next generation who gets to decide if it's a timeless classic or not. And even then I'm still not going to read the damn books.
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