Why I Need to Pass in my Geek Card

"Okay, you need to pass in your Geek card."

If you have ever heard this, it's normally in response to you not knowing, or not liking something that another person believes to be common or needed knowledge in what was previously considered indie. Which means independent, or not mainstream. (Nutty: It is NOT a genre of music. Get it right!)

For me, it gives me a brief moment of mind numbing panic before wondering if I'm going to be shamed any more.

Here, let me explain.

Geek refers to a person that is normally rather intellectual, who is heavily interested in a hobby.

Nerd is someone described as being overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired, that spends high amounts of time on activities excluding mainstream practices.

Gamers are those who spend most of their leisure time playing or learning about games.

Okay, there is no way any of those can be applied to me.

I don't focus on one activity or hobby to the point of excluding most others, I do not ignore mainstream activities  and I definitely don't spend a large amount of time on games.

I like dipping my toe into the pool, and seeing exactly how much I want to swim in one direction or the other.

And by that, I mean, I don't have a background knowledge of video games or comic books. I play/read the ones I like, and if I'm recommended others, I'll try them, to narrow down what else I like.

My background in anime started with Sailor Moon, Digimon and Pokemon. But, TV Shows are only on at a certain amount of time, and I wasn't always interested in being in front of the TV at said time.

With Anime, I discovered Manga. Perfect! I could carry a book around and enjoy the stories I wanted to! Of course, certain stories go out of print, or are hard to get a hold of.

Which introduced me to card games such as Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon to pass the time! From there it was a hop skip and a jump to video games, cosplaying, LARP-ing, and most recently, I'm dabbling in comic books.

Of course there's plenty of other topics in there, like my strange inability to be a good collector of anything other than book series, coffee mugs, and cats, and the fact that I only just 2 hours ago discovered what "Tokusatsu" was.

I can't write about this stuff! I feel like I don't know the first thing about all this sometimes!

See? See what I mean?

All I'm trying to say is, shut up! Can I not just like what I want without you people making a flip or glib comment on my ability to live under a rock? Since when does a community based on being individual feel the gorramn need to stick a label on everyone?

So live and let live, and stop telling others what to like and what not to like.

Jeez!

(Damn right I used a Firefly reference.)