Geek culture

[cosmolinguist]

There are things that can be said for secondary worlds being useful for speculative experiments (socio-political, alt-historical, and many others), for imagination, for metaphor and allegory, but the obsession these geeks have with world-building is not so much for the imaginative, the speculative, or even the interesting.

This resonated with me so hard I shook like an old pickup driving down a wheel-rut road, with only the small difference that the person it immediately made me think of is not so much a devotee of a particular writer or "fandom" as he was forever in the earliest stages of trying to "write" what were much less like stories and more like deep, deep background for an RPG's sourcebook.

He was obsessed with making "magic" of various kinds -- superpowers, Harry Potter tricks, whatever -- "scientific." It turns out he knows even less science than I do, but worse than that he resisted my most fundamental, oft-repeated point: Where were the stories? What use was all this; what end was it serving? If you make magic science, if you want to work out "explanations" for everything, all you're doing is writing the science textbooks for an alternate universe (and in the hands of someone who cares so little about science in this one, that sounds unspeakably tedious).

Insisting it would be a "universe" that people could write their own stories in, he himself was of course going to start writing some, as soon as he figured out the precise connection between kobolds and cobalt, or whatthefuckever. I never knew of it getting any further than him burbling at me, but that's just as well; anyone who cared more about the rules of magic than about character development and story is not someone whose writing I feel I'm missing out on.

To many SFF fans (the type who identify as a fan, as part of their honest-to-goodness identity and personality) even strong plot or characterization–let alone such lofty a thing as the quality of prose–fades in importance next to that holy grail of nerdism: world-building.

And I think this is of great comfort to the people who don't just want to read this shit, but want to write it: it doesn't matter if you can't plot your way out of a paper bag and can't get past your own neuroses enough to figure out how to shape good characters, because you can world-build!

Those references to "the kind of people who identify as a fan/geek/nerd/etc" recur in a way that sticks out for me, perhaps because I have never liked the "identify as" construction, because it's ugly -- I pay attention to and care about language*, possibly too much -- and because it invites derision, both specific (I remember reading someone's scathing opinion on how cis people just are their gender but trans people have to identify as their gender**) and general (the best example I can think of for that is @TumblrTXT).

I don't think all that derision is unearned, but I do think it's interesting the way the writer contrasts "identifying as a fan" with "leaving this stuff what it should be: just a hobby." I think there is some middle ground there; I just stumbled across this from a previous incarnation of miss_s_b:

Doctor Who is probably the nearest thing to a religion I have. It's shaped my mind from a very early age, and I believe in it's core values and worship regularly. My first memory of anything is of Tom Baker turning into Peter Davison. Alex says that Doctor Who "fostered a free spirit, encouraged me to start reading, instilled a passionate internationalism, made me think about ecology, and give me a lasting hatred of prejudice; green scaly rubber people are people too. And, of course, it made me want to change the world, and believe that an individual can make a difference", and I couldn't agree with that more. It's always been a show with a moral message, and that message is an essentially Liberal one - even if the world IS a horrible scary place full of fascistic monsters, one person can change that by doggedly doing the right thing, and this is what the right thing is.

I wouldn't say that Doctor Who is "just a hobby" for her, or Alex, or Andrew, or many other people I know, but nor need they "identify as fans" (certainly Andrew doesn't). I don't think it's a choice between "geek as personality" or "geek as hobby," but the false dichotomies are easy to fall into.

It's a fun read -- I hate so much about geek culture that it's great to find people who can articulate some of its horribleness (and I'm not alone in being no fun here; I think this was my most-retweeted link of recent times on the erstwhile Twitter account), but most of all it reminds me how glad I am not to have to listen to any more goddam magic-as-science world-building bullshit.


* I was going to say "I'm a language nerd" or something, and then thought in the circumstances that'd be a bad idea! But also, I thought of something more precisely what I wanted to say because I had to stop and think; this geek/nerd/fandom/subculture/counterculture thing creates shorthands that can be useful but also can be overused.

** I haven't observed this dichotomy myself, but what I have seen construes cis people as "identifying as" their genders or "identifying as cis," when they don't, if only because they're not any more used to the "identify as" than they are to thinking of themselves as "cis." "To be" is a monstrously tricky verb...yet another reason it's probably better to say "I care about language" rather than "I am a language nerd."

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

During RaceFail, I read a piece about a classroom exercise of having people describe themselves, and it turned out that most of the adjectives they applied were things they'd been hurt about.

[cosmolinguist]

Well yeah. A cursory look at things I've been abused for -- being a woman, American, an ex-pat, disabled, fat, bisexual, a Lib Dem or a Democrat depending on which side of the ocean I'm on -- consists mostly of the first things that'd spring to mind if I was asked to describe myself. It's much more effective, in the eyes of people who want to hurt me, to go for what I am rather than what I'm not.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

There might be another piece to it-- to the extent that people haven't been hurt, they think of themselves as being in the unmarked state.

[cosmolinguist]

Maybe. Words like "geek," "nerd" and "dork" have also been used to abuse me, and many others that do not hurt me. I'm not saddled to describing myself with all the terms used against me.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

I have to say that while you make an eloquent argument, I fundamentally disagree. I think that narrative is vital for fiction, whether it's novels or short stories or films and so on and it is a useful and interesting way to view the universe but I don't believe it is the only way to view the universe or to imagine the universe. Why shouldn't there be the equivalent of non-fictional forms in sff universes - travel writing, speculative science, philosophical experiments, imaginary history? If the purpose of worldbuilding is to write a story, then I agree narrative is vital but I also like the idea of inventing a space to play creatively, even if that does not easily translate into a conventional sff format.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

I like fanfiction (even if I don't want to read most of it) for exactly the inverse reason - giving people the chance to play creatively in another world, without the worldbuilding.

[cosmolinguist]

Oh I think there is a place for all those. The steampunk piece I linked to, which I like very much, is encyclopedic in form, and about a well-worn alternate-history: The Nazis Won.

I just don't think encyclopedias, travel writing or the what-ifs of science and philosophy, whether of this world or another, and narrative are mutually exclusive. I think we storytelling apes, with our pattern-seeking brains, will connect things up whether they are meant to be or not. So it helps if they connect up in a way that is somehow interesting or satisfying for the reader.

[andrewducker]

"There’s nothing wrong per se with world-building, or even an enthusiasm for it, because as I said it could serve many useful purposes."

I loathe this attitude with a fiery passion.

"There's nothing wrong per se with *activity X I have no time for*, because it could serve many purposes that would make me happy."

My instant reaction to this is "Some people like world-building, get used to it."

Because not everything has to be for the benefit of other people. Sometimes we can have hobbies purely because we enjoy them.

[cosmolinguist]

Of course things don't have to be useful to other people to be worthwhile.

But since the blog post is talking about books and other media presumed for public consumption, I think it's fair to ask that they benefit other people.

[n3m3sis42.livejournal.com]

Fucking hate Tolkien and the people who write complicated languages consisting of mostly apostrophes. And I realize this is sacrilege, but stew punk makes me itch a little. Now I know why. Very much enjoyed the article. Although to be honest sometimes I have no idea what I'm doing when I build my worlds, heh.

[cosmolinguist]

I think it's interesting that you call it sacrilege to not like steampunk.

It's weird; my husband once had a conversation with some friends of mine that he was just meeting, and he talked about a shared loved for classic Doctor Who, and why he doesn't agree with a popular science writer, etc. Then one of them asked him for his mobile number, but he said he didn't have a mobile phone, never had, hates the things. And she expressed surprise that "a geek like him didn't want the latest gadgets." Admittedly most people who don't have mobile phones attract some comment about it these days, but suddenly liking a TV show (and the incarnation of it that was common for whole families to like, not just for a geek subculture) and having educated perspectives on science made him "a certain kind of person," with attendant traits he was expected to also have. Just like you seem to feel you "should" like steampunk.

sometimes I have no idea what I'm doing when I build my worlds

But you're clearly doing stuff people care about, enough that they want to write fanfic! Not everyone needs to care about world-building; the whole point is that it's not the be-all and end-all.

[n3m3sis42.livejournal.com]

LOL at my autocorrect calling it "stew punk". I know I don't HAVE to like it. It just seems so uncommon not to, that sometimes I wonder what I'm missing. To me, it's impossible not to see it as boringly derivative but everyone else is all "ooooooo, shiny". Sigh.

It is interesting, the assumptions we make. My husband is arguably geekier than I am and does not like gadgets the way I do. I'm fairly geeky but have zero knowledge of and very little interest in comics, and I suck at video games.

What I meant about my worlds is that I do have an interest in building them, but I'm not always as clear as I'd like to be on the implications of every new detail I write. Although I am going to have to figure out how to map some things better because the histories of the characters are getting too complex at times to hold it all in my head. And hee at my world's tiniest fandom. My ego, it swells. ;-)

Although here lately, I think it's been more about the characters than the worlds for me. But even there, I'm not always sure how things fit together.

[n3m3sis42.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This is reassuring. Now how long until it goes away?