kylaraingress | Speak Out With Your Geek Out (Reply)

I am proud to consider myself a geek. While my junior high and high school years were the character-building years wherein I determined I'd rather be weird than normal (much to my mother's chagrin), it wasn't really until college and beyond that I finally got to the point where I could say 'fuck it' as to whether people liked me or not, and just be myself regardless - which included re-claiming the nerd, geek, and dork names I had been called growing up.

I share this reclaiming with a number of people, from Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day to Joss Whedon and Steven Moffat: people who are not ashamed to proudly proclaim that they are indeed geeks. In fact, I had heard about Speak Out With Your Geek Out via the online comic Dork Tower which I read because it's "funny because it's true" humor about geeks and geek life.

So, per the blog, I am writing to share my enthusiasm and love of some my various things I feel I am a geek about. I am not detailing everything - otherwise, this blog entry would be a novel (and Wheaton's already done that), but these are the ones that come to mind.

Doctor Who: Gordon Bennett, Doctor Who. I started watching when I was around 12, when the St. Louis PBS station was rebroadcasting older shows - and so I got addicted during the latter half of Tom Baker's turn of the Doctor ... and fell in love. (The BBC, however, were just in the rein of Colin Baker ready to turn over to Sylvester McCoy.)

I briefly belonged to the St. Louis Doctor Who fan club the CIA during high school (and even tried starting up a branch in Kansas City during college with no luck), had the two movies on VHS before we had a fire, had the Destiny of the Doctors PC game (and never could figure it out) and even had almost all the cards available in the collectable card game. I even (for the most part) liked the tele-movie.

When the show returned, I awaited with trepidation, knowing it could fail horribly - but was also excited when I heard that the person who had done the British Queer as Folk (I had just started watching the Showtime version) was on board (yay for slash fic!). And got the first season through ... shall we say unusual means - and fell in love all over again. It was smart, sweet, fast paced - and while it updated the concept, it still had the heart of the original series. David Tennant is now my favorite Doctor, and Matt Smith finally won me over with "A Christmas Carol".

I'm on the fence about Torchwood: I love the character of Captain Jack (and was one of the few who recognized him as the same guy from Putting it Together, and his very brief appearances in Delovely and The Producers), and loved that they were going adult and somewhat silly (but in a good way). "Children of Earth", however, had me yelling at the screen too much - and since I don't own Starz (and it's not available to purchase via iTunes or Amazon.com), I haven't seen "Miracle Day" yet.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf: my love for Doctor Who in my younger days got me turned onto these two comedy science fiction series (and in the case of Hitchhiker's, the books as well). It was the combination of my love for British humor (Monty Python especially) and my love for (at least televised) science fiction. I remember for New Year's Eve for 1999, BBC America did a special showing of Red Dwarf IN REVERSE, and my husband and I tried staying up all night to make sure we videotaped each episode.

Quantum Leap: Partly due to it being a time travel show, partly because at the time I thought Scott Bakula was cute (thanks to the discovery of slash fic - and Dean Stockwell's appearance in Married to the Mob, I later discovered Al was handsome as all-get-out as well), I watched this show fairly regularly during high school. To further date myself, the last season was during my freshman year, and I remember trying to get my mom to videotape it since I didn't own a VCR.

I recently started re-watching the episodes that are available via Netflix Instant (I own the first two seasons, but was so pissed by the replacement music used in "M.I.A." I haven't bought any other seasons) - and unfortunately, you can't go home again. The first season especially has not aged well at all, and is especially egregious (yes, TV Tropes will ruin your language) on the hammering of the moral into the skulls of our viewers (racism is bad - it's bad, I say!). But I still have a soft place in my heart for it, especially among my time travel sluttiness I refer to in Hot Tub Time Machine. (And hey - I've written slash fic for it - I have to be geeky for that, right?)

Brief mentions of other things science fictiony:

Babylon 5: although it's been a few years since I've seen it, I used to re-watch it fairly religiously.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favorite of the Star Trek series, loved the reboot movie, and was one of the few who actually liked Enterprise, it seemed.

Lost, although it's touch and go there in a few seasons, was overall something I enjoyed

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, Buffy, Firefly, and Angel: got into Buffy late, and didn't see Angel until it was over, but saw Firefly all through it's aborted attempts on Fox, and Serenity is one of those movies I equate with Shindler's List: good movie, glad I saw it, but don't really crave to watch it repeatedly

The Guild: got into it while it was in it's second season, and have thoroughly enjoyed it

Gaming:
I'm not a diehard gamer, but I do enjoy playing video games, whether it's on my PS3, on the computer, or once we get back into a bigger place even going old school on our Super Nintendo or Sega. I tend to like plot-based games, like Dragon Age (am waiting for the sequel to go down in price a bit). Thanks to Red Box, I got to rent LA Noir (loved Rockstar's Bully and have yet to beat GTA: San Andreas) and have found it fun. And thanks to the PS hack, I got to try Infamous (which I quite enjoyed). I do occasionally play World of Warcraft, although Rich tends to like it much more and so I give him the desktop for playing it more often.

Reading:
I used to without fail re-read The Prydain Chronicles (by Lloyd Alexander) and C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, but haven't been able to since the move. And I used to be big into Tanith Lee and Agatha Christie, but I just don't have the time to read as I used to. I do still read Discworld books (which I got into two or three years ago, so am catching up) occasionally, but I don't read as much as I used to, primarily because I read so much online nowadays. I read about ten or so online comics as well, and then GoComics on top of that.

Podcasts:
I love podcasts so much, I've started my own. I listen to around 10 podcasts, and they vary widely in interest. From the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company (ARTC) doing full-on radio plays (many of them sci-fi in nature) to KCUR's arts news, from Stuff Mom Never Told You and Stuff You Should Know giving me all sorts of fun information to Onion Radio News, a perusing of the ones I currently listen to (and the ones I finally had to stop listening to because I just couldn't keep up) shows the eclectic taste and interest I have. In fact, you can blame my interest in podcasts as to partly why I don't read as much as well, as I listen to the podcasts on the commute in and from work rather than read.

I started my own podcast, Stage Savvy: The Podcast, in January 2011, and - aside from a two month hiatus - is still going strong. It's about the various aspects of the performing arts, with a Kansas City bent, co-hosted with Jen Morris.

Theatre:
This could be a post in and of itself. From a very young age, I loved theatre. I was always participating in school and church productions, mainly because I have one of those clear voices that can project naturally, but it wasn't until my junior year of high school that I actually auditioned for a role - Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. I got a theatre scholarship at Park University and graduated with a minor, and have been involved (on stage, back stage, on the board, and of course working with KC Stage as a contributor (and volunteer on the back end), and more recently as a reviewer as well.

Whether it's squeeing at the Act I finale for Wicked when Rich and I got a chance to see it in St. Louis, contemplating driving 11 hours (one way) to see the Reduced Shakespeare's latest show, or even tearing up a little while attending a live production of A Prairie Home Companion, I love watching theatre, and am continually glad that my participation with KC Stage has gotten me the ability to see many shows I wouldn't normally. (It also got me the chance to go to LA in May of 2010 for a fellowship, where I got to see 10 productions there as well.)

But I also love participating in it, although I do take a break every once in a while to maintain that love. Whether it's helping build the sets, doing props for a production, acting on stage (including some wonderful script-in-hand readings of old radio plays as a fundraiser), or directing, I participate in theatre for the same reason you hear why many join the military: to be a part of something bigger than myself. When it's done right, it's the best high I've ever had.

In conclusion:
This is just a small things I'm passionate about. I didn't even delve into my music choices. So, what's the point of this?

We all have things we love to the point of potentially boring others who aren't into that, and that's okay. Whether it's sports, science fiction, mystery books, board games, cats, or even beanie babies, it's what makes us 'us', and is part of who we are.

So, can't we all get along? Share the love of all things geeky, regardless of what that geeky thing is, and realize everyone is a geek - it just may not be the same thing as you.