Video Games Don’t Kill People

Stories about violent video games have filled the pontificating meat flaps of the media and politicians when discussing what caused such terrible events as Sandy Hook or the DC Navy Yard.  This amounts to blaming the symptom and not the disease, a false IF-THEN statement used to heavily suggest that if you play violent video games you’re destined to be a danger to society.  The only cure – get rid of violent video games.

Geeks Without Borders

Recently, we walked down a street and were drawn into a store with tons of video games and geeky accouterments — Yoda mugs, Big Bang Theory t-shirts, Borderlands miniatures. Nothing particularly surprising or new about this, except its location – Vienna, Austria. Besides some German words here and there, it looked exactly like the geeky video game stores my husband loves to go to in the United States, equipped with a group of three geeky looking young guys standing around talking about the tv show Breaking Bad.

This shouldn’t be that surprising considering that most of the geeky board games I like to play come from German game companies, but I continue to be amazed at how much geeks have in common regardless of what country they are in. Maybe if everyone was a geek, we really could have world peace!

The Legend of The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Disclaimer: GuestGeekBrian is an employee of Nintendo of America. His opinions are his own and in no way reflect those of his employer.

“It was the spark that started the fire– A legend that grew in the telling”
– Jonathan Hickman, Avengers (2012) #1

There once was a boy in a green cap with pointy ears and blond hair. Okay, maybe it was strawberry blond? Anyway, this boy set out to rescue a girl with hair and ears like his. He left home with nothing but the green tunic on his back, but a kindly older man gave him a sword. He delved into the deep places of this world to search for the power to save the girl. Some say he even ventured into worlds beyond this one. The girl was held captive by an evil wizard who had embraced the bestial power in his heart, but the boy’s courage and the girl’s wisdom proved too much for the wizard. He was defeated — for a time.

That should sound familiar. But which game in the Legend of Zelda series is it? It could be (nearly) all of them. While Nintendo has an official three-timelines explanation of how all of the Zelda games fit together, I like to take the title literally and think of them as retellings of the same legend.

“Wibbly-Wobbly Sexy-Wexy”: Queer Comic Anthologies

Guest post by Leah of The Lobster Dance, a blog about Japan, gender, media, and culture (with a heavy dose of manga and geekery) and I’ll Make It Myself!, a food blog.

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey… stuff. — Doctor Who

“Wibbly-Wobbly, Sexy-Wexy”…: sexuality, like time, can be looked at from a “non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint.” —Anything That Loves, based on a comment at Comic Con

John Lustig. Anything That Loves. p. ii

My taste in comics has always run a bit queer*of the center. If a comic has a sword-fighting woman or an androgynous character (or both at once if you please), I’ve probably read it. And much to the horror of misogynist nerds who think nerd girls do it for the ships (and what of it?!), the one thing guaranteed to get me interested in your superhero features is a queer love story. Why? The introduction of non-heteronormative romances often means that both the character and the general narrative are far more likely to break out of gender norms regarding romance.

Dan Savage and Ellen Forney (1994). “My First Time in Drag.” No Straight Lines, p. 216.

Furthermore, I (and many others, I suspect) have a theory that we seek out and stick with media that show us a reflection of ourselves and a reflection of our desired future selves; the tropes we return to over and over are a rough guideline to where we fit into the broader narrative of our lives.

Geek 501 – Sharing

One of our guest bloggers, AC Powers, suggested a new ongoing set of posts here on Comparative Geeks. Primers in geekery. A Geek 101, if you will.

However, Holly and I both have a masters, so by golly, it’s Geek 501. Welcome to primers for people who want to master Geekery.

Right? That’s how that works.

I thought I would open with one of the more important parts of Geek Culture – sharing. One of the things that might separate “geek” from other sorts of groupings (like “nerd”) is the outward excitement and passion geeks have for the things they love. It’s not secret or hidden, but open and known. And while this sort of enthusiasm seems to be becoming less counter-cultural and more of the norm, that does not mean it is not a defining characteristic of geekdom.

So, for a bit of a primer in: sharing, for geeks!