This is the week of Speak Out With Your Geek Out, a time of celebrating fandom.  Because I am an active member of many fandoms, I couldn’t pick just one.  Therefore, I’m writing to you about all that my various fandoms have done for me.

1. Webcomics: They’ve made me a better artist.
I’ve always liked drawing, but it was a wholly solitary activity.  It was “just for fun” and therefore didn’t matter.  Then one day, my friend introduced me to a webcomic called "Kagerou" by Studio Whipping Boy.  From them on, I was hooked.  I read every kind of webcomic I could find, from epic fantasy to short newspaper-style comic strips.  What fascinated me about these comics, besides the beautiful art and intriguing storylines, was the fact that they were all done by ordinary people.  All you had to do to have a webcomic was write a story, draw it happening, and update your website regularly.  It was sort of a “punk rock” moment for me – a flash of “Hey, I can do that too, even though I didn’t go to a fancy school and don’t have connections in the industry.”  Webcomics is the continuation of the most traditional form of storytelling, because it’s powered by passion and effort rather than a Hollywood budget.  So I took my “Hey, I can do that” feeling and I made my own webcomic.  In the past ten years, I’ve done four different series.  And there ends the solitary aspect.  Between exposure to webcomics that had styles so different from the Disney and anime looks I was used to, and the realization that my art was going out on the world wide interwebs, I was inspired to improve my art.  What’s more, it helped me take my drawing more seriously, because it proved to me that labours of love can lead to success.  Just because something is done for fun, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

2. Anime: It made me confident.
Let’s go back in time fifteen years.  I am an elementary school kid; shy, nervous, fearful of making presentations in front of the scrutiny of my unforgiving classmates.  I am also about to discover a new type of super hero.  Sailor Moon and the senshi presented a younger, hipper hero for me to look up to.  I had grown tired of the cliche Superman, identifiable by a giant cape and an even bigger chin, and a tendency to say things like “fear not, citizens, for I shall rescue you!”  … Okay, I don’t know if Superman ever actually said that, but the cliche was getting stale.  And then all of a sudden, there were teenage girls leading dual lives, united on a team yet unique in their personalities, and walked the perfect balance between relatable fragility and admirable toughness.  Sailor Moon was a clumsy crybaby who saved the universe.  For a similarly clumsy crybaby, I took heart in the fact that, you know, maybe I’m not a write-off after all.

Fast forward another ten years.  I’m attending my first anime convention.  After a lifetime of shyness and body image issues, I’m going out in public dressed like a catgirl.  After years of being mercilessly ridiculed while trying to hide in baggy jeans and oversized sweaters, I have found a place where people are actually appreciative of the effort that goes into cosplay.  People who are dressed like Link and Aeris (and some neon pink raver thing I can’t identify) tell me I look good.  We pose for pictures for one another.  I question why people aren’t this outgoing and accepting in “real life.”

Today, I am over my fear of speaking in front of a group.  I have hosted panels and gameshows at anime cons.  When I think back to my 10-year-old self, I remember believing that Those Confident People were at some unattainable level, something I could never hope to achieve.  And while I agree that displaying confidence in front of strangers requires you to be OVER NINE THOUSAND, I can now say I’ve got the dragonballs to do it.

3. Gaming: It made me a better writer.
Gaming walks the line between storytelling and free agency, which make it a breeding ground for fertile imaginations.  Did I just say something dirty?  Anyway, games let the player identify with someone else and travel through unfamiliar terrain, which drops them right on the edge of a potential story.  The player explores at will, but right as they stumble upon a new twist, the game’s built-in plot whisks them off along just one of the many branches the story might take.  The gamer can enjoy the game but still be left wondering what would happen if they had gone down a different road?

Games can also gloss over a key story element.  While this is unacceptable in a novel, where the story is all that matters, a game’s main focus is to get on with the action.  Therefore, there are lots of gaps missing that the imagination is eager to fill.  These are prime story starters, and they aren’t necessarily fanfics.  As much as I wonder what Sonic said to Knuckles after defeating him in the Hidden Palace,* I am much more interested in what happens to the secret headquarters Lara Croft discovered in the London Underground now that its shadowy organization has been defeated.  Or, in Mario Kart Wii, who they had to beg to let them drag race through a mall in the middle of the day.  Or, in Metal Gear Solid, who keeps leaving all those conveniently placed items all over?  Anyway, as I’d play, I’d explore these “offscreen” ideas, sometimes at a level of detail that including word-for-word narration of spinoff stories I later wrote down.  Names were replaced, personalities were switched around, and soon the story I came up with had nothing to do with the original games.  And yet, those games had served as templates in my early days as a writer.  Still, to this day, games make me remember my beginnings and help me feel inspired to keep writing.

4. Writing: It helped me find new friends.
Is everyone sick and tired of me raving about NaNoWriMo?  Not yet?  Good, I’ll keep going.  NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is the challenge one takes to write a novel of at least 50,000 words between the 1st and 30th of November.  That breaks down to about 1667 words per day, which isn’t so bad once you get into the habit.  Why, then, should a writer participate in such an event if they ought to be writing at that pace anyway?  NaNoWriMo is more than just a challenge.  It’s a community. 

Try explaining to someone who doesn’t get it that you enjoy spending time in front of a word processor, agonizing over people who don’t exist doing things that may or may not make sense.  Just be sure you follow up by telling them there is a whole network of people who are just as crazy as you.  The founders of NaNo built a website and forum for writerly geeks the world over to connect.  They’ve sought out published authors (including the likes of Piers Anthony, Mercedes Lackey, and Neil Gaiman) to write pep talks to those who sign up for the NaNo mailing list.  What’s more, local chapters all over the world have in-person meetings to have fun and cheer each other on.  I am lucky to live in a city where we have a large group of participants, and we are like one big writerly family.  We have a costume party in late October as our NaNo Kickoff, we play games and do mini-challenges in our chatroom, and we’ve combined our creative talents to make CDs and a ‘zine.  Although my social contact with these folks is most frequent in November,** we keep in touch through Twitter and deviantART.  We share our other fandoms and we share our lives.  Several successful colabs have risen out of NaNo-found contacts, including a webcomic circle, a geek folk rock group, and yours truly’s YA project.  These are lasting friendships, becaus
e it is one kind of geekery that brought us together and many other types of geekery that keep us coming back.

All in all, I hope this helps to clarify the geek lifestyle and undo the stereotypes.  We’re not a bunch of losers, either loners or stuck in a group of friends who had to “settle” for one another.***  What’s more, I hope this illuminates the truth for closeted geeks who worry about taking part in the fandoms they admire from afar.  People won’t think less of you because you are passionate or creative or because you refuse to follow the crowd.  If anything, it will help you make friends because it shows the world who you really are. 

*I refuse to believe it was “I just headbutted you really hard.  Now we’re friends,” and Knuckles was like, “Okay.”
**Again, because we’re a larger group, we can have a coffee shop get-together at least four times a week during NaNo.
***You hear me, “Big Bang Theory”?

- Tamara Hecht