How to Party Like a Geek

Two weeks ago, I hosted my first party ever.  I don't count bridal and baby showers I helped with, because that wasn't solo work.  Here's how it came about: I "recently" realized that the majority of my close friends are, like Ross and me, unashamedly geeky.  

There's Ryan, who knows more Doctor Who trivia than, I think, Steven Moffat himself.  There are my parents and their besties Lee and Shelly, who made Friday nights their double date nights for years - because that's when Stargate: SG-1 was on.  Oh, and their daughter Shannon, whose fashion sense would put her on par with any splashy comic book villainess or heroine.  There's also Ross's buddy Matt, who has taken on the heroic task of raising his three daughters to be geeky princesses, despite any good-natured intervention on the part of their non-geeky mom Jaime.  Not to mention, my new pal Emily, a quirky young artsy-type who refuses to let her son drink out of her Spiderman mug.

Other people have Superbowl parties, where they chow down on high-fat snacks and celebrate big, meaty guys punching each other around.  Some folks throw parties for awards shows, all the while sipping on frothy alcoholic beverages and making snarky comments about gowns, hair, and jewelry.  Why shouldn't I throw a bash celebrating all the things that, in the past, made me a social pariah?

Girl-cat squares off with Catwoman!

I sent out handmade invitations.  I spent hours researching to create the perfect trivia challenge, relying primarily on the Big Five: Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, and a conglomeration of X-Men, Justice League and Avengers.  Yes, I realize that Harry Potter and Supernatural and about a million other franchises could have made their way into the mix as heavy hitters, but I considered my audience, and these were the fandoms that were most thoroughly represented among my nerdy kin. 

Totally retro. Photo cred: Emily G.

On the menu were Kryptonite Krunch (Chex Mix), Tribble Kibble (kettle corn), Iced SereniTea and Romulan Ale (blue Hawaiian Punch), Green Arrows and Black Canaries (celery sticks and pitted olives), T.A.R.D.I.P. (salsa con queso), Darth Taters (potato puffs), Obi-Wan Kielbasa (smoked sausage discs), Bowties Are Cool pasta and even chocolate-chip Wookiees.

I dressed as River Song, circa "Let's Kill Hitler" and sprayed my naturally curly hair into a huge hive of spoilers, and my husband donned his red captain's tunic (after polishing up his freshly shaved head).  

O Captain, my Captain!

I read the questions from my ThinkGeek T.A.R.D.I.S. journal as our guests observed our many geeky T-shirts, displayed as decoration.  Loki paraded her tiny little cat self around, getting into a bit of a tussle with Shannon, whose Catwoman costume might have intimidated her a bit.  Even Jaime, pregnant and dressed quite comfortably as a female version of Frodo Baggins, was pretty happy to win the doorprize - a Spiderman sippy bottle.

Loki lurves the Doctor.

Completition ramped up among the three carefully matched teams - The Terrible Tolkienators, the Raging Redshirts and the Kiss-My-Asgardians.  We learned that being a geek does not automatically mean that you've seen all the Star Wars movies.  We also learned that Emily does a beautiful whale impression, that most superhero themes sound alike, and that my dad didn't even need to wear the iconic orange hat for him to walk around the house scowling like Jayne, the hero of Canton.  We also learned that sweet Thor, despite his ultra-masculine name, is kind of a fraidy-cat and spend most of the party hiding.  He only appeared - as if freakishly on cue - when my dad and Emily were reading their hastily scribbled sci-fi story, about a race of catlike gods from the distant planet...Thorpiter.

The whole shebang - celebrate ALL the fandoms!

For one lovely evening, my house was full of heroes and villains, the whole Pond family, and one very photogenic little cat.  In retrospect, I think I would have made the trivia questions a little easier.  I also would have baked about three more batches of Darth Taters.

I got a request that our next batch have an 80's theme.  Which I can, like, totally handle.

Unless my dad shows up in legwarmers.

The Measure of a Man Is Not His Cheekbones

Recently, I mused on facebook why the "Geek" section of Pinterest hadn't already been changed to the Gallery of Tom Hiddleston, David Tennant and Benedict Cumberbatch.  Honestly.  Cheekbones, moody stares, dramatic coats and fantastic hair galore.  So little posted about Stargate, or X-Files, or Flash Gordon or  Star Trek: The Next Generation (other than those awesome Picard memes).

I don't know what happened, exactly, but somewhere along the line, society has confused fangirls and geek-girls.  Which is sort of embarrassing for me.  And this is a problem.

Allow me to explain. 

It's like the difference between a football fan and, say a Troy Polamalu fan.  You can like Troy without being a fan of the Steelers.  You can like Troy without being a fan of football at all, really.  You can just admire him, think he's attractive, or nice, or a great player, or whatever other reason that makes you like him.

But a football fan likes football, no matter who's which teams are playing, who is traded, or who's out for the season.  Football, to them, is football.  It's bigger than the sum of its players.

So it is with geek girls.  We like science fiction and/or fantasy because they're cool.  Personally, I liked the Avengers movie because the special effects were great, the exploration of the characters' relationships was satisfying, it was funny and exciting, the acting was super, the actors obviously cared about - even loved - their roles, and the fandom that has risen up around it is epic.  I love seeing the interviews and how the cast interacted off-screen.  I enjoy the BBC's Sherlock series because I am fascinated at the way they are reworking classic literature in a way that is not only palatable but riveting to a modern audience.  I am transfixed by the technology used.  I am loving the development of the characters.  The acting is beyond brilliant.  I am incredibly excited to see all of these actors take on new roles (The Hobbit, anyone?!)

Yes.  The actors playing the heroes - and villains - are obscenely good-looking human beings.  (I admit, though, I prefer short-ish blue-eyed bald guys - one in particular.  Call me old-fashioned.)  Giving them superpowers (or near superpowers) makes them even more attractive.  But this is the thing, people.  Being admirers of Loki, or Hawkeye, or Sherlock, or the actors playing them...this is the entirety of fangirl-ness.  It doesn't proceed past that!  A fangirl might further research an actor or role because she finds him (or her) sexy or interesting, and then post 3,422 pictures of said actor or character on Pinterest, but that's it. 

Being a fangirl without progressing to a geek-girlhood as well is like nibbling on nothing but a turkey leg while ignoring the whole decadent Thanksgiving spread before you.  A geek girl devours her prey whole.  Even the vegetables.  A turkey leg - even an, um, sexy one - doesn't ultimately give you everything you need.

A geek-girl can also be a fangirl.  But a fangirl isn't necessarily a geek-girl.  There's nothing wrong with a fangirl.  We need fangirls.  They are great.  They are fun.  They dream.  They are passionate. 

But I'll be darned the next time I hear a fangirl talk about how much she loves comics when the only Marvel characters she can name came directly from a recently released major motion picture.

And if she doesn't know Loki was once a woman.

Please.

A Treatise on Female Geekery

Back in my day...

Isn't that a terrible way to start a story?  I don't care; this story warrants it.

Back in my day, it was definitely not cool to be a geek.  It wasn't cool to like Star Wars more than Saved by the Bell, or arcade games more than Beverly Hills, 90210.  You didn't dress up as Captain Kirk for Halloween; you dressed as a sexy nurse, or a sexy ninja, or a sexy nun.  Your Friday nights were spent partying at the football game, not hunched around a coffee table in your parents' basement, rolling a strangely-shaped die.

And yet, in that harsh, anti-geek environment, a few of us managed to thrive.  Maybe it was because we weren't that popular anyway.  Maybe it was being geeks that made us not-that-popular.  I don't know.  Frankly, I don't care.  After my parents' divorce, some of the happiest times I had were hanging out with my geek friends, being geeky and doing geeky things and dreaming geeky dreams.

We geek chicks banded together, the few of us that there were in high school, and quietly read our comic books, designed Jedi costumes, and wrote our own fanfics.  Now, we're the ones blowing people's minds with incredible art at Renaissance fairs, dabbling in miniatures, and writing, writing, writing.  And if no one ever remembers us, who cares?  We left a legacy.  We were Geek Girls before it was cool.  We were HIPSTER fangirls!

I don't know when it became cool to be a sci-fi fangirl.  Maybe when sci-fi got tall, leggy, British, and developed incredible cheekbones and brooding personality quirks.  I think that's funny, you know; I'm as big a fan of the BBC as anyone (I watched Are You Being Served? while I was still too young to understand all the innuendo), but I think it's funny that suddenly the concept of the "fangirl" came into play with the onset of Pinterest, facebook...with Tom Hiddleston/Benedict Cumberbatch/David Tennant/Matt Smith as the objects of fangirl admiration/adoration/obsession.

Wait a minute, here, chickens.

A real Geek Girl is not a fan only of the dazzling blue eyes, nor the spectacularly whimsical hair, nor the oh-so-delicious accent of the actor!  Not that there's a problem with that...but a true Science Fiction devotee, an honest-to-goodness advocate of the wonders, joys, and creativity that come with unleashing your innner geek...

...she ultimately prefers the TARDIS itself over the Doctor.

He's just a fantastic special feature.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we used to love science fiction for its own sake.  Of course there was the aspect of romance...it's even more epic and intoxicating if you're sweeping past solar systems and unknown planets while you're being wined and dined.  We all admit that.  But the teensy little percentage of hipster that's in me wants to ask a lot of so-called fangirls what they would think of Sherlock if, say, Simon Pegg were playing the lead role instead of Mr. Cumberbatch?  Pegg's a charming, clever, geeky boy himself...but alas, he lacks the proper cheekbones for the part.

True Geek Girls, I know you're out there still!  You'll sit on your bedroom floor, leafing through the lastest issue of The New Avengers and patching together your own Princess Leia outfit (not the slave Leia outfit, but the take-charge princess-in-command camo-friendly Forest Moon of Endor Leia outfit, of course), dreaming of somehow making it to ComiCon (again, while wearing a smart, savvy and not-too-embarrassingly sexy costume), writing your own graphic novels, majoring in physics and art, being as postmodern and progressive as you want to be while still acting like a lady.

That's what it's about, girls.

Not cheekbones.

 

*Disclaimer: Yes, I am also a huge fan of all the actors mentioned above.  But just FYI, I don't think any of them can pull off posing with a child's pink bicycle.  Please prove me wrong.  That would be stinkin' cool.