A DIARY OF A SHAMELESS NERD
"The following contains a smattering of profanity so if you don't like them naughty swear words, I suggest you turn back!"
There's a common misconception in mainstream society that geeks are a group of unattractive, overweight, friendless virgins sat in front of dual screen computers viciously debating the age old "Kirk or Picard" question to death on one screen as they relentlessly farm XP for World of Warcraft on the other. While it may sound hypocritical of me to say this as I sit alone, at a computer screen in a darkened room at 1 o clock in the morning wearing a Superman onesie, I beg to fucking differ. To use myself as an example, I scrub up pretty well (see left) and in the past I've been told I resemble Zachary Quinto and Jared Leto (I wish!), I've also had several committed relationships and I'm marrying my fiance Michelle later this year. I don't have trouble making friends and I have a solid group of mates I still hang out with from back when I was a kid. I also know for a fact there are plenty of geeks out there in my position who have wives and children. So society can go eat a dick then, but what are the pitfalls of being a modern geek? Well, taking from my own experience it typically boils down to other people's attitudes, be they other geeks, friends, work colleagures or the aforementioned betrothed. Now, I'm not saying any of the people I'm going to tell you about are necessarily in the wrong in any of what they do, a large proportion of blame for the awkward silences lies with me and the fact I'm entirely incapable of reigning in my ridonkulous geekery. Before you get the wrong idea and think this is just going to be some bitter nerd lammenting the world for not accepting him many of the people I'll be talking about are also geeks and are just plain awesome. In case anyone reading this is confused, this is my written account of life as a geek which I'll be updating regularly for your enjoyment or total boredom depending on your point of view.
wednesday 5th june 2013
I recently rediscovered one of my favourite television shows of all time, the criminally under-rated and often overlooked Farscape. When the series first premiered on BBC2 back in 1999 I've got to admit, I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. By this point I was already heavily entrenched in the likes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager and was very skeptical of this strange new series from Australia. It became a regular fixture on my TV, however and as the weeks passed I grew to love it. The most appealing quality of Farscape was that it was the antithesis to the often stuffy and formulaic modern age Star Trek series. If I'm totally honest, Farscape did everything I feel that those in charge of Star Trek: Voyager were so obviously afraid to do. The potential within Voyagers (and ultimately Enterprises) premise was such that they could so easily have broken the mould and created something truly unique. As it happened, both of those series maintained the status quo and carried on with the generic starship based story of the week formula seen in The Next Generation. I know I sound like I'm hating on modern Star Trek, but I'm not, I just feel there are some things that were often lacking. I'll be putting together something about what I would have liked to have seen in Star Trek: Voyager when I get around to it, I have tons of ideas and very little motivation so you can look forward to that. In the coming weeks and months I'll also be writing a season by season retrospective on this very website as I progress through Farscape (I'm about half way through the first season as we speak) and we're looking to getting a couple of guests on board for a Farscape themed Podcast so look out for those. For now I'm going to focus on something a little silly.
So... silliness... and a little female objectification I guess.
On first watching Farscape as a teenager, I didn't find Aeryn Sun remotely attractive. No, don't go clicking on the back button to take yourself away from the page, stay with me here. Here's the thing, Claudia Black is blatantly an attractive woman, more handsome than beautiful, but attractive for sure. Her character in Farscape pissed me right off in the beginning. It's possibly because I was still early on in the series and her character hadn't had the chance to fully develop beyond adversarial bitch. Perhaps it's because John Critchon was set up right from the start as such a likeable protagonist and Aeryn spent the majority of the early episodes being a complete twat to him. Maybe it's because her voice is really annoying (more down to her weird accent than anything else) and her general character profile for the first six or seven episodes read "be a complete dick to everyone", but I generally found her to be a very unlikeable woman for the majority of the shows run.
Then something happened, I grew my skinny ass up. Ten years down the line and nearly 14 years later with a little perspective on the female of the species beyond a pair of tits and a pretty face and I'm a little smitten. Having moved through that early episode hump, the writers have started expanding her character and showing a little vulnerability, letting her shields down a little. Now I'm not saying that the requirement of my liking a female character is that she needs to be vulnerable, to be rescued because that's not the case and I like the fact that Aeryn is a total bad ass. The issue I had with her was that there appeared to be very little to her character beyond the surface level tomboyish asshole.
One of the things that sort of turned me off the show in my youth was the relationship with Critchon, I didn't like her, I didn't like the plotline and I didn't get why he liked her. As it happens I was wrong and my young mind was incapable of moving past my initial judgement of her and, in the here and now, watching the slowly burning relationship with Critchon develop is an absolute joy. It's a testament to the writing and direction of the show that the traditional and over used boy meets girl tropes were kind of reversed here with Aeryn taking the role of the testosterone fueled dude and Crichton taking the role of the sensitive and emotional chick. Subtle little character moments are peppered liberally over the course of the first half of the season, allowing the mutual attraction to show without the need for being blatantly over the top and dramatic about it. We also get to know a little about her life as a Peacekeeper and the structured, regimented existence she led before her time aboard Moya. As the show progresses we watch her develop from a bland and unpleasant soldier with a chip on her shoulder into and attractive, well-rounded woman.
Through clever writing of both characters we are allowed to gradually see, not only the development of a relationship that will become one of the defining arcs of the entire series, but the development of a strong female character that I now have a bit of a crush on... don't tell my fiance!
On first watching Farscape as a teenager, I didn't find Aeryn Sun remotely attractive. No, don't go clicking on the back button to take yourself away from the page, stay with me here. Here's the thing, Claudia Black is blatantly an attractive woman, more handsome than beautiful, but attractive for sure. Her character in Farscape pissed me right off in the beginning. It's possibly because I was still early on in the series and her character hadn't had the chance to fully develop beyond adversarial bitch. Perhaps it's because John Critchon was set up right from the start as such a likeable protagonist and Aeryn spent the majority of the early episodes being a complete twat to him. Maybe it's because her voice is really annoying (more down to her weird accent than anything else) and her general character profile for the first six or seven episodes read "be a complete dick to everyone", but I generally found her to be a very unlikeable woman for the majority of the shows run.
Then something happened, I grew my skinny ass up. Ten years down the line and nearly 14 years later with a little perspective on the female of the species beyond a pair of tits and a pretty face and I'm a little smitten. Having moved through that early episode hump, the writers have started expanding her character and showing a little vulnerability, letting her shields down a little. Now I'm not saying that the requirement of my liking a female character is that she needs to be vulnerable, to be rescued because that's not the case and I like the fact that Aeryn is a total bad ass. The issue I had with her was that there appeared to be very little to her character beyond the surface level tomboyish asshole.
One of the things that sort of turned me off the show in my youth was the relationship with Critchon, I didn't like her, I didn't like the plotline and I didn't get why he liked her. As it happens I was wrong and my young mind was incapable of moving past my initial judgement of her and, in the here and now, watching the slowly burning relationship with Critchon develop is an absolute joy. It's a testament to the writing and direction of the show that the traditional and over used boy meets girl tropes were kind of reversed here with Aeryn taking the role of the testosterone fueled dude and Crichton taking the role of the sensitive and emotional chick. Subtle little character moments are peppered liberally over the course of the first half of the season, allowing the mutual attraction to show without the need for being blatantly over the top and dramatic about it. We also get to know a little about her life as a Peacekeeper and the structured, regimented existence she led before her time aboard Moya. As the show progresses we watch her develop from a bland and unpleasant soldier with a chip on her shoulder into and attractive, well-rounded woman.
Through clever writing of both characters we are allowed to gradually see, not only the development of a relationship that will become one of the defining arcs of the entire series, but the development of a strong female character that I now have a bit of a crush on... don't tell my fiance!
So, now on to something even sillier, for your viewing pleasure I draw your eyes to the following image, which google says is Aeryn Sun from Farscape. That's right, in amongst a set of Farscape themed images I got Eddie Izzard dressed as a fairy and smoking a cigarette. What the fuck, eh?
sunday 2nd june 2013
I had an interesting experience the other day, one that I don't have very often; I met another nerd. I'm a generally miserable, anti-social bastard, especially at work. I tend to keep myself to myself as I have very little interest in pool or talking shop when I'm not driving so I'm often filled with a certain degree of cold fear should a colleague join me at a table in the break room. Don't get me wrong this is nothing to do with anyone I work with, I'm just a jerk who enjoys his own company.
As it happens, I get on rather well with the guy who joined me and was pleased to engage in conversation with him. Once we were over the initial bullshit of discussing which services we'd been doing that day and generally lamenting our mutual employer we got on to music and then out of nowhere Star Trek. Turns out my man had been quite looking forward to the release of Into Darkness, which I'd already seen and we moved on to the classic "Which series do you like most?" and "Kirk or Picard" conversations. Now the reason why I'm boring you shitless with this drawling crap is because he pointed out something I found incredibly funny and I decided to share with all of you. I draw your eyes to the images below.
As it happens, I get on rather well with the guy who joined me and was pleased to engage in conversation with him. Once we were over the initial bullshit of discussing which services we'd been doing that day and generally lamenting our mutual employer we got on to music and then out of nowhere Star Trek. Turns out my man had been quite looking forward to the release of Into Darkness, which I'd already seen and we moved on to the classic "Which series do you like most?" and "Kirk or Picard" conversations. Now the reason why I'm boring you shitless with this drawling crap is because he pointed out something I found incredibly funny and I decided to share with all of you. I draw your eyes to the images below.
Yeh, that's right former children's TV presenter and wife of Fatboy Slim, Zoe Ball looks a bit like a Ferengi. Look hard at the images above and it's hard to deny. I know this may seem a little mean spirited, but I found it really funny. Should I have in any way upset you with this here's a picture of some kittens!
thursday 30th may 2013
I'm going to go right on ahead here and sound like one of those deluded, egotistical morons you'd likely see on The Apprentice when I say that I'm an ideas man. Thinking is probably my most useful and most useless endeavour and I spend an inordinate amount of time and effort thinking up ideas for things that I can do, most of which are utter shite, some of which I can see a modicum of potential in. So we move on to my latest project, which I actually think could come to something.
If the picture of Isaac Clarke on the left hasn't clued you in yet, it's something to do with Dead Space. Tonight I finally began putting pen to paper and wrote a script for a Dead Space audio series that I hope to be able to make alongside people I hope to find through this site. I created a basic outline for the series, tentatively titled Dead Space: Execution with rough character bios and a few bits and pieces I exhaustively researched through the Dead Space Wiki. I don't know if any of you geeks out there have ever tried to do something similar, but it's tough trying to do something like this, especially when you're trying to make events and characters tie in to an existing canon crossing video games, animated movies, books and comics. This is made extra difficult by the fact I have yet to read through some of the comic books and haven't got round to reading any of the associated novels yet due to a slight lack of the finances required to buy all of it.
I did really enjoy doing it though, sitting at my computer letting the words flow out as I wrote the script was extremely therapeutic and the fact that I've chosen a series I've invested so much time in and have so much passion for certainly helps. Although research can be a bit of a bitch with relying on Wiki entries that may not necessarily have been written by the most knowledgeable or eloquent of writers I found myself finding small pieces of information that helped the world and characters start to take form in my head. It's also a great feeling when you e-mail your script to someone and they say they like it. It's not anything that I'm ready to show the rest of the world yet and it's certainly nowhere near ready to start recording yet, but it's promising and I'll be keeping everyone who's interested updated on the creative process possibly with a few videos and junk.
I did really enjoy doing it though, sitting at my computer letting the words flow out as I wrote the script was extremely therapeutic and the fact that I've chosen a series I've invested so much time in and have so much passion for certainly helps. Although research can be a bit of a bitch with relying on Wiki entries that may not necessarily have been written by the most knowledgeable or eloquent of writers I found myself finding small pieces of information that helped the world and characters start to take form in my head. It's also a great feeling when you e-mail your script to someone and they say they like it. It's not anything that I'm ready to show the rest of the world yet and it's certainly nowhere near ready to start recording yet, but it's promising and I'll be keeping everyone who's interested updated on the creative process possibly with a few videos and junk.