Those of us here at LGG&F are back again and working tirelessly to compile and vote on this years top 10 canon and top 10 fanon pairings in Geekdom. Last year’s list can be found here.
Now onward to see who made to this year’s list!!
Okay, fandom, I tried to find a fanfic for this Friday to recommend, but I like to give a variety of different fanfics when I post. This means I try to recommend various fandoms and pairings, or no pairings. I have tried to suggest fanfics that are slash fics, het fics, and gen fics, and this week all I wanted to do was introduce you, dear reader, to an awesome femslash fanfic. Finding good femslash fics, or any at all for that matter, is as hard as trying to find diamonds in Minecraft.
So San Diego Comic Con is this weekend, so a lot of cool industry news will be breaking in the next two or three days. But here are two of the coolest things I’ve heard so far:
1) Legend of Korra has been officially renewed by Nickelodeon! And not just for a Book Two, but Books Three and Four! That means forty more episodes of Avatar-world awesomeness! (In fairness this isn’t an actual announcement from SDCC but… get over it.)
2) One of the biggest things that sci-fi geeks find themselves having a sad about is the cancellation of Firefly. Well, it’s not coming back, but the cast is getting a double-whammy reunion—they’ll all be together at Comic Con this weekend for the first time since, I believe, the filming of Serenity, AND they’ll be filming an extensive behind-the-scenes documentary called Browncoats Unite that will be airing November 11th on the Science Channel. Yay!
Shiny!
Since I can never seem to restrain myself from sharing nerdy things, have this video!
Firefly is one of those shows that everyone assumes that you, dear reader, as a sci-fi fan, have watched. After all, it’s only one short season and a movie. And it was written by Joss Whedon, god of screenwriting. (See: the awesomeness of The Avengers and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, for just a few examples.)
But full disclosure: I didn’t watch Firefly until about a month ago. So let me tell you what it’s all about, and what’s good and bad about it.
First of all, the story: Firefly is the tale of a ragtag crew on the Firefly Class spaceship Serenity. They do odd jobs—shipping, passenger transport, etc.—to make money, and they’re unconcerned about the legality of said work. They take on a brother and sister as passengers who are, unbeknownst to them, on the run from the law, and the adventures proceed from there. As a friend and I painstakingly explained to another friend who didn’t understand the concept of a space opera, Firefly is basically a western but with spaceships instead of horse-drawn carriages.
So what’s so great about this show? The short answer is the characters and the dialogue. The characters are each unique and nuanced in their own wonderful ways: soldier-turned-smuggler with a heart of gold Captain Malcolm Reynolds, brilliant mechanic Kaylee, violence-loving soldier of fortune Jayne, wisecracking pilot Wash, whore companion with a heart of gold Inara, etc. etc. As is expected from Joss Whedon, the female characters shine in this show, each avoiding trite stereotypes. The dialogue is snappy and clever, including such gems (that you’ve probably heard but didn’t know were from Firefly) as:
“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!”
“I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.”
(upon seeing something sexy) “I’ll be in my bunk.”
A warning about the plot of Firefly, though: it doesn’t have much of one. The government’s pursuit of River and Simon, the brother and sister duo, follows the crew of Serenity throughout the fourteen episodes of the first season, but all in all it’s very episodic. Certainly not the most compelling or best show I’ve ever watched, but still very good, and a short time commitment compared to other epic sci-fi shows spanning several seasons.
That, of course, is part of the hype of Firefly: nerds everywhere lament that Fox canceled the show before it could get more than one season on air, and fans banding together got enough of a complaint out there that they got the cast reunited for the movie, Serenity.
I can see both sides of this: what the nerds saw that made them want to have more, and why the studios didn’t care to renew it. But I’d definitely recommend that you add this to your sci-fi repertoire if you haven’t seen it yet—it’s pretty shiny. (That’s cool in Firefly-slang. ;D)
Nerd and main stream colliding
Before I can describe the story that led me to write this post, I need to explain one of my friends (who is my inspiration today). When I say she is the farthest thing from nerd one has ever seen, I am not joking. She wants to go into marketing to sell fragrances and is a ‘fashionista’ of sorts. She is very much like Rarity from My Little Pony, and I’m being quite serious. So when I say she is not a nerd, she is NOT a nerd.
So here is our Lady Bacula story: The other day, she sends me a text: “have you seen the Avengers yet?” I laugh, saying “Yes, but I’ll see it again with you.” So a couple days later, we meet up to go see MIB 3 and we start talking about the Avengers movie. She explains that she wants to see it because she is a huge Joss Whedon fan (aren’t we all). And my other friend suggests she should watch Firefly. She gets excited, saying it was on her list of things to watch. Later in the conversation, we get into a heated debate about who is hotter: Sam or Dean from Supernatural. And then it hits me: the Avengers, Firefly, and Supernatural are all nerd things, yet my farthest-thing-from-nerd friend is a fan of/ interested in all three. So have these nerd things become main stream or can a person be fan of all three and not be a nerd?
Let’s be realistic, the Avengers and Harry Potter movies are some of the largest grossing movies of all time at this point. Lord of the Rings too; and even my parents watch Game of Thrones (although they refer to it as LoTR with porn). Nerds love these things, but so did/does everyone else. But is that because everyone is secretly a nerd or the things we consider nerdy aren’t actually nerdy. So I don’t know.
Maybe the thing that makes nerds nerds and other people just other people who occasionally like nerd things is that we nerds have our own unique culture. We spend insane amounts of time on the Internet watching, reading, and learning about things we the nerds classify as nerdy. We interact with one another, but through computers, Facebook, and other blogs like this one. We aren’t sitting down together on national holidays for a nice dinner. We don’t all get together and celebrate nerd holidays (or maybe you do. In that case, you should invite me so this point can be proven moot). There is no national holiday for nerds. I guess the point I’m trying to make (and I took the long way, sorry) is that I don’t know if nerd-dom is a culture. Wikipedia defines culture as the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. My point is that we are still all on different paths. So how many paths can one be on at once?
I think my main point of this article is what makes a nerd a nerd? There are different kinds of nerds, you got your video game nerds, your scifi nerds, your superwholockians, your Harry Potter fans, your MLP fans, and I’m probably missing a lot. But where do we cross the line? Are fashonistas just fashion nerds with a fancy name? Probably. A wonk is just a different fancy name for political nerds. But fashion and politics aren’t nerdy, yet they have their nerds. So what makes something nerdy? Clearly, nerd interests are just for nerds anymore either. So to conclude, I’m more confused now.
Let’s lighten the mood with a completely random image, shall we?
I’ve had an atrocious Monday and I’m going to be a pessimist and assume you all did too. Here’s an awesome video that is both a mashup of pop songs and a mashup of sci-fi awesome things. Hope it makes your day a little bit better (as it did mine).
(Via FandomBase)
Just watch this. You are all welcome.
It’s Web Crush Wednesday, party people! Let’s take a look at the latest Web Crush!
Okay, let me be honest, I hate LMFAO. I don’t think they are very talented. They are catchy and fun, I guess, but talented? No. There are many pop artists like this that I simply do not care for, but then something happens, something that makes me change my opinion of a song, and causes me to embarrassingly sing along to a song that I once professed to hate. What brings me to this lowly state? Parodies of songs, or to be very honest, nerd parodies of songs. Without fail, if you take a song I hate and relate it to something nerdy, I’m suddenly a silly screaming fangirl, which brings me to my latest Web Crush. Ladies and gentleman—Mr. Steve Martin!
No! Not that one, you idiot! The Cooler Steve Martin! What do you mean you don’t believe me? Just check this guy out!
Cool, right? Ha! I thought so! This video has everything a nerd could ask for looting, minecraft, wizards, comic book references, the Force, big guns (“I call it Vera.“), and to put it quite simply, nerds doing awesome nerd things. Steve also got rid of the annoying part in the original song where they just say the word “wiggle” over and over. Seriously, LMFAO, what the fuck?! It’s replaced by the much more hilarious “study, study, study, study, study, yeah!” It also has zombies. I love zombies!
I would also recommend that Steve nerdify: Fell in Love in a Hopeless Place, Love You Like a Love Song, and The One That Got Away. Those all need nerdified immediately… because they suck.
So check out, like, and subscribe to The Cooler Steve Martin‘s latest video and check out his vlog too!
Go now and support my latest Web Crush!
Another day, another Web Crush!
I’m a big supporter of therapy. Seeing a therapist is like seeing a doctor. Sometimes you just need a check every so often to make sure you are healthy.
It’s the same for geeks and nongeeks alike, but geek therapy is a different story.
Nongeeks out there are realizing how popular anything geek is and need help to up their G.Q. I mean how are nongeeks supposed to pick up women if they don’t know the name of Jayne’s gun or what pwned means? They can’t. So they need the help of a geek therapist.
But geeks need help too. Like what if you’re a nerd but you’re boyfriend is a geek, or you can’t stop reciting movie lines, or you’re still distraught over the death of Steve Jobs. That’s right—therapist.
But you know who needs help the most. DC comic book writers. Those guys are insane.
I hope you enjoyed my latest Web Crush! Check out Comediva for more awesome videos!
