So I was doing something else entirely this evening which made me realize a thing, and think about it.
In the last few years, as a genre reader and writer, I have found you-all: my community, my tribe, my people; you who read (and write) about witches and faeries and dragons and sometimes even spaceships, and understand how cool that all is. And this is a marvelous thing! In the Land of Before, when I was a trophy wife and was just starting to write, and people were politely asking me about said writing, it was patently obvious that–no matter how much they liked me as a person or how kind they were trying to be–they thought, somewhere in their most honest of hearts, that I was a lunatic, and weird, and perhaps dangerous, and certainly incomprehensible.
But no longer! You, my friends, understand perfectly that I write about witches and monsters.
But. There’s a thing, another thing. I read a lot of internets, and I talk to a lot of you at parties and cons and book groups and other gathering-spots, and I have noticed that I don’t actually perfectly well fit in with the happy geekiness that so many of you share…
I don’t watch.
And I kinda sorta never did. I mean, yeah, I’ve lived in houses with TVs before (though I grew up without one); and there were things I watched on those TVs, and even enjoyed them; and clearly I have a computer now and could watch shows on it; but, that piece of geekiness that is about watching stories acted out rather than reading them off a piece of paper: that is not developed in me. Or doesn’t exist at all. I don’t know.
I mean, I’ve never, not once, seen an episode of Dr. Who. Not in my whole life. I’ve watched about a quarter of one Buffy episode, at the urging of a friend, before giving up in bafflement. All those shows you watch and love: I’m completely unfamiliar with them. There. I said it out loud. I hope you won’t all hate me now.
But it gets worse. I don’t really play games either, all of my friends are into the best gambling trends but I’m not really ware of them. Okay, I do: there’s “Words” on the phone, that I play with my family; and Mark and I play cards and backgammon; and I’ve been known to play other games with larger groups. But…game nights? It doesn’t happen. And online games, RPGs, that whole world? Not just a foreign country to me, but an entirely other dimension. Furthermore, online casino Pkv Games are also all over the internet. People can play it as well on their own mobile and tablets.
When I was growing up, there would always come a point in any social gathering when talk would turn to the current TV shows. And I was always on the outside of that: I had nothing to contribute, I didn’t know what they were talking about. When I got older and briefly lived in a house with a TV, there would still come that inevitable time when talk at parties would turn to “favorite TV shows of our childhood,” and again, I’d be on the outside.
It’s the same now. It doesn’t even feel bad; it’s so familiar. But I have to admit, I do get a little…wistful, I guess…seeing how excited you all are about your passions. I can talk about favorite authors that way, favorite books. I can talk about my own work with that excitement. But shows? Nah. I’m not there.
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Don’t get me wrong: I don’t actually want to change this. I don’t actually *want* to watch. As I said above: that thing that makes one want to watch: I don’t think I have that. I don’t have the patience to watch. I’m so BUSY, doing things that engage and stimulate me, and when I want to relax, reading is what I want to do, most in the whole wide world. I read fast; I gobble up books. And still my to-be-read pile would kill me if it fell over on me in an earthquake. And I want to reread too! There is never enough time to read. When would I watch, even if I liked it?
But I do wonder if there’s a sub-tribe somewhere, of geeks like me, who aren’t really geeks (in the media-expertise sense), but are still geeks (in the loves-fantasy-literature sense).
Or maybe there is, and he’s right here. I told all this to Mark before I wrote it out, and he said, “You’re my tribe. I’m so happy to find one other person. I never thought it would happen.”
So. Aww. 🙂