Science-Fiction Weapons
Because, and let’s be honest here, whether we are black or white, Christian,
Muslim, agnostic or atheist, whether we are American or Chinese – we all love
the smell of napalm in the morning. And it always smells like victory.
T
here are various ways to understand the expression geek. Some of the most used are ‘weirdo’ or
‘freak’, although they bear the negative tone to them.
Another word commonly used is ‘nerd’, despite the
fact that there need not be overlapping between
an all-straight-A’s student and an SF, science or IT
nerd, who are into these sorts of weird stuff and
non-stuff on the verge of common sense, logic and
human existence. One of the least frequently used
expressions is ‘dork’ and I knew only one person
who ever used it for geek – my college professor.
Conventionally, the word geek is not translated within geek subcultures, of course, although sometimes its spelling may be adjusted to the language.
Perhaps it is time now to tell you that this has been
only too long an introduction and that there is no
delving into linguistics throughout the rest the text,
but – who knows, it may be that I have been writing
the introduction in order to justify the fact that further on in the text I am going to use the commonly
accepted English expression exclusively and maybe
for the fact that I am a writing geek (no, I’m not).
Geek subculture can be divided into many other
sub-subcultures. There are science geeks (within
this group there are physics, astronomy, history, psy-
chology and linguistics geeks), gaming geeks, and
music geeks. In the general sense, geeks can be divided by genres (science fiction, further on referred
to as SF, epic fantasy or EF and horror – further on:
horror). However, the geeks usually never belong to
only one of these subcultures, but rather to several of them at the same time, walking around at the
Star Wars convention dressed as Spock, exchanging
the old issues of Sirius and intricate figures for their
souls. To outsiders, they are nothing but eternal teenagers with underdeveloped social skills – at least
until you get to know that an alpha-male such as
Vin Diesel enjoys playing Dungeons & Dragons!
And by doing so, they are merely confirming yet
another time that a stereotype is always just a stereotype… Except when it’s not. But here I am on
the mission to familiarize your culture with the
geek culture. And what better way to understand
them than the common affiliations -what else could join two sides with differences between them
but – weapons. Because, and let’s be honest here,
whether we are black or white, Christian, Muslim,
agnostic or atheist, whether we are American or
Chinese – we all love the smell of napalm in the
morning. And it always smells like victory.
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