Keep Your Basket Covered in the Woods

sugarbooty:

You know what’s weird? Telling people you are going to a comic con and having them reply “Oh that must be tough, huh? All those geeks and weirdos everywhere? Hee hee hee haw! Be careful!”

I don’t know how to respond to these people, so usually I say something like “Well, lucky for me, I fit right in with them”, or sometimes I just roll my eyes. But now that my heavy rotation of comic connery is over, at least for a little while, I want to break this down and talk about what a stupid, dumb stereotype this is to have about Comic Con attendees.

Yes, people go to comic cons dressed up from head to toe, they stand in long lines for hours and share lots and lots of random facts about their obsessions with other people, they pay loads of money for artwork and signatures, and they pose for photos with complete strangers. I am completely unsure how this is any different than sports fanatics who also stand in line for hours and spend tons of money on tickets, who paint their half naked bodies from head to toe in their team’s colors, who hoot and holler and yell and fight and participate in the sports “fandom”, who quote random statistics of their favorite players, and cry when their teams win or lose.

This is the exact same level of appreciation shared by people who consider themselves to be fans of a particular thing, yet one group is heralded and the other is ridiculed. I have met and befriended tons of jocks and sports fans who are as socially awkward as the stereotypical “geek” that attends comic con, and I have met some brilliant and articulate fanpeople with whom I have enjoyed great conversations. My hope is that one day, I will tell someone that I am going to Comic Con and the typical response will be “Really? I’ve never been. Is it cool?” I will say “Yes. Yes. It is exhausting, crazy, bizarre, and totally cool.”

Comic cons are WAY more fun than any baseball games I have attended. I mean, aren’t baseball bats just less impressive light sabers anyways?