littleyellowboxes:

gamelamer:

I hate people like this with a burning passion.

I’ve earnt the title ‘nerd’. I’ve dealt with the bullying and abuse and I’ve defended my enjoyment of comic books and video games and movies for years before they were seen as anywhere near normal or cool.

I remember vividly in my first year of middle school I had a big book that had reprints of the origin stories of a bunch of Marvel characters. Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, The Avengers, X-Men. It was a magical book to me, and I adored it, and I remember taking it to school one week because we were told to bring something to read in lessons. This was around the time when Marvel only had a couple of their big movies out, and it wasn’t seen as ‘cool’ to like superheroes. And what happened?

The entire class, save a small group of my friends, laughed at me. They told me it was “babyish” to like superheroes, but I ignored them. I defended those heroes, because I loved them. I lived them. They made me feel like I wasn’t weird or different.

Picking up a video game controller doesn’t make you a nerd. Watching The Avengers doesn’t make you a nerd. Being a nerd is a title you earn. The sub-genre of society that is Nerd Culture exists solely because it accepts those who love and are interested in mediums outside of what is considered the norm, and those who have felt like outcasts. If you are a nerd, then at some point in your life, even just once, you have had someone look down their nose at you, aghast with disgust, because you tried to tell them you like video games, or comic books, or roleplaying games, or something else equally as nerdy, and you’ve felt that feeling of shame. You’ve felt that shame, and you’ve risen up and replaced it with pride.

That’s the entire reason nerd pride exists. Because we’ve admitted that’s who we are and we’ve fucking owned it. So excuse me if I get a little fucking pissy and go on a rant because you called yourself “such a nerd” for playing a video game.

TL;DR- Calvin was bullied as a child for being a nerd and finds it offensive when people piss on that.

This is a good post and you should feel good.