#proper nerd

what the fuck has gone so horribly wrong for you that you feel the need to mimic and mock people around you? i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that maybe your week is going as horribly as mine.

but that doesn't excuse your decision to show off to your similarly prickish neckbeard friend by affecting a lisping, high-pitched voice and putting your own hateful words in my mouth - "i'm either a very ugly woman or a very pretty boy! i can't read proper books so I have to read picture books!" and so on. nor does it excuse your decision to physically shove my comic into my face to assert your superior existence as a man.

okay, you think "tank girl's shit." good for you. and maybe you feel like you, as a man, are uniquely entitled to wear a grubby dalek shirt and call yourself a nerd. whatever. i want to know, genuinely - why are you so fucking threatened by the idea that somebody you see as unworthy of a peaceful existence can exist peacefully? what the fuck was i doing to provoke your attack? you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and think about the kind of person you are before you start targeting other people for mockery. i'd rather be the 'mincer' and 'dyke' you believe me to be than the absolute bullying fucking troglodyte tosser you are. yes, i am camp. look at me, mincing off, shitting glitter, and not giving a fuck about you and your shitty fucking opinions.

Every nerd I know who isn't cishet, male, white, etc, has had a stage of feeling obliged to be a Proper Nerd and love all the 'right' things in exactly the 'right' ways. It's exhausting! It's also stupid.

For example, I really like Batman. By which I mean, I love the live-action Batman series with all my soul, because it's kitsch, silly, homoerotic, colourful escapism. I don't, however, particularly enjoy the films with Christian Bale, because I don't get on with gritty & grimdark, and, honestly, I can't enjoy Batman as a character when he's taken too seriously. And that's okay! My connection with the character is specific, but it's no less valid.

Elena gave me some Batman shoes a while back, and anyone who sees me regularly will know that I FUCKING LOVE THEM. I wear them all the time. But last year when I was travelling to Heathrow for Nine Worlds, I had somebody pull me up on my Batman shoes on the train. He started off with a compliment, but it very swiftly became this bizarre, aggressive interrogation on whether I was sufficiently 'into Batman' to be 'entitled' to wear them. He determined that I was not.

My partners got me a pair of Batman tights for my birthday, and I'm edgy about wearing them in comic shops and other places likely to contain Proper Nerds. Now every time I put them on, I have this sense of anxiety about them, as though angry Proper Nerds are going to leap out from behind a bust of Christian Bale and rip them off my legs. I feel scared and silly if I don't know 'enough' about something I like, to the extent where I find myself apologising for not having caught up with a series or read a comic from 1973. It's BULLSHIT!

On monday I'm starting a work placement at York University Physics Department. I went to look around today so that I won't get lost because the department itself is bigger than my whole school, not to mention the bloody campus. And oh my lord.

I will have a partner called Tom (who I hope to either be really nerdy like me, good looking, or really camp. Or all three would be fantastic.) 

We will be making...

Wait for it...

Wait...

LIQUID NITROGEN ICE CREAM for the graduates and ourselves.

Guys really Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream. That's the coolest thing ever.

And then there's an observatory, a nanotechnology lab, a massive plasma thing (I can't remember it's name damnit but it's the biggest in the country) and all sorts of other equipment in the labs. And we get to use all of it apparently. How exciting? We can use the solar scope to look at the element on the sun. HOW COOL IS THAT OMG?!