_Geektastic_ isn't quite
Jan. 17th, 2010 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraGeeks obsess about minutiae, right? So if you're publishing an anthology entitled _Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd_, and all of your contributors and editors are geeks, how do you end up with your very first story talking about "Annakin" going to the dark side and "Jadazia Dax" joining a brawl? Why does an otherwise-charming teen romance story include lines like "a request to pass a beaker of liquid hydrogen in AP Chem sophomore year" and, looking through a telescope, "our eyes just absorbed protons that are forty million years old." Geeks will notice these things.
Also, sigh. This is the paragraph wherein I cement myself firmly as an unhip pro-censorship worrywart parent instead of an actual young adult, but I was uncomfortable with the inclusion of a story wherein the sympathetic geek protagonist responds to some standard-for-high-school minor social aggression with a really vicious (also unethical and illegal) act of bullying and the story just ends there with her being satisfied with her action. I'm sure some thoughtful young adult readers will think about it, realize that the popular girl crying alone at the end is not "getting her comeuppance", she's just another kid too, and end up with more compassion towards all of their peers, but I feel like the less careful reader could easily take away a message of wasn't-that-cool-that-awful-thing-they-did. In other news, am probably now too old to watch _Heathers_.
Also, sigh. This is the paragraph wherein I cement myself firmly as an unhip pro-censorship worrywart parent instead of an actual young adult, but I was uncomfortable with the inclusion of a story wherein the sympathetic geek protagonist responds to some standard-for-high-school minor social aggression with a really vicious (also unethical and illegal) act of bullying and the story just ends there with her being satisfied with her action. I'm sure some thoughtful young adult readers will think about it, realize that the popular girl crying alone at the end is not "getting her comeuppance", she's just another kid too, and end up with more compassion towards all of their peers, but I feel like the less careful reader could easily take away a message of wasn't-that-cool-that-awful-thing-they-did. In other news, am probably now too old to watch _Heathers_.
