Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hey everybody! My name is Autumn and I'll be
your friendly neighborhood Line Monkey. That sounds weird
now but it made sense at Everfree...
Anyway, there's been
a lot of stuff going on in the
girl geek community. More specifically
there was a song that was written that said that
girl geeks don't have anything to prove.
well... that's true. No, we don't
we're geeks. There's only one thing that
makes you a geek and that's if you really love something
and nobody can define how much you
love that thing. But I want to elucidate on that a little bit
and in order to do that I'm gonna
tell you story. It's what I do. I'm good at it.
So imagine
it's back in 1985-86. You're just a little girl
Really little. I was teeny tiny
And your parents are geeks. They're role playing geeks
no less. They play D&D. oh my dungeons and dragons.
now imagine that it's cold and it's
nasty outside... and there's really nothing to
do. So your parents bring over a huge group
of their friends. And you're bored
because you're a kid, and there's all these adults around
and then these adults say "Why not let her play?
We'll roll up a character sheet for her. It's no big deal." So they roll up a character
sheet for you.. you decide you're going to be a
Thief. Because you're sneaky.
You're 6 years old. You're not sneaky.
Well, so...
you get your character rolled up. Everybody's doing great. Everything's going fine
and you go down into a dungeon (because that's what you do)
get through 3 or 4 rooms
and the Dungeon Master freaks
everybody out with the announcement
that they see a huge shadow cast
upon the wall. Okay. All the adults are
panicking because "It's a huge shadow! Oh No!
There's something we're gonna have to fight! What do we have? What do we have?"
Now imagine you're 6 years old and
your inventory contains a mirror. And you think you're sneaky.
so you take the mirror out
And you look around the corner. And the Dungeon Master says
"You see an ant standing in front of a torch on the ground."
Now of course your little six-year-old brain is processing this
And all the adults are just like "Whew!
Oh good. we're not gonna have to fight a monster!"
And your little brain is still processing it. You pipe but we haven't
been there. So who dropped a lit torch on the ground?"
At which point all of the adult panic again.
It was -amazing-! Now wants you to bring yourself ten years
forward. 10 years forward you're sixteen-years-old
and you look sixteen!
you're not
gorgeous, but you certainly don't look like the
back end of a northbound mule... and somebody tells you
you can't play D&D because you're not a
Geek. You're
not a Geek. You've been playing
D&D for 10 years. You've
been reading. You've been studying it. You -love- it!
You love it, and somebody tells you "You can't do it because
you're a girl and you're not ugly."
yeah that didn't work for me either
I didn't like that. In fact, I got pretty pissed off about that. It kinda set the tone for the next five or
six years of my life!
until I realized that it didn't matter
what anybody else said because I love things.
I. Love. Soooo. -many- things!
I mean let's face it I love Harry Potter
I love My Little Pony
I love Phineus and Ferb. I love music.
I love learning things. I learned studying
I love studying medical stuff.
seriously how many people do you know that love studying the
physiological normative
of labor and delivery, and not just
you're 10 centimetres, push push push! Which
doesn't really make sense or have any
evidence based.. and I'm getting off track again.
but you see I love
things. I love
-things-. I love
music... really guys
I love music! I love playing it. I love singing it.
I love listening to it!
Love it! All of these thing, every single one of these things
make me a geek.
I still play D&D! I'm almost 35!
I'm a geek.
and nobody. not a man, not a boy
not a child, not a woman, not girl... nobody
Nobody gets to tell me how much of a Geek I am
and guess what! That applies to you, too.
Nobody can tell you how much of a Geek you are.
because if you love something Enough to study it.
Dissect it. Learn everything you can about it. You love something
about whatever this thing is that you love...
That makes you a Geek. You don't need
"cred" to be a Geek.
You just are a Geek!
You just -love- something. That's what makes you a Geek.
So I'm gonna tell you right now,
from one Geek to another,
The day some body tries to tell that you're not a Geek because...
You're old. You're young. You're pretty. You're ugly. You're whatever
You can tell them
that Line Monkey said to shove it up their butt!