1. Tony Breeden says:

    See, I was a geek before I was a Christian.

  2. Tony Breeden says:

    If you’re saying that Lorehaven will pretend that they don’t benefit from genres that the House of Geek built, I find that kind of disrespectful. The speculative fiction genres are part of the geek culture heritage – and it’s absurd that folks like Mike Duran want to distance themselves and remain aloof from the geek fandoms from which they benefit. “I’m not with them. Too cool. Not THAT into it,” because… (geek) is still a by-word, right?

    It’s not cool. Not even a little bit. Geeks take our fandoms seriously. To have someone sit by and say that they’re “not SO into” my geek culture feels like they think their attitude is more reasonable. It feels snobbish. It feels especially insulting when you write speculative fiction to feed those geekdoms but pretend like it’s about the Gospel… when these same authors also write a lot of criticism of messages (and dare I say sermonizing) in speculative fiction and reduce Christian speculative fiction to speculative fiction written by Christians from a Christian worldview (whatever that means).

    Maybe that’s the real problem. They’re Generalists in all regards. They don’t delve too deeply into geek culture. They don’t even want to be overtly Christian. Except in a general sense that they will defend as above criticism.

    Me? I was a geek before I was a Christian. This is my turf. I’m not faking and I’m not dabbling. I’ve cosplayed and will be happy to shame Mike Duran for being too cool to do so, especially when he’d make such a great chubby version of Keiffer Sutherland’s David (The Lost Boys).

    My advice to Geek Generalists who benefit from geek culture as authors is “S#!@ or get off of the pot.” Shut up about it (because, yes, it is insulting to hear you brag about how you’re into it but only reasonably so – and, yes again, that IS how it comes off) or embrace it. Who knows? You might even like it.

    But it almost doesn’t sound like Lorehaven is going to be for geeks like me. And if that’s the case, I gotta ask: What kind of book clubs are you thinking you’re going to form exactly? Do you really suppose that the Generalists care enough about fandoms to form any kind of club because they’re passionate about the fandom sort of, but not SO much?

    I’m hoping that I’m wrong about Lorehaven. I’m hoping it caters more to Geeks than Generalists because, frankly, that’s not just my market. That’s not just my audience. That’s my people.

    Until we reach The Last Door,
    Tony Breeden
    TonyBreedenBooks.com

    PS. I’m looking at the Lorehaven site and there is this sentence: “Learn from other fanservants.” What the Christianized double hockey sticks is a #fanservant??? Is it like a geeky manservant? I don’t like it.

    • notleia says:

      “Fanservant”? That’s…..unfortunate. Maybe it’s just me (it won’t be just me), but that word is entirely too close to “fanservice.”

      Am now immaturely speculating on whether Lorehaven will have a centerfold pinup. Top Ten list of hottest characters? Quiz: What kinky reading position should you try? lolololol

    • I’m not sure what you’re responding to, but it isn’t this article. Please re-read it. And please feel free to ask any questions you have about the mission and intended audience of Lorehaven. Thanks, Tony.

  3. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
    For the record, I wouldn’t describe my mood in adopting the word “Geek” for Christian Geek Central as “happily”. From day one up to now I’ve actually had mixed feelings about it, though conclude that the pros outweigh the cons. Some of my recent public remarks on the topic can be found in the following video, beginning at the 8:25 mark.

    -Paeter Frandsen

    • Thanks for your observation, Paeter! I for one think the term works perfectly for what you’re accomplishing and the types of folks you’re reaching. Can you recall whether the pros-over-cons were similar to my lists above, or were there other pro/con associations you had to work through while choosing the name?

      • The main hesitation I had (expressed in that video link) was that I didn’t want to encourage any Christians to think of “Geek” as their defining identity. But in the end “Geek” just works too well as a short hand.

  4. Sparks of Ember says:

    So as I was reading this post, all I could think was, only a “geek” would thoroughly read it and worry about the subject. 😉

    But it got me thinking and wondering how much of the ideas behind geek is a generational thing so I spoke to my 15-yr-old niece about it. She said, “I think it depends on the person. Some people see it as negative but others really like it. I personally don’t really care about it, if someone were to call me a geek I’d just ignore it. I think it just means someone who likes things like comic books, video games, Sci-fi, things like that. Frankly, I don’t think most younger people would care much.” We discussed it some more and concluded a good way to look at it is that in some ways we’re all geeks. Just about different things. She’d consider herself a Kpop-geek while I can be a bit of an Asian drama-geek. Her sister’s a book-geek, my daughter’s an anime-geek. Others are comicbook-geeks, DC or Marvel Geeks, Trekkie geeks, Star Wars geeks… There are football geeks, cooking geeks, sewing geeks – the labels go on and on. So if you think about it that way – geek kinda just means a person with interests and since it applies to everybody, it becomes redundant.

What do you think?