I'm not intimately familiar with the Silmarillion. I don't really play modern AAA games. I'm having trouble reading Game of Thrones (still on Clash of Kings, haven't gotten to the "red wedding", yet) and I don't really watch the show. When it comes to Pokemon, though I was a massive Pokemaniac when it first came out (I was 9-10-ish; once I even put some circle bandages on my cheeks because I wanted to be a Pikachu for a day), I'm only familiar with gen-1; I've never really played any of the other games, and stopped watching the show after Ash's initial go at the Pokemon Leagues. I'm very much a casual fan of Star Trek, and the only series I've seen all the way through was Next Generation. I have no knowledge whatsoever of Battlestar Galactica. I still haven't read the Wheel of Time books, I haven't seen many classic 80s fantasy (just Conan, Krull, and Deathstalker), I'm not familiar with the Star Wars expanded universe, I don't really read comics except a few one-shots that I really like, I'm only partially familiar with the rules of other tabletop RPGs besides Dungeons and Dragons (which I'm still kinda fuzzy on as well), and I REALLY SUCK at math (and by really suck, I mean that even though I'm 26 and a high-school graduate, I can't really do simple division by hand.) And I've only ever seen a few episodes of Dr. Who.
I've NEVER felt like I had to turn in my geek card.
I can program decently enough in C++, being half self-taught, half junior college-taught (though I still have trouble with arrays and STL containers, but only because I've not yet felt the need to use them in personal projects; I can quickly learn them once I need them.) I'm very intimately familiar with the Sonic franchise pre-Adventure, having played or at least become familiar (via the early post-dotcom crash web) with games even many other Sonic fans have never heard of (in his Sonic Generations review, Yahtzee wondered what kind of fan would be asking for a return of Charmie the Bee... that's nothing; I've been hoping for a return of Ray the Flying Squirrel for over a decade). I own 14 game consoles, most of which I bought just for the sake of having them. I own a Commodore 64 (that doesn't really work and I have absolutely no software for it), and one of my dream-computers is an Apple II. I'm primarily a Linux user who spends a lot of time in the command line, even going so far as to installing Ubuntu Server (currently 13.10; I keep it up to date) on an old computer just so I could have a CLI-only work-only machine that didn't suck like MS-DOS does (it's even set up with an old CRT monitor configured to display entirely in green, and late 90s white Dell keyboard). Heck, I actually prefer programming in the command line to using an IDE. I intend to learn both x86 and x64 assembly intimately, along with HLA (if that ever gets an x64 release) and perhaps even 6502 assembly, the language used for 2600, C64, and NES games. I want to explore the released Metroid source code.
...and I'm not gonna lie, I kinda want an Altair 8800.
Geekery is obsession with a particular topic, typically (though not always) to the point of having far more knowledge of that topic than most people. As a result, a geek may have mountains of knowledge of one topic, while only having peripheral knowledge of another topic typically associated with geekery.
Kidding aside, I totally understand. The rule for those books that I've always found when trying to reread them (and I still haven't successfully reread the entire thing), is that once you get past the Council of Elrond, it starts to pick up from there (only to run right into a screeching halt again after the Ring is destroyed). I, personally, love the story, but yes, LotR is not a terribly well-written book except when he's talking about the landscape and history (so if you're looking for a character piece like the movie making-of documentaries say the book is, you're going to be sorely disappointed; the character dialogue is awkward at its best, and I don't remember most of their characterizations being more than 2-dimensional). I think it only got popular because it struck some kind of cord with the 60s youth (it was published in the mid-50s, but didn't get popular until sometime in the 60s).
I think LotR is kind of in the same league as Dune (except for the obvious fact that the Dune movie legitimately does SUUUUUUUUUUUCK. Sorry, Dune movie fans, but I couldn't watch it, it was so dull and full of indecipherable jargon.) It's a very popular book in a semi-niche genre that is, itself, interesting enough in its subject matter, but with an execution of questionable and debatable quality. (...and I also haven't read Dune beyond the first few chapters, by the way.)
Side note, for anyone aspiring to be a creator in science fiction or fantasy, take heed of Yahtzee's Kingdoms of Amalur review and keep jargon to an absolute minimum. Whatever you think of A Song of Ice and Fire, that's something that George R.R. Martin got absolutely perfect by using familiar English names for most of the characters (albeit with archaic spellings) and English words for places in WESToros. (So I don't care if you hate the books or the show, they're absolutely required reading for anyone wanting to write fantasy novels.)
I've NEVER felt like I had to turn in my geek card.
I can program decently enough in C++, being half self-taught, half junior college-taught (though I still have trouble with arrays and STL containers, but only because I've not yet felt the need to use them in personal projects; I can quickly learn them once I need them.) I'm very intimately familiar with the Sonic franchise pre-Adventure, having played or at least become familiar (via the early post-dotcom crash web) with games even many other Sonic fans have never heard of (in his Sonic Generations review, Yahtzee wondered what kind of fan would be asking for a return of Charmie the Bee... that's nothing; I've been hoping for a return of Ray the Flying Squirrel for over a decade). I own 14 game consoles, most of which I bought just for the sake of having them. I own a Commodore 64 (that doesn't really work and I have absolutely no software for it), and one of my dream-computers is an Apple II. I'm primarily a Linux user who spends a lot of time in the command line, even going so far as to installing Ubuntu Server (currently 13.10; I keep it up to date) on an old computer just so I could have a CLI-only work-only machine that didn't suck like MS-DOS does (it's even set up with an old CRT monitor configured to display entirely in green, and late 90s white Dell keyboard). Heck, I actually prefer programming in the command line to using an IDE. I intend to learn both x86 and x64 assembly intimately, along with HLA (if that ever gets an x64 release) and perhaps even 6502 assembly, the language used for 2600, C64, and NES games. I want to explore the released Metroid source code.
...and I'm not gonna lie, I kinda want an Altair 8800.
Geekery is obsession with a particular topic, typically (though not always) to the point of having far more knowledge of that topic than most people. As a result, a geek may have mountains of knowledge of one topic, while only having peripheral knowledge of another topic typically associated with geekery.
TURN IN YOUR GEEK CARD NOW!!!Spiritofpower said:
Kidding aside, I totally understand. The rule for those books that I've always found when trying to reread them (and I still haven't successfully reread the entire thing), is that once you get past the Council of Elrond, it starts to pick up from there (only to run right into a screeching halt again after the Ring is destroyed). I, personally, love the story, but yes, LotR is not a terribly well-written book except when he's talking about the landscape and history (so if you're looking for a character piece like the movie making-of documentaries say the book is, you're going to be sorely disappointed; the character dialogue is awkward at its best, and I don't remember most of their characterizations being more than 2-dimensional). I think it only got popular because it struck some kind of cord with the 60s youth (it was published in the mid-50s, but didn't get popular until sometime in the 60s).
I think LotR is kind of in the same league as Dune (except for the obvious fact that the Dune movie legitimately does SUUUUUUUUUUUCK. Sorry, Dune movie fans, but I couldn't watch it, it was so dull and full of indecipherable jargon.) It's a very popular book in a semi-niche genre that is, itself, interesting enough in its subject matter, but with an execution of questionable and debatable quality. (...and I also haven't read Dune beyond the first few chapters, by the way.)
Side note, for anyone aspiring to be a creator in science fiction or fantasy, take heed of Yahtzee's Kingdoms of Amalur review and keep jargon to an absolute minimum. Whatever you think of A Song of Ice and Fire, that's something that George R.R. Martin got absolutely perfect by using familiar English names for most of the characters (albeit with archaic spellings) and English words for places in WESToros. (So I don't care if you hate the books or the show, they're absolutely required reading for anyone wanting to write fantasy novels.)
