{"id":1409,"date":"2008-10-31T11:42:19","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T18:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1409"},"modified":"2008-10-31T11:42:19","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T18:42:19","slug":"grok-the-vote-that-one-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1409","title":{"rendered":"Grok The Vote: That One Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to voting and politics, I think most of us want to be Spock. Logic and reason are our hoped-for guides, our arguments spilling forth in factually-supported constructs of such astonishing correctness that they knock the opposing viewpoint right out of the park…er, starship? Whatever. In reality, of course, emotion — hearts and guts — always worms its way in. We all have that one issue we can’t be cool and measured and rational about. For instance, this morning I spotted a certain bumper sticker supporting a certain California prop on the car in front of me and it made me so blood-boilingly angry that I suddenly had the wild, rageful urge to floor the gas and ram said car repeatedly. Or maybe just steal the assy bumper sticker.<\/p>\n

I think the way in which we think about and discuss politics parallels classic Geek Fights in a pretty obvious way. Geeks don’t just like to argue. We like to argue using wordy analyses we have spent an inordinate amount of time constructing, made up of bits of continuity (“X character acted this way in all previous storylines, therefore his\/her behavior in this storyline MAKES NO SENSE”), reasoning (“For X character to react this way is possibly consistent with past characterization, but is not in any way, shape, or form a logical way for a human to react and therefore MAKES NO SENSE”), and dental floss (“This is dumb and MAKES NO SENSE”). We might as well be stumping for a presidential candidate.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But, just as it happens in politics, we all have That One Thing on which we are completely, irrationally emotional. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, thanks to an extended email exchange between me and my friend Caroline (aka Mad Marvel Girl) about Emma Frost.<\/p>\n

“I’ve decided that everybody is allowed to have a point or two in fandom where their reactions are completely emotion-based and irrational,” she said. “I mean, if everything is like that for you (and we all know people like that) they maybe need to step away from the source material. But I’m resigned to having a couple hot buttons, and Emma-related things are among them.”<\/p>\n

(By the way: Caroline regularly blows me away with her overwhelming big braininess. You can get some more of that over at Fantastic Fangirls<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In these cases, our responses are more clipped.<\/p>\n

“Because it’s cool.”<\/p>\n

“Because I like it.”<\/p>\n

“Because. Shut up!”<\/p>\n

I, too, have a few of these. One of them also relates to Emma and I think was included in the above email exchange somewhere.<\/p>\n

Basically: even though I love Emma and appreciate the attempts of the X-writers to pen an adult romance (and I am a big fan of romance in superhero comics to begin with, hearts and flowers!), I have a serious mental block when it comes to Emma\/Scott. Because it’s supposed to be Jean\/Scott. Why? BECAUSE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.<\/p>\n

No thoughtful commentary from me there, folks. Just a big, fat, irrational block that somehow triggers blinding rage.<\/p>\n

I used to be moderately embarrassed by this, but I’m slowly coming around to the acceptance stage. I think Caroline is right: everyone is allowed their One Thing. After all, having that passionate love for your comics\/movies\/TV\/characters of choice is one of the things that makes fandom great in the first place.<\/p>\n

And to bring it ’round again to politics, my treatise against the aforementioned prop is equally clipped: because it’s wrong. I can definitely come up with a more well-reasoned explanation for this one than I can for the whole Emma\/Scott\/Jean mess, but sometimes, the best arguments really do boil down to three simple words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to voting and politics, I think most of us want to be Spock. Logic and reason are our hoped-for guides, our arguments spilling forth in factually-supported constructs of such astonishing correctness that they knock the opposing viewpoint right out of the park…er, starship? Whatever. In reality, of course, emotion — hearts and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,49],"tags":[61,62,418,63,64,34],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-grok-the-vote","tag-cyclops","tag-emma-frost","tag-grok-the-vote","tag-jean-grey","tag-scott-summers","tag-spock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}