the violence of nerdiness

(from Fear Claws)

more on this (about Chase from Runaways, some weak spoilers)

I was also thinking that Chase’s lack of nerdiness/intellectualism/intelligence (including the facts that he isn’t part of a subculture, doesn’t do well in school, and is often kind of dense and spacey) is an extremely important facet of his character, and that makes it especially unfortunate that Joss Whedon retconned him as nerdy. The conceit of Runaways is that all the main characters have parents who are a different type of supervillain, and when the kids find out, they team up to fight their parents. Chase’s parents are “mad scientists,” obviously the most intellectual type of supervillain (which Whedon himself portrayed as a hero in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, with the villain being a conventional hero, Captain Hammer, who is a stereotypical dumb jock–self-centered, stupid, sexist, and a bully of the nerdy Dr. Horrible). Although, like all the Runaways’ parents, they do evil with the goal of providing for their children, Chase’s parents are physically and emotionally abusive, and they are the only set of parents who are like this.

Although Chase fights with his parents and behaves rebelliously, he is written throughout Brian K. Vaughan’s run as having internalized the lessons he was taught by their abuse–basically, that he deserved to be abused because he wasn’t a good person, misbehaved, or was otherwise unsatisfactory. An amazingly painful moment, toward the end of BKV’s run, is Chase’s realization that he is “innocent” after all. (Amazingly painful because Chase wants to sacrifice an innocent soul to bring his dead friend back to life, so his realization causes him to plan his own death.) Chase’s parents frame their abuse of him in terms of “we’re smart, and you’re unsatisfactory and don’t know what is good for you, because you aren’t smart/intellectual.”

I started thinking about Chase again because my original post was called “isn’t that a cliche?” which is a quote from the first page Chase appears on. During an argument about Chase’s grades, his dad hits him and tells him he is a “dumb jock,” a “cliche.” Chase responds, “You’re a nerd who punches like a girl–isn’t that a cliche?” Which I think is really interesting because if you do read Chase’s dad through that lens, as a nerd who was bullied as a kid and wasn’t physically able to stand up for himself, and the violence that grew in him became his supervillainy…doesn’t that serve as a frame for his parenting? Does he have a childhood hatred of “dumb jocks,” which he takes out on his dumb jock son? It doesn’t matter if you “punch like a girl,” after all, if the person you’re punching is young and dependent on you.

So can I just say how much I love Brian K.Vaughan? He clearly isn’t mainstream or anti-nerd, as many of the positive characters are nerdy, but he also sees the potential violence in the idea that nerds are better than other people. In Y the Last Man he does a great job of portraying very diverse characters and the same is true for Runaways.

(The reason I’m categorizing this post as “disability” is that I think some disability culture, primarily Autistic culture, has this kind of nerd violence in it. Basically, autism is associated with nerdiness and intellectual achievement, and the people who hold this association think that intellect should redeem autism from the stigma of disability, or even the word disability. People who feel this way are prevented from experiencing solidarity with people who have autism but don’t have high intellectual achievement, or have intellectual disabilities, and they are prevented from experiencing general disability solidarity. Which is a huge problem in my opinion, and very upsetting.)

isn't that a cliche?

Oh my gosh tumblr pretended to be back for one minute, but it really wasn't and now I have to make dumb posts on my important blog. (I know this blog isn't actually important but I refer to it as my "important blog" sometimes.) For some reason I was tweaking out on how much I love Chase Stein from Runaways even though I haven't been into Runaways for a really long time, but this is how I felt about it when I was into it:


(circa three years ago)

And I was thinking about the fact that I stopped respecting Joss Whedon when he wrote some issues of Runaways and he portrayed Chase as liking comic books and basically talking like Xander Harris. Which is like--Victor Mancha could have had all those lines. But it seemed like Joss Whedon's understanding of Runaways was just: oh, it's just like my stuff because they're teenagers with superpowers or whatever, so I'll just write all of them as talking like my characters, and all the dude characters will be Xander, and all the girl characters will be Willow and Buffy.

I mean, I guess that in theory there's nothing wrong with only being able to write one kind of dialogue, but I feel like if you are that way, then you shouldn't write in other people's universes if they have characters who don't talk like that. But it's seriously not just my ridiculous love for Chase talking. Well, it is. But to me the way Joss Whedon wrote Chase indicated something deeper and it got on my nerves.

Basically, I guess Runaways is a geek-centric comic in that most of the main characters are geeky/alternative in some way. And I think this is sort of what makes Chase like my favorite comic book character of all time. Let me explain. I feel like a character like Chase (who is introduced as a "dumb jock," and is a lot more than that; but that description never stops being true) is normally only presented sympathetically in really mainstream narratives, which tend to not have a ton of depth and tend to portray geek characters stereotypically. Brian K. Vaughan, the incredibly baller person who wrote Runaways, sort of decenters Chase from being the character we're supposed to identify with (which he would be in a mainstream narrative) but still portrays him with a lot of depth.

Chase reminds me of my favorite person from high school, John M. John was a jock, and he was dumb. He said dumb stuff about me being gay. He made gross jokes. He was also one of the best friends I've ever had, and he was an outsider in his own way. I feel like writers, especially genre writers, tend to be geeky/alternative and don't portray "dumb" or non-alternative characters in a compassionate way. Although I guess in a lot of ways I am Hipster Scum, I just don't really identify with the value of rejecting people who aren't intellectual or aren't alternative. I can't imagine feeling that way. I mean, maybe it's because I'm disabled or something (see you guys, I got it in there somehow!) but I try to relate to people based on how I get along with them emotionally and not based on their subculture or what they want out of life. Wow, I sound like an asshole--I mean, I can certainly be a dick and cut myself off from people for other stupid reasons. But I guess I just get annoyed by people who are anti-anti-intellectual and I got irked with Joss Whedon because I realized that he was maybe that way.

And now I'm going to pretend to be in class.