Welcome to Nerd Church

Ladies and Gents - I give you Nerd Church!



Original church image (before edits) courtesy of debspoons at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I figured that after all the stuff I've been talking about recently, what with the stories being passed down through mythology and generations, and the comments about worshipping with the DC congregation with the Suicide Squad trailer, it would be best to provide a small weekly space of deep thinking for the nerd community. I say weekly, I will aim to make it weekly but it might be fortnightly, or just whenever I remember. But the intention is that I'll release a dedicated Nerd Church post weekly.

Also, I may on more than one occasion go off on one completely. Usually this will be because of either too much or too little coffee, but if you read this blog a lot then that won't exactly be much of a surprise to you. I probably come off as really caffeine-crazed in most posts. I assure you that I'm calmer in real-life (well, ish.)

So, as an intro for you lovely people...

Just a thought for the week ahead. Think of the stories that we still cling to from childhood - The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, pretty much anything in the Marvel back-catalogue, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Artemis Fowl, etc... What are the similarities here? Is there a common thread calling to us? Of magic maybe, and possibility; of extraordinary things happening to seemingly ordinary people, who were never quite as ordinary as they thought themselves to be.

There's also a common thread of dead or absent parents - Harry Potter and the Baudelaire children (A Series of Unfortunate Events) are orphans; the Pevensie children from the Narnia books are sent away from home; Artemis Fowl's parents are usually out-of-action for at least part of the books. And let's face it, superheroes are notorious for dead, abusive, or neglectful parents.

Now, that doesn't mean that we all secretly hanker to be neglected or orphaned - it simply means that the heroes have to make do on their own. They have no fall back of 'I'll call dad to pick me up,' and they have to learn to rely on their own wits and skills. So, we look up to self-sufficiency, to bravery and survival in the face of vulnerability and challenges. We yearn to make heroes of those who've managed to make their own way in an often hostile world, the way we all feel like the world can be hostile to us as we do our best to make our way through it.

And, as one final thought - what the hell were the parents in Enid Blyton books doing?!?! It's like, hey group of small children, of course you can go faffing around the country alone in a caravan. You don't need supervision, it's not like your average age is like eleven or anything! And the first time my kids caught a load of smugglers and/or were kidnapped and/or injured, would be the very last time I let them do anything on their own. But next holidays, the parents are back to being like - 'you want to go on a tour of haunted houses? Yeh, go ahead.' Dude, really?!?!