I am a proud nerd. I say that especially after attending Planet Comic-Con in Kansas City last weekend. Despite the celebrities that I had the option of meeting or seeing from my favorite series, Comic-Con was also an opportunity to be exposed to some of the most creative people around: the geeks and nerds that are obsessed with the comics, shows, movies, and fandoms associated with Comic-Con.
From the moment I stepped out of the car and headed towards the convention center, I was already impressed with the cosplay of others around me. From a Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" to dozens of superheroes to a meeting of Spider-Men and Deadpool having a random dance party, I was constantly in awe of the creativity and the time put into the costumes.
It got even crazier when I got into the center. There were hundreds of people, but instead of being annoyed and freaking out like I usually did in crowds, I was mainly trying to take it all in at once: the hundreds of booths of the creators, who have painted and made crazy products based on these fandoms and fictional characters and worlds, the hundreds of people that I realized sharing the same passions as I did. It was impossible to not be impressed.
These people have taken something that they love, either a fictional character or entire world and used their creativity and spent their time making their costumes and their props, trying to get it the best that it could be.
They spent hours doing their makeup, or setting up their booths and creating the products to hand out. That's more than I could ever do.
Nerds are also the people that are able to immerse themselves in these fictional worlds and become a part of it. That's creative in itself, the ability to open one's mind and have that suspension of disbelief to escape into these worlds.
But to be passionate and creative enough to take those worlds and characters and manifest them into something in the real world shows so much creativity and passion in a person.
So no, "nerd" isn't an insult to me. To me, it just means that I'm creative, just in a different way than a lot of people. I know what I enjoy and am passionate about, and I know that I am in one of my best moods when I'm surrounded by nerds and can see how much these worlds and characters mean to other people, just like they do to me.
What I love most about nerds is that part of us refuses to grow up. We still believe in the escapes from reality, the fantastical, the imagination. A lot of adults these days have lost sight of that as they grow up. Us nerds are still children at heart, so we should be proud of that.
