![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rawrr Rawrr Like a Dungeon Dragon
May. 18th, 2009 08:25 amIt's hard to say if cartoons or comics came first. Probably cartoons, though the good cartoons didn't kick up until the mid-80's anyway.
Of comics, it was whatever seemed neat at the drug store just a few blocks away. I ended up getting a lot of Iron Man, Power Man & Iron Fist, and occasionally stuff like Avengers. Only after I got a little older did I start getting into X-men, Alpha Flight, and the rest, and older still when I could make my way to the comic book store, everything else.
Sci-fi - it was cheese like Godzilla or Space:1999, or whatever happened to be on TV at the moment, though Star Wars at the Cinerama imprinted pretty deeply between the dogfights and laser swords. Alien, Aliens, and Terminator would also be big hits with me as well.
Like most boys, it was all about Transformers and Robotech, but I also got to have a good dose of Star Blazers, even getting my ass up 2 hours early to watch it. Later we'd trade fansub or straight japanese VHS copies of stuff like Dragonball before it made it to the states. You don't know my glee when Akira hit, if only because it opened the door. My first two purchased anime tapes were Dangaioh with it's psychic mecha and Gunbuster with it's black hole bombs.
It was something like 3-4 years AFTER the movie came out that I finally got a chance to watch The Dark Crystal. Aside from being completely unlike any other fantasy I've seen, I didn't realize how much I connected with the gelflings' sense of disconnection from their heritage and culture. Older now, I see the story of diaspora peoples, refugees, genocide, all with muppets.
I was 12 when my cousin gave me a copy of blue box D&D, which was way too poorly written for me to understand. There was a map and instinctively I knew maps lead to treasure. I'd pick up Red Box Basic and try to play with my sister and my friends, but couldn't understand how we kept getting eaten by rats when the cover on the box showed a guy taking on a dragon... I made my way through a ton of rpg systems, getting my most play around high school when we all had time for such things.
I stuck with roleplaying because, like hiphop, it was about telling your own stories. I played with a group of all people of color for 2 years, and then after that, a group 1/2 POC in Canada. We were especially happy when Feng Shui came out, because then all of our HK movie geekiness got a chance to play out, in a battle across time.
It wasn't until I was a teenager that I started finding HK movies and wuxia. Everything from sci-fi to fantasy showed up. I would swing up to the art-house theatre for the double features, before Tarantino slapped his name on everything. I'd make my way to boogsie Scarecrow Video to snag movies from other countries, and finally at the ghetto Chinatown spot ($2 a movie and you could rent for 2 weeks).
I got into Lovecraft years back, if only because I wanted to know what all the hubbub was. Less terrifying, more hilarious - novels about "Don't open that door!" watching folks be stupid. I appreciate the abstracted horror, even as I'm all too aware of his sketchy race issues. As I'm reading more and more older pulp fantasy now, I keep running into it. At least I can console myself with the fact that the writing is good and most of these people are dead, and it's less rage inducing than when I encounter books published in 2005 with the same issues.
Despite all this, I stay firmly "middle of the line" in terms of my geekiness compared to my friends. I had two people who were religious about Star Wars novels, a couple of Tolkien fanatics, and much more serious comic collectors than myself. One friend can tell you most B-horror movies from the last 20 years.
Of comics, it was whatever seemed neat at the drug store just a few blocks away. I ended up getting a lot of Iron Man, Power Man & Iron Fist, and occasionally stuff like Avengers. Only after I got a little older did I start getting into X-men, Alpha Flight, and the rest, and older still when I could make my way to the comic book store, everything else.
Sci-fi - it was cheese like Godzilla or Space:1999, or whatever happened to be on TV at the moment, though Star Wars at the Cinerama imprinted pretty deeply between the dogfights and laser swords. Alien, Aliens, and Terminator would also be big hits with me as well.
Like most boys, it was all about Transformers and Robotech, but I also got to have a good dose of Star Blazers, even getting my ass up 2 hours early to watch it. Later we'd trade fansub or straight japanese VHS copies of stuff like Dragonball before it made it to the states. You don't know my glee when Akira hit, if only because it opened the door. My first two purchased anime tapes were Dangaioh with it's psychic mecha and Gunbuster with it's black hole bombs.
It was something like 3-4 years AFTER the movie came out that I finally got a chance to watch The Dark Crystal. Aside from being completely unlike any other fantasy I've seen, I didn't realize how much I connected with the gelflings' sense of disconnection from their heritage and culture. Older now, I see the story of diaspora peoples, refugees, genocide, all with muppets.
I was 12 when my cousin gave me a copy of blue box D&D, which was way too poorly written for me to understand. There was a map and instinctively I knew maps lead to treasure. I'd pick up Red Box Basic and try to play with my sister and my friends, but couldn't understand how we kept getting eaten by rats when the cover on the box showed a guy taking on a dragon... I made my way through a ton of rpg systems, getting my most play around high school when we all had time for such things.
I stuck with roleplaying because, like hiphop, it was about telling your own stories. I played with a group of all people of color for 2 years, and then after that, a group 1/2 POC in Canada. We were especially happy when Feng Shui came out, because then all of our HK movie geekiness got a chance to play out, in a battle across time.
It wasn't until I was a teenager that I started finding HK movies and wuxia. Everything from sci-fi to fantasy showed up. I would swing up to the art-house theatre for the double features, before Tarantino slapped his name on everything. I'd make my way to boogsie Scarecrow Video to snag movies from other countries, and finally at the ghetto Chinatown spot ($2 a movie and you could rent for 2 weeks).
I got into Lovecraft years back, if only because I wanted to know what all the hubbub was. Less terrifying, more hilarious - novels about "Don't open that door!" watching folks be stupid. I appreciate the abstracted horror, even as I'm all too aware of his sketchy race issues. As I'm reading more and more older pulp fantasy now, I keep running into it. At least I can console myself with the fact that the writing is good and most of these people are dead, and it's less rage inducing than when I encounter books published in 2005 with the same issues.
Despite all this, I stay firmly "middle of the line" in terms of my geekiness compared to my friends. I had two people who were religious about Star Wars novels, a couple of Tolkien fanatics, and much more serious comic collectors than myself. One friend can tell you most B-horror movies from the last 20 years.
