A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

All this hullabaloo about Fake Geek Girls infecting our fandoms with their icky, sticky sexuality, their skin tight costumes, their quivering posteriors, and their evil hoodoo power over poor, hapless geeks, helpless to resist the allure of Teh Hotness! According to some, girls at conventions are really just a bunch of invaders/fakers/freeloaders looking to loot Nerdom.

Gosharootie, what drama, hunh?

But wait: all this ire, it’s not about cosplay girls (even though it is about cosplay girls, dudes, you said so way before you backtracked). Real men like real chick fans. When they actually find one.

Rare like red diamonds, I know.

Still, this whole fake geek argument goes back to the dawn of time since I got into fandom (1980-something). Long before scores of women were actually at conventions. Or even long before ten women at a time were actually at conventions. So, um…yeah.

But I digress! This argument has never been about real fans! No, the men folk didn’t mean that! Not all girls are paragons of potential whoredom! Oh, no, all you in internet land. We guys totally fucked up and said out loud what we usually say to all our drunk friends at the Hyatt Bar at San Diego Comic Con after we’ve had a few too many shooters. That’s all just a misunderstanding on your lady parts because you are emotional females who can’t take a joke, hahaha!

It’s really all about EVIL BOOTH BABES! Wicked hotties for hire who don’t wear very much and are only at the convention for the money and the attention, the only currency in fandom you can’t buy, except with your firm, tremulous, tempting flesh.

Booth Babes! Yes, that’s it. Everything guys say and do toward women at conventions…it’s all the EVIL BOOTH BABES’ fault.

It’s so hard to tell the real fans from the parade of prostitutes who are only there to advance their lousy careers, delude themselves that they’re actually pretty, meet a producer, and get a runway gig. God, what a bunch of users!

You women should totally hate them too, since they make all of you look bad. Sure, the dudes would all be perfect gentleman if every woman who attended a convention dressed on the outside like it was 1830, and under her pinafore, wrapped herself in a silver layer of sacred Mormon underwear.

Do the Geek Guys have to wear this as well?

But hey, let’s not be sexist about where we apply our nerd rage! Men can be big, fat black holes of sucking userness, too!

Flash back to the horror that was: Jonathan Frakes: Booth Babe User Extraordinaire!

SOURCE.

Don’t be fooled. Behind that noble Captain America shield beats the cold, cold heart of a NINO: A Nerd In Name Only.

Wait, you may ask, that Jonathan Frakes? The guy who went on to play Commander Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation?

Why, yes, indeed, my fellow geeks.

Well played, Mr Frakes. Well played.

There he was, at comic book conventions and shopping malls all across America. Hired by Marvel Comics to dress in a disturbingly well-cut costume, all sleek lines and clinginess, striding across the convention floor, his manly thews flexing with the swish-swish-swish of spandex against spandex. It’s not like I was looking really closely or anything, but you could tell his religion, know what I mean?

SOURCE.

Hell, honey, with that in the room, who’s going to buy any comic books? And, uh, Toots? Put down the shield, you’re spoiling the view.

Won’t someone think of the cartoonists? Won’t someone even look at the cartoonists? They want to get laid, too!

Tramp.

Consider the generations of innocent fans of stunted emotional development, their geek purity corrupted by the sight of wantonly displayed washboard abs, globular grapefruits of glutes, and pounding perky pecs.

Oh…sob.

Do you think Fake Frakes cares about you? Do you think he’d ever go out with you? Do you think he knows diddly squat about Captain America and how he became Nomad?

Do you think we could ever convince him to wear the Nomad costume with the wide slash down the front? Do you think Frakes waxes?

Listen, my friends, and listen well; he doesn’t care about you! He’s not one of you!

He was just using you to get to Gene Roddenberry.

There.

Now, see how stupid it sounds?