bending stereotypes

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

The bookish, gamer, and so on nerd with Krav Maga training. Possibly because s/he was bullied and decided "no more" and started to learn to fight back.

Martial arts is kind of a geeky hobby, there are several people on this forum who practice a martial art.

The cheerful Goth. S/he's just very sensitive to bright lights (it's common for autistic people to be sensitive to every kind of stimuli) and as such prefers dark places, and muted/dark colors, but don't let that fool you, s/he is very sweet and will animate your party like no other, as long as you set it when it's dark.

"Perky goth" is a well established archetype (I mean there is even what's-her-name on that silly NCIS show). Also Goth clubs aren't inanimate in my experience (in fact the few times I have been to more mundane nightclubs they struck me as pretty tame in comparison).

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

MacGyver did a lot of that, if my vague memory of TV from my youth serves (usually in conjunction with a techno-trick, such as using it as a distraction so he could clobber someone from behind).

Luke

Yeah, he did. MacGyver was a genuinely unusual character, esp. by TV standards. He was not helpless in hand-to-hand combat, but he was by no means an expert at it, nor a walking killing machine.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Yeah, he did. MacGyver was a genuinely unusual character, esp. by TV standards. He was not helpless in hand-to-hand combat, but he was by no means an expert at it, nor a walking killing machine.

I still love the Rockford Files where the protagonist usually got his rear handed to him by toughs. That's not common in any genre with non-nerdy male main characters.
The villain has been trained since birth in Ninjitsu while the hero once took a course at the Y, but has gumption. Sure he'll lose, but slowly and still have enough time to get away to fight evil another day.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Martial arts is kind of a geeky hobby, there are several people on this forum who practice a martial art.
...

Does a hobby become geeky, because geeks focus on it, or are they geeks, because they focus on geeky hobbies?
I'm partly serious.
Sports fanatics have always fit the general criteria of geeks from obsessiveness to interest in minutia to often poor personal athleticism, but due to popularity of sports haven't been called nerds until relatively recently.
I can't call anything requiring intense physical activity and agility geeky.
The very concept of nerdy ninjas just makes me blink in shock.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I can't call anything requiring intense physical activity and agility geeky.

On the other hand the cool kids aren't reconstructing historical sword-fighting.

There must exist someone who is willing to read old Fetchbuchs, and wear mail in public who is also willing to break a sweat and get some bruises.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

There are certification programs for vets with related MOS training, I don't know if there were in 1988 though.

For some MOS's, yes, there were... but many places didn't accept those, either.

Some fields still don't. Most obvious case is the Navy Corpsman - many states won't even let them use their skills off-base when they encounter an accident...

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Some fields still don't. Most obvious case is the Navy Corpsman - many states won't even let them use their skills off-base when they encounter an accident...

Although I gather that Corpsmen usually have a pretty easy time with civilian EMT and paramedic training (or nursing school), and the GI Bill pays for that.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

On the other hand the cool kids aren't reconstructing historical sword-fighting.

There must exist someone who is willing to read old Fetchbuchs, and wear mail in public who is also willing to break a sweat and get some bruises.

There is no rule that says that the athletic child of geek parents is so because sports are cool. Perhaps he just thinks them fun.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Although I gather that Corpsmen usually have a pretty easy time with civilian EMT and paramedic training (or nursing school), and the GI Bill pays for that.

It's 2-3 years of repeating the training only to find out that the most useful 10% of your training is still off-limits... or so I've been told by ex-corpsman EMTs...

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Does a hobby become geeky, because geeks focus on it, or are they geeks, because they focus on geeky hobbies?
I'm partly serious.
Sports fanatics have always fit the general criteria of geeks from obsessiveness to interest in minutia to often poor personal athleticism, but due to popularity of sports haven't been called nerds until relatively recently.
I can't call anything requiring intense physical activity and agility geeky.
The very concept of nerdy ninjas just makes me blink in shock.

It seems like the meaning of 'geek' and 'nerd' got diluted over time. I used to encounter it to mean someone who's very obsessive about a non-physical, non-social, cerebral/intellectual/etc. topic or topics, and tends towards the lower end of the physical and social spectra in general. Nowadays we have people talking about dancing geeks and MA geeks and the like, which is why I shifted towards using 'nerd' instead. I actually always considered the years spent on pole vaulting during my university years (and on firearms lately) to be the un-nerdy side of myself. But it seems like by now the word loses its precision, gradually becoming indistinguishable from 'aficionado' or 'fan'.