Manifesto XXIV: The Imagination Subculture

by otaking on Aug.18, 2009, under Manifesto

Earth to Jaden. Page 5 preview, The Vigilant Issue #1

Earth to Jaden. Page 5 preview, The Vigilant Issue #1

This is addressed to all of the following, although this is by no means an exhaustive list:

  1. Gamers (console, PC, handheld, tabletop, interactive fiction, miniature, CCG, MMOG, LARPers, board);
  2. Weeaboo (anime, manga, light novels, niconico, traditional Japanese martial arts otaku, people who only know Japan through samurai films, Zen Buddhists);
  3. Genre otaku (fantasy, sci-fi, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of the Rings, the various D&D campaign settings, superhero, Vertigo, gothic horror, mystery, pulp, fanfic, K-Dramas, reverse harems, musical theater);
  4. Head-in-Cloud-Types (poets, artists, dreamers, philosophers, theoretical scientists, sages, mystics, shamans, prophets);
  5. People who play with toys (scale models, dolls, figurines, phones with excessive arrays of features we don’t use, pretend guitars and drum kits connected to consoles, lightsabers, limited edition custom-painted Stitch statues)
  6. Any subculture or group I have forgotten to mention that prefers to spend time in imaginary worlds.

Hi. Nice to meet you.

We have something in common: We have vivid imaginations and enjoy spending time in imaginary worlds.

These worlds are off the six-lane highway of the shared world of the monoculture, that bland soup of the mainstream. Some are right off the exit ramp, others take convoluted side streets to get to.

Let’s stop being in denial and just accept ourselves: We’re weird.

We do things that ‘normal people’ would never do. We watch ‘cartoons’. We like to pretend we’re Jedi or magicians or two-dimensional characters or elves or vampires or pirates or ninjas. We roll kinds of dice most people have never seen. Our dialects are incomprehensible to outsiders, and there are so many.

We’re weird.

They don’t understand us. That’s what it means when they say “That person is so weird.” It’s the only way they can deal with us. Sometimes it’s a sign of disapproval. Sometimes it’s simply a sign that someone cannot comprehend our motivations or behavior because they have no cultural context. Weird. Doesn’t make sense – at least sense the way the ‘people who see the world for what it really is’ see it,  the self-proclaimed realists.

We’re the imagination subculture. We’re weird. It’s okay.

We need to stop thinking that we need approval for everything we do. Even different imagination subcultures disagree with each other, sometimes vehemently. We need to accept the fact that we aren’t going to please everybody – and that the monoculture isn’t everybody. Even entire scenes have little tribes that skirmish every now and then. Fine.

Let’s stop trying so hard to make everyone accept us, we lose our identities in the process, our cultures. If everyone was like us, acted like us, thought like us, talked and dressed and hung out in the same places as us, then we would be normal.

And we don’t want that now, do we?

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