Brainy Badger #1

Being chosen last for playground kickball is actually only the second most humilating experience of nerd childhood. The worst is being a subject of a "trade of liabilities", when the self-appointed captains of the teams begin to bargain, "I'll take her if you'll take him." When other people continuously refuse to recognize value in your existence, you start to believe them. That makes it all the more powerful when you encounter a different view -- one where the nerd saves the world.

Maybe its a need to overcompensate by replacing untouchable status with transcendant hero, but Andrew "Ender" Wiggin in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game always wins. Always. And, more importantly, Ender always wins because of his intellect and never because of his puny physical prowess. Further, the consequences of Ender's battles couldn't be more important -- any failure, any loss might result in humanity losing a war with an enemy with whom negotiation, and even basic communication, is impossible.

Of course, its science-fiction and well beyond any situation that is likely to occur in anyone's daily life. Science-fiction books like Ender's Game are part and parcel of the nerd mystique, right? But, once we stop chuckling, we can realize that there are reasons beyond mere escapism for some people's obsessive attachments to games like Dungeons and Dragons and genre like fantasy and science fiction. In these alternative worlds, the anti-intellectualism and petty violence that pervades school-age life in our modern society melts away, replaced with powers and abilities of the mind that give socially crippled young people hope that there may yet exist real-world analogues that will bring them meaning, respect, and even -- like Ender -- victory.