Why are fantasy fans treated so bad?

[Justin]

My novel LARP: The Battle for Verona (available on amazon and bn.com) is a YA fantasy novel that deals with the topic of social acceptance and bullying. As I am sure you know, people with interests or hobbies that are different than the norm are often treated badly in society. Labels like "geek" "nerd" and "dork" are often applied, in a negative way, to people with unique interests.

So, my question to everyone is...why does society as a whole judge and mistreat people with unique interests?

[Barbara]

because being different is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad! I don't write YA, but I have lots of characters who are one of the "O" (outsider, outcast, outlaw, other) that threaten (or maybe just pretend to - they're just minding their own business and society thinks they're working on destroying it, LOL!) society... :)
It took me over 30 years to accept I'm different and 40 to start loving my being different, so I'm not surprised some people don't make it that far...

[Justin]

I think a lot of the mistreatment, too, comes from the "normal" people wishing they had the courage to pursue their interests.

[John]

News flash!

Listen people, we are the new mainstream. We are the new cool. Everyone knows it. Turn on your TV. There are vampires, witches, people with fantastic powers, zombies, and outright old school fantasy ruling the airwaves. They all watch what we read.

They finally get it. We have been cool for a long time and they were missing out.

Now, just accept your new status with a big stupid grin and be proud of your geeky self, because you are not just in the IN CROWD, you are the masters of it.

[Justin]

J... good point. We hung on long enough and outlasted the torment, and now THEY are US! That's one of the reasons I wrote my book; the time was right to participate in the geek renaissance.

Still, though, it's tough to go thru the years of aggravation.

[John]

LOL, Jaq!

[Justin]

Jaq...for real! People write that stuff because it sells. And, in writing it, there's not a whole lot of thought involved. When I was shopping LARP to publishers, so many of them aren't interested in fantasy, or even YA. They want romance because it's a low concept easy sell.

[Justin]

Authors often to that...they'll throw elements of a genre in to their book in order to earn the classification of a popular genre.

[John]

What? No fairy sex magic for you guys? Me neither. But a lot of people really like it. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the authors that write that sort of thing like it too. Maybe they are all just doing the same exact thing that we are doing. Writing the kind of books that they would like to beat themselves.

[John]

A smut fairy section at the local B&N? LOL.

[A.L.]

I am proud to be a geek and a nerd. I don't adhere to the popular trends and I'd rather be who I am than pretend I am someone else.

I love fantasy, it is such a diverse genre. I read a lot of other genres as well but nothing quite matches the excitement of fantasy. I was running a series of blog posts about how pervasive fantasy is - look around I bet all those who scorn watch it/read it and don't know. Look at our cultures - St George, Santa, tooth fairy, batman, Superman, Thor, Dragons. Nearly every culture has dragons, giants and monsters.