IT'S NOT UNIMPORTANT

First, the fanart:
http://mysticdragon3.deviantart.com/#/d4mz1lu
Finished painting Ika-musume's dress, even in the back, behind all that tentacle hair.

http://mysticdragon3.deviantart.com/art/it-s-rubbing-time-280473216

Every once in a while, we geeks always run into someone who says our interests are unimportant.

 But who makes these standards of what's "important"?  People, ways of living, are all too subjective for one person's standards to properly measure another person's.  No more can anyone impose tastes for foods or interests on another person.  Kind people generally allow everyone to live however they want, because they can be happy as long as other people are happy.  They also tend to realize that attacking another person's interests is the same as attacking that person.  Because any amount of empathy would prove that our interests reflect who we are, because *we* identify with them, in the first place.

 But humans are social creatures.  And living in a community requires some consensus of values.  So we all settle on basic things, like biological survival, mental well-being, and a freeddom to enjoy life.  More specific values, like good relationships with others, are agreed upon as priorities.  It's only natural as community members, and as the social-evolved animals called humans, afterall.  It became instinct because it so effective for survival, that it became ingrained into our Survival Instinct.  Humans have a hard time denying it, without copious logics and pondering.  So people look at geeks so involved in fictional stories, rather than stereotypical social endeavors, and say we're crazy.

 But what are these stereotypical social endeavors?  Running around, dating left and right?  Revolving all our actions, thoughts, and emotions, around that pursuit?  Partying all the time?  Posturing and trying to look cool for the opposite sex?

 I'm sorry, but while some people may enjoy experiencing life solely through trial and error or quantity of experiences, some of us prefer quality and thought.  Yes, we are out there.  Everyone's different, afterall.  There are even those who want a balance of each.  There's lots of people out there.

 Why should an experience indoors, or through thought-provoking fiction, be any less of an experience?  There is the "fairytale scholar's" theory that the whole point of fictional stories is to provoke the development of thought, for the goal of becoming someone who values human interactions, relationships, and feelings.  It's true, in my opinion.  And yet I find myself still wrapped up more in the fictional experiences, than applying the thoughts, I developed, into relationships with real people.  Well, that's just *my* social anxiety disorder:  an Escapism coward, forever practicing for real life interaction, but never doing it.  Or maybe me, and people like me, just need more time in training.  ...While we watch other levels of people branch out from solo fandom, into online communities, to convention socialization, and such.  We'll all get there eventually.  Even *I* cosplay.

 So do I conceed that Normal people's value of human relationships is priority?  I guess I'd have to answer that it's not "Normal people's values".  It's valuable to all of us.  As human beings, it's in our DNA, and we can't get away from it.  But why should we?  Because some representatives from the camp that values ONLY that stereotypical lifestyle and were jerks to us, say so?  Hell, no.  But because those experiences of human relationships and emotions are exactly the same reason we love the experiences in our fandoms' fictional stories.  It's all the same.  We're all human.  So none of us should be saying that one experience, or other, of life is unimportant.