THE worlds and fandoms of sci-fi, fantasy, and video games, often described as “geek” or “nerd” culture, are fraught with contradictions. The revelation that actor Kaitlyn Dever had to be provided with extra security on set of The Last Of Us season two, for fear of backlash to the character she’s playing, speaks to the worst of these.

The measure was taken because of the extreme response of some fans to developments in The Last Of Us Part II video game, on which the Emmy-winning HBO series is based. In the game, Dever’s character Abby, who will be a new addition in season two, is an enemy of the protagonists, Joel and Ellie. Without going into spoilers, this means the character is not very nice to the established “heroes” of the story.

This, along with the character’s muscularity and lack of traditional femininity, was enough to send some men into a spiral of frothing rage so deep that the voice actor in the game, Laura Bailey, received floods of abuse and death threats, including threats against her newborn baby.

It would be all too easy to dismiss this as the work of an off-the-wall minority whose parents neglected to explain to them as children that the people talking on the screen in the middle of the room were actors and that the things they were saying and doing were “make believe”. When the characters are animations and the medium has the word “game” in the title, any lasting confusion over whether it is, in fact, a documentary is certainly worrying.

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But the truth is, the men doing this were already looking for an outlet for their anger and resentment – the fact that they’ve chosen to target it at women who had no role in the creative decisions they’re apparently upset about tells us that they simply wanted an excuse to harass a woman.

This is a paradox that lies at the heart of “nerd culture” and which reveals itself time and again. A subculture which is at once about providing community, representation and boundless imagination in a world of rules and limitations is, at the same time, notorious for acting like an exclusive club where women, queer people, and racialised minorities don’t really belong.

There have been significant efforts in recent years to change the face of gaming and the sci-fi and fantasy genres to be more inclusive, not least because doing so is a sure way to gain new fans and consumers. The Last Of Us franchise has been amongst those efforts, foregrounding women and queer characters who are richly complex, no doubt supported by the fact that one of the two story writers for the second game, Halley Gross, is a woman – still a notable achievement in the video game industry.

(Image: ACME Comic Con)

But one woman’s progress is another man’s coup, and that’s exactly how some of the old guard of this once white, straight, male-dominated culture seem to feel about it. We saw this with “gamergate”, a campaign of misogynistic harassment against women in the videogame industry 10 years ago.

We saw it when Captain Marvel was “review bombed” with negative reviews before the film was even released, partly because the film was about a strong woman who wasn’t being objectified, and partly because its star, Brie Larsson, had previously spoken out about the lack of diversity amongst movie critics at press events.

We’ve seen it with the latest Star Wars films, where so-called fans trolled the new cast – Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran – with online abuse. And now, with the branding by some fans of the new Star Wars TV series The Acolyte as “The Wokelyte”. All for the apparent crime of having a diverse cast of humans in a franchise featuring talking aliens and space magic.

I have to sympathise, to a degree, with the sense of fear and loss some fans experience in watching what might once have felt like the one little piece of this world they could lay claim to as theirs alone, suddenly cracked open for anyone and everyone to mould and bend to their will.

Many of those who are most serious about these fandoms have been so from a young age, and they bring with them all the baggage that comes from a lifetime of forming one’s identity around the idea of being on the outside, isolated from the mainstream.

Some of these men are the nerds who were picked on in school, the loner in the back of the class. People who found comfort in the multiverse of fantasy, confidence in characters who could overcome all obstacles, and connection with the like-minded people – mostly men – with whom they could discuss every detail of these games, comics, and films without judgement. Like any group, cool or not, in or out, it’s often easiest to define who you are by defining who you are not – and thus, even the excluded can become exclusive, particularly when your sense of self hinges upon being “not like the others”.

The contradiction lies in the fact that many of these men are now adults who are privileged in almost every way that matters, while large parts of their little subculture have become the fuel of behemoth industries which are as much a part of our mainstream culture as Barbie or the latest reality TV show.

For some this is a blessing, for others a curse. Change is scary. Change which requires you to reconsider the parameters of your own identity or your place in this world is terrifying.

So, I understand why some self-professed nerds or “real fans” are battening down the hatches, insisting there is no more room for compromise, and definitely no room for girls.

Except, there have always been gamer girls, comic book girls, Star Wars girls. It’s just that, up until recently, many of those girls, women, queer people, and other marginalised fans have been spending their time on the outside of the outside. Making their own spaces for each other, or simply doing it alone.

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The question that some men should be asking themselves isn’t “why are these people taking over my fandom?”, but “why didn’t they feel like they could join in before now?”.

Like most science fiction, there is an important moral to the story of The Last Of Us Part II. It forces the player to see the world through the eyes of a character they’ve been encouraged to despise and dehumanise. To discover how blinkered vision and anger can prevent you from understanding another perspective, or from recognising shared suffering in a cruel world.

Perhaps it was this, more than any given aspect or action of this fictional character, that truly upset some of these men.

It’s also the lesson they most need to learn.