dis·crim·i·nat·ing adj. Showing careful judgment or fine taste: a discriminating collector of rare books; a dish for the discriminating palate. (American Heritage Dictionary)
fan·girl noun A person obsessed with an element of video or electronic culture, such as a game, sci-fi movie, comic or animé, music, etc; a person obsessed with any other single subject or hobby. (Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English)
The Discriminating Fangirl is all about geeky stuff. We glory in it. We revel in it. We review speculative fiction, movies, comics, tv, and video games, and we post random geeky chatter. This place may be called The Discriminating Fangirl, but discriminating fanboys are more than welcome, too! Read on to meet the awesome fangirl staff!
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Editor/Head Writer
The Discriminating Fangirl, who is more likely to answer to Pamela if you shout it at her, has harbored all her life a not-so-secret desire to be Indiana Jones. She realizes, though, that real archaeology entails less treasure hunting and fighting Nazis and more crawling in the dirt with a toothbrush, and so she went to grad school and got a Master’s in English. But the love of Indiana Jones and other deliciously geeky things was instilled in her at a young age by closet geek parents, and so she started this blog as an outlet for her geeky passions.
TDF Pamela reads like a fiend; you can see what she’s read in the past year by clicking that “Books Read in 2009″ link at the top of this page. She prefers speculative fiction by far and has been reading a lot of urban fantasy and paranormal romance lately. She also reads science fiction, more traditional fantasy, and the occasional Egyptian mystery. She digs comic books, particularly anything with Wolverine and/or Jean Grey in it as well as Fables and Hellboy. When time permits (that is, when she’s procrastinating), TDF/Pamela plays video games; she’s currently addicted to Sid Meier’s Civilization: Revolution, Little Big Planet, Lego Indiana Jones, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. She’s a huge Sims 2 junkie, too, as is evidenced by her bio pic. Geek fandoms of choice include X-Men, Firefly, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Iron Man, and way too many to list here. She’s something of a fandom polyandrist.
TDF Pamela is currently travelling around the country with her Fanfiancé and will eventually find a place to settle down.
elsewhere on the web
- Twitter: @tdfangirl
- Goodreads: The Discriminating Fangirl
- Flickr: tdfangirl
- DeviantArt: pink frangipani
Regular Contributors
The Bibliomaniac (a/k/a Jennifer)has a disease. Said disease is the only hobby that qualifies with the American Psychiatric Association as a mental illness, bibliomania (you knew there was a connection in there somewhere, didn’t you?) My mother taught me how to read when I was three, and I haven’t quit since. My personal library currently stands around 5400 volumes, with more on the way in the mail. My favorite genres include fantasy (especially urban fantasy and alternate history), horror, and SF. But I’ll read almost anything if bored or desperate. Favorite authors include Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman, Thomas Burnett Swann, Rachel Caine, Kim Harrison, Stephen King, F. Paul Wilson, Manly Wade Wellman, Julian May, and Charles Beaumont.
A published writer, I have worked on a number of projects for White Wolf Games in the past, including projects for Vampire: the Requiem, Changeling: the Lost, and Scion. My first professionally-published short story is coming out in an anthology this December.
I have a B.A. in English (Literature) and a B.S. in Criminal Justice, as well as having done some postgrad work (courses in Medieval Latin).
When I’m not reading (when does that happen?), you can find me watching bad horror and chop-socky movies, gardening, playing with my five cats, LARPing and gaming, attending SF conventions, collecting comics, or making myself yet another cup of tea. Like many heartfelt readers, I am also a writer, and can usually be found typing diligently away on my next novel or working on another poem.
Emily is a twenty-something fangirl from the East Coast. Her biggest obsessions are books—reading them and having lots of them. Her favorite genres are young adult, fantasy, horror, memoir, pop culture and humor. YA, in particular, fascinates her because she wants to convert more children to fangirlism at a very young age. She thinks you should always have a book (or three!) with you at all times, in case you get trapped in a well or otherwise have a lot of time to kill, and doesn’t like it when you ask her what her favorite book is because she doesn’t want to offend them by choosing.
Along with her literary nerdity, Emily has also been known to geek out over comics, movies and TV shows. Prior to becoming a guest-nerd at “The Discriminating Fangirl,” Emily maintained a popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer website called “The Thundering Looney Bin” and a Harry Potter fanfiction archive.
Emily now lives in New York City. She works at a large corporation that crushes little piece of her soul out each day. One day she hopes to be able to pay for her therapy with books.
Finn is a fangirl hiding behind a pseudonym. While she is all about originality, there are some things in life that are too original, such as Finn’s real name. She lives under the belief that her parents secretly wanted a boy they could name Broc Lee and thereby punished Finn for being a girl by giving her a name that was undeniably feminine.
Thumbing her nose up at tradition, Finn discovered a love for all things comic book related at a young age and unabashedly strutted around the house wearing Wonder Woman UnderRoos. Growing older, and still wearing the golden lasso (in reality a piece of yellow string) and indestructible bracelets (uh…toilet paper cores cut in half), Finn barreled headlong through her formative years surrounded by all things related to computers, movies, books, video games, comic books and electronic gadgets. To this day, Finn has an unhealthy lust for the X-Men (especially when specific to Wolverine/Jean Grey), books (of the paranormal /urban fantasy/science fiction/fantasy variety), movies (of the campy horror/adventure/action variety), video games (of the bloody/gory variety) and her BlackBerry (of no variety).
Finn is currently working on her Bachelor of Science for computers and doesn’t, contrary to popular belief, live under a rock. Instead she lives in an alternate universe, where the state of Virginia doesn’t suck, with her husband and awesome geek daughter. She also reminds everyone that geeks are born, not made.
When I grow up, I want to be the Librarian. My parents think it’s a great idea, but friends have pointed out that without some serious investments with Johns Hopkins, I will never be like Noah Wyle. Their sarcasm will be noted in the afterlife. In truth, I would love my career to be “student”. I have two B.A.s (in Anthropology & Medieval Studies) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Medieval History (only recently have I stopped waking up in the middle of the night conjugating Latin verbs). I have plans for additional degrees, including an A.S. in Political Science, an M.A. in Anthropology. I love to travel, speak a little bit of several languages, and have several stamps in my passport (and not just to Canada & Mexico). I’ve driven across the United States twice and am only missing one corner of my puzzle – the enigmatic Pacific Northwest, home of Sasquatch and other X-Files-esque happenings. I read, I write, I knit, I scrapbook, I photograph, and I’m even learning to sew. I know how to dip candles, spin wool, make cheese, and use a foot-pedal printing press (yay for lead-free type slugs!). Next time on Olde Fashioned Skills, I will be learning to loom-weave.
elsewhere on the web
- Twitter: @arysani
Strangeness Abounds graduated with her BA in English in May of 2009. She is returning for her MS in English in the fall of 2010. She is a writer of speculative fiction as well as original fiction. Additionally, she is a freelance editor.
Strangeness Abounds is a lady who is a discriminatory viewer of many books, movies, and video games – books coming first, video games second, and movies third.
SA loves to read fantasy novels, manga/anime, graphic novels, documentary books, Stephen King, and Garrison Keillor. She cannot stand to much ooey-gooey romance and has been known to spork it relentlessly.
SA is a tremendous fan of The Legend of Zelda series, and has been for nearly a decade. Be aware that if any mention of Zelda is made, she will ramble about theorizing for a long, long, long time. She is also a fan of any fantasy-type video game, but doesn’t care much for “shoot-’em-ups.”
Tarte Amandine, or Amanda, has loved to read ever since she was 3 and picked up a Care Bears book. She sprinted ahead in her reading levels, even picking up Michael Crichton at 8. She was a fangirl from the start – being the only girl who liked Star Wars meant was always Leia at recess. At 13, she moved onto her first big fandom, The X-Files, where she was introduced to fanfiction. She is active in Supernatural fandom and went to ChiCon in 2009. Other fandoms include True Blood, Firefly, Doctor Who and Torchwood.
TA has a B.A. in French and studied abroad in France twice. This fall she will start her MLIS program at Kent State. She hopes to work as an academic librarian or as a reference librarian in the future.
Currently, TA works as a shelver at a local library in southern Ohio.
elsewhere on the web
- twitter: @Tarte_Amandine
- blog: Telling Tales Out of Library School
- Goodreads: Amanda
The WereGeek, also known as Deke (no, really), began reading comics as soon as she could read. Her parents bribed her with Disney and Harvey comics to keep her quiet on long road trips. Before long, she moved to Archie comics and then to Marvel. Power Pack turned out to be her gateway comic – leading first to The Uncanny X-Men, then to Alpha Flight, The New Mutants, Thor and a host of others. She also picked up ElfQuest (and felt very naughty reading the orgy scenes in the fourth graphic novel) and even picked up some DC comics when the only 7-eleven in town was out of her usuals. She collected comics of all sorts through the 80s but stopped in 1992 when every title became multiple titles. When she couldn’t afford her habit, she quit cold turkey.
Of course, all that changed in 2000 when the X-Men movie came out. She began collecting comics again in earnest and tried to fill in what became known as “The Gap”. Thanks to student loan money, The Gap is now much smaller and more sporadic than it once was.
Speaking of student loans (of which WereGeek has many – she refers to the payments as her “condo only [her] brain can live in”), she got her undergraduate degree in History, with a minor in English so she fits in around here, concentrating in Medieval Britain. She even studied abroad in Swansea, Wales, where she learned some Latin she’s now forgotten and took lots of pictures of Traveling Wolvie interacting with the locals. She also got her Master of Science in Library and Information Science but is not currently working in the profession. Her dream job would be to work as Marvel’s digital archivist or be the curator of a comic book museum.
Other fannish favorites include, but are not limited to: Being Human, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Firefly/Serenity, Dark Angel, The Dragonriders of Pern books (only the ones written solely by Anne McCaffrey), and the Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett. Come to think of it, anything by Terry Pratchett.
WereGeek currently lives in northern Colorado, but would jump at the chance to move back to Wales permanently.
elsewhere on the web
- Twitter: weregeek
