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!

Thanks to J.M. Lee for the great icon on our Twitter feed!

Meet The Geeks

Editor/Head Geek In Charge Writer

TDF Pamela

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 most of the time. She prefers speculative fiction by far and tends to read a lot of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. She also reads science fiction, more traditional fantasy, and the occasional Egyptian mystery. She digs comic books but gets annoyed at Marvel quite often. She also plays video games, goofs off on Tumblr, knits, and watches a lot of quality television and film in the evenings. 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 lives in lovely Oregon with her husband, Mr. Fangirl, and spends the rainy months wishing she lived in Hawaii.

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Regular Contributors

Amanda

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.

Amanda has a B.A. in French and studied abroad in France twice. She is completing her MLIS program at Kent State. She hopes to work as an academic librarian or as a reference librarian in the future.

Currently, Amanda works as a shelver at a local library in southern Ohio.

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Jess

There is a pretty high chance that Jess can out geek you, out Google you, or both. She is a published writer and editor who reads as much as possible, watches way too much TV, can’t leave home without at least two gadgets, and spends far too many hours on the Internet.

Geeky persuasions include Buffy, Firefly, Doctor Who, Farscape, X-Men, Songs of Ice and Fire, Fringe, and whatever new shiny may have caught her eye. She loves reading fantasy, sci-fi, historical, and dystopian fiction, with a large helping of young adult and romance. She is currently writing her first novel (though which novel is being written changes depending on what day it is).

When she isn’t writing or reading, Jess enjoys knitting, playing video games (especially anything Mario-related), bookmarking cool stuff on Pinterest, building blogs, and getting hackery with her many computers and tech toys. She is an Apple fangirl who may have shed a tear the day Steve Jobs died.

By day, Jess is the marketing manager for a custom publishing and content marketing agency. She lives in Dallas, TX with her husband, three very spoiled cats, and piles of books.

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Kerry

A devoted movie buff and avid reader, Kerry took on the mantle of geekiness when she was in elementary school and fell in love with Star Wars, 1950s scifi/classic monster movies and Boris Karloff. To this day, Princess Leia is a major inspiration and daily influence for Kerry. A very zealous comic book fan, she is currently exploring the medium and her own reactions to it as a feminist. Along with writing for The Discriminating Fangirl, her reviews and feelings can be found at her blog, Fangirling Daily, in which she attempts to read and review a comic a day from a feminist perspective. Originally a devoted Batman fan, she has slowly grown into a very ardent Marvel fan, especially anything Avengers related. Of course, she is anxious to become as well versed in comic book lore as possible and loves receiving recommendations.

Kerry is currently working on her MA in English and hopes to begin a career in the publishing field (and with all going according to plan, specifically the creation and publication of comics). Along with dividing her time between graduate school, working as a bookseller, and fangirling over movies and comics, she’s also recently delved right into the world of video games, thanks mostly to Arkham Asylum. But who can blame her? Follow her on Twitter @fangirlingdaily.

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Lady T

Lady T is an Englishwoman still living in England. She resides in the bit people generally don’t talk about that exists between parts which are more interesting. She usually prefers it if you refer to her as LT, even though it isn’t her name.

Lady T cut her baby teeth on books about dragons, gnomes and mad scientists and spent her childhood wanting to become any possible combination of the three. Over the years she has lost innumerable weekends to intensely convoluted Dungeons & Dragons quests and ten-hour marathons of Babylon 5.
She has been actively involved in various fandoms since her early teens, and wandered through all manner of interests from Red Dwarf and X-Men to Scott Lynch and Jasper Fforde.

LT maintains she sold her soul to the BBC some time after the incident with Robert The Incredible Chicken and they still haven’t given it back yet. Currently they keep her enraptured with satirical panel shows, Doctor Who and inexplicable things on Radio 7.

When she’s not refining her almost encyclopaedic knowledge of Hugh Jackman, Lady T is also a part-time artist, habitual writer of fanfic and almost compulsive coveter of books. The rest of the time, Lady T mostly just aspires to be half as much fun as Nanny Ogg when she grows up.

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Marron Marvel

Marron Marvel, sometimes known as Tiarra, is a comic book and sci-fi geek girl who enjoys reading, playing video games, listening to The Beatles, and comparing everything to “that one episode of TNG where…”

With a BA in Studio art and Graphic Design and a minor in Art History, Marron is a professional graphic designer by trade and a published writer (of the journalistic variety) living in Las Vegas where she enjoys avoiding casinos and spoiling her fat, orange cat that may or may not hate Mondays.

Marron is an avid reader, loving not only sci-fi and fantasy books, noir detective novels, and horror stories, but (as you may have guessed from her moniker) she is a lover of comic books as well, especially from Marvel Comics. Marron has a love-hate relationship with Brian Michael Bendis and an on-and-off fling with Iron Man.

She’s also fairly convinced that the Queen song Fat Bottomed Girls was written about her, which means that she will at some point create a time machine and go back in time to well before she was born to inspire said song.

Marron can also be found on the geek culture blog Geek Life, where she volunteers her time as a writer and as the site’s Executive Editor.

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Stacy B

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.

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Strangeness Abounds

Strangeness AboundsStrangeness 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.”

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Teresa

Teresa resides in rural north Alabama with a closet full of books instead of clothes—but swears she doesn’t have an addiction. She was raised on classic rock, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. Fangirling for Teresa began in the late 80s with the Goonies, boy bands, a dwarf named Willow, and just never stopped (though she now has better taste in music).

Her current fixations include Star Wars, Tolkien, Arthuriana, Doctor Who, darker plots that give the reader a sympathy for the devil, Harry Potter, X-Men, Carrie Vaughn, Merlin, True Blood, strong-minded heroines, BBC period dramas, Supernatural, werewolves, Batman, Once Upon a Time, Game of Thrones, Annie Rice, Loki Laufeyson, urban fantasy, Hex, Firefly, Torchwood, Being Human (UK), Dickens, superhero movies, and Narnia … to name a few. She has also been known to revere the Holy Trinity of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Tom Hiddleston.

Teresa studied web design and has worked as a web designer, library assistant and a Girl Friday for an author’s estate, but is now focusing her time on creating a career in publishing as both a publisher and an author. Other than being a fangirl blogger for TDF, Teresa also runs Read All Over Reviews and is a partner at True Love Ink. You can follow her on Twitter at @eireannoir.

Links to Elsewhere

Blog: Read All Over Reviews (www.read-all-over.net)

Twitter: @eireannoir

Goodreads: Teresa (www.goodreads.com/readallover)

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WereGeek

werewolflibrarianThe 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.

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Retired Contributors

The Bibliomaniac

bibThe 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.

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LamoreVincera

LamoreVincera means “love will win” in Italian. LV (also known as Jen) used to think it was a wonderful, romantic idea – but has now seen enough bad romcoms and daily life to just think it’s funny.

While she lacks the credentials of the other Discriminating Fangirls, it never meant that she stopped learning, reading, watching, or… well, fangirling. She started fitting into the geek subculture at the age of seven, when she was shoved up against Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and fell head over heels in love. Star Trek followed soon after – Next Generation, thank you very much – and she became a Trekkie. Hard. Except for Voyager and Enterprise; we don’t talk about those.

She self-studies whatever strikes her fancy, from languages, to European history, to world religions, to archaeology, and especially to Arthurian legend. (Her favorite version is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, for being the first to tell the stories of the women involved and not make villains out of them.)

She’s also an avid gamer – board, D&D, Magic: The Gathering, World of Warcraft, and console gaming. Her favorites are JRPGs, and her favorite game is Final Fantasy X. She started playing the Final Fantasy series when she was eight, and hasn’t stopped since.

Jen has five bookcases in her house, and desperately needs more. Her favorite novel is Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and those two authors make up the top two spots on her favorite authors list. Among others are George R. R. Martin (if he’ll get down to writing), Garth Nix, Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne Rice, Jacqueline Carey, and Anne Bishop. She hopes someday to have her own novel stuffed on one of her overfilled shelves.

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Lord Fanny

Lord Fanny, also known as CJ, or possibly Charles, but never ever Chuck, likes to make a habit of trying everything at least twice, as the first time may have been a fluke. He learned to read from his older cousin’s Justice League of America comics, and wants to be a superhero when he grows up, which should be any decade now. Hopefully he’ll have developed superpowers by then. Something cool, like teleportation or invisibility… In the meantime, he’s working on a PhD in Literature, with a focus on comic books and superheroes.

LF/CJ loves to read, and given enough time and/or boredom will read quite literally anything, including shampoo bottles, cereal boxes, clothing tags, grocery receipts, and People magazine. His first literary love will always be comics and superheroes, but he also digs science fiction, role-playing game books, fantasy, horror, erotica, and basically anything weird or trippy.

LF/CJ also loves videogames, role-playing games, mixed martial arts (spectating, not participating!), music, and writing, both fiction and non-fiction. And monkeys. But who doesn’t love monkeys?

LF/CJ lives with his brilliant son in an interdimensional fortress hidden within a pocket universe, where there is rarely any traffic.

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Guest Contributors

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