International Women’s Day with The Geekiary’s Editors!

Although The Geekiary is going ‘dark’ tomorrow as part of the “Day Without A Woman” for International Women’s Day, we still wanted to do something to *mark* the day.

Although our bios are available year-round on The Geekiary’s Team page, we decided that it would be fun to give you a bit more background on some of our editors! While not everyone was able to participate, Admin Angel, myself (Tara), Jamie, Khai, and Bekah had fun choosing from a pretty long list of questions, and we hope you enjoy getting to know us a little better!

ANGEL

So many fandoms. What’s your main one?

My main fandom seems to shift frequently, but right now I’m knee deep in the Yuri on Ice fandom.  I participated in the the Katsudon Mini Bang, got to interview Johnny Weir, and will be hosting a panel on Yuri on Ice at KawaiiKon.  I feel that this one is going to stick with me for a long time.

As a fangirl, what are you most proud of?

Besides being the admin of The Geekiary and getting to interview so many awesome people, I’m most proud of my Gishwhes team.  Team Subtext has been runners up every single year that they’ve announced runners up.  I personally have more runner up medals than any other player (my team has fluctuated slightly each year).  Someday I hope to win.  Once that happens, THAT will be my proudest fangirl moment.  I love my team like family.

What are you involved in outside of fandom?

I am currently the website administrator and a member of the outreach committee for the March for Science Hawai’i.  I’ve marched in the Women’s March, plan to participate in the Tax March on April 15th, and will be wearing red and abstaining from unpaid work on March 8th in honor of the Day Without A Woman.  So basically, I’m very politically active.  I also run my own blog, where I talk about things that might not fit on The Geekiary.

TARA

Do you have a favorite quote or personal motto?

I kind of have both? My personal motto evolved from something a college acquaintance who passed away at a young age once said, and while I can’t say I’ve always succeeded at living this way, that motto is:
Be the adventure
the love story
the success
you dream

As for a quote, I first saw The Last Unicorn at a very young age, and while this particular line didn’t jump out at me when I first heard it nearly twenty years ago, when I heard it again years later I wrote it down and have kept it with me in some form or another ever since:
“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed.”

While I certainly didn’t have many sorrows or burdens as a child, by the time I revisited this quote that had changed…and as the years have passed I’ve added to those sorrows and burdens (or they’ve been added to). I’m not saying I necessarily have any ‘greatness’, but I’ve certainly tried to use my sorrows and burdens to help others who have the same or similar ones, and without having been through what I’ve been through, I wouldn’t have that level of insight at all.

Where are you from, where do you live, where would you like to live?

I grew up in Connecticut and I’m proud to be a New England/Connecticut native! I’ve lived several other places over the years (including a brief stint in Massachusetts and a couple of years in south-central Virginia); at the moment I reside in the Orlando, Florida area. However, most of my adult years were spent in Greenville, South Carolina, and I miss it *a lot*. It’s a beautiful little city with affordable living, good restaurants, great hiking nearby…I could go on and on (and yes, it helps that my family and several close friends still live in that area). That said, other places I would love to live are Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans, although only if I could afford to live in the historic districts and run my own bed and breakfast or something of the sort.

How do you share your fandom(s) with others?

I attend conventions, cosplay from my fandoms, and talk about them on panels. I write about them both for The Geekiary (and share those posts on my personal social media!) and on my own blog – find me all over the web: @ageeksaga !

Beyond that, I’m the type of person who is constantly gushing to my friends about what I’m reading or watching. I have countless clothing items (t-shirts, dresses, socks, sweaters, and more) that show off the fandoms I love, everything from Lilo & Stitch and Steven Universe to Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica.

And you know, probably most important of all, I host events and run conventions themed around some of the fandoms I belong to…for instance, I founded and organize Ice & Fire Con, the first ever US-based convention themed around A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.

JAMIE

What was your first fandom?

There are a lot of things I was super into when I was younger, but we didn’t have internet until I was 16, so I count Star Trek: Enterprise as my first fandom. That was the first thing that ever got me involved in online fandom (message boards and things like that), and that’s the first fandom I ever wrote fic for. I was a huge Trip/T’Pol shipper – I even have a Trip Tucker ornament!

What’s your Hogwarts house, and why?

I’m a Ravenclaw! I immediately identified with Ravenclaw when I first read the books in college. I always liked school and learning. My mother was a history major and family vacations involved things like touring Civil War battlefields or visiting museums. I also consider myself to be pretty creative – I self-published a novel and recently I took up origami. I like puzzles, and trivia, and learning new things.

Who is your role model?

Same as probably many, many women in the world: Carrie Fisher. She overcame so much and accomplished so many things, and she was finally able to get to a point where she just didn’t care what anyone thought about her. I hope to get there myself some day.

KHAI

What was your first fandom?

Star Wars, hands down. I was in a lot of early AOL chatroom RPGs, I wrote fic, I played tabletop Star Wars, I collected the Star Wars Insider magazine and all the comics I could find – pretty much everything that was available at that time. Honorable mentions go to The Sentinel and The Pretender, because (though they’re both a little problematic when I watch them now) those were the first niche fandoms I really resonated with.

What’s your Hogwarts house, and why?

I consistently test into Gryffindor. My first instinct when I see something wrong is to fight it somehow. I probably made my supervisors’ lives hard in the Army because I wouldn’t let things go. “What do you mean, females need 2 battle buddies when males only need 1? Eat my shorts, sir.” (FWIW, there were a lot of Gryffingals in my unit, because that rule lasted precisely thirty seconds before we collectively laughed it off.)

What are you involved in outside of fandom?

I work as a freelance copywriter. I just got a really fun new client (copywriting isn’t always fun) and I’ve been having a good time working with them. In my free time I volunteer with a crisis intervention chatline and as webmaster for the charity that trained my service dog. I’m also on the board of governors of my neighborhood association, because I am secretly an old lady.

BEKAH

What was your first fandom?

I guess I’ve always been into Disney and Peter Pan (the book, not the Disney movie), but my earliest broad reaching fandom that I can remember is The Lord of the Rings. My Dad read The Hobbit to my brother and I growing up. When the Fellowship of the Ring hit VHS in August 2002 I watched it and fell in love with it. I read all the books before seeing The Two Towers in theaters. My Dad passed his nerdiness down to me through those books. I was twelve years old and the fangirling only intensified from there.

What community on The Walking Dead would you belong to? Why do you think you’d be with them?

If we’re being realistic, I’d be dead. But that aside, I think I would be with the Kingdom simply because I like King Ezekiel and hello, a pet tiger? Count me in!

How has being a fangirl impacted your life for the better?

Belonging to a fandom has always helped me to keep my head above the water in my most difficult times. I met and bonded with some of the most incredible people because of our shared fandoms. Imagining myself as my favorite heroine got me through some of the darkest months and years of my life. I’ve felt safe in my fandoms and it’s there that I have made my family.

What about you, readers? Do you have any answers you’d like to share to the questions asked above? Are you participating in the International Women’s Day without a woman? If so, please leave your answers in the comments! (And don’t forget to have fun with them!)

Author: Tara Lynne

Tara Lynne is an author, fandom and geek culture expert, and public speaker. She founded Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones convention in the US, and now runs its parent company Saga Event Planning.

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