Nerds, and Geeks, and Dorks! Oh, My!

This post is also a result of my Oscars bet (see my previous post). @Ebenn27 got to pick the topic of a blogpost. Essentially this post is about awesome nerdy/geeky/dorky women and awesome characters that nerdy/geeky/dorky women love and fangirl over. Awesome post idea, right?
You might be thinking, "But MormonLesbian, there are SO many women like that fit into one of those two categories." This is true. And that is why this is the first post of a series.

So, yeah, don’t hate me if I failed to include your favorite nerd/geek/whatevs in this post. Just calm your face and wait for the next nerd post. But feel free to still complain about in the comments section. And if you don’t think a certain lady belongs in the post, also feel free to complain. Or, you know what, just deal with it and keep it to yourself.

Okay, first, let’s quickly talk about the differences between nerd, geek, and dork.
Let’s consult Merriam-Webster...
*A ‘nerd’ is: “an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits.”
Example:
On my bookshelf:
Are those issues of the Institute of Food Technology's magazine and peer-reviewed psychology journals? Yep.
*With ‘geek,’ some of us learned the delightful definition of “a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake” in elementary or middle school when we looked it up in the dictionaries that sat in the wire baskets underneath our desks (well, that’s where our dictionaries were at my middle school... I don't know your life). Merriam-Webster's third definition is the one that is most relevant to this post: “an enthusiast or expert, especially in a technological field or activity.”
Example: I have an SNES and a GBA emulator on my phone.
*Merriam-Webster simply states that “nerd” and “jerk” are synonymous with “dork.” Also, my research said that dorks take social awkwardness to an extreme and often smell bad.
Example: I take creepy/molesty pictures with statues. It's awkward, but hilarious. And it makes the people around me when I take the pictures feel awkward too.

Here’s a nice little Venn Diagram:
(find it here)

Anywho, let's enjoy some ladies!

Allison Scagliotti

I totally did NOT recognize her as Mindy Crenshaw from Drake & Josh... Because I didn't watch that show... *cough*
Sci-fi geeks know her as Claudia Donovan from Warehouse 13.
And she is a self-proclaimed comics geek :)
Who doesn't love an adorable redhead?

Tina Fey

What would a post about awesome hot nerds be without Tina Fey/Liz Lemon? Without her, we wouldn't have words for when we 'lizz' or 'snart.' And she told us how we too can ride the fart train to work (eating Raisin Bran until four in the morning). She plays The Sims (And learned: "When a child doesn’t see his father enough he starts to jump up and down, then his mood level with drop until he pees himself."). She's a musical theater nerd (It's gonna be a Mamma Mia!). She plays online Boggle, which you shouldn't play into the wee hours of the night... it messes with your head. "STAR... RATS... ARTS... TARS..."
It really wasn't fair for Liz Lemon to be on a jury since she's a hologram...

Lucy Lawless

Which nerdy/geeky lesbians (and even some straight girls) haven't fangirled over Lucy Lawless at one point? She's mother effing Xena! AND Number Three on Battlestar Galactica. And most recently, she's on Spartacus (not my cup of tea, but whatevs) and No Ordinary Family (I still need to catch up on that business...).
Can we just look at her legs in that left photo? That's just super hot to me.
(Battlestar Galactica does have a special place in my heart because of its Mormon roots and references [especially in the original series], which make me laugh.)

Tricia Helfer

Number Six from Battlestar Galactica... I have quite a few straight friends that would totally go gay for Helfer. (I had to include the Chuck pics because... dayum. I mean, very hot on BSG, but really... all I can think is how dying her hair platinum blonde made her hair fall out and then she had to wear a wig... Did we not learn anything from Marilyn Monroe?)
Helfer has also voice acted in quite a few video games, including that bitch Sarah Kerrigan in Starcraft 2. I mean, what's Starcraft...?

Grace Park

Continuing on with BSG hotties, it's Number Eight. And Grace Park is Korean (if you couldn't tell from her last name...), and we all know how awesome Koreans are ;)
And look how ridiculously skinny she is...

Katee Sackhoff

Not only was she Starbuck on BSG, but Sackhoff was in that not-so-great show Bionic Woman. And now she's some kind of someone (Wikipedia says she's an insensitive investigator... because that's never been done before...) on CSI (Do people still watch this show?).

Kandyse McClure

Aside from being Dualla on BSG, Kandyse has had guest appearances on loads of geeked over shows: Smallville, Andromeda, Dark Angel, Sanctuary.
And she has super pretty eyes...

Mary McDonnell

Who doesn't love Mary McDonnell? President Laura Roslin on BSG--her and President Palmer (24) being my favorite TV presidents. Dr. Dixon on Grey's Anatomy taught us about the calming effects that deep pressure have. Captain Sharon Raydor on The Closer, who we thought was a bitch at first because of her initial interactions with Brenda Leigh but now we love their friendship and the lesbian subtext.

Alessandra Torresani

Did you know that before she was Zoe Graystone on Caprica that she was the first Ann Veal on Arrested Development before Mae Whitman? Yeah, I didn't know either until writing this post... I mean, I knew there were two Blands (like there were three Martas), but I didn't she was the other Egg.
In real life, Alessandra has a black belt in taekwondo, which is kinda less nerdy and kinda more awesome.

Carrie Fisher

I really have nothing more to say than: Princess.Leia.
Oh wait, also her mom is Debbie Reynolds, which is ridiculously amazing.

Natalie Morales

I only watched the pilot of The Middleman, but I liked it. I didn't have a TV at the time or I probably would have watched it and been devastated when it was canceled.
But you should watch her being a lesbian with her co-star from The Middleman, Brit Morgan, in this music video for David Lynch's "I Know."

Felicia Day

Felicia Day is ridiculously nerdy. National Merit Scholar. College at 16 with a double major in mathematics and music performance (violin)--I mean, you hear that and you think Asian (I don't care if this statement makes me sound racist. Everyone's A Little Bit Racist...). Valedictorian. She has been on Buffy and Dollhouse. And she's a hardcore gamer, which is the basis for The Guild (credited as an actor, writer, and producer). And I think I need to post another Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog song :)



Soooo, this is the part I'm kinda most excited about... :D

Twitter Nerds

I asked on Twitter if some of the fabulous nerds, geeks, etc. that follow me on Twitter wanted to be in this blogpost (another brilliant idea from @ebenn27). If so, they were just supposed to submit a picture of their awesome nerdy selves and talk a little bit about what makes them so nerdy fabulous.

@ebenn27

She's who to thank for this post!
Aaaand she wrote a post on her blog about being a nerd: here.

@Doom_Kitteh

Note the Serenity jacket and the Cheshire Cat scarf ;)
If you follow her on Twitter, you will see her tweets about all the video games she plays. Also, she has boxes full of books, watches anime, and loves corny jokes.

@Gappy45

First off, she's Mormon too, which is awesome. Aaaand Mormons are often nerdy (if I had a dollar for every socially awkward Mormon nerd/geek/dork I've met... I'm so not saying that @Gappy45 is socially awkward!)
She owns almost every important Disney movie (and, well, she has classified Disney movies as being 'important' or 'unimportant'...) and she refuses to watch Disney sequels. She wants to grow up to be Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender. She only eats the cartoon character mac and cheese because it "makes it taste better."

@elyima

Her Twitterpic is her with Sara Ramirez, which is SUPER AWESOME.
Anywho, she's a Web Developer and "can program in 9 or so different languages." She co-moderates a community of over 2000 Calzona fans, and loves just about everything that combines techie stuff with fangirling. She is a musical theater nerd and "majored in theater first actually, then went back for the 'real' stuff." And she checks all of her social networks on her phone before she gets out of the bed in the morning (Wait... Are there people that DON'T do that?!).

@msanimanga

Note the Pokemon cards and the Teen Titans comic...
She's a self-proclaimed television, writing, Pokemon, and photo/art nerd. She still collects Pokemon cards. And she owns a lightsaber and Nerf guns.

@TTownAmstaff

And if her Halloween costume doesn't tell you enough... She's teaching a politics and film class in the fall using BSG. She plays live team trivia every Tuesday night and they always win. Aaaand she's been to two Chicago Comic-Cons.

@MormonLesbian

Oh goodness... I could bore you for years about how nerdy I am...
*I'm a music geek. Some people only have 3042 songs on their iPod... I have 3042 artists and I add a lot more every month... I've got everything from country to showtunes to rap to classic rock to Shibuya-kei to Québécois neo-trad.
*When I was a wee tot (well, 5-13), I read A LOT. Every week, I would go to the library and check out 25 books (the limit) and read them all. This rate meant that I read a lot of things earlier than I should have... (e.g., I read Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal when I was 11).
I don't read that much anymore, but, you know, it still happens... Aside from the limited selection of crappy teen fic, the classics, and more modern lit. on my bookshelf here at school, most of my books are nerdy non-fic.
Nerdy hipster books:
(Chuck Klosterman... Issues of McSweeney's [which isn't non-fiction, but whatevs]... And I have all of David Sedaris's nonfiction works)
I also have books about history, politics, sociology, psychology, etc.
A small selection:
Yeah, I'm cool like that.