PoP! Fangirl of the Month – December 2011

The PoP! Stars scour all of teh internetz in search of the most Fabulous Females of Fandom. Please keep it in your pants.

2011 is coming to a close, and with it, our final Fangirl of the Month…of the year! December on PanelsOnPages.com brings us a C2E2 cosplay fixture, X-Men fanatic, and hardcore geek, Tia! Show her a warm PoP!ulation welcome, but please…don’t say anything about that time Trini left the Power Rangers.

Things are still tender.

Name: Tia Rodemeyer
Handle: No handle…just Tia.
Birthdate: 07/07/1985
Location: Des Moines, IA
Marital Status: Eh…single.
Occupation: Cake Decorator, and part-time comic book shop girl.
Hobbies: Sewing, costuming, reading/collecting comics, painting, napping, and general crafting.

Favorite Movies: Star Wars, the Lord of The Rings trilogy, Cry-Baby, Hairspray, Little Monsters, the Harry Potter films.

Favorite TV Shows: Oh, gosh…well, I really like Curiosity on the Discovery Channel, but I generally like all the weird documentaries on Discovery and History Channel. Other than that, I like TV on DVD like Arrested Development, Flight of the Conchords, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, and Trueblood.

Favorite Music: Ah, ya’ know what? I just really like gypsy-type music. My favorite band is Beirut, but I also really love Johnny Flynn, Alasdair Roberts, and Boom Pam, Arcade Fire, Cursive, The Decemberists, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Tilly and the Wall.

Favorite Comics: Well, my pull box is comprised entirely of X-Men titles, and a few Deadpool titles. I also keep up with all the Green Lantern titles as well as American Vampire, Chew, RASL, iZombie, Sweet Tooth and sadly…Crossed. But, I’d say Nextwave will always be my favorite.

Favorite Video Games: I’m crap at nearly all video games…especially first-person shooters. The only game I’ve ever gotten good at was Mario Kart on Wii. I could pretty much destroy anyone at that. Honestly, I really prefer to watch people play big, epic video games.
However, I’ve just recently been gifted a PS3, and I’m trying SO hard to be good at Portal 2. Still too soon to tell if I’m a lost cause, but I’m giving it the ‘ol college try!

Favorite Books: Le Petit Prince, Anthem by Ayn Rand, the Harry Potter series, the His Dark Materials trilogy. I guess also really like reading different language textbooks.

Turn-Ons: Dark hair and dark eyes, positivity, musicians, easy-going attitudes, really great senses of humour, animals, airports, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and heroes.

Turn-Offs: Bad tempers, pretentiousness, negativity, complaining, facial hair, people who whine, and grumps.

PoP!: What makes you a Fangirl?

Tia: Ah, I guess you could say I’m a “Fangirl” in the purest form. I work at a comic book shop, and I have an absolute love for the medium. I’m also a pretty equal opportunity geek – while comic books are my first love, I don’t discriminate and continue to carry on relationships with other forms of fiction and sci-fi.

I’d say that the minute I started truly, truly, truly wishing I lived in the Marvel 616…that was the minute I became a proper Fangirl.

PoP!: How long have you been a Fangirl?

Tia: Oh, well, I’m sure everyone says it here, but, my fan-dom goes pretty far back. I can remember my mom taking my brother and I to the comic book shop to buy X-Men Fleer trading cards when I was about 12, and playing X-Men with my brothers ALL the time (we made X-badges out of paper plates). I began heavily re-reading comics about 5 years ago, and it’s been all downhill since then.

PoP!: Do you have a favorite childhood geek-memory?

Tia: Hm…’favorite’ will be used loosely in this instance, but, I was a HUGE Power Rangers fan back when the original series was on. Trini the Yellow Ranger was my absolute favorite, and I had managed to collect a whole lot of Yellow Ranger memorabilia. When Trini left the series, I was unbelievably devastated – it was SO unexpected! I never saw it coming! My siblings delighted in watching me mourn the loss of my favorite Ranger and started a chant “Trini’s off the showwww-owww! Trini’s off the showww-owww!” which just made me start bawling. I gathered all of my Ranger toys, posters, clothes, and EVEN my life-size Yellow Ranger standup, put them in a pile and dumped everything in the trash.

PoP!: Holy hell. That story is heartbreaking. Fangirl of the Month just got REAL.

…

What toys did you play with as a kid?

Tia: Oh, a pretty delightful mix of action figures (or ‘guys’ as they were known) that I shared with my brothers, Barbies, American Girls dolls, Power Ranger toys (editor’s note: Ouch.) , and My Little Pony’s when I was really young.

PoP!: What are your current Fangirl obsessions?

Tia: Ha! Um, well, I’ve been on a Harry Potter kick pretty hard for about 5 months. I can’t seem to surround myself with enough Potter things. Besides that, I’m pretty seriously into X-Men Schism, and all the fallout it’s going to bring to the team, as well as the 616. I’m completely Team Wolverine and the X-Men, and I’m really enjoying following where the story goes. Oh, and DC’s new Animal Man? F–king amazing. I can’t stop talking about it.

PoP!: What has been your biggest Geek-Out Moment?

Tia: Ah, meeting Clay Mann at C2E2 pretty much turned me into a puddle of geek-out gunk. I costumed as Dazzler from the brand new Age of X series, which Clay Mann designed the new costumes for. I had corresponded with him a bit on Facebook as I was assembling the costume, and made sure I had his blessing as I went along. Come to find out, and unbeknownst to me, Clay Mann is one of the hottest men I’ve ever seen, and I ended up just turning to idiot mush whenever I got around him. He was never particularly chatty, so I ended up spouting a lot of non-sensical verbal diarrhea.

PoP!: Mush, puddles of gunk, diarrhea…ma’am, you’re in the right place.

Besides the aforementioned Clay Mann, what is your wildest Fangirl dream?

Tia: I suppose it’d be sleeping with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And Warren Worthington (Angel NOT Archangel form). And Harry Potter. And Ron Weasley. And Lee Adama. And Luke Skywalker.

Not all at the same time.

PoP!: Of course. But you’re going to have to double up on a few of those…I mean…who has that kind of time? I’m sure there’s some slash-fiction out there that might suggest Harry and Ron would be down for something like that.

Usually, this is the part of the interview where we get “real”, but we passed that marker at Question #3.  You don’t seem to mind telling us what you really thing, so, Tia, how do you feel about the current Geek Girl renaissance?

Tia: Beh – I really try and stay out of it, and not get too personal, or offended by any of it. Obviously, it’s really irritating to watch girls who can’t make it as ‘real’ models pop on a Batman tee-shirt, snap a few photos on an X-Box and take the mountains of male attention as a springboard to some pathetic form of celebrity…but, at the end of the day, who really gives a crap, right? I’ve never encountered any negativity because of my hobbies or what I like, and beyond that, I’ve never encountered any negativity from people assuming I’m one of ‘those’ girls who is just looking for attention, and not costuming because I’m a real fan. The fact that ‘geek girl’ is becoming an accepted, even lauded, trend is really lost on me. I just don’t want the stigma hanging over me, assuming I’m some fetish model, or nude-y, slutty girl. And, ESPECIALLY the stigma that I’m not a real fan.

I mean, I know that I can recite the entire history and alternate timelines of any character I costume as, and I can go to a convention and hold my own in a conversation about any comic book or sci-fi series, and of course, I can wax poetic about my favorite artists and writers, what their best works were and the differences between their past work and recent stuff, so I really don’t have anything to prove. But, as far as the ‘costume celebrity’ crap…I’d really rather be known as an impressive seamstress than for how many Twitter followers I’ve got.

PoP!: Boom. ^That is the correct answer.

How has being a Fangirl affected other aspects of your life?

Tia: It’s pretty much taken over at this point. I have other interests, sure, but for the most part, I just really prefer to be identified for what I like most. I choose to surround myself with various forms of geekery, and it’s not having a negative impact on my life, so I’ve really got no reason to pretend I’m not just a big, stupid geek. Right?

PoP!: Damn straight. We here at PoP! pride ourselves on being big, stupid geeks, and like to surround ourselves with like-minded individuals. That being said, if they’re so inclined, where can The PoP!ulation find you on the interwebs?

Tia: You can find me on Facebook. I think that’s it. I mean, you can Google me and find me there. I’ve got a Google+ and Twitter account that I never use.

PoP!: There you have it, PoP!ulation. Stalk gently.

Thanks to Tia for taking part in this month’s Fangirl of the Month interview, and for helping us end the year strong! 

Speaking of ending the year, it’s that time again for a new PoP! Fangirl of the Month Calendar, and Tia is featured as our December Fangirl, with art by Sean Forney! Preorder the calender now and save $3!

–Knize

Filed Under: Fangirl of the Month • Features

Tags: calendar, cosplay, Dazzler, fangirl, featured, jewel, kick-ass, Kitty Pryde, lois, tia