Mary Beth Beckman

Caption Editor

Mary Beth came into this world a week late, and perhaps that has something to do with something. As a materialist determinist, she imagines it set in motion a great many unavoidable things, such as her love for everything Joss Whedon has ever created, Placebo music  (but not Placebo marketing, and certainly not Placebo fans), Harry/Draco fan fiction, coffee, linguistics, Peter S. Beagle's A Fine and Private Place, and being persnickety about other people’s grammar.

For Mary Beth, it is a recent revelation that Battlestar Galactica is, in fact, the best show ever made, and she will never be able to decide which character she has the biggest crush on, but she upholds that Helo is what every Hufflepuff should aspire to be. (Crossover fic, anyone?) She also enjoys long sentences, no matter how irritating they may be to caption.

Before delving into BSG, Mary Beth spent months hard at work plowing through all of the Star Trek series (except for TAS, which hardly counts). As an anomaly, Deep Space Nine is by far her favorite, and the irony of being an atheist who loves DS9 and BSG has not escaped her. She has very detailed reasons for considering herself a “Trekker” and not a “Trekkie,” which you can ask her about at any time. She wants you to know that there’s a lot to learn from Star Fleet’s socioeconomic model. (Furthermore, Jacques Fresco is a genius. Check out The Venus Project.)

MB, and you can call her MB, tries not to be too preachy about the things she cares about, which include (but are not limited to): social equality, non-GMO/organic food, feminism (she authors a feminist blog), and communication. Seriously, she flips for meta-conversation.

Also, she argues that Standard (now known as Ballroom) is the only style of ballroom dance with the potential for truly objective judging, and therefore it is the only legitimately competitive style. Trust her; she edits the Minnesota Dancing Times.

She has been a linguistic determinist since she learned what the term meant, and will happily tell you why gendered pronouns have ruined society and need to be done away with immediately.

Stuff too unrelated to put into a sentence: ex-clarinetist, ex-drum major, St. Thomas graduate, studier of Spanish and Latin (guess which one she’s actually good at), aunt, squeamish about marriage, Slytherin, ESTJ.

And nerdy. Don’t forget about nerdy.