Being a teenager can really suck. You’re at the cusp of having to make major life decisions about college and possibly moving away from home. There’s the stress of school and various personal and social milestones. Hormones are zinging around everywhere. And for eight hours a day, five days a week you’re crammed together with tons of other people going through the same thing.

Some people handle it more gracefully than others, though. Well, some fictional characters do, anyway. To that end, here are 9 Female Characters We Wish We’d Been More Like In High School. Sometimes it’s their attitude we admire, other times it’s their resilience or their morals or just the circumstances of their lives. Regardless, these are some pretty awesome teens.

Did you watch the Oscars last night? Here’s our take on the 7 geekiest moments of the show.

Depending on whom you ask, tomorrow might be Valentine’s Day, Singles Awareness Day, or Day-Before-Discount-Candy-At-Duane-Reade Day. Like it or not, romance is a big deal tomorrow, at least if you’re in the States. And to, er, celebrate, I decided to write about movies and TV shows that don’t have any romance. Sadly, there aren’t as many of them as you might think.

The holiday season is upon us, and with that comes the joy—or stress, depending on how you look at it—of giftgiving. If you’re not quite sure about that perfect gift for your parent/sibling/friend/significant other/etc., you might find yourself tempted to resort to the dreaded gift card. But, dear reader, we believe in you. We know that you have it in you to do better. But everyone needs a little help, and that’s where our Holiday Gift Guide comes into play.

Whether the giftee in question is a comics geek, a film geek, an animation geek, whatever—there’s something to be found for them on this list. You can thank us later.

Bear with us, non-American readers: Thanksgiving is tomorrow, at least in the U.S., and it’s made us at The Mary Sue contemplate the variety of things from this year we’re thankful for.

From comics to movies to cosplay and other con-related fun, here’s just a sample of what has made us happy to be geeks in 2012. Getting a bit sappy for a moment, this list is dedicated to the thing we’re most thankful for: Our readers. Well, second most thankful. There’s Batman, after all.

Halloween’s about dressing up and eating candy (and, for many adults, getting incredibly drunk). But that doesn’t have to be all it’s about. Back in 2010 Neil Gaiman suggested a new Halloween tradition of giving away a scary book to a friend on that most spooky of holidays. Since then that basic idea has evolved into All Hallow’s Read, and we here at The Mary Sue are supporting it by highlighting eight of our favorite literary horror heroines. All of the books we’ve mentioned here—including one by Gaiman himself, which is only fitting—come with the TMS stamp of approval if you want to participate in the AHR tradition of book-gifting.

Depending on which universe you live in, monster hunting can be lucrative business. Or not so lucrative, as the Ghostbusters have discovered from time to time. Monsters are, well, monstrous, and not many people can claim affection for them. So what’s a person to do? Kill them, of course! Some of the hunters we’ve included on this list work for an organization and/or get paid for their trouble, but most hunt down creatures of the night for revenge, for fun, or for some combination of both.

Sometimes good guys are actually “good” guys. They treat people well, they help old ladies across the street, their good intentions are matched by their positive (not necessarily chipper or anything, but at least nice) personality.

And sometimes good guys are just jerks.

Shopping for a Halloween costume can be a somewhat disheartening experience for a woman. There’s the sexy nurse, the sexy pirate, the sexy Chewbacca (oh yes, it exists). But what if all you really want to do is dress up as an awesome lady, and not necessarily in a way that exposes your skin to the brisk October air?

There are plenty of options; you just probably won’t find them in your local costume store. So we at The Mary Sue have assembled our own list of geek girl costume ideas, split evenly between pop culture and history, the latter courtesy of Take Back Halloween, an unparalleled resource for those who A) like kick-ass ladies from history and B) want to know how to dress up as them.

With a new official image from upcoming sequel prequel (?) The Wolverine surfacing all over the nerd ‘Net – not to mention announcements about the sequel prequel (ok, we need a word for these) to X-Men: First Class – it got me thinking about my favorite group of neurotic post-humans and how things are going for them at the box office. While the fact that we even need a word for the sequel to a prequel makes me want to burn my film degree and run screaming into the woods… it’s also a symptom of the larger diseases plaguing the X-franchise.