It’s Mother’s Day this weekend, and while we’ve covered horrible moms and great moms, we thought we’d spend this week talking about moms who get to be the heroes. This list focuses on mothers who are also leading protagonists, not just supporting characters to others with bigger roles. Geekdom is full of secondary parental figures, usually there to advise, get killed for dramatic effect, or to rebel against. These moms, however, are front and center and waving their mom flags high, and even if they might not be the only protagonist in their story, their character development is just as much a part of the whole as the other characters.

Are you still smarting from director Patty Jenkins‘ ousting from Thor 2? Well, don’t hold your breath, because unless Lionsgate is hiding some female directors under their hat as their trump card for the rest of the Hunger Games franchise, that sinking feeling of despair that women never get to direct major franchise films isn’t going away any time soon! But we here at the Mary Sue can at least help dull the pain by reminding you that if you’re looking for talented female filmmakers, the odds actually are in your favor.

Are you hungry? Couldn’t you go for a nice, juicy, bodily organ right about now? Maybe raw? No? Huh. That’s weird, because everyone in this week’s power grid did just that. Some did it for fun, some for pleasure, some because they thought it would make them strong, and others, because they were just looking for a good meal. And no, these organs weren’t always of the animal variety.

The idea that evil is in the blood is an old one. Not quite as old as blood, but probably about as old as the knife. There are many religious philosophers that have put the concept of Original Sin under this heading, as representing “hereditary” evil tendencies in humankind.

So here’s to the fictional characters who didn’t just have abusive childhoods but out right megalomaniacal parents, who in many cases were grooming them so they could later inherit a dominated world… and turned out pretty okay anyway.

Last month, we did a list of ten female heroes who don’t wear costumes and don’t have super powers… even though most of the people around them (or the people or things they’re fighting) have one or the other. You guys seemed to really like it, which was nice, I mean that’s what we always strive for; but you also had a lot of good ideas to add to the list.

So, naturally, we decided we had to do another one.

There’s a concept on TV Tropes called Fridge Logic, which is what you call it when something totally makes sense at the time you were reading or watching it, but at some point after the viewing, maybe while you were idly staring into the fridge thinking of not much in particular, you realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with it. Sometimes it’s a plot hole, but sometimes it’s more subtle.

See, all the characters seemed super excited that they’d saved the day, and, carried away by acting and a strong orchestral score, you felt pretty good about it, too.

At least you did until now. Now you can’t remember why it seemed like they’d accomplished much of anything by defeating the bad guys…

Captain Janeway was referred to as “Sir,” despite clearly not being a man. Perhaps she was taking cues from Marcy from Peanuts, who called Peppermint Patty “Sir.” (Actually, it’s just military custom to refer to superiors as “sir,” no matter what gender they are.) And then Elizabeth Swann became the King of the Pirates. While women taking titles normally reserved for men shows up in fiction every once in a while, what’s more impressive is that it’s not a product of fiction — this happens in real life, more often than you’d think, and in pretty high places.

For Women’s History Month, we’ve taken a break from fictional female characters to put the spotlight on a few women who became significant rulers, even kings. Yes, kings. Not queens, not empresses, but kings.

Now that March is nearly upon us — less than 24 hours away, actually — it’s obvious that many of us are excited about The Hunger Games coming to theaters in just about three weeks. But one of the major elements of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy is how exceptionally ordinary the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is. She’s just a normal girl, thrown into a horrible situation, and then she handles the crap out of it. She sends a message that fantastical superpowers aren’t all that necessary if there is a battle afoot. Even an epically huge, life-or-death battle that concerns the welfare of a country, a planet, or even a universe.

This week, we’re talking about Katniss’ predecessors — superheroines of geekdom who don’t wear costumes, nor do they have superpowers. Some of them might be barely educated or inexperienced, some of them are wildly smart. But what they all have in common is that if you have them on your team in a fight, you will win. Hands down.

Whenever we hear about a movie being remade, or a book being turned into a movie that probably should just be left alone, or a TV show that has no business being made into a movie, the next thing we do, after swallow a small amount of bile, is wonder who will be cast in this abomination. Sometimes, you luck out (see: J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek). But sometimes, you cringe at the thought of who might be stepping into a role (see: M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar: The Last Airbender), or what childhood memories would be crushed next (21 Jump Street).

Since we’re gluttons for punishment, and sometimes stay up all night worrying about these kinds of things, we’re going to share 10 Worst Case Scenario movie adaptations and reboots of how Hollywood could go totally wrong.

Main characters are main characters for a reason, they get all the glory. Luke Skywalker defeated the Dark Side, the Doctor saved the universe again, Buffy prevented the apocalypse…or did they?

A famous story may fall to pieces if a minor, underestimated character is removed. Ender Wiggins was the only one who mattered in Ender’s Game. That is, until you read Ender’s Shadow and discovered Bean’s story. Then there’s those one-off characters who interact with a universe in such a way that if they were removed, the entire story would fall apart.

More often than not, it’s the little people who make the biggest difference and we’re here to show you how often “even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”