Half a Moon: 14 Days of Celebrating Women

First: hi! I've hung out in the Unpopular Women Love Posts a couple times previously, and this year I come bearing... I don't know what yet.

But first, I come bearing a Warehouse 13 fandom primer. I was considering doing it anyway, and then there was Myka in one of the new headers! (She's third from the right on the red one; Claudia's first on the left on the blue header.)

Warehouse 13 is slated to begin airing its third season in July. It was one of the Big Premieres to go along with the Sci-Fi Channel's name-change to Syfy, and it's been their best-rated original show to date.

The show follows two Secret Service agents who, after saving the president from an assassination attempt, are reassigned to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota. But it's not all it seems at first glance: Warehouse 13 is the latest iteration in a loooong line of places set up to collect various things that don't behave according to the laws of nature as we know them.

And while the Artifact-hunting element is a big part of what makes the show tick, it wouldn't be half as fun without the awesome character interactions, and many of those characters are awesome ladies:

*Myka Bering (played by Joanne Kelly): Bookish, rules-oriented, fond of logic, tightly wound and slow to trust at first, took fencing lessons as a girl, has a keen eye for detail. She goes from saying 'I'm too valuable to be wasted here' in the pilot to thinking of the Warehouse as her personal happiest place on Earth by the end of S2. (There's a cliffhanger to that effect.)

*Mrs. Frederic (played by CCH Pounder): Not exactly in charge of the whole show, but she's the most seen of the management level. Hasn't aged in at least 50 years (probably longer); usually pops up behind the person she wants to talk to and disappears just as quickly; has a Very Important Connection to the Warehouse.

*Leena (played by Genelle Williams): Runs the B&B that most of the core characters live in. Has some kind of psychic aura-reading thing that hasn't been fully explained going on. Got used as a mole by the S1 Big Bad Guy, and has since regained her agency. Hasn't been in the show nearly as much as she deserves, partly due to contract size (which rumor has it is bigger for S3) and partly because Genelle was pregnant during S2's filming (which I don't at all mind not being written in, given the implications).

*Claudia Donovan (played by Allison Scagliotti): Enters the show by hacking into the Warehouse and kidnapping one of the agents to get his help in getting her brother unstuck from the interdimensional space he teleported himself into when she was a kid. Techno whiz-kid, probably too smart for her own good, likes poking the Artifacts to see what they'll do, getting used to really having a family for the first time in years.

*H.G. Wells (played by Jaime Murray): Given name Helena; her brother, as she puts it, 'supplied the mustache' for publishing purposes. Former Warehouse 12 agent and major plot-catalyst in S2; whether she'll be back in S3 remains to be seen. Has some Issues stemming from her daughter's murder. Also, she's bi. (Myka/HG is one of the main fandom pairings, and this little tidbit just made it more so.)

There are also a number of awesome female guest stars, including the Warehouse-business doctor and a former agent who still kicks ass at 80. The guys are awesome too, don't get me wrong, but Syfy could just as easily have given us another Show About Guys. Instead, they gave us some brilliant ladies who in fact outnumber the guys.

Fannish hubs include warehouse13 and fic_warehouse; there's also endless_wonder on DW and a fandom tag on AO3.