If you know your way around nerd neighbourhoods, you'll know Felicia Day.
Her acting work includes demon staking alongside the eponymous cult heroine of Joss Whedon's Buffy The Vampire Slayer and fighting the forces of role-playing evil in The Guild,her own award-winning online series creation.
Most recently she firmed her status as geek goddess playing socially senstivie songbird Penny in Whedon's trailblazing musical web serial, Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long-Blog.
But it's her work on The Guild, inspired by Felicia's experiences as a World of Warcraft player, that has in particular won this brilliant mind accolades from industry and high praise from gamers and audiences around the world.
Felicia writes, produces and stars in the series, available online at watchtheguild.com, and the show gives compelling, appealing voice to an endlessly fascinating sub-culture.
To top it all off, she can play a mean violin and knows her way around an equation (studying mathematics at university before becoming all super famous).
The lovely Felicia took time out from her latest project, developing a machinimaseries (that's a filmed narrative 'within' a gamescape or virtual world), to pose for our pin-up.
GI: What is your first memory of technology? The Internet?
FD: Technology? It had to be playing Zork on my Grandpa's Compaq "laptop" (it weighed 40 pounds, at least).
Earliest Internet memory, logging on through the University of Texas at Austin web browser and thinking, "Well, this is cool, is there somewhere to go outside the Library system with this thing?" Then I created a bad web page with a horrible photo of myself on it and some sick bubbly green wallpaper. Terrible choice.
GI: The Interwebs tell us you were homeschooled. What was that experience like? How did you find the transition to institutional learning in college?
FD: Going to college straight from being homeschooled wasn't that traumatic. I think I would have been more traumatized going from homeschooling to high school because it's so regimented and inflexible. At least in college you're able to make your own schedule and choose what you study to a certain extent. I took a crazy variety of classes and loved it because I love learning.
My dating life wasn't so good though because I started college at 16, so when guys found that out they were like, "That's cool, see ya in two years!". LOL!
GI: Why do RPG's and meta-verses appeal to you (and broadly, do you think, to us humans)?
FD: I moved around a lot as a child and I think I was pretty sheltered, so books and computer games were my way of escaping and having a feeling of independence. When you're in a fantastic environment you're not limited to reality, you can create your own world, which I still love doing.
Also I've always played RPGs that let me interact with other people (from MUDS to Diablo to WOW) so they're an important social outlet in my life. RPG's are a way to LIVE a story, not just watch it.
GI: Was The Guild a steep learning curve around content creation? What are you doing better since you began that work?
FD: Yes, it was very steep :) I think in short, I've learned to resist the urge to overcomplicate; with story, with business, with everything. Less is more.
GI: Can you tell us a bit about bringing Dr Horrible to life? What sort of schedule did the team work to? What was distinctive around Horrible's process versus more classical format shows?
FD: It was an insane schedule, six day shoot I believe? For something with stunts and music and a huge cast it was CRAZY! The great thing about the Horrible set was the infectious enthusiasm that started from the top and infused every part of production. No one was just showing up to do their job.
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GI Pin Up: Ella Morton
GI Rising Star: Tom Wood