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1 day ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
The dragon. The ultimate boogeyman. A creature of untold dread and destruction that appears in ancient myths across the world. Beowulf has one! The Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish features another! Even The Bible features a seven headed dragon in the apocalyptic Book of Revelation! Honestly, if a mythology doesn’t feature a dragon of some kind, can it really be considered a mythos at all?
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1 day ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
While H.P. Lovecraft was responsible for popularizing one of the most profoundly terrifying genres of horror imaginable, he was also a total bigot. A xenophobic shut in, many of Lovecraft’s stories were inspired by his fear foreign cultures, and his racism is often reflected in his fiction. Plenty of modern authors have made superior contributions to cosmic horror, without any of the problematic views.
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2 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
The Odyssey. Beowulf. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Throw them all in the trash, those fantasy stories are old as dirt. It’s a new century, and with that comes a fresh crop of fantasy books destined to become timeless classics. While the 21st century still has 75 odd years to add new contenders to the pile, these novels are shaping up to be the very best of the modern era. Eat your heart out, Homer. Ancient Babylonian scribes and Viking mead hall singers, you guys can do the same.
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2 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Sometimes a villain has a point. Sometimes a villain is worthy of empathy. Sometimes a villain uses questionable means to justify a noble end. These villains? None of the above. These characters are the most vile, sadistic, depraved and unjustified villains in all of anime – the lowest of the low, the cruelest of the cruel. If story is only as good as its villain, you can consider each one of these titles a masterpiece.
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2 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Ahhhh 2024, a fine vintage for anime. Twenty years from now, the discerning connoisseur of the medium will surely point to these titles as the most potable of the annum. With palatable notes of high fantasy, historical, and far flung science fiction, these titles distinguish themselves from the competition – like Champagne compared to off-brand grape soda. Here they are, the 10 best anime of 2024 – certain to age like the finest wine.
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5 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
A fantasy book with no magic? That’s like a bagel without cream cheese! Cereal without milk! An owl without a graduation cap! Criminal! Heretical! An affront to nature! Or is it? Maybe fantasy books don’t actually need to be propped up by whacky magic systems, allowing author to focus on character building rather than enchanted swords and ponderable orbs. Maybe these authors are actually on to something here?
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6 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
While fantasy stories may send us flying off to realms far different than our own, one concept seems inescapable in even the most distant of lands: gender roles. Traditional fantasy stories are full of characters who defy traditional expectations of their assigned sex (consider the peasant girl to warrior pipeline, for instance) but rarely does a story feature a character who totally turns away from binary concepts as a whole.
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6 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
The Greeks. The OG myth makers. It’s impossible to overstate the influence that these fabled storytellers had on well, storytelling. Through tragic dramas, titanic poems, and word of mouth tales, the ancient Greeks were able to create a tapestry of legends that has draped itself over the imagination of the world. Their pantheons and parables are still beloved by modern minds, long the their ancient authors’ bones turned to dust.
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Did you yourself struggling to stay awake in high school history class, thinking that the Napoleonic Wars would be far more interesting if they involved… I don’t know, dragons? Maybe the all those political rebellions in 18th century England would have tickled your fancy better if they were fought by magical hot people? Perhaps Imperial Chinese history would have captured your imagination if you knew that there were prophecy fulfilling lesbians involved in the making of it?
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Are you looking for rock hard sci-fi? Sci-fi you could use to cut glass? Sci-fi so solid you could heave it through the tempered alumino-silicate glass pane separating a starship’s interior from the cold expanse of space, thereby causing explosive decompression as the internal atmosphere attempts to reach equilibrium with the external vacuum? I thought so. I’m sure an egghead like you already knows this, but hard sci-fi is a genre of fiction centered around scientific facts.
