Earlier today I reviewed the latest campaign from The Adventure Zone. One of my favorite characters from Graduation was The Firbolg, played by Justin McElroy. The Firbolg had no name and was a member of a forest-dwelling race of creatures able to communicate with nature. He was bluish and large, which makes sense since in Dungeons & Dragons Firbolg are half-giants. In the game, Firbolgs are reclusive and stay mainly with their groups in the forest but are formidable when it comes to magic and some weapons.

The post Mythology Monday: Who Were the Real Firbolg? appeared first on The Mary Sue.

It seems like just yesterday we were hyping the announcement of The Adventure Zone: Graduation and now the third major campaign in from the popular tabletop podcast has concluded after 38 episodes. So we want to take a minute to talk about the campaign, and what we loved and didn’t love about this trip to the Adventure Zone.

The post Grading <em>The Adventure Zone: Graduation</em> appeared first on The Mary Sue.

First up we have a newly discovered Kunpengopterus antipollicatus, but their friends call them Monkeydactyl! Monkeydactyl is a pterosaur; these reptilian dinosaur cousins were the first animals after bugs who developed powered flight. Think reptile bats. Monkeydactyl is unique however because it had something no other pterosaur had: opposable thumbs!

The post Porgs and Dinos and Monkeydactyls OH MY! appeared first on The Mary Sue.

Yesterday on the steps of the Supreme Court, Senator Ed Markey, flanked by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York, announced the introduction of a bill aimed at expanding the Supreme court from 9 to 13 seats. This was met with cries from the GOP of “court-packing” and Nancy Pelosi frustratingly said she would not bring the bill to the floor in congress.

The post Expanding the Supreme Court Is Normal and We Should Do It appeared first on The Mary Sue.

So. The Department of Defense confirmed that leaked images of three different “unidentified aerial phenomena” taken in 2019 are legitimate. The photos were taken by Navy personnel and show triangular objects blinking and moving through the sky. These objects were tracked and continue to be investigated but the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, the organization that currently investigates UFOs.

The post This Week In Space: The Pentagon Casually Confirmed More UFOs appeared first on The Mary Sue.

Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead completed most principle photography in 2019. At that time, the character of “Peters,” described as “a cynical helicopter pilot,” was played by comedian Chris D’Elia. Since filming wrapped, the now-41-year-old D’Elia has been accused by multiple people, including minors, of sexual misconduct, and just last month he was sued for possessing child porn and exploiting a minor. Long story short, Chris D’Elia is a piece of crap and not the kind of person you want in your movie.

The post Let’s Just Replace Every Terrible Man in the Movies With Tig Notaro appeared first on The Mary Sue.

We’re just over a week away from the debut of Shadow and Bone on Netflix, and fans of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels cannot wait to get a look at the world of Ravka, the shadow fold, and more onscreen. From the alleys of Ketterdam to the glittering halls of the Little Palace, Shadow and Bone has created a complicated fantasy world, but newcomers might be wondering what a “Grisha” even is.

The post Netflix Takes Us Inside the Grishaverse in a New <em>Shadow and Bone</em> Featurette appeared first on The Mary Sue.

A recently uncovered trove of artifacts in Wales has been officially designated as a treasure, meaning that the collection of  coins, rings, and other personal items which belonged to Welsh nobles from the 9th to the 17th must be given over to the staff at the National Museum of Wales. Among the horde was a gold finger ring from Carreghofa Community, Powys. Pictured above, the ring features a skull and is also engraved with the Latin phrase “memento mori.” It means “remember that you die.”

The post Welsh Treasure Trove Reminds Us of the Memento Mori appeared first on The Mary Sue.

Last we saw Odette Annable’s Geri on Walker, she was driving away from Austin after selling the side step bar, following the reveal that she somehow was involved in Emily Walker’s murder. Since then Liam Walker and Captain James have closed in on the real conspiracy behind Emily’s death and Cordell finally knows he was right to suspect there was more to her passing than he thought. This week Walker will track down a poker game where the killer may play only to find Geri. And things only get more awkward from there!

The post <em>Walker’s</em> Odette Annable Talks Geri’s Big Return appeared first on The Mary Sue.

Disney parks are making some much-needed changes. As the nation and world continue to unpack generations of racism, classism, homophobia, and other systemic inequities, the Disney company announced yesterday that the parks would be adding a new guiding principle to how they operate: Inclusion. This initiative will apply to all aspects of the Disney destinations, from updating rides to eliminate racist elements, as well as to cast members, specifically how they are allowed to present themselves at work.

The post Disney Parks Introduce New Inclusion Initiative, Will Allow Tattoos and Gender-Inclusive Costumes appeared first on The Mary Sue.

With eligibility expanding, millions of people are getting the COVID vaccine every day, which is wonderful news. But getting the vaccine isn’t without side effects: sore arms, fatigue, temporary flu-like symptoms are all common side effects that you will be warned about or hear about from the vaccine. But one side effect that you may not be warned about and which is just now being discussed is that the COVID vaccine seems to have an effect on menstrual cycles.

The post The COVID Vaccine Might Mess With Your Period appeared first on The Mary Sue.

Last week, the Supreme Court decided a case 6 to 2 that had huge implications for the tech industry. In the case of Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., the issue before the court was (to oversimplify) if it was okay for Google to use code created by Oracle in their own Android products. The court held that it was fine for Google to use the code as a matter of fair use.

The post An Expert Explains the Implications of the Google v. Oracle Case for Fanworks appeared first on The Mary Sue.

There’s no better way to get people mad on social media than a ranking. It really doesn’t matter what you rank, only that you say one thing is better than another, and boom, fight time. It’s a tale as old as the Apple of Discord but that doesn’t make the fights any less brutal or ranking any less annoying. Just take a new ranking of all 50 states that came out today from pollster YouGov which had everyone pretty mad.

The post Things We Saw Today: This Ranking of States Has Everyone Mad appeared first on The Mary Sue.

There’s a lot going on in the two trailers that have been released for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. The spots are packed with obscure DC heroes and villains and more explosions and gore than you can shake a javelin at, so one might be forgiven for not thinking too much about the literal big bad that’s revealed in the red band trailer with a tech yelping “We got a kaiju up in here!”

The post Who Is <em>The Suicide Squad’s</em> Starro, DC’s Killer Starfish? (From Space?!) appeared first on The Mary Sue.

I will admit that when I first heard the pitch “Vegas heist in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse” pitch for Army of the Dead my first instinct was to ask “But why? Who needs money in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?” Add on top of this inherent absurdity that the Netflix action film was directed by none other than king of dour superheroes Zack Snyder and I was less than sold. But you know what, the first full trailer for Army of the Dead is out today and it has completely changed my mind.

The post Zack Snyder’s <em>Army of the Dead</em> Looks Ridiculous and Fun? appeared first on The Mary Sue.

We’re just under two months away from the debut of Loki on Disney+, and while Tom Hiddleston isn’t giving away any plot details or spoilers (he’ll leave that to a different MCU Tom) in his first interview about the series with Empire Magazine, he did give audiences some tantalizing clues about what to expect from the series and how it will dig into Loki’s shape-shifting and trickster nature.

The post Tom Hiddleston Says <em>Loki</em> Series Will Dig Into the Character’s Identity appeared first on The Mary Sue.

One of the best things about Disney+ is that it’s brought the iconic animated show Gargoyles back into homes across the world. Gargoyles was revolutionary when it reigned in the 90s, with complex characters, a rich world of mythology, and a developing serialized story that we hadn’t seen much in “kid’s” animated shows before this. And it deserves a sequel animated series.

The post Please, Disney+, There’s Still Time For More <em>Gargoyles</em> appeared first on The Mary Sue.

Studying and writing about mythology can be a very frustrating thing. To mix philosophy in here, it’s often like the allegory of the cave because we’re not studying original deities or myths themselves, but instead the shadows they cast in history. When we look at a god from some cultures, we’re only seeing a small fraction of what the original story was. That’s the case with the Romano-Celtic goddess Epona.

The post Mythology Monday: Epona, The Celtic Goddess of Horses Who Conquered Rome appeared first on The Mary Sue.

Space is full of wonders, but the space around our planet is also increasingly filled with … junk. Pieces of defunct satellites and spacecraft litter the earth’s orbit and the more stuff that goes up into space, the more celestial litter we leave behind. And it’s not just annoying that humans can’t go anywhere without leaving garbage, this stuff is hazardous to the other stuff in space. And if two pieces of space junk collide? That’s downright dangerous.

The post This Week In Space: When Space Junk Collides appeared first on The Mary Sue.

It takes a lot to make a city disappear, but it does happen. Pompeii was famously erased by a volcanic eruption but the Egyptian city of Thebes (now Luxor) was partially lost to time for a different reason: a religious revolution led by the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Thebes was the capital of Egpyt for over 150 years, but it was abandoned as part of Akhenaten’s attempt to remake Egypt into a different image, and then much of the city was forgotten and lost until time. Until now.

The post A “Lost Golden City” Has Been Found In Egypt appeared first on The Mary Sue.