The Mary Sue Squad: A Pop Culture Podcast

A hardened criminal stalks the streets of Ketterdam with his crew, and he just so happens to shop at Hot Topic. In this episode, we dig into Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and discuss real MVP Inej, Nina x Matthias, and how deep our love for Jesper runs (real deep). Don't worry - we get into it. 

For many of us, college is a cringey coming of age and a stress-fueled reality check. Fangirl manages to represent this perfectly, albeit more charmingly. Heads up: there’s a lot of discussion of fanfic - hope you know your Omegaverse, because we get into it.

Oh, Nannerl. History did you dirty, but fortunately Marie Lu's fantasy novel, The Kingdom of Back, is here to put you centerstage where you should've been all along. In this episode, we discuss Wolfgang's lesser-known sister, the child-prodigy Anne Marie, and the fantasy world they created together as we struggle to pronounce German. Don't worry - we get into it.

A kick-ass heroine with hair that gets curlier the more magical she becomes, an enemies-to-lovers romance, West African-inspired magic, and giant, rideable cats: this book is so friggin awesome it's unfair to ask us to sum it up with a pithy description. In this episode, we review Tomi Adeyemi's critical triumph Children of Blood and Bone. We discuss representations of violence in YA, the real-wor...

It's all fun and games until someone grows a second spine. In this episode, we take a walk on the wild side of YA literature with Rory Power's novel Wilder Girls . We talk body horror, female representation in survivalist novels, and whether or not the dinghy has sailed on Hetty and Reese's relationship—don't worry, we get it into it.

Welcome to the sexiest court of the fey! We dissect the journey of the main protagonist, Feyre, as she navigates the magical (and terrifying) world of Fairy. We discuss depictions of sexuality in the YA genre, gendered power dynamics in fantasy, and whether or not Tamlin was worth the effort. Don't worry - we get into it.

Is The Hunger Games a feminist novel? Three twenty-somethings weigh in on dystopian tropes in YA, Katniss's issues with her mother, and how perfectly (or imperfectly) cast the movie was. Don't worry—we get into it.