Unwise Girls

The Hammer of Thor, ch. 21 to 25 Time to shred some wicked pipe! This week on Unwise Girls, we're bringing a brand new energy in as we enter the brand new world of Alfheim. We discuss elf physics, language across the World Tree, the possibility of Riordan's view on cops shifting over the years, the inescapable trap of being considered a second-class citizen, well-pissing and stone-playing, what th...

The Hammer of Thor, ch. 16 to 20 This week on Unwise Girls, we've found the cure for Rick Riordan's Second Book Sucks Ass Syndrome! Let's turn up the heat as we talk about making concessions to combat, (not) giving family a chance, Hearth getting to be a character with complex emotions, Kylo Ren, self-censorship, bottom-of-the-shelf miracles, why Loki as a cackling villain is actually starting to...

jane got sick so no episode this week :( listen to the first episode of our iron blooded orphans coverage instead! if you like it, you can find the full season 1 on patreon RIGHT NOW!!! here's the old episode description: cw: even by Gundam standards, Iron-Blooded Orphans is pretty grim! we're going to be discussing child soldiers, war crimes, dehumanisation, fascism, colonialism, suicide, and PTS...

The Hammer of Thor, ch. 11 to 15 This week on Unwise Girls, we discuss some serious historical gender diagrams, tie up some loose ends from the first book, weirdly true-to-life transphobia, reconciling religion in the reality of Rick Riordan, totalizing Jack exhaustion, the great funnel of history, and a confirmation of the world's greatest love story. Come back next week for The Hammer of Thor, c...

The Hammer of Thor, ch. 6 to 10 This week on Unwise Girls, we're kind of stumped. Rick Riordan... provided us with free material for the Not Cishet segment? Well, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth! This week we discuss the introduction of our new favorite character Alex Fierro, a new set of celebrity einherji, Magnus's clunky writing style, what happens behind Loki and Randolph's closed doo...

The Hammer of Thor, ch. 1 to 5 We're finally back to books, hooray! And it's good!! This week on Unwise Girls we discuss returning to the edge, low-level superhero shenanigans, sword characterization, goat-killer theories, a total reframing of how we think about this book (and, surprisingly, Kane Chronicles?), discomfort with re-entering a society that previously abandoned you, mourning a guy that...

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, S1E7 to S1E8 Ask not what Disney can do for you, but what you can do for Disney. This week on Unwise Girls, Audrey joins us once again as we finally finish the Percy Jackson TV show's first season. We talk about the good, the bad, and the profoundly unsatisfying as we go over action that rules versus action that sucks, good sets lost in a sea of visual nothingness,...

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, S1E5 to S1E6 This week on Unwise Girls, we're a bit lost in this here hotel and casino... in fact, I can't even remember why we came into this darn place! Oh well, I guess while we're here we can indulge in some sick VR titles such as "Edging Ares," "Parking Garage Simulator," "Chair of Hephaestus," and world-famous "The Satyr Tha...

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, S1E3 to S1E4 This week on Unwise Girls, we're joined by our very special guest for this run of the TV show - Moonshot's own Audrey! Episodes 3 and 4 are full of highs and lows as we grapple with a slew of incredibly compelling themes being presented in highly compelling monologues... that seem to be undercut by the very fact of the show's Percy Jackson-ness. How fa...

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, S1E1 to S1E2 Three years ago, the Unwise Girls began their journey through The Lightning Thief. This week, we go back to the very beginning as we start our month-long coverage of the brand new first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. After a brief discussion on Riordan's lackluster statement on the continued colonization and genocide of Palestinians by Isra...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 71 to Epilogue This week on Unwise Girls, we're officially putting a bow on The Sword of Summer! We discuss our first ever epilogue and how it seems to be setting up the next book's major players (while kicking a bit of sand in the face of our hopes for a really complex Asgardian pantheon), evil homoerotic thralls and masters, the dawning of the Trump era, some major confu...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 65 to 70 This week on Unwise Girls, we must make peace with the fact that sometimes things that are good... are worse. After revealing our plans for covering the Percy Jackson TV show, we discuss overly-meta chapter titles, Magnus coming into his own as a healer just in time to embrace a new understanding of his own family, death beyond ideology, success coming in threes,...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 59 to 64 This week on Unwise Girls, we're nearing the end!!! What's gonna happen? Well, before we find out, we've gotta start our final battle with Bad Big Fridging Wolf himself. This week we talk about Sam as Spider-Man, timeskip upgrades, how well done Sword of Summer is as "just another good version of The Lightning Thief," our creeping sense that this book's...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 53 to 58 As one glorious, awful battle does not a victory secure in the grand tapestry of war, so too does this glorious, awful episode of our podcast not secure our place in the world of podcasts. And yet, we persist! This week on Unwise Girls we talk about Sam's need to prove herself to a system that hates her, Gunilla's racism backstory, Jackass stunts, the pace of this...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 47 to 52 This week on Unwise Girls ... are you ready to try and fit themes in a goat? How many can YOU fit in there? My record is seven. We talk about the subdued charm and cruelty of Thor, the illusion of Doctor Who, Arrow lore, Giant piss drafts, toeing the line on exploitation, getting hollowed out, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, how Sam tries to excel within traditional societal st...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 41 to 46 Oops, Extra Life hit hard! Still and despite everything, this week on Unwise Girls we talk about comedic old guys and weirdly young guys, getting handed everything on a silver platter, some confusion around biological parentage, an incredible series of interferences and the hilarious event that contains them, paradox ingredients, our new old companion Jack, the sw...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 35 to 40 This week on Unwise Girls we talk about Rick Riordan's lush locations, the differing ways one can be pushed into homelessness, connections to Percy Jackson that work and those that don't, the real emotional stakes Magnus attaches to family, the struggle of Utgard-Loki, ducklings, making an XD random squirrel properly scary, the contradictory characterization of Na...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 29 to 34 (cw: discussion of incest) After our sick week, we've returned with the first real portion of this book's main adventure! This week on Unwise Girls we talk about Magnus filtering the Norse pantheon through his own worldview, how one copes with existential knowledge, the solidarity of the food court, exploring both the real world and the fantastical, the American i...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 23 to 28 Hey, isn't this a bit like YuYu Hakusho? Like, with Yusuke, and seeing his own dead body and stuff... Well, here's hoping Magnus gets the Spirit Gun! This week on Unwise Girls, we discuss hallmates who immediately become ride or die for each other, Alf Sign Language and the surprisingly well-realized worldbuilding of Alfheim, what never having a moment away from b...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 19 to 22 This week on Unwise Girls, we're a bit lower energy but no less enthusiastic for this book than we have been! This week we discuss our surprisingly optimistic hopes for what's seeming to be a pretty traditional Riordan adventure, one-to-one parallels with Lightning Thief, embracing battle royale ridiculousness, Sun Tzu's advice for Ragnarok, Magnus's critical posi...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 13 to 18 (cw for discussion of suicide and sexual assault) This week on Unwise Girls, we take a deeper look into the life and troubles of a Valkyrie, our general hopes for Loki, how Magnus's perspective on Norse myth is limited, Valhalla as prison, the specter of alcohol, how Rick Riordan characterizes people and places through food, sustainable vegan beasts, the rabbit ho...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 7 to 12 This week on Unwise Girls, we discuss a new proposal for Rick Riordan ghostwriter theory, how Magnus's narrative voice really distinguishes him from past protagonists (and where we think that comes from in the character's history), nerve damage, organ damage, asthma damage, damage to the historical preservation of religious practices and beliefs due to Christianiza...

The Sword of Summer, ch. 1 to 6 Set your longships ablaze, we're going a-viking! This week we're starting The Sword of Summer, the first book in Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy. After reading some concurrent blog posts where we discover Rick's musical proclivities (and a quick questioning of this book's dedication) we jump right into this new series with a spring in our...

Demigods and Magicians On this momentous day of Jane's birthday, we also celebrate our very first ever crossover book, Demigods and Magicians! It's three short stories where the Kane siblings, Percy, and Annabeth all get to go on a big adventure to stop one of our absolute favorite villains Rick Riordan's ever made. We discuss milkshake astrology, Percy Jackson's big British change, torquing off,...

The Heroes of Olympus retrospective After over a year of flying along with these funny kids on their silly dragon boat, Jane and Jacqueline have finally come to the end of their journey with the Heroes of Olympus! In this retrospective, in what may be our longest episode yet, we hand out a whole slew of awards, really tear into the themes, and try to figure out exactly why we've come away from thi...