A haven for the weird, wild, and wonderful, with a special focus on bizarre and beautiful creatures. Feel free to submit any fantasy/sci-fi/just plain odd things you find!
“We all know how the story goes. The spunky fantasy heroine is inevitably joined by her Charismatic Mammal Companion* who loves her and protects her and about fifty percent of the time is also telepathic.
This is fine if you are a North American heroine, where you have cougars and wolves and bears and an array of hoofstock, or jaguars if you go a little farther south. Works out okay if you’re Northern European, too—fewer big cats, but there’s always wolves, or the old standby, telepathic horses. Get over into Asia and you’ve got tigers and snow leopards and more wolves and dholes and panthers and what all, and of course, our African heroines have their pick of the savannah.
But the poor fantasy heroine stuck on a Polynesian island? You are sunk. There’s only one big animal in the neighborhood, and it will follow you around grunting worshipfully and rolling in mud when you aren’t looking, and occasionally getting overexcited and goring your relatives. This, I suspect, is the real reason that we see so few Polynesian fantasy heroines.”
