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Pop Culture Mail Carriers Who Really…Deliver

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” goes the United States Postal Service motto. And why? Well, because mail carriers are badasses, that’s why—and people have noticed. Mail carriers of all shapes, species, and skill levels litter the halls of pop culture. Today, we celebrate eight famous fictional postal workers, regardless of if you trust they would correctly deliver your mail or not.

Posted by Maggie Fremont

Least Threatening Villains in Lit and Pop Culture

Looking for more villains like these? Check out The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains or The League of Regrettable Sidekicks by Jon Morris!


The best villains are the ones that are truly scary. The bad guys who make us quake in our boots, who leave us terrified and truly convinced that becoming their enemy would be the worst possible scenario. Take Amy in Gone Girl, a woman who isn’t at all physically threatening, but whose meticulous scheming and total lack of a conscience make her utterly terrifying. Or consider Thanos, the recent big bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s a villain who may be bright purple, but who is physically intimidating and emotionally unperturbed by wiping out half the living things in the universe in a single snap.

These are the villains that are true nightmare fodder, that all other villains aspire to emulate. Of course, there are also the truly sympathetic villains — the cool kids, the guys who may want to raise hell, but are so charming that we’d probably just let them do it. And then…there are these guys. The ones who may dream of being true villains, but who barely make it out of laughing stock level who couldn’t make a chihuahua tremble if they tried.

Posted by Rose Moore

The Literary Roles of Eddie Redmayne

Happy birthday, Eddie Redmayne! We’re obsessed with the fact that you keep starring in literary adaptations. We like to imagine you sitting on set with the original novel – dog eared and filled with marginalia. In honor of your special day, we’re diving into every single literary adaptation that bares your name. Even the rumored ones.

Posted by Danielle Mohlman

Literary Roles of Benedict Cumberbatch

Editor's Note: To finish out 2018, we're revisiting some of our favorite blog posts from the past year. This post was originally published on 7/18/18. 

We all know that Benedict Cumberbatch made his mark playing literary great Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series Sherlock, but how many other literary Cumberbatch roles can you name? While we could spend literally his entire birthday coming up with literary misspellings of his name and other bookish memes, we’d rather celebrate the literary roles that decorate his IMDB page.

Posted by Danielle Mohlman

Pop Culture/Literary BFFs Who Go Together Like PB&J

Editor's Note: To finish out 2018, we're revisiting some of our favorite blog posts from the past year. This post was originally published on 4/3/18. 


They say best friends are never more than a phone call away. But It’s 2018, so we should probably revise that to “never more than a FaceTime, Snapchat, or VR sesh away.” Even then, these fancy new methods of keeping in touch really only apply if you exist in the same dimension as your bestie, which to be frank, might not always be the case. Before passing away, Stephen Hawking co-published a final paper on the possibility of a multiverse, prompting us to wonder, can we really even say who our true best friends are? For all we know, they might not even exist in the same time or space. We tested the theory, and sure enough, in the case of these pop culture and literary icons, their perfect matches weren’t even found in the same story, let alone universe.

Posted by J. B. Kish

Devilishly Good Characters in Pop Culture

Frozen yogurt, anyone? Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Do you think you are a good person? If hit series The Good Place has it right, your deeds on Earth might land you in a magical place where everything is catered to your deepest desires, and you get to meet your one true soul mate…or, if you aren’t quite worthy of all that, you might end up being tortured by Ted Danson! A devil pretending to be an angel, Danson’s Michael is a brilliant addition to the award-winning series, perfectly executing his diabolical plan to torment his victims by having them drive each other crazy in a fake "heaven." The show is sharp, funny, and eminently relatable as four people examine their wicked (and not-so-wicked) ways, and Michael is far from the only devil character that we want to watch again and again.

Posted by Rose Moore