Does real porn not do it for you anymore? Are the bikini-clad Maxim girls nothing but airport magazine stand eye candy? Do you find that your appetite for sexy, realistic mermaid art is gradually exerting its influence more and more in your daily life? Well, now there’s hope: Epilogue.net.

Yes, Epilogue.net (“Fantasy and Sci-Fi at their Best”) is the visual distraction Mecca for enthusiasts of faeries, mermaids, dragons, wizards, miscellaneous magic-people, werewolves, swords, spaceships, “spacescapes,” unicorns, demons, anime-based art and just about anything else you can shake your bag of 20-sided dice at. As the story goes, around ’98 the “Epilogue team” started noticing that there weren’t enough quality web sites showcasing original fantasy and sci-fi art. Apparently any yahoo with a pencil and hankering for dragons could post his/her material at these sites; that wasted the valuable time of Internet fantasy and sci-fi art connoisseurs, especially back in the day when not absolutely everyone had a high-speed Internet connection. Thus Epilogue was born—a powerful, well-organized site with an elite team of fantasy art critics (including staff illustrators for TSR/Wizards of the Coast—I know that excites some of you) providing an ever-expanding virtual library of high-quality, or at least harshly-scrutinized, dork art.

Now, why should you, the busy, project-proposal writing Macalester student that you are, bless this web site with your acknowledgment? For starters, colors are pretty. Faeries, dragons and enchanted forest scenes are, when well-done, like the watermelons of the art world—not terribly filling, but juicy and consumable nonetheless.

Reason number two: genuine quality. In addition to the plentiful supply of run-of-the-mill fantasy monsters and space heroes, there is a sizeable collection of original art. There are the vibrant, vaguely disturbing psychological figure paintings of Patrick Castell, the highly stylized comic-book art of Tim Shumate, the vegetation, nude women and starlight-based art of Hervé S. Flament (who appears to suffer from a severe case of being French) and the visionary work of Carrie Hawks, which largely consists of abnormally colored housecats with various kinds of wings. Truly, there is something for everyone.

Some of the featured art is, admittedly, in poor taste. I find paintings of women and men in bondage to be every bit as disturbing and unnecessary as actual bondage porn. Also (and much to my surprise), I quickly get burned out on sensually posed women with butterfly wings who appear on the verge of leaping into a steamy woodland tryst. Also on my hit list: 3-D graphics “art.” There are quite a few people around Epilogue who think stills that clearly came from a PC game are some kind of art, whereas I am inclined to disagree.

It is my general opinion that art has to look like a person made it. No, I take that back—I once saw an elephant paint something pretty abstract with six different colored buckets of paint, a gigantic canvas and a huge brush in his trunk. If that elephant could paint an anime wizard, he’d be a shoe-in for Epilogue membership. But my point remains: nuts to 3-D graphic art. Go get some colored pencils or something.

Speaking of colored pencils, my discovery of Epilogue.net was delightfully accidental. I wanted a new picture for my desktop background, being bored with the usual Cute Kitten of the Week or current favorite pro hockey player (Daniel Briere). I used the Google image search engine to hunt for pictures of badgers, because they do not get enough recognition as a species. I mean, other than The Wind in the Willows, when have badgers ever gotten a piece of the spotlight? My search came up with tons of photos of the little ground-dwellers along with a colored pencil illustration of some tribal badger-people, complete with spears and clothing made from other animals (thus proving that if they could, they would, so we shouldn’t feel too bad about our leather-clad selves). I thought it was a pretty cool picture, creative at the least, so I clicked on the link. My next several hours were spent cruising the Epilogue gallery, being stoned and conspiring to write this article so that other easily-distracted kids could find cool desktop backgrounds.

So if you can’t stare at your paper on Microsoft Word for another second, you feel weird looking at S&M with your roommate around and ESPN.com keeps making you feel silly for being a Bills fan, click your way over to Epilogue.net. It’s free, it’s pretty, you can leave any time you want and it’s way easier than trying to find your long-lost copy of Ridley Scott’s Legend (hint, hint—10 days until my birthday).