#can't recommend this series enough

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Do you like sci-fi and indie animation? Check out Monkey Wrench!

[necrotic-nephilim]

Tell me why Kara Zor-L is one of my your favs! I'm been meaning to make the jump from the CW show to the comics. Any recommendations?

- @cicero-in-gotham

@cicero-in-gotham oh i would LOVE to!! Kara Zor-L is my darling beloved.

firstly for suggestions, i'll be honest Kara can be... a hard character to read for. you have to slog through a lot of really shitty "male gaze" content to get scraps of interesting stuff. the top comics i'd recommend are

Power Girl: Power Trip

Power Girl Returns

Power Girl (2023)

some people like Harley Quinn & Power Girl. i'll be honest... i did not. and Power Girl (2009) has... ups and downs, is the nicest way i'll say it. but it's also solid for what it is. certainly better than her New-52 content so i can't really complain.

anyhow, i always am enamoured by characters who are disconnected from their "family", especially due to trauma. bc no one really counts Power Girl as part of the Superfamily. and even within the Superfamily if people are talking about the "outcast" of the family, they always say Kon. (which, eh? maybe New-52!Kon but i wouldn't say the main Kon is an outcast, his issues are internal) but to me, Kara far better suites that role. it's one thing to be one of the last survivors of Krypton. it's another thing to be one of the last survivors of your entire *universe* as well. she lost everyone, *twice*.

i adore characters who feel like imposters and Kara is *peak* imposter syndrome. everything about her identity is constructed around not feeling like a "real" Super, or a "real" Zor-L. she has to live with knowing she's on an earth that has Supergirl, meaning they don't need her. she didn't wear the S crest for so long even on her own earth, because she felt like she didn't server it.the only thing she feels like she has going for her is her sexual appeal and so it's so amped up she lacks a personality outside of it. she has been isolated again and again by her trauma and she struggles to face her grief, masking with humor and oversexual appearances. i find that to be so interesting. she lost *everything*, twice. and now she's an imposter who will always hold herself at a distance from the Supers because she doesn't want to make them uncomfortable with her existence. she has to live on an Earth and know everyone is... slightly off. she has Clark, but it's not *her* Clark. she has the Justice Society of America, but it's not *her* JSA. and she doesn't have her best friend, Helena Wayne at *all*, because this earth has Helena Bertinelli as Huntress. (unless you count New Golden Age stuff but that's future timeline nonsense)

i find Kara's lack of identity interesting, and the way she just sort of drifts. she has done a lot of things, but lacks a sense of self importance bc she will never view herself as a "real" Kryptonian of this universe. she's just so neat to me. i also love the JSA personally, they're one of my favorite superhero teams, so i love any character connected to the JSA, they're always so underrated.

the Power Girl Special (which is collected in Power Girl Returns) is like, genuinely one of my favorite single issues ever. that comic just lives in my bones. it also has one of the *best* internal monologues i've ever read. something something comics are art. this is cutting some stuff out but just to show you have beautiful the writing is, this is an excerpt from that comic

people tend to think of hatred as love's opposite. but i disagree- i think hatred is just love's sharpened edge. it's the same passion. the same potency, the same intensity. just a different flavor. so no, hatred isn't love's opposite. grief is. grief is the void left behind after something you once loved was violently ripped away. grief is what happens in love's sudden absence. love is when your cup runneth over. but grief is hollow. a chasm. there is no negotiating with grief. it does what it wants to you, when it wants. you will never outgrow or outrun it. but... you can find ways to grow around it. i never got to say goodbye. i was loved, once. i was once loved so much that my life was prioritized above all else. i will never feel worthy of that love or sacrifice. but i'm realizing now that to freeze or falter in the shadow of that love is the only way to fail their sacrifice. i have to live in the light. i can step out into the sunlight, and still carry them with me.

like that is??? so Character to me. she is Everything. i'm just. so unwell over her internal struggles and how she faces the world, i cannot recommend her enough. she means the world to me and that comic has stuck with me since i read it for it's conversation about handling grief. i am begging everyone to be a Power Girl fan i know she's confusing but once you get the hang of her backstory she's so cool i swear-

[inafieldofdaisies]

Invasion (2023) | Season 2, Episode 8 “Cosmic Ocean” | Favorite scenes

"In Hindu mythology, there's this sage, Markandeya. One day, he climbs up and out of the belly of the world and finds himself looking out through the mouth of the great god, Vishnu. The cosmic ocean. His mind snaps with the enormity of it. He stumbles. Falls back down the god's throat. Smack-down to earth. He spends the next several millennia searching for a way back out."

[musemelodies]

a summary of the big good wolf:

mickey: haha, i can fix him. :D

big bad: (eats an entire town)

[saysflora]

The Box of Delights (1984)

[vivvy-of-the-lake]

damn, you wouldn't believe the hands that trans bocchi fanfics have

[auroralynne]

Amirya - Cosmos

Cosmos flowers are associated with simplicity, joy, and beauty. They're also a symbol of order, harmony, and balance.

Amirya is my pick for a Mother's Day post, as uncertain as her fate is... She's Nadraya's older sister and a very wise woman, so lovable and brave. Amirya is a character from @skaylanphear's fantasy novel "Deathborne", from the Dragon Seer series. It's seriously so good!

You can fin it here:

[floralovebot]

What character in any media do you think is similar to garth?

I thought really hard about this but honestly I couldn't come up with a good answer.

I really wanted to say bbc's Merlin, and tbh I do still think they have a lot of similarities with their personalities and story arcs, but it's not the best answer. The thing about Garth is that he's a Good person - not just good, but "pure of heart". And like,,, that's hard to find unless you're specifically looking at children's media aimed at like,, five year olds. Anyway, while Garth and Merlin share a lot of similarities (extreme selflessness, tragic destinies, people around them being Mean, abandonment and isolation being major elements), Merlin also has a darker side to him that is just so,,, Not Garth. And in the later seasons, he starts to become very somber and cold.

Personally, I feel like the Garth/Merlin parallels are at their highest during the earlier seasons!

[hawkinslibrary]

forgot how much i love fanvids. i used to spend so so much time on youtube watching them and i'm kinda falling back into that habit now. there's sooooo many good st ones out there too. people are so creative and the editing skills and attention to detail are amazing

[reservoirreputation]

We're cutting the cord on Netfilx at the end of this month, so I'm trying to focus on original series and movies from the platform. I've worked my way through Midnight Mass, after putting it off for years, and guys.

If you only use Netflix for one month, this is a must-see series.

Like many Flanagan projects, it will enrage you, tire you, make you ball like a baby. Both feel beaten down and inspired, and the meditations on grief, of very human flaws, thematic elements mirroring each other and coming together so neatly by the end. This is the level of cathartic sorrow that I could only dream of touching (and god help any readers if I figure it out), but it's still so damn hopeful. You never leave a Flanagan series feeling that all is lost ('Usher' may beg to differ, but we shall see, it's up next). There is always hope, a sense of comfort, a sense of reassurance even through all the tears. Netflix has seriously fucked up, letting this guy go.

I wish Mike Flanagan and his recurring actors the absolute best, because that's exactly what they are.

[saunter-vaguely-into-a-bookshop]

It's 2:30 and I've been knitting for 7 hours and now YARN CHICKEN at the end of a TEST KNIT that's overdue because of a FUNERAL are you SHITTING ME

[owlyflufff]

still thinking of how I finished reading the Trigun Maximum manga last month but that series is forever engraved into my very soul like it's so raw, emotional and I haven't been the same ever since-

[space-blue]

I am very sorry. I just saw any leech stuff and freaked out because I just finished that book and O U G H

- 🐀

Don't ever be sorry for freaking out about a good book. If I were still a bookseller I'd be slapping people across the face with it.

I really love me a narrative shift like this book pulls. AND it's on top of multiple layers of unreliable narrator? Boss move.

I really like the hive mind concept in general, and loved the way it was handled in A Fire Upon The Deep, if you care for crazy scifi. It was also very interesting in Ancillary Justice, which also has unwilling hosts/a parasitic quality.

If you want a recommendation for a book that mind fucks you over time in that same way, I recommend you read Sheri S. Tepper's book Grass, and then the second one Raising the Stones.

I often describe her way of writing as making me feel like a snake, properly charmed. She pulls the wool over your eyes. I frequently thought about Tepper's work while reading Leech. Things not being as they seem, the slow buildup of evidence that flies under the radar, the pov shift that leaves you scrambling...

I was still super surprised by the bold choice of having this Franco-English pigdin language. It felt very tailor made for a bilingual reader like myself, but idk how hostile that must have felt to a monolingual reader. The whole world slowly revealing itself to be far future instead of fantasy gothic alone... Genuinely this book felt like a puzzle at times, with lots of missing pieces.

Very very fun! Glad you liked it.

[smooth-tea-blossoms7359]

The fact that this series isn't that well-known pains my heart because it is just amazing. (Cover of The Case of the Spring-Exclusive Strawberry Tart)

[leftoblique]

✔ Best treatment of Holmes as a complex, eccentric, troubled, sometimes funny character (who isn't always likeable, but isn't just an asshole)

✔ Best modern update of the Watson character

✔ Best wardrobe in any Holmes adaptation, period

✔ Best modern exploration of Holmes and Watson as platonic life partners (especially cool considering they went with an opposite-gender pairing)

✔ Queer and trans actors thrown in just because they could

Bonus: Lucy Liu ate in every scene

“i wish we could see adaptations where sherlock holmes hates the rich and is allowed to be kind to those around him and uses his abilities to support society’s underdogs” elementary was doing this back in 2012. this was only episode 4.

[forthegothicheroine]

Tanith Lee Recs

Since Tanith Lee deserves to be known for much more than having been plagiarized, I thought I'd share some recommendations. She had a HUGE body of work, and I've seen it suggested that the reason she never became a household name in fantasy and science fiction is that she wrote so many things that were different from each other, rather than staying in one easily labeled niche. I've only begun to make a dent in her catalogue, but here's the stuff I liked the best.

Note: A lot of her stuff can be disturbing, and I can't remember everything well enough to give perfect trigger warnings.

Red as Blood and Redder Than Blood: These fairy tale collections are being talked about now for the title story, but my favorite is The Golden Ladder, an incredibly creepy and hot version of Rapunzel, or perhaps When the Clock Strikes, a horrifying beautiful take on Cinderella.

The Weird Tales of Tanith Lee: As you can see, I love her short stories. These are all the ones published in Weird Tales, which includes some of the above fairy tales (including When the Clock Strikes) but also Arthurian, steampunk and science fiction stories. It's a great sampler of all the things she could do.

Blood 20: One more short story collection! This one is (most of) her vampire stories, so I know you goths will like it! There are things erotic, fantastical and grotesque in here, but to me the most haunting is the tragically mundane The Vampire Lover.

The Secret Books of Paradys: In this series, an alternate history of Paris, bad things happen. Supernatural things, sexual things, horrifying things. And sometimes good things happen, such as a man saved by a Jewish sage an his beautiful daughter who then actually converts to Judaism.

The Secret Books of Venus: I've only read the first entry in this similar series about an alternate world version of Venice, but once again it leaves the reader feeling totally transported to this sometimes sinister, sometimes lovely place where romance and cruelty live next door to each other.

Vivia: This tragic medieval plague-influenced vampire story is maybe the darkest thing of hers I've read, but dear god can she paint a picture with words. Along with The Birthgrave (which I didn't like as much), George RR Martin definitely pulled a lot of Danaerys's story from the title character here.

Islands in the Sky: And now for something completely different- a children's book. I remember finding this at the library as a kid and wanting to cry when it was over, because it gave me an equal sense of wonder and happiness as The Lion the Witch and the Wardobe, which I hadn't known was possible and worried would never happen again.

...but if you're like me, you'll just see which of her books you find at the library and used bookstores. You may not love every single thing, but it will always be interesting!