Hi, Kiyaar! I drew you a picture of Tony suffering, but with, like, metaphors or something.
Recommending music always feels so iffy to me buuuuut I have two angsty playlists to share: Director Stark Tears, which makes me cry despite being my own playlist; and in the morning Tony Stark will be sober... or dead which definitely has several of the obvious songs one would expect on a 2nd drinking arc playlist but hopefully a few that are new to you as well.
SFF: Maybe I'm recommending things you already know but here goes! - The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits. Featuring academia, psychic attacks, and lots and lots of women characters. - Among Others by Jo Walton. Okay maybe this is really popular and everyone already knows it? But if not. This is a story about being young, disabled, nerdy, and new in town. There's also magic, fairies, an evil biological mother, and eventually a scifi/fantasy book club. - I think that everyone should read Samuel R. Delany if they haven't already. He's a Black queer author who's been writing since the 1950s. My favorites are his space operas, like Nova -- which is a sort of bonkers Grail story that includes a fight on a lava planet and a brain in a jar -- and Babel-17 which is about an API wlw poet and linguist saving everyone through her badassery. Note: his older stuff contains a lot of outdated terms, plus slurs (including words that were considered slurs at time of publishing, plus some that weren't). There's also Dhalgren. I wouldn't say I recommend it, exactly. It's 300k words of experimental 1970s... experimentation. It's about a lot of things, including the process of writing, as well as sexual identity, racial identity, identity generally, cities and urban culture, white flight, and lots more I'm forgetting. There's a chapter called "Palimpsest" that's literally a palimpsest. But also I'd love if someone read Dhalgren because then I could have someone to talk to about it. - Event Factory by Renee Gladman can be hard to get your hands on but is absolutely worth it. Gladman is a queer Black poet and this novella(?) is about a linguist traveling to an unfamiliar city-city state. It's very much a spiritual successor to Dhalgren.
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Recommending music always feels so iffy to me buuuuut I have two angsty playlists to share: Director Stark Tears, which makes me cry despite being my own playlist; and in the morning Tony Stark will be sober... or dead which definitely has several of the obvious songs one would expect on a 2nd drinking arc playlist but hopefully a few that are new to you as well.
Places: (if I post enough of these, there are probably some you haven't seen before, right?)
- Fairy circles of Namibia
- The painted hills at the John Day fossil beds. I'm mad there's never been a Star Wars movie (or TV show) shot here.
- Lake Hillier, a pink lake in Australia
- Nevada's fly geyser
- The Crooked Forest in Poland
- An abandoned Wizard of Oz park
- Rainbow mountain in Peru
- Leftover Star Wars sets in Tunisia
- Abandoned dinosaur amusement park
SFF:
Maybe I'm recommending things you already know but here goes!
- The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits. Featuring academia, psychic attacks, and lots and lots of women characters.
- Among Others by Jo Walton. Okay maybe this is really popular and everyone already knows it? But if not. This is a story about being young, disabled, nerdy, and new in town. There's also magic, fairies, an evil biological mother, and eventually a scifi/fantasy book club.
- I think that everyone should read Samuel R. Delany if they haven't already. He's a Black queer author who's been writing since the 1950s. My favorites are his space operas, like Nova -- which is a sort of bonkers Grail story that includes a fight on a lava planet and a brain in a jar -- and Babel-17 which is about an API wlw poet and linguist saving everyone through her badassery. Note: his older stuff contains a lot of outdated terms, plus slurs (including words that were considered slurs at time of publishing, plus some that weren't). There's also Dhalgren. I wouldn't say I recommend it, exactly. It's 300k words of experimental 1970s... experimentation. It's about a lot of things, including the process of writing, as well as sexual identity, racial identity, identity generally, cities and urban culture, white flight, and lots more I'm forgetting. There's a chapter called "Palimpsest" that's literally a palimpsest. But also I'd love if someone read Dhalgren because then I could have someone to talk to about it.
- Event Factory by Renee Gladman can be hard to get your hands on but is absolutely worth it. Gladman is a queer Black poet and this novella(?) is about a linguist traveling to an unfamiliar city-city state. It's very much a spiritual successor to Dhalgren.