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Best Witches

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (rural, realistic, last-minute gender confusion)

Häxan (1922) (weird, intricate, humanist)

His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman (badass, bisexual, political)

Suspiria (1977) (scary, fucked-up, retro)

Madoka Part III: Rebellion (2013) (unfair, intense, lesbian)

Best Angels:

"Sail On! Sail On!" by Philip José Farmer (so fucking clever)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) (awesome, low-key feminist, fruity)

His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman (mysterious, bizarre, gay)

"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel García Márquez (odd, pitiful, mysterious)

"Hell is the Absence of God" by Ted Chiang (destructive, terrible, desired)

Best Demons:

Evil Dead 2 (1987) (existential terror + comedy)

Slumber Party Massacre II (also 1987) (similar)

"The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe (unfathomably cruel)

The Wolf House (2018) (sinister, subtle, real)

The Wailing (2016) (scary, cool, funny)

Best Robots:

Robot series by Isaac Asimov (good, logical, gay)

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94) (similar)

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis (depressed, intelligent, bitter but caring)

Blade Runner (1982) (sad, weird, cool)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) (tragic, lovable, fucked-up)

Best Vampires:

Interview with the Vampire (2022-) (sexy, scary, tragic)

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (funny, sympathetic, occasionally caffeine-addicted)

Dracula (1931) (spooky, iconic, swag)

Best Fairies:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (scary, mysterious, greedy)

"The Elves" by Ludwig Tieck (selfish, environmental, lesbian)

Best Ghosts:

Lake Mungo (2008) (desperately sad)

The Innocents (1961) (creepy, ambiguous, clever)

Pulse (2001) (tragic, mysterious, intriguing)

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) (adorable, romantic, fun)

Opening Night (1977) (unusual, unsettling, mirrored)

Best Giants:

Shadow of the Colossus (2005) (epic, sad, environmental)

The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells (cool, sympathetic, socialist)

Fantastic Planet (1973) (weird, vivid, retro)

Best Aliens:

Alien (1979) (scary, weird, fucked-up)

The Man who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis (longing, sympathetic, smart)

Remembrance of Earth's Past series by Liu Cixin (terrifying, cold, pessimistic)

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (fun with gender and physics)

"Mother" by Philip José Farmer (greedy, intense, Freudian)

Best Monster Boyfriends:

La Belle et la Bête (1946) (pathetic, scary, romantic)

The Shape of Water (2017) (intricate, sympathetic, subversive)

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (funny, unusual, adorable)

Best Werewolves:

Ginger Snaps (2000) (sad, loving, funny)

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (funny, unexpected, cute)

ah ha ha no girl don't use Vampirism, Religion, and/or Cannibalism as a metaphor for all consuming love and obsession you're so sexy ah ha

Fictional podcast recs

One of my friends got into audio drama and I just sent them a whole list of recommendations to go through, I thought someone who follows these tags might also appreciate it and perhaps have some more to throw in. I resisted the urge to throw in the little blurb about audio dramas as a weird little medium and their tropes that I wrote up. It was something to the effect of nodding at how the medium has rapidly been improving since Welcome to Nightvale started, also how a lot of the tropes that tie the medium together are products of the indie podcast scene being accessible and primarily based in audio. Also at how well horror works in the format. Those paragraphs went unsaved but writing first about the medium in general helped me to reflect on a lot of the things that make audiodramas appealing or repulsive to me for discussing each show in brief beyond just explaining what they're about.

All recommendations are tagged for the tldr.

Fiction podcast recommendations in no particular order:

The Magnus Archives

Horror

The biggest criticism I ever had of this podcast’s voice acting from episode 1 turned out to be a relevant plot point. This thing is probably the best of the best, but I would never recommend it to someone unfamiliar with podcasts because the listener only notices a plot hook somewhere between episodes 20-40 and that’s daunting in the face of a 200 episode show. Getting sucked in rewards you with 200 episodes of thoughtful content and a great explanation for most of the weird things this show chooses to incorporate.

Old Gods of Appalachia

Horror

Fantastic production quality on this ongoing show. Many seasons with interconnected lore and a hell of a narrator. It’s not my personal favorite but it’s quite excellent.

Red Valley

Found footage mystery

One of the newer shows I’ve gotten into, Red Valley is well-crafted. It becomes compelling very quickly with a rapid pace that slows down to land in a neat spot for a while so you can savor the cool parts. The production quality is excellent and the two main voice actors have excellent chemistry. The third and final season is currently being produced.

The Silt Verses

Horror

Often compared to American Gods, this newer podcast made by an experienced team is doing a lot of creative and fresh things at once. The magnificently fucked up religious system of The Silt Verses is both a neat plot vehicle and cleanly works as a criticism of late stage capitalism, where many podcasts like to jab at capitalism this one is much more pointed in its commentary. Episodes are long and very well produced. All the credits in the third season have been mostly diegetic and add flavor to the world.

Archive 81

Found footage horror

Slow to start but by season 2 the production quality and plot are among the best in the game. Unfortunately, on an extended hiatus.

Ars Paradoxica

Science fiction, historical

Very well produced considering its age, this is a highly regarded show among people who follow the medium. Excellent time travel mechanics here. The plot drags a bit by the end because time travel stories must violently contort themselves into a conclusion, but the first season or two are fantastic and it’s always nice to have an ending instead of interminable hiatus.

Caravan

Gay demons n stuff

Showed up, did magic and gay shit, disappeared and went on hiatus probably with some kinda unsatisfying cliffhanger seeing as I don’t remember the plot. Could I recommend it in good faith? Not until they at least cough up season 2. I don’t remember it being bad and that alone is notable for the medium.

Mabel

Gothic horror

This is the deepest cut on the list except for maybe Caravan. Lesbians pine at each other for increasingly complicated reasons, eventually devolving into them doing datura and then spewing cryptic poetry together for the rest of their days. The production quality is fair. The slow windup and creepy house are American-gothic af. This show has had a few hiatuses, but each time it comes back significantly more intriguing.

Welcome to Nightvale

Goofy spooky news broadcast

Old and iconic, not very consistent. Sometimes explores emotional, tense, spooky, or funny scenes well, but the show is really focused on being local news for an ooky spooky desert town because Cecil is damn good at his job. Don’t come here looking for plot, it’s a fun vibe and I don’t know that anybody’s ripped it off and notably improved on this classic. Above average production quality for its time which improved through the years.

Alice isn’t Dead

USA road trip, horror

Made by at least one of the Nightvale writers, totally different show with a lesbian trucker making wry observations of some magnificently twisted shit seen around the United States. The producers know how to run a show, so the production is pretty good.

Tanis

Found footage horror

Tanis is not good. However, it was the first fiction podcast to make me ask “Is this real?” and hesitantly believe it for a frankly embarrassing number of episodes. The stories in the first season were interesting and the lore is just some big-tent conspiracy style of cramming a bunch of fun Wikipedia research into what turns out to be an increasingly nonsensical plot. Every season after the second, I return to hate-listen and am gaslit into thinking the show might low-key rock a few episodes before the finale, which is routinely frustrating and makes sure to throw out any good plot points Terry Miles comes up with. The acting is routinely terrible, and the frame narrative allows lazy and frequent retcons, ruining what I think is a good premise. Also it’s incomplete.

The Black Tapes

Horror

Terry Miles started this show before Tanis began releasing about 5 months later. I think of it as one of his earlier works because it behaves like Tanis with an added layer of cringe from a time waster of an awkward romance(?) between the two main characters. I couldn’t finish this show. You won’t see this recommended as often as it used to be online because there’s many better shows now, but this used to be a big deal. There’s a bunch of memes making fun of the annoying cadence of the characters’ speech and iconic sponsorship reads in both this and Tanis. If you’re interested in some cringe atop your creepypasta podcast, the two are interchangeable.  

Rabbits

ARG investigation

Not as horror focused as Terry Miles’ other shows, the cringe is dialed down and the show is better for it. Tanis and The Black Tapes are more well known, I think the only reason more people don’t think about this one is because the first two don’t inspire trust in the production or narrative quality of this show, but I remember it being fine for a season. I have not gone back to catch up now that more is out.

Malevolent

Horror

Inspired by The King in Yellow, one man performs two voices and verbally abuses himself with aplomb. Having a blind main character with an extra voice in his head is a frame story I haven’t heard yet (unless it came up in the magnus archives and I don’t remember), the concept works out great for the frame of a podcast to deploy the environmental imagery that foley cannot communicate. It also prevents the podcast trope of lengthy exposition about visual surroundings from sounding awkward or potentially impacting someone’s character development to show setting.

Wolf 359

Comedy, science fiction

A crew of whacky characters is stuck in deep space, hanging out and researching a star. Since that’s not actually very interesting they crack jokes and fuck around for a slow burn until interesting stuff happens. Good but not great, this one is long and satisfying and a bit less heavy than all the horror this medium often focuses on. Decent production quality.

The White Vault

Found footage horror

I lost patience with this podcast even though the overarching story seemed very cool – it progresses very slowly yet appears to grow bigger and more confusing instead of deigning to answer basic questions for a frustratingly long drag through the first four seasons. I worry that this frustration may be the point and the Patreon gated stories are the drivers for this tendency towards the confusing patchwork of ideas this show communicates. The production quality is good though.

The Left Right Game

Found footage horror

Genuinely great reddit creepypasta got turned into an overproduced podcast – I say “over” in comparison to the voice acting quality because it’s kind of impossible to sell some of the lines, which makes sense considering the source. Brief, complete, punchy, interesting, and just a little odd to hear such a clean production but a creepypasta this fun deserves the effort.

Wooden Overcoats

Comedy

Surprisingly good production quality for its age, and also a refresher from the usual tropes of the medium. Just a chill sitcom about a funeral parlor in a small town. I haven’t finished this 4 season show yet but its good.

The Black List Table Reads

Movie script readings

Some movie scripts just short of making the cut to be turned into a full Hollywood production were well liked enough by a group of film nerds that sat down to act them out as a podcast. Half of the episodes are interviews with screenwriters, and the other half see a script read all the way through by actors. They’re all rejected for different reasons so there’s a pretty broad spread of genres. My favorites were Blood From a Stone and Balls Out.

I love Sisko dude is just trying to do his job, which is the space equivalent of making an air BnB from a diy-flipper house where everything is just constantly breaking. And then the neighbors insist he’s like one of their more important gods, but every time he denies it he actively partakes in major religious history. Also, his son only wears knit unitards and is bffs with the nephew of the neighborhood crime lord (not to be confused with the neighborhood spy).

heyyyy my insta people can see these in high quality!!!!

i guess ill post these....(these are not all the ones i made but the best ones i think)

ive seen like 6 episodes

This is so cute I love it when athletes pretend to be equally matched to a little kid

Background: this is stage fighting! No one was seriously hurt. The girls name is Hakura, a child wrestler who is now retired.

Okay but when Con O'Neill as Izzy Hands came out onto the deck of that party boat in dramatic drag makeup and sung the most beautiful love song so the crew could dance my middle-aged, late-coming-out heart grew three queer fucking sizes, I would lay down my life for this man

paired with their often intimate and violent subject matter, i find the incidental way tamsyn muir frames women and their bodies throughout the locked tomb series to be refreshing bordering on radical

consider harrowhark; in the first book we see her as gideon sees her. she's a hideous ghoul with a flat ass and no tits, she's a delicate sopping wet beauty with a sharp face and angel bow lips, she's a triumphant and awe inspiring master necromancer screaming and fighting drenched in her own blood. the shape and condition of her body is allowed to take on meaning contextually based entirely on the situation and how gideon feels about their relationship in any given moment

she then spends the second book hobbling around with a sword twice her size, ripping apart her body to use as a weapon and passing out in her own vomit, struggling to eat and sleep – she and puts herself through absolute hell and never once thinks anything of it, and we're made to mourn this not as the desecration of a beautiful woman but as a manifestation of a human being's despair and self loathing, and we see this specifically contrasted against the care gideon tries to take when inhabiting her body during the last act

it's jarring, in nona, when we're suddenly made aware that her body could be perceived or valued as a commodity, when pyrrha is assumed to be nona's pimp. it feels strange and horrifying when we learn alecto's form was modeled for a doll, learn that she was given a woman's body as a display of ownership, an alternative to being consumed, and as we're processing this we watch gideon, paul, and ianthe, immediately setting aside their conflict in a desperate scramble to preserve harrow's body for no reason other than because it is harrow's and they love her

feminist fiction often focuses on women's relationship to a body which is valued more than the person within it – and that is a worthy experience to explore – but as a transsexual butch(ish) dyke, i have never really had the privilege of seeing my body as a precious commodity, never felt like it couldn't or shouldn't be a sight of violence and disgust, and as a result the locked tomb books have made me feel seen in a way that few other works of fiction have?

we as an audience are not made aware of how attractive any character would be outside of the context of our lesbian POV characters' perspectives, their relationship to patriarchal beauty standards is an utterly irrelevant detail we're never told and only occasionally glimpse through implication. the women in the locked tomb books are simply free to exist, to have experiences and feelings, to love and hate and grieve and suffer and die like anybody else, and to have those experiences reflected in their physical vessels

it's a perspective that's so fundamental and obvious that to praise muir for it for it feels almost patronizing, but i also think it's a huge part of what's made the series so resonant for so many queer women and i feel that that's worthy of highlighting and celebrating

I am 40% of the way through Gideon the Ninth. There are no plot spoilers below.

What is refreshing about Gideon as a protagonist and POV character is that she is a jock. She fundamentally does not care about all this nerd shit going on, i.e. the entire setting and plot. She misses exposition, background, and other explanations because, as one person who starts explaining how magic works observes, "right, you're not even pretending to pay attention."

Most writers are writers, so this is not a common perspective for a book to hold. Plot-relevant details can be sprinkled freely because Gideon's narrative will see them and not even shrug before moving on.

GIdeon lacks the emotional and mental maturity to be a good person. She is not evil as such, just apparently unaware of the existence of moral implications. When we meet her, her motivation is to get out of this hick town and join the military, because fighting is glorious and cool and this hick town sucks. She likes weapons and fighting and working out and hot chicks. She fantasizes about leading military charges that bring death to new worlds and fuel necromantic rituals because that would mean hot goth babes would see how cool she is and be grateful. She does not dwell on the thought of worlds that apparently have never known death and her plan to look cool leading imperial invasions and killing enough people to fuel necromantic rituals. She does dwell on the thought of that prissy bitch from her high school having to see how cool and hot she is now that she's a war hero who gets medals and hot babes.

You as the reader can be carried along very quickly by this incurious perspective that does not think twice about things. You as the reader may want Gideon to backtrack and dwell on something or explore it further. The weirdness of the setting is more or less swept under the rug by Gideon's not noticing it. 98.5% of the children on a planet gone (died?), but Gideon doesn't devote a second sentence to boring backstory like that. What was that about galactic conquest, in a setting where the main weapons are swords and necromantic magic? How little advancement has there been in technology or magic in 10,000 years, despite a possibly continuous civilization that whole time? Or some references to what sound like dark ages? Damned if Gideon cares or even notices.

The necromancers are dying to talk shop about their powers. Gideon rolls her eyes and wants to talk to that woman about the cool flip she did, because Gideon wants to look cool doing flips during fights and have girls notice how cool she looks. Also her biceps. Gideon cannot pay attention for a full sentence on necromantic magic, but she does have a half-page to dwell on girls noticing how big her biceps are.

JOE JONAS COUNT YOUR MISOGYNIST FUCKING DAYS BITCH

The band Ghost is so fucking funny to me. Their frontman currently looks like this:

Or some version of a horny goth clown, but the guy underneath it has got the wettest saddest eyes I've ever seen. Just look at him:

This man admits to being very sensitive and cries at the drop of a hat.

He has a wife and kids.

He wears the costume because he doesn't like the way he looks on stage as a rockstar.

He treats the audience like his children. They're officially called the children of Ghost for that and also because of the play on "children of god."

The band literally fucks around on stage while riffing this badass music. They go through physical comedy skits every concert like the three stooges. For example:

Two demons throw guitar picks at each other when they get angy.

One guy grinds and licks the stage like a cat in heat.

One of them shakes their tits at goth clown man and scares him shitless.

One of them twirls goth clown man like a ballerina as he dances by them.

Several of them slap goth clown's ass when he waddles by.

He created the band to make people happy, to celebrate being a fucking weirdo because he always felt left out, and to make fun of Christianity because it makes people feel bad. He lost his older brother, and it tore him up so bad that the music he made as a result launched him into a worldwide music career.

This man ends every concert "ritual" with three things:

1. Be nice to each other

2. Help each other

3. Go fuck yourself

(Literally and figuratively)

Their music is 70% "fuck me I'm so horny", 10% "I love you so much" and 20% "ethereal badass metal".

Look at how much fun he's having, dude.

It's literally just a rock band filled with the nicest people on earth wearing costumes like a Shakespearean play. And all they do is make up funny little lore stories and serve cunt.

The thing that makes me sad about the Eurovision results is that Loreen’s victory lacks everything that makes a Eurovision victory great:

A lesser known artist catapulted into stardom? She’s been internationally known for years.

Their country getting a chance to host after never/rarely doing so before? Sweden’s had it 6 times already.

An underdog taking the crown by being an audience pleaser? She was the bookies’ favourite from the start.

Eurovision being one of the biggest, most exciting things they’ve ever done? She’s done it all before.

None of these things are personally Loreen’s fault, and I actually feel bad for her that this win will be remembered as one that the public clearly wanted to give to someone else. But it does all feel extra slimy and calculated on Sweden’s part, especially given the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s Waterloo just happening to be next year. It all feels very hollow.

I've turned off the telly box in a huff. I don't want to see Sweden perform again.

Nope i wont accept it

No way

Not with the way the crowd was chanting käärijä and cha cha cha

get rid of the 50/50 jury, give us 75/25! More power to the public! Everyone saw! Finland got almost 200 more votes from the public! Everyone heard the audience chanting!

This victory is so hollow… Europe has spoken we chose Finland.

Jesus, after coming back from the dead: hey guys it’s me Jesus, just look at the scars on my hands

Thomas, a known freak: show us the feet as well please

absolutely fucking insane and iconic of ghost to put bukkake in a music video tbh

I see al of you making phantom Copia edits because of the leaked album and the track Phantom Of The Opera. But I raise you Christine Copia! I think he would look lovey in the dress ;)

Adding “Tiktok Mary Poppins cosplayer respond to allegations that he was wearing a Third Reich medal in his latest fit by coming out as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler complete with past life memories before his entire social media prescence was nuked with the sole exception of their egg-laying kink spotify playlists” to the internet sentences treasure vault. Amid all the societal decay we still got it boys.