Wizards Vs. Lesbians

I think we slipped some good advice in here amidst the silliness?

A violent girl in a milquetoast world gets to go to Autism Heaven, where she can be torn apart as much as she wants. We love this book, despite everything. Thanks to Fabian for the intro!  His music can be found at: https://fbgtz.bandcamp.com/ https://toyoudeary.bandcamp.com/

We have struggled to fit Ann Leckie's books under our remit because there are usually too many genders in them for something as pedestrian as lesbianism to take place. Luckily for us this one fits neatly under Narcissistic Parents of Monstrous Children. 

A psychological horror story about the delusions of a narcissistic parent. (We aren't sure the book knows that's what's happening but it is what it is.) It's like the Book Eaters - to the extent that we think they constitute their own emergent genre - but possibly worse.

As an end of year treat (for ourselves, exclusively) we asked for questions and then answered them. Thank you for indulging us.

We've made it to 75 episodes, and as has become the custom for these milestones we're watching cartoons.  We've run out of Utena so we're moving on to one of Isaac's favorites, and we've chosen the most Wizards vs Lesbians part to talk about.

It's one of the great novels of China, With Lesbians!  The contemporary moral framework the author brings to the story sits uneasily atop the chaotic and bloodthirsty original but it's still a good time.

Oh, this is a good one. Sequel to She who Became the Sun, follows the continuing adventures of a bunch of ruthless moral lacunae who want to become Emperor, features the most tender BDSM relationship between a trans man and a eunuch ever committed to paper. 

This was going to be a bonus episode but it turns out this is perfect wizards vs lesbians, so it's our first mainline episode with a guest! Joelle guides us through this extremely gay visual novel and we talk about the 90s a lot.

A late entry in our anglophilia arc.  A sneaky smart regency romance involving curses, fourth wall jokes and a mysterious lesbian aristocrat known as The Duke.

A delightfully weird book about tracking a cybernetically enhanced doggie through an interdimensional transit hub.  The first properly grungy modern cyberpunk we've read so far, and very satisfying.

A limp Sherlock Holmes pastiche on Victorian English Jupiter. The plot is nonsensical, the setting is impossible, but the lesbians certainly are lesbians.

Isaac, Alexis and Lee discuss a masterpiece. 

Mountaineering, colonialism, survivor's guilt, toxic relationships, the world's worst technopriest, and Literary Techniques - this is a very good book with a lot going on in it.

It's a sprawling space opera about being a child soldier (an emerging WL theme!)  It also feels like it wants to be a movie, with all that that entails.  An ambitious failure. 

We conclude our anglophilia arc (for now) with this weird little book about fairies, Brexit, drugs and the power of interpretive dance.

The anglophilia arc continues! This one's on a boat. A silly gay murder mystery featuring a parrot and a suitcase of porn which is better than it needs to be.

Full disclosure: the author is Alexis' former housemate.  That being said, even those of us who do not have a personal stake think you should read this book if you have an interest in fairy tales, existentialism or the drama of the gifted child. 

It's the anglophilia arc!  We're starting on a series of books which are fantasy British - we set out initially to critique teaboo tendencies in sf but we accidentally picked a bunch of good and fun books, of which this is one.  Or maybe we're both just weak to this stuff, having been raised on a diet of Terry Pratchett. This specific example involves charming old ladies, Victorian drug labs and t...

The theme of today's episode is supernatural short fiction from Southeast Asia: " The Terracotta Bride " by Zen Cho " Lay My Stomach On Your Scales ," by Wen-yi Lee   "Margo Lai's Guide to Dueling Unprepared ," by Alison Tam 

We were so delighted with The Outside that we decided to cover its sequels!  We probably shouldn't have.

It's a novella which feels like a very long short story, and we struggled to get a full episode out of it.  What happens when you make your hardboiled noir detective a magical lesbian?  Anything?

We really enjoyed this one - it's about being autistic and trying to follow the rules when you're an inveterate anti-authoritarian, and it's also about cyborgs and spaceships and tentacle monsters and AI gods. Featuring the world's worst graduate advisor. 

In this episode we are unduly harsh on a sequel to a book we both liked, which is kind of par for the course with sequels.  Take it as a study of the peril of high expectations. (This episode was recorded before we embarked on our ideological short novels series - apologies for any resulting continuity errors.)

We are glad to live in a world where a movie as weird as this can win Best Picture, and we have a lot to say about it.  Our guest for this episode is Soyi Kim, doctor of comparative literature and art history (and big fan of this film, more to the point.)