life-giving media in this trash fire era: a list

[glass_icarus]

Inspired by a recent exchange with rydra_wong, I thought it would be nice to make a list of life-giving media content that's been helping me get by! I noticed upon my latest rewatch of Nirvana in Fire that the comfort reading/media consumption I do to cope with politics these days is distinctly different from the comfort reading/media consumption I do in response to general life stress. There's a specific flavor of schadenfreude involved in the former which leads me to look for plots involving political takedowns and reforms for great justice, for one thing, though I will also settle for characters resisting and/or getting justice in a less socially comprehensive sense. *g*

My political coping list is much less extensive than my general comfort list, but here are a few things I've been leaning on:
♥ Nirvana in Fire/Lang Ya Bang - I would rewatch this show anytime for any reason because of the amazing characters, but it is especially satisfying as political coping because of Mei Changsu's beautiful takedown schemes (also, there is an explicit hierarchy of court corruptness being dealt with)!
♥ Captive Prince - similarly satisfying, but to a lesser extent. I love Laurent's plotting, but Mei Changsu eclipses him in terms of layers, let's be real.
♥ Black Panther - the most comforting parts of this movie for me are Shuri, Okoye, and Nakia, tbh. I love soft-hearted T'Challa, but those three are what I watch for these days.
♥ A:TLA - this is also a general comfort thing, but for political coping I like turning to the latter half of Zuko's character arc and, uh, pretty much every episode where Katara gets angry, because she's glorious when pissed off and never gets punished for it. I also like all the fights with Azula; they're quite cathartic for me!
♥ Kristin Cashore's Graceling series (er, I forget if that's the actual series name? but all three books!) - I like these because in addition to the various trash fires and takedowns, they don't shy away from the parts where everyone is also coping with the traumas involved during and afterward. There's a raw generosity and kindness in Bitterblue, especially, that I really appreciated post-November 2016.
♥ V for Vendetta - clearly explosions are not a solution to shitty government, but some days there's only so much bullshit I can take before I just want to watch it (fictionally) burn.
♥ The Matrix - same as above? xD
♥ The Handmaid's Tale - I started rereading a couple of weeks post-Kavanaugh, but it was a bit much then (also, I was away that weekend and got distracted by people). I think it would be good to revisit another day, though.
♥ Janelle Monae's entire discography - not only is she an incredible musician, her music videos (Many Moons, Tightrope, and Dirty Computer especially) are such amazing portraits of everyday #resistance.
♥ In the Heights soundtrack - maybe Hamilton would be more satisfying (I still haven't seen it), but literally all of this is immigrants surviving, thriving, and going about their everyday lives, and I desperately need more immigrant stories. (I would cite Allegiance too, if I owned the soundtrack!)
♥ By The Still Waters - I love and have been rereading this fic so much, because it is all about choosing and dealing with the consequences of your choices. Also OMG, what an incredible character piece! (Spoilers for Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition.)
♥ LOTR - for all those comforting Dire Moments with Frodo, Sam, Eowyn, etc., haha.

What are the things you've been turning to? Any recs?

Comments

[rydra_wong]

May I signal-boost, if this is a thing you'd like random people turning up and joining in with?

[glass_icarus]

Sure :)

[trascendenza]

The new She-Ra reboot really, really hit the spot for me recently. Sometimes watching a mostly-women rebellion fight to re-instate a magical matriarchy is just the thing!!

[glass_icarus]

Oh, is that the version on Netflix? It sort of caught my eye but I ended up starting on Voltron instead due to seeing it float by among my circle multiple times.

[heavenscalyx]

The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells. Murderbot just wants to be left alone to watch its media, and people keep trying to kill its humans, dammit. Intense reread value, especially if someone is reading the novellas aloud to you and possibly some of your friends, so you can all squeal, "Murderbooooooottttt!" together at certain points.

[glass_icarus]

That sounds pretty entertaining! :)

[alexseanchai]

Miraculous Ladybug

[glass_icarus]

Hmm, I might check that out at some point...

[brainwane]

Here are my recs -- I want to in particular bring Elvis Costello's song "Tramp the Dirt Down" to more people's attention.

Here via rydra_wong.

[rydra_wong]

I can fervently second Hope in the Dark, which is very much on my list also.

[oracne]

The Comfortable Courtesan: https://www.clorinda.org/

[glass_icarus]

Oh, interesting!

[naraht]

Here via rydra_wong...

I found Yuri!!! on Ice incredibly life-giving in the dark days of late 2016.

To some extent I still do, although because I'm now engaging with it as a fic writer I've now transposed it into the key of post-Soviet angst.

[glass_icarus]

Oh yes, YOI is absolutely general comfort media for me, haha. Post-Soviet angst take sounds pretty interesting!

[cesy]

I have been enjoying the BBC's DIY SOS and ITV's Love Your Garden, where nice people in the community come and help with your house and garden if you're ill or disabled.

[glass_icarus]

Aw! That sounds like the kind of warm and fuzzy the current version of Queer Eye gives me.

Here via Rydra

[susanreads]

I just finished Ephemera, the book version of vol. 2 of Wonder City Stories - the original serial is on here at wonder_city. Unfortunately, vol. 4 was derailed by writer's block, and then probably by life and/or politics; the first 3 vols. contain everything I'm looking for in comic-book-world fiction.

I also recommend ysabetwordsmith's Love is for Children series and Schrodinger's Heroes.

Re: Here via Rydra

[glass_icarus]

Cool, thanks! :)

[aurumcalendula]

Here via ryda_wong.

Two of mine are Leverage (I love watching the team take down the villains of the week via Mission Impossible style capers) and Terry Pratchett's books - particularly Monstrous Regiment and Night Watch.

[glass_icarus]

Oh that's right, I've been considering Leverage for a while! Maybe it's time. :)

[thatyourefuse]

M*A*S*H (the TV series), because you've never seen anything so casually refute the theory that you can't film war without making it look exciting, and because it's doing things with gender and sex and also with mental illness that maybe you only ever COULD do on TV for a brief period of time in the 70s without making a big self-congratulatory deal about it.

It is also spill-your-drink funny. Occasionally WHILE it's being bleak enough to go toe to toe with the ending of Blackadder Goes Forth.

(Everyone drinks. A lot. Often. If that's a deal-breaker, it's going to be a deal-breaker. There's an episode in S2 that's basically "oh okay that's what hypomania looks like when you don't really have a vocabulary for it," and all of S4 is an extended depressive crash. It's incredibly good for the soul regardless.)

[thatyourefuse]

I would also like to mention Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver -- I've never been an unqualified fan of her work, so when I say this one blew me away, I damn well mean it. It's hard to pin down a main character, but the plot pivots around Miryem Mandelstam, who is just... the most awesomely stubborn human being in all of Fantasy Medieval Poland, and possibly the actual world. Her stubborn is unbelievable. The entire novel runs on the force of her "okay YOU KNOW WHAT, fuck this, fuck everything, I'm going to do the impossible just to spite all you motherfuckers, and I'm going to do it 100% fair and lawful because I am fairly and lawfully in the right and you're all going to admit it." (Until it starts also running on the force of her "okay YOU KNOW WHAT, fuck this, I may not really have applied to be queen of the frost elves, but I accepted the position once it landed on me, and I live here now, and I have responsibilities. And then my stupid frost elf king husband can marry me again in a nice Jewish ceremony with my family if he wants this to actually be a thing." It's AMAZING.)

[kore]

- Black Panther and Janelle Monae YES. Angelique Kidjo also did a remake of the Talking Heads album Remain in Light, here's Once in a Lifetime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z84rtbVbIEQ

- DC's Bombshells and Bombshells United trades, which are my super happy place

- This Sam & Dave song always makes me happy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREppyQf5uw

- Luke Cage S1. Luke punches injustice in the face and is bulletproof. Bonus: Mike Colter is a wonderful actor and beautiful eye candy, and Simone Missick and Alfre Woodard are amazing.

- The Winter Soldier. Lost track of how many times I've seen this by now. Steve Rogers also punches injustice in the face. Bonus: ANTHONY MACKIE.

- Rachel Maddow's shows keep me sane. I also love all the Watergate docs rydra_wong links to.


Whoops I forgot a couple:

- "Our intrepid gang takes on injustice" shows like Leverage, Person of Interest,

- Rogue One is a BIG pick-me-up for me politically. Same thing with The Last Jedi. Failure isn't the end, isn't even really important, you keep on going.

- Rebecca Solnit's book are all fantastic, especially the new version of Hope in the Dark.

- John Lewis has a twitter and it is great: https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis ("Nov 7: Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year—it is the struggle of a lifetime. Be persistent and consistent. We shall overcome.")

- Ursula Le Guin's translation of the Tao te Ching is available as an audiobook with incidental music and is super calming. https://www.shambhala.com/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-14850.html

[glass_icarus]

Awesome, thanks for these!

[vass]

This is such a good post.

Mine:

Kimya Dawson, Remember That I Love You (album). In this context especially the song 'Loose Lips', which was written during the GWB presidency but is even MORE relevant now: "And we'll pray, all damn day, every day /That all this shit our President has got us in will go away / While we strive to figure out a way we can survive / These trying times without losing our minds." The line "tugging on the sleeve of how things used to be" makes me well up sometimes.

Sleater Kinney's discography.

Like you said, Janelle Monae's entire discography.

Political musical soundtracks. Hamilton of course (and the mixtape) but also especially its nearest Australian equivalent, Keating!. I'm listening to 'The Arse End of the Earth', which comes as close as anything can to my almost entirely vestigial patriotism, with its general attitude of 'yeah, our history sucks and our present sucks too and we aren't anyone's shining ideal, but we have to start where we are and we're not entirely awful and we CAN make things better': "We can move this world / We can chance this place / Shifting inch by inch / At a glacial pace / Take it step by step / Build it brick by brick / Important innovations / And delicate equations / I'm running out of patience, can we make this quick?"

clipping's discography (if you haven't listened to their album Splendor & Misery yet... well, that's my rec. They were nominated for a Hugo twice, and didn't win either time but fucking should have. Their sound (experimental noise hiphop) isn't for everyone, but I love it.)

Ann Leckie's Ancillary trilogy. About fighting for personhood and independence from an evil empire on a broad and individual level. And spaceships and cyborgs and non-binary people.

Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy, in which the evil empire seems completely impossible to overturn, and it so clearly gets into the heads and hearts of everyone there and corrupts them in small and large ways and makes the unthinkable seem commonplace, but people still resist in various ways, and it is still possible to overturn it if you can find the right lever and place to stand. And spaceships and robots and trans people.

JY Yang's Tensorate series, with yet more resistance to an evil empire, and yet more trans and non-binary people, and also raptors.

And I'm going through a Tolkien thing right now, reading the Silmarillion, but the part of that which makes this list is the fanfic and fanart and meta which engages with race and colonialism and gender and sexuality in ways Tolkien would never have thought of and does the Loving Something Problematic thing so fiercely well, and is also FUNNY, and I need that right now.

Is it media content if I list watching one of my cats give the other one a brutally thorough face-washing while he closes his eyes and tilts his head up to give her better access? Because that and the endless stream of cute animal pics on the internet is sometimes a very important thing.

[glass_icarus]

ANCILLARY TRILOGY YES, I need to finish that at some point! I've also had my eye on Yoon Ha Lee's books for a while, just been waiting for the opportune (guilt-free) free moment, haha.

[recessional]

I will probably wander back with more later, and maybe this will prompt me to actually get together and POST my "songs for digging in my heels and shouting I AM NOT DEAD YET" playlist, but one specifically new and recent was HoNY's photo-narrative visit to Rwanda focusing on Hutus who protected or helped Tutsis (or the stories of those who were protected somehow) during the genocide.

It also comes with just about every single content note you can think of, mind: the stories are direct and there is no pussy-footing around what happened, the violence and sexual violence and grotesque nature of the time and events. But it's also a very concrete, very real world story about people faced with the absolute worst of what humanity can come to who did what they could with what they had, in a country that has managed against incredible odds to, well. Still EXIST. To function. To have a next generation and a future.

While I linked that page, irritatingly they haven't got around to sticking it on their Stories or Countries pages, and their actual site is very hard to navigate in order, so the best way to get to it is to go to their main page and scroll down until you see the post I linked, and then read forward. Sigh.

[glass_icarus]

Goodness, that's an amazing project.

[cadenzamuse]

I have a "surviving 2017" Spotify playlist I put together when 2017 was killing me: https://open.spotify.com/user/1238246429/playlist/75qcyaW9CBvLwJxVabHBBp?si=cjYIYkXHRzydOWwQdtSYbA

Also, ACLU South Dakota put together a freaking amazing Election Day playlist this year: https://open.spotify.com/user/v9d7vkw0nh8rya7lb1d5bov4x/playlist/5MEsEx1p8BDP0yfPlKs2Ua?si=c27tcZiSQUOKwWJSZwRV_w

And I listen to Spotify's (very woman-centric) "Confidence Boost" playlist a lot lately: https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX4fpCWaHOned?si=xj3ENZV9SHG35oAhwIAw-g

My "surviving politics" self-care media appears to be quite different from my "surviving life" self-care media. The latter is epitomized by watching Flashpoint: which is essentially a wish-fulfillment version of something very similar to my career. The former involves a lot more escapism. But both involve themes of fictional characters who have power to engage with systemic problems and win.

[glass_icarus]

Ha, nice! I'm probably one of the only people who has never used Spotify in this day and age, but those playlists remind me that I omitted significant chunks of music. Lupe Fiasco's Lasers has suddenly floated to the top of my iTunes library again, for instance.

[oracne]

This is a list I put together for a "found family" panel at WisCon:

Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter [book, sequel is now out]
Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide [book, sequel is now out]
Vivian Shaw, Strange Practice [book, sequel is now out]
Sherry Thomas, A Study in Scarlet Women [book, 2 sequels are now out]
Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor [book]
C.J. Cherryh, Merchanter’s Luck [book]
Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni [book]
Grace Draven, Radiance, Wraith Kings series [books]
Laurie Marks, Elemental Magic series [books, fourth and last out soon]
J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts), Eve Dallas “In Death” series [books with horrible murders but continuing cast that are weirdly comforting sometimes]
Martha Wells, Raksura series [books]
Lilo & Stitch [movie]
Avatar: The Last Airbender [tv]
Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat [comic, Kate Leth]
Unstoppable Wasp [comic, Jeremy Whitley]
Champions [comic, Mark Waid]
Check, Please! [comic, Ngozi Ukazu]
O Human Star!, blue dellaquanti [in progress science fiction webcomic]
The Hues, Alex Heberling [webcomic]

[glass_icarus]

Oh, the Elemental Magic series! I remember reading the first couple ages ago, but I never picked them up again. I should go back and finish the series :)

[tielan]

Right now, I'm re-reading:

- all Nora Roberts' trilogies and quartets
- Nalini Singh's "Rock" series
- the SGA Legacy books series and subsequent novels related to that series

Otherwise, a lot of my focus is going into my own writing, and work in my garden.

[glass_icarus]

Nice! Gardening is... not my forte, but it looks to be increasingly comforting as a pastime, heh.

[rydra_wong]

I have to add Sifu Hotman's Matches since I know it's been an anthem for quite a few of us.

More to follow!

[recessional]

Such an Important Song.

I've been thinking about the verse about ancestors lately, and also how given that the memes of culture and history are as important to who we are and what we're doing as the gene of our bodies, our ancestors are not only our biological forebearers but our cultural and social forebearers.

[rydra_wong]

Two particular vids have been talismanic:

thingswithwings: New Vid: Dance Apocalyptic (multifandom, by me and eruthros) -- which also spawned my tag for this era

bironic: New vid! "The Greatest," multifandom SF/F/H characters of color extravaganza (bonus points for being made for Fandom Trumps Hate)

Tangential ETA: just saw this comment on the latter, which led me to Squee From the Margins, which sounds like it could be very very interesting

[glass_icarus]

Ooh, shiny! :D Speaking of vids, I just remembered how much I love Watershed (A:TLA), omg.

[aoftheis]

Love this, and have grabbed many suggestions from this list! ♥

My political coping thing is everyone's favourite queer glittery space opera Steven Universe. Queer, inclusive, and diverse in its politics, and its characters deal with issues like community, rebellion, trauma. And its attitude is fundamentally caring and hopeful and optimistic, which is what I need in 2018.

Man, I really want to return to Dreamwidth/fan communities, but I have no idea how fandom works these days ;)

[glass_icarus]

Oops, totally missed comment-notifications for a couple weeks... /o\

I miss fandom activity too, but not enough to migrate platforms! I attempted and left the pit that is tumblr, and haven't really tried again. (I also haven't heard much about other platforms, so there's that.)

Obviously

[rydra_wong]

Watergate, considered as epic multi-media non-fiction drama!

Which is why I have my watergate fandom tag.

I find it deeply heartening, as a kind of ghost map to current goings-on, and with a happy ending to boot. Not heartening in a "this proves the system works!" way, because the deeper you get the more you see how the outcome depended on so many different people stepping up in different ways, not to mention pure luck and some spectacular incompetence on the part of the bad guys. The ending looks very fragile and unliely in some lights. And yet all those people, some of them very unlikely candidates, did step up.

Elizabeth Drew dedicated Washington Journal to "those who rose to the occasion", and people really did -- she cites Peter Rodino in particular, this guy who hardly anyone had heard of, chairing this committee than no-one thought was going to be particularly important, who summoned up this incredible gravitas and skill in steering the Judiciary Committee through the start of impeachment proceedings.

Also it's amazing just how bugfuck (and how genuinely shocking) the Watergate story is when you get into it.

Re: Obviously

[glass_icarus]

Just saw these comment-notifications, ahaha. /o\

Watergate is fascinatingly relevant, I wish I had more time to look into that period. ^^;