Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Fandom Wishlist

[rogueslayer452]

Challenge #7: In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a wishlist of sorts.

01. Icons of the following shows/characters/pairings: (the bolded are highly requested)

- Detective L (specifically of Huo Wensi, Luo Fei/Huo Wensi)
- Fangs of Fortune (Zhuo Yichen, Zhao Yuanzhou)
- The Blossoming Love (Mu Xuanling)
- Meet You At The Blossom (Zongzheng Huaien, Huaien/Xiaobao)
- Till The End of the Moon (Tantai Jin, Pian Ran)
- 23.5 Degrees (Aylin, Alpha, Charoen)
- The Untamed (Xue Yang)

02. Weird fiction recommendations. I tend to find a lot of things accidentally, but sometimes it can be hard to find something specifically to my tastes. I like a lot of weird fiction, weird science fiction/horror in particular, but anything goes in terms of the bizarre and straight up trippy storytelling. Examples of this include: the Dune series by Frank Herbert, anything from Jeff VanderMeer (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Borne, The Strange Bird, Dead Astronauts), television shows like Doom Patrol, Legion, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, movies such as Peau d'âne (Donkey Skin), Něco z Alenky and the filmography of Jan Švankmajer. Any medium, any genre, any language, any era. The more obscure the better, preferably.

Comments

[blackcatofmisery]

Have you seen Night on the Galactic Railroad (I watched the movie, but it's based off a book.) or Kurayukaba? They're odd but have nice animation. With more context, they may not be as weird as they seemed, but I'm not sure. Night on the Galactic Railroad, after reading about it, is a metaphor for dying? Or the process of dying? Kurayukaba is a detective story investigating disappearances in a hard-to-reach underground city. There's something about circuses...

I honestly can't say if I enjoyed either of them. Maybe watching them again would help me understand more.

=^..^=~

[rogueslayer452]

I haven't, but I'll look into them. Thank you for the recommendations. :)

[queenslayerbee]

I've found sf/f and horror magazines are generally a good place to find weird stories. An author I've followed in tumblr for a while definitely has that style and got me into looking those magazines and anthologies up (here's a link to their stuff).

I also read Kemi Ashing-Giwa's short stories on this vein (free in Tor), and looking them up made me realised there's a new one, so thanks for that :D

[rogueslayer452]

Oh, nice. Thank you for sharing that. :)

[got_quiet]

Are you interested in Visual Novels at all? Some indy VNs take things to surreal levels. Unfortunately most of the stuff you cited I'm not familiar with so I might not be able to rec stuff that's hitting the right spot, but I can try.

The novel City and The City might qualify. It's often cited as science fiction, but can also be read as not. It involves a murder in place where two cities exist directly on top of each other, aka your building may be from city A and your neighbor may be from city B. And the way people deal with this is never acknowledging the existence of the other city unless they cross over formally. It's definitely weird, but I found it fascinating.

You might also be interested in the webcomic Rice Boy and Order of Tales. They're both fantasy adventures with lots of surreal elements.

[rogueslayer452]

I haven't really ventured into the realm of visual novels, though there is a first time for everything.

City and the City sounds fascinating, and reading the synopsis of the book itself I'm definitely intrigued by the concept with combining the weird and a murder mystery. That'll be added to the list.

Thank you for the recs. :)

[facethestrange]

The book Bunny by Mona Awad is so deliciously weird and one of my favorite things. :)

[rogueslayer452]

Based on the summary, it does sound intriguing. I'll have to add that to the list. Thank you for the rec!

[facethestrange]

Oh, yay! :) Since you wanted horror, I didn't bother with content notes, but maybe "really gory things happening to animals" is one content note that I should include, especially if someone else is also snagging recs from here. Gore in general too, but I guess that's obvious.

[tarlanx]

I hope you like these :)

  

[rogueslayer452]

You are a doll! Thank you so much! :D

[tarlanx]

You're welcome!

[profiterole_reads]

Weird storytelling: have you watched Netflix's Polish mockumentary 1670? It's even been renewed, I can't wait.

Weird science fiction/fantasy: Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi Takács. It's a collection of brilliant speculative short stories.

[rogueslayer452]

I haven't, but I think I might've seen it cross my Tumblr dash at some point since looking it up I vaguely recall seeing something about it in passing.

Thank you for the recs, much appreciated. :)

[fred_mouse]

For one, I was going to point you at c_ent, and their wishlist Wednesdays, but I see that you are already a member.

For two, not books: In terms of trippy story telling, movies directed by Peter Greenaway. The name I remember is Belly of An Architect, which I remember as incredibly surreal, although I was quite young when I watched it, and might just not have had the film literacy to follow the story. I'll note that I don't remember enjoying it, mostly because I hadn't yet reached the point where I understood that sometimes the lack of understanding is part of the story.

For two, books: I also like the works of Umberto Eco for weird fiction. The one I have is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, their most famous one in english translation to my knowledge is Name of the Rose, which isn't particularly weird. If you like pastiche/homage, then the works of Edgar Cantero might suit: This Body's not Big Enough For Both Of Us is detective noir; Meddling Kids is kind of Famous Five grown up; and The Supernatural Enhancements is kind of a gothic ghost story, or at least it starts that way. It is possible that some of the works of T Kingfisher would suit, but you'd have to pick their horror rather than their fairy story retellings (the horror is often a bit weird, their fantasy/retellings are interesting, but not weird, not really; The Twisted Ones is the only one I've really found to be horror rather than A Bit Odd).

Some other thoughts, with differing levels of 'well, that was odd': Isaac Fellman, Dead Collections; Lina Rather, Sisters of the Vast Black (dystopia in space, body horror); Sunyi Dean, The Book Eaters, Arkady Martine, Rose/House; Vajra Chadrasekara, The Saint of Bright Doors; Cassandra Khaw, The All Consuming World; Chuck Tingle, Camp Damascus; Tade Thompson, The Murders of Molly Southbourne and sequels; A J Fitzwater, No Man's Land; Nino Cipri, Finna and Defekt (and their short story collection, if you can find it); R B Lemberg, The Unbalancing; Marie Cardno, How to Get a Girlfriend (When You're a Terrifying Monster); Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go In the Dark; Naomi Salman, Nothing But the Rain; Victor LaValle, Lone Women (more straight up horror, but still weird); Stephen Jones, Growing up Dead in Texas (I frequently wasn't sure who the narrator was); Octavia Cade, Stone Wētā; Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun; Maggie Stiefvater, All The Crooked Saints; possibly the works of Gillian Polack and Christina Henry; Rudy Ch Garcia, The Closet of Discarded Dreams.

Hopefully amongst that you'll find things you like. And I'd be interested in hearing about whether they count as 'weird' in your perspective! I went a little closer to what I think of as ordinary, because you listed Dune and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

02. Weird fiction recommendations:

[angelcage]

Are you familiar with Catherynne M. Valente? While she tends to lose me a bit with her endings, no one can say her fiction isn't delightfully strange. Her most accessible work, in my opinion, is the Orphan's Tales duology which is told in a Scheherazade/One Thousand and One Nights way, with many stories within a story. But, if you want to fully commit to the Catherynne M. Valente experience, try Radiance. Set in a retrofuture that has both space-faring and silent black-and-white films contemporaneously, it proceeds to swap genres at every major part of the book, containing a neo-noir section, epistolary interview sections, screenplay, etc. It falls apart at the ending, but it is a ride in getting there. Some people love her stuff, some people hate it, I really love parts of it and roll my eyes at others. Still, definitely worth a read!