Recbox for Hannah

[beyondthealgorithm_mod]

Username: Hannah

Preferred Genres: Drama, Comedy, Scifi

DNW Genres: Horror

Preferred Media Types: Movies, TV shows, novels

DNW Media Types: Podcasts

General Likes: Competence, enjoyment of each other's company, enjoyment of one's work, strong narrative thrust, belief in the hope and capacity of human kindness and potential, anger focused outward to a sharp point to leverage against the injustices of the world, Jews, bad rats

General DNWs: Deliberate miscommunication, cruelty, nihilism, dishonest storytelling, lack of commitment to the narrative being told, a major outstanding time commitment, dogs, laugh tracks, lack of character development

Fandom Preferences: Genfic, vids

Requests for Content Warnings: Violence, dogs, earworms

Examples of Media Enjoyed: Six Feet Under, Deep Space Nine, Deadwood, Scrubs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Good Place, Discworld, The Mandalorian, The Golem and the Jinni

Examples of Media to Avoid: Critical Role, animation in the uncanny valley, The Walking Dead

Streaming Services I Can Access: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime

Languages I'm Comfortable With: English

Comments

[flowersforgraves]

Hi Hannah,

I think you may enjoy the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie. It's a far-future sci-fi series that focuses on Breq, an artificial intelligence who used to be a ship. She now occupies one single body, and is doing her utmost to take down the Lord of the Radch. The Radchaai culture is fascinating, and Leckie has done a fantastic job worldbuilding. The series focuses on themes of personhood and sapience, colonialism and empire, and anger/revenge. While some people have found it to have a slow start, the narrative is really compelling and (in my mind at least) has the kind of thrust to it that you've said you enjoy. The canon also plays with gender (in Radchaai language, there's only one pronoun, which Leckie renders as "she" -- the characters aren't necessarily women, but I know that a lot of queer/trans women or woman-adjacent people in the fandom have really related to them). In the fandom, there's about an equal amount of shipfic and genfic. Since it's a book series, there aren't a whole lot of vids, but there are some talented artists whose work is really stellar.

In terms of content warnings, there is ship-to-ship combat as well as a few instances of interpersonal violence, including a murder in book 2 and a couple instances of gun violence. I don't believe it's particularly gory or lingered upon, but I'm not sure the extent you'd like violence content warned.

If a trilogy is too much of a time commitment, Leckie has also written a standalone book set in the same universe. Provenance explores themes of imprisonment, identity, culture, and preservation. You don't need the context of the Radch trilogy to enjoy it, but there are some references and callbacks to worldbuilding elements from the trilogy. Again, there is some gun violence, a murder, and some blood, but like with the Radch books, it's not gory and Leckie doesn't revel in it. (I may be wrong, but I think the murder actually happens off the page.) I think this universe may be something you'd like to explore, and please feel free to message me if you want any further content warnings!