Detective Pony: am i embarrassed to have a homestuck fanfic be my #1? absoultely not. genuinely one of the most exceptional pieces of metafiction out there. and on that note...

Homestuck: without which i wouldn't have survived high school.

Pale Fire: a queer, schizo academic who believes he's royalty? a poem about one's relationship with death? when john shade wrote 'oblivion thrives / not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives', i felt that.

Artemis Fowl: my intro to magical realism. i related a lot to artemis when i was wee.

Going Postal: obviously discworld in general is great for this, but writing a fantasy epic about the postal service of all things? sublime. mwah.

Reaper Man: a love letter to death. makes me happy.

Temple of the Cosmos: i don't love this book uncritically, but it's wonderful to see egyptian mythology tackled from the perspective of a philosopher.

The Satanic Bible: ok, just because i say it was foundational, doesn't mean i'm saying it's good. it was both my introduction to paganism and to questioning The System. obviously i've grown far away from the very libertarian school of thought it employs, but it was exactly the right thing to get the person i was back then started in this direction in the first place.

Object Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything: i don't pretend to understand most of this book yet, but it feels... grounding, in that it bridges the gap between a lot of metaphysical and material concerns of mine. it also gives us the following quote, which i think about often: "...a successful string theory would not be able to tell us anything about Sherlock Holmes, and this alone suffices to disqualify it as a 'theory of everything'".

Fight Club: "mord the message of fight club isn't--" shhhhhhh. this is on here for pretty much the same reason the satanic bible is. plus, it's cinematographically fascinating.

The Lobster: i don't know how this movie affected me, but it did, and probably for the worse.

The Three of Us: this gets its own entry because it's basically my soul song. kept me sane through high school, which is weird, because i graduated in 2013 and this song came out in 2016.

The Hands That Thieve: the album that the above comes from. it fills the same hole in me as an adult that shit like simple plan did as a kid.

Prequelle: practially by their own admission, ghost is abba for doom metal fans. this album has the highest concentration of that energy, so it's the one most aligned with my aesthetic.

Alestorm: i only ever end up liking half the songs off any given album of theirs, so here's some highlights: To the End of the World, The Huntmaster, Magnetic North, Treasure Chest Party Quest, 1741, Sunset on the Golden Age.

"But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts." - Vincent Van Gogh

"God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation." - Julian K. Jarboe

“All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!” - Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men