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1000 results for “DiePresse”
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Heute hab ich wieder etwas gelernt.
Der #Postbus in Österreich ist eine prinzessinhafte Zicke.
Der #VOR macht die Koordination und Kundenservice für die Busse in Niederösterreich nicht, hat auch keine Möglichkeit den Postbus zu kontaktieren (zumindest die im Kundenservice).
Der VOR hat zwar einen Kundenservice... aber verweist einen für Anfragen zu Verspätungen und Ausfällen zur NÖVOG. Denn die Koordiniert das jetzt, weil es irgend einen "Vorfall" gegeben hat.
Die NÖVOG verweist einen bei Fragen zu Ausfällen zum Postbus mit der Telefonnummer 051717...
Aber auf 051717 sagens einem, dass sie den Postbus nicht erreichen können, weil sie keine Telefonnummer haben und auch nur in der Fahrplanauskunft sehe, was los wäre... und was dort nicht drin steht, gibts es für die Fahrplanauskunft auf 051717 (und VOR und NÖVOG) nicht...Also ein Ringeltanz ohne Ergebnis.
Nun gut. Grund für den Ringeltanz durch Kundenservice-Stellen war ein ausgefallener Bus von Tulln nach Stockerau. Die ÖBB-Fahrplanauskunft weist diesen Bus als regulär verkehrend aus. Nach wie vor.
Der bei 051717 sagt mir aber, diesen Bus um 8:04, 9:04, 10:04, 12:04 habe er NICHT im System sondern um 8:50, 9:50... Linie 140.
Spannend. Also hier passt es schonmal nicht zusammen.Zum Glück hab ich die Auskunft am Handy und Laptop mit Screenshot gesichert.
Und weil ich wissen wollte, an wen ich meine Rückerstattung einreichen muss, damit sie Aussicht auf Erfolg hat, (alle deuteten auf den Postbus, der als einziger im Ringelreier nicht direkt erreichbar ist, auch von den Partner-Unternehmen ÖBB, NÖVOG und VOR nicht... dass die Schuld seien. Klar, wer sich ziert und zickt und nicht erreichbar ist, muss schuld sein), recherchierte ich weiter.
Und siehe da... scotty.oebb.at zeigt auch heute noch den Bus als regulär verkehrend an. Aber auf www.vor.at zeigt die Fahrplanauskunft die Halte Tulln Bahnhof und Feuerwehr dieser Linie als ausgefallen an, da die Brücke in Tulln saniert wird...
Jetzt bin ich gespannt, ob ich mit dieser Auskunft und den Belegen (Screenshots der Fahrplanauskunft, Car-Sharing-Rechnung, ÖBB-Ticket) und der eindeutigen Beweislage, dass die ÖBB-Fahrplanauskunft einen Hau hat, meine Car-Sharing-Kosten wieder rückerstattet bekomme. Der Termin wartet nämlich nicht.
Und ich frag mich, ob ich mich nicht an die Presse wenden soll. Nicht wegen den ausgefallenen Halten und der falschen Fahrplanauskunft... sondern wegen der Kommunikationsprobleme mit dem Postbus... Kann ja nicht sein, dass ein so großer Mobilitätsanbieter einfach beschließt "Telefon... nein das gibts bei uns nicht". Auch nicht für Partner und Auftraggeber.
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@jensorensen
Which reminds me. I occasionally shop at #Ocado and have never had a problem with the process... except the other day I could no longer get the 'login' button to 'stay depressed'. After spotting some 'interesting' traffic I tried (temporarily) relaxing my firewall rules wrt certain g00gle domains and, et voila, all was 'normal'.
#WTF #privacy #surveillance #consumer #security #comsec #thirdpartyparasites -
The support for #MathML in browser is often poor. The fact that instead of improving it the developers seem to be instead pressuring the standard bodies to impoverish the language only makes this worse.
(I am aware of #MathJax. We shouldn't need a heavy-duty #JavaScript library to solve typesetting problems. That's exactly what browser engines are there fore.)
I weep for the status of scientific publishing in the modern world.
(This rant is offered by my experience looking for options to make the SPHERIC newsletter available both in PDF and in HTML form. I don't even need complex math usually,, we try to avoid it in contributions because it's hard to typeset math outside of the TeX world. But the fact that in 2026 online the only safe way seems to be to typeset everything manually or rely on huge JavaScript libraries is a little depressing.)
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Puzzled, I try the trigger again, and watch as the lever closes in on the contact switch... and then the trigger maxes out just before the switch is depressed. Looks like a manufacturing defect in either the trigger or the lever, one of them is just a hair too thin. I pop out the trigger, run a tiny screw into the end of it, and reassemble the saw. Now I've got a working chainsaw for $36 while simultaneously saving this thing from going to a landfill.
3/3
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Puzzled, I try the trigger again, and watch as the lever closes in on the contact switch... and then the trigger maxes out just before the switch is depressed. Looks like a manufacturing defect in either the trigger or the lever, one of them is just a hair too thin. I pop out the trigger, run a tiny screw into the end of it, and reassemble the saw. Now I've got a working chainsaw for $36 while simultaneously saving this thing from going to a landfill.
3/3
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Puzzled, I try the trigger again, and watch as the lever closes in on the contact switch... and then the trigger maxes out just before the switch is depressed. Looks like a manufacturing defect in either the trigger or the lever, one of them is just a hair too thin. I pop out the trigger, run a tiny screw into the end of it, and reassemble the saw. Now I've got a working chainsaw for $36 while simultaneously saving this thing from going to a landfill.
3/3
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Puzzled, I try the trigger again, and watch as the lever closes in on the contact switch... and then the trigger maxes out just before the switch is depressed. Looks like a manufacturing defect in either the trigger or the lever, one of them is just a hair too thin. I pop out the trigger, run a tiny screw into the end of it, and reassemble the saw. Now I've got a working chainsaw for $36 while simultaneously saving this thing from going to a landfill.
3/3
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Battle for the Ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation 2026
The two Best Dramatic Presentation categories are among my favourites in the Hugos, because I consume a lot of SFF media and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about them. Since my post last year about why I had wanted Loki S2 to win a Hugo in 2024 (which I was working on for a while but ended up not posting it in time for it to sway anyone), I’ve been toying with the idea of producing more writing around some of my favourite things from each year, in case it helps anybody—least of all me, in getting it all out of my system.
I know I’m posting this with one day to go before nominations (these take so long for me! I must develop a better system for next year 🤔), but I’m really writing this to sound out my own thoughts about the DP categories this year, because it is absolutely bananas with how stacked they both are. There have been some truly great speculative television shows and films, stuff that I’m sure we’ll still be talking about for years to come, and making decisions to boil my favourite media down to just 5 per category—especially given the fiddliness of Long Form and Short Form where TV is concerned, which I’ll get to in a sec—is going to be excruciatingly difficult for me.
So come along on a journey with me as I parse my thoughts, and who knows! Maybe I’ll argue my way to your heart about some of this, or tell you about something you hadn’t heard of before—some of which I’ve already written about before, but I’m getting ahead of myself!
Let me know what your ballot looks like, and if you’re nominating any of the below shows, films, and other dramatic works, or if you’re including other things entirely. I’m curious!
TV series and the Long Form/Short Form debate
A big question for many fen every year is “do I nominate one episode from a TV series that stands on its own or that adequately represents the show in Short Form, or do I nominate the whole season in Long Form because it’s one complete narrative, and isolating one chapter of it would be unfair?”
Understandably, it’s a tough one; when a show inevitably gets votes in both categories, it can lead to headaches for the Hugo Administrating Team as they have to sift through the numbers and ultimately decide which category it should be nominated in1, which I don’t envy at all. But at the same time, as a voter, I have to go with what my heart says and name my favourite episodes in Short Form, regardless of whether I’ve also named the show/season as a whole in Long Form, because if enough others have put that same episode down, then that’s what’ll make it through to the shortlist, and I would want my vote to count towards those totals.
All that to say: if you expected a clear stance from me on this, HA! I’m afraid I don’t have one 😇—and to be perfectly honest, this is exactly the sort of thing where people’s mileage will vary the most.
My personal method of deciding whether to nominate entire TV seasons rather than one specific episode is purely based on ~vibes~, on whether or not I thought the season works better in its totality than through its individual parts, versus cases where one outstanding episode eclipses all the others for me. Not all shows are written the same, of course, and those that favour a longer narrative arc (as a lot of prestige TV does nowadays) tend to find their way on my long form ballot more often than not, as opposed to the more episodic writing that isn’t as popular now but used to be ubiquitous in the pre-streaming era.
Ultimately, you may agree or disagree with me on my reasoning for some of my choices below, whether on the LF/SF question or my actual opinions of the various media, and that’s fair enough. I welcome discussion in the comments, but please keep it civil!
Jump to:
- Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
- Long Form: Films
- Long Form: Non-Film/TV
- Short Form: TV Episodes
- Short Form: Non-TV
Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
You might see episodes from some of these further down in the episode/short form discussion.
Andor, Season 2+
This is kind of my front-runner among the TV seasons for the Long Form category. Overall, I enjoyed it slightly more than season 1 for a few reasons: first of all, the pacing was much more even, with a little bit more action and intrigue peppered throughout the season as opposed to having several quieter mini-arcs that slowed things down in places; and crucially, there was a lot less dithering from Cassian Andor, our reluctant protagonist, who finally comes into his own as a rebel after being passively tossed about this way and that in the first season. The agency he has in this one makes him much more interesting as a character, and brings him on the same level as other players in the budding rebellion front, like Mon Mothma and Luthen Rael. In fact, with all the different character arcs completed, Andor finally becomes what Rogue One always wanted to be: a testament to the great sacrifices necessary for revolution to take root.
I liked a lot of what went down in this season as tensions continued ramping up between the Empire and the Rebellion; the Ghorman subplot was outstanding, especially with Dedra and Cyril’s journeys as instruments of Imperial oppression and violence, as was Mon Mothma’s arc from quiet resistance financier to full-on political rebel on the run, with her heartbreaking arc where she realises the personal cost of rebellion. None of the individual episodes in season 2 came even close to the intensity or narrative brilliance of One Way Out, which was hands down my favourite episode of season 1, but that’s okay—I think this season works so much better in its totality, that I’ll be happy to nominate it wholesale.
I still need to re-watch Rogue One actually, to see if my (very mid) opinion on it changes at all, but ultimately I’m just really happy this show was made, and that it looked and felt amazing throughout. It’s probably my favourite Star Wars story, period, and I am so chuffed that so much of it was filmed in the UK (in locations I know and visit all the time, including my old workplace!2), and is full of incredibly talented and classically trained British theatre actors who fill the space with their physicality and make their performances memorable even in the smallest of roles3.
Severance, Season 2+
Another really strong contender for this category. If you ask me which TV show might win the LF Hugo between this, Andor, or Pluribus, my money would probably be on Severance, even if I personally prefer Andor thematically and Pluribus cinematically. There’s no doubt Severance is an absolute masterpiece of television—nay, of cinema—and the fact that the most anti-capitalist story of our time is coming directly from the big tech megacorp Apple is an irony that is as delicious as it is hilarious.
Aside from its bonkers world-building (which still has so many unanswered questions!), this season of Severance also dove pretty deep into its characters, whom we only got to know a bit in season 1. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but there’s a handful of moments in this season that go SO HARD—particularly that one slow episode that everyone else hated for some reason, where we follow Patricia Arquette’s character as she goes to her dingy home town and fills us in on the cult lore around Lumon Industries, and of course the team building episode in which our intrepid heroes actually go outside, but it’s all weird in that trademark Lumon way where nothing really fully makes sense, and it leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable, like something’s not quite aligned right.
But yeah, the world-building, man. It’s something else. I was glued to my screen and my mind was running a mile a minute trying to join the dots and figure out the answers to the show’s mysteries, much like our heroes consolidate memories refine macrodata—remember, the work is mysterious and important—and the excitement of getting it just before the show confirmed it was super fun. Yet, finally understanding what macrodata refinement is was actually a really tragic moment, and everything that happens after that made my heart break for the innies who are stuck living a half-life they can’t escape, on pain of death.
Ultimately, what I loved the most about the second season of Severance is its staunch anti-capitalist messaging that speaks to the average office worker today regardless of where they may be in the world, because corporate manipulation knows no borders:
- A job is a job, not a family.
- The company you work for does not deserve blind, cult-like loyalty.
- Your life is more than just work, and compartmentalising your work self and your out-of-work self might be a band-aid solution, but it doesn’t really work in the end.
- You are you, with all your complex layers of self, even if your corporate overlords (…or just your line manager 🤐) want you to think otherwise, or to act otherwise so you can fit into their office culture.
- Basically, it’s all dumb, and you deserve to live, not just to survive so you can punch your clock card and get meaningless little bonuses like finger traps or waffle parties.
This relatability is what keeps me hooked, and what I think elevates the show from pretty sci-fi to a classic of our times. It’s definitely got my vote.
Pluribus, Season 1+
God, talk about another cinematic masterpiece. When Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul‘s Vince Gilligan said he was working on a new show (which he was writing specifically for Rhea Seahorn to star in), I was crossing my fingers and my toes that it would be sci-fi, and Pluribus has completely blown my expectations out of the water. Not only does it mark Gilligan’s return to science fiction for the first time since The X-Files, but he brings his now-trademark cinematic visual language to it, full of tight choreography and nuanced subtext through visual and music cues, which is what made BB & BCS so special.
The result is an unnerving combination of horror, absurdist humour, and subtle world-building, centered around a complex character named Carol Sturka, who is one of only a few humans not to join the weird hive mind connection that takes over all other human beings on the planet, and doesn’t want to even entertain the idea. I’ve seen many reviews call her unlikable and unrelatable, and while the first part may be true (I was really tired of her contrarian nature in the first half of the season), I think there’s something more going on here than just a selfish white American woman who expects the world to move just for her.
The thing is, Vince Gilligan does not talk down to his audience; he expects us to keep up and to pick up what he’s putting down, whether that’s subtle digs at the publishing industry (it is truly hilarious to me that the protagonist of this show is an actual romantasy author!), not-so-subtle digs about community building and the harm humanity has done to the planet and to each other (particularly around resource distribution, iykyk), and questions about human nature that we are left to ponder: would you trade world peace for the complete flattening of human culture? Are we capable of retaining what makes us human while not actively harming the world around us, or each other? What is humanity, really, or human nature even?
Big stuff coming from an Apple TV show, once again; should I even be surprised at this point?
I think the long game of this show is going to be Carol’s character development from grumpy selfish miser to someone who genuinely cares about other people—a reverse Walter White, if you will. Gilligan is all about the narrative arc, and he has been known to deliver some of the best narrative arcs in TV ever, even if they take a while to stick the landing. I have faith that he is cooking something we haven’t even yet begun to poke at, if Better Call Saul is any indication, and between the already great writing and the show’s superlative production value, I think Pluribus is going to be a low-key modern classic. Vince has my vote, now and always.
My Hero Academia: The Final Season+
I wrote about this extensively in my Hugo ballot recommendations post a couple of months ago, so I’ll pull a quote from that as to why I loved it so much:
Y’all, what can I say: this has been my favourite anime of the last decade, and the fact it is ending has had me in my feelings for months. I’ve been deeply invested emotionally for many years, watching the simulcasts on the same day as the anime airs in Japan since around season 2, and this last season has been all payoff for almost ten years’ worth of story. Every Saturday from October 4th till December 13th, I tuned in and bawled my eyes out for 20 minutes straight, which for an anime aimed at teenage boys is an absolute feat. Defying every expectation, it stuck the landing for every little story beat, every subplot, and every theme set up over its ten year tenure perfectly, making it one of my absolute favourite stories in the superhero genre.
This is definitely one of those where context is essential, so I don’t think it can be viewed in a vacuum and appreciated to the same extent as having watched all previous seven seasons. You can try, but it wouldn’t be worth it just for the awards. Just watch the show so the ending can hit you like a ton of bricks in the best way possible, even if you miss the deadline. It’s fun, it’s moving, it’s made with so much love for American comics through a uniquely Japanese perspective. I can’t recommend it enough, and it’ll definitely be on my Long Form ballot even if I’m one of ten people who put it there 🤷🏻♀️
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Silo, Season 2: It’s definitely not as tight as season 1, and it was missing some stuff from the books that may well turn up in season 3. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot I enjoyed about this season, but unfortunately it’s simply weaker when Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette isn’t on screen, and there’s a lot of that unfortunately. I’m certainly looking forward to what season 3 will be adapting, and to see what format that will take, as I think they’re either condensing or axing the second half of book 2 to go straight to the dual narrative of book 3, which I have mixed feelings about.
- Murderbot: I never got into the books because of tonal whiplash (MB’s violence and misanthropy coated in dry humour just didn’t work for me), and while I thought the TV show was a little better in that regard, ultimately I thought the show was just okay. I didn’t actively dislike it, mind, but I watched most of it on a plane ride, didn’t finish it, and haven’t felt like picking it back up since. The story just doesn’t grab me, I think, and I never felt particularly attached to or compelled by any of the characters… and I’m okay with that 🤷🏻♀️. Not everything is for everyone! I expect it’ll be mass-nominated by all the book fans anyway based on the online discourse I’ve seen, so it won’t miss my vote.
- Invasion, Season 3: I didn’t even know this was out, lmao! I was deeply invested while watching seasons 1 and 2 (even though I disliked quite a few of the characters), but as soon as I was done with it I promptly forgot about it—and Apple TV didn’t even let me know that it was back on. Whomst can I shake until they fix the marketing situation over there?! Christ on a cracker!
- Stranger Things, Season 5: To my own surprise, I didn’t like this season nearly as much as season 4, let alone season 1, and so I will not be considering it for the Long Form category (including the last episode, which would qualify under Long Form on its own due to being 128 MINUTES LONG 🙄). It’s turned out to be one of those things where, while I enjoyed it a fair bit in the moment, the longer I think about it the more my feelings about it seem to change, and the ending has left me a bit… conflicted, shall we say. But it did have some great episodes in the middle especially, so I will consider a couple of them in the Short Form category.
Long Form: Films
Sinners+
This was probably my favourite SFF film of last year. Not only is it atmospheric, fun, and lush with cross-border folkloric world-building (Hoodoo magic and Irish vampires?! yes please!), but the story touches so many themes that a regular popcorn movie won’t even veer towards, and it does so brilliantly.
All the many layers of the Black and POC experience in the South during the Prohibition era (and beyond) are crystallised in the character arc of each ensemble cast member, with some absolutely outstanding performances by Hailee Steinfeld (whose character Mary is biracial, and torn between safety and belonging), Michael B. Jordan (who plays identical twins Smoke and Stack so well he walked away with an Oscar for it), and Wunmi Mosaku in particular as Smoke’s wife Annie (she’s such an underrated performer, but I’m so glad to see her actually flex her acting skills after her appearance in Loki). We’re talking themes like the push and pull of religion and its role in both keeping communities together and also oppressing them, the safety of BIPOC in a white supremacist society, and even the immigrant experience… the truth is your average blockbuster would never—but this is Ryan Coogler, and he won’t sugar-coat things for a mainstream audience, instead telling a story only he could tell, filled with truth, complexity, and nuance, something I really wish more filmmakers would embrace nowadays.
The film’s protagonist, Sammie (Miles Caton) has a preternatural gift with music, and the plot revolves around a juke joint Smoke and Stack put together, and the connection that music can create across time and even culture—with a wonderful supernatural twist.
One of my favourite moments is when the villain Remmick (an immortal Irish vampire played by Jack O’Connell) turns up at their juke joint and cries with joy at the emotions Sammie’s music has brought him after years of numbness. He talks about his own experience of colonialism at the hands of the British Empire and the subsequent erasure of Irish culture through the centuries, which is a very real thing—but he’s also a predator who has been making his way through the land trying to trap people and turn them into vampires, chased away by indigenous people who could tell he was a monster before attacking a couple who are Klan members. It’s clear that he doesn’t want Sammie’s music in order to connect people, but to use it as a tool on his quest to propagate a vampire race, and that seemingly sweet moment of connection is exposed as the performative allyship that it is.
There are some phenomenal action sequences too, with the last third of the film keeping me on the edge of my IMAX seat4. Genuinely, this film was such a breath of fresh air: delightfully complex but also fun, in ways that cinema just doesn’t dare to be right now. I was sad they didn’t win all the awards they were up for, but perhaps we can give it a Hugo instead.
Frankenstein+
©️ Netflix 2025I have a full review of this here, but basically: the SFF-ness of this is lush, as expected from a Guillermo Del Toro movie, and for the most part it works well as an adaptation of the book. As I mention in my other post, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the NT’s theatre adaptation, which I still consider the ultimate version of this story, but it does similar things with the characters as Penny Dreadful, which is my runner-up favourite, save for the very end, and it’s that ending that makes the whole thing fall short for me, unfortunately.
To quote myself:
Why do we sing sad songs, when we know their ending is unhappy? When our instinctual yearning for a happy ending is met with the inevitability of human flaws getting in the way, that emotional release we experience is what my ancestors called catharsis. As the audience we accept that because of who these characters are, they would always make these choices and lead the story to the same outcome, time and again, even though we’d like them to change, to choose better, so they can be happy in the end.
What makes Frankenstein compelling in any iteration is its core conflict: Victor’s refusal to acknowledge the Creature as human, despite the fact that the Creature is deeply human, as much as his creator would like to think otherwise. We are invited to empathise with the Creature’s plight, to see how he thinks and feels, how he desires things we all do: safety, friendship, love. Victor is incapable of recognising this, and so the two clash eternally. Such is the tragedy, and no matter what minor changes are made to it, the good adaptations always recognise the impasse between the two at the end. It’s what makes the story tick.
My ultimate issue with the way Del Toro chose to end his adaptation of Frankenstein is that it ultimately robs us of our deserved catharsis by artificially resolving the incontrovertible stalemate between the two leads, giving us a happy(ish) ending in which Victor, at death’s door, forgives the Creature for the violence and destruction he’s wrought, apologises for what he did to him, and urges him to live on, free of guilt, yet completely alone. The Creature then walks off into the Arctic sunrise, liberated from his vendetta yet devastated at losing his creator.
It’s a lovely thought in principle, a Del Toro-ism about accepting one’s nature and walking away from one’s painful past, and if it were an original story without baggage I’d be all for it—after all, The Shape of Water had similar, pro-monster themes of letting go of trying to fit into a world that won’t accept you anyway, and I ate that up voraciously. But here, in taking a tragedy that is so classic and ingrained, loading it with a bunch of new traumas and subplots, and then resolving it all with a little monologue, the ending robs the story of its true conclusion, fundamentally missing the point of the source text, and doing a disservice both to Victor and the Creature.
I still think it’s a strong contender in the category, and definitely one of my favourite SFF movies I saw last year, despite my issues with it. However, given all my favourite TV shows above, I think I might eschew giving this one of my ballot spots, but I won’t be disappointed to see it on the final ballot, should it make it through.
Thunderbolts*+
I loved this movie A LOT, you guys, and it made me very sad that it flopped at the box office. I don’t blame people for being fatigued with Marvel’s mediocre superhero slop, but they should have given this movie a chance at the very least, because it might not have been the movie we wanted, but it was definitely the movie we needed right now.
(c) Disney/Marvel Studios, 2025I was very surprised with how deep it went into the trauma our various superheroes and anti-heroes have sustained through their previous adventures, and the level of empathy with which it treated them all:
- Yelena Belova, the last surviving Black Widow5, starts off depressed and morose, aimless, dissatisfied with running around and blowing things up for people with nothing to show for it except a path of destruction.
- Her and Natasha Romanoff’s father figure, Alexei Shostakov, is facing the music that his “Red Star” superhero persona is nothing but a figment of a bygone era, and is living a meagre life as a limo driver while reminiscing about his glory days.
- John Walker, the temporary Captain America replacement later dubbed “U.S. Agent”, is dealing with guilt after slaughtering innocent bystanders using Cap’s vibranium shield during the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, all while struggling through early parenthood.
- The Winter Soldier—Bucky Barnes—is running for office, in an attempt to turn his newfound and shaky inner peace into something productive. Yet, something keeps niggling at him about the power vacuum left in the wake of the Avengers disappearing, and he can’t help but get involved in ways political candidates really shouldn’t. See: taking a huge machine gun and riding a motorbike out to the desert to find out who is behind these shenanigans. Tut tut, Mr Congressman.
- Oh, there’s also Ava Star/Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, probably my least favourite Marvel movie to date, whom I completely forgot about before watching this movie and while writing this review. Oops! Her thing is that she is constantly phasing in and out of a solid existence, and she has to keep shouting about how traumatised she is with no need for subtext because they know we’ve all forgotten about her and need to be reminded of her struggles. Normally I’d be mad at that, but they are not wrong this time 😅
And then, there’s Bob.
(c) Disney/Marvel, 2025Bob is a new guy, recruited to be experimented on in hopes of becoming a superhero. He seems normal, average even, and he reluctantly joins our motley crew as they escape from a trap set by their employer—but under the surface he carries a deep wound, a gash that opens up to swallow him whole and turns him into The Void, his mysterious alter ego who awakens when Bob’s absolutely OTT superpowers kick in. The rest, as they say, is plot.
There’s a lot of (predictably dark) humour in this, and I was surprised with how much I liked these characters once they were given enough room to be protagonists, rather than minor antagonists in someone else’s story. While they haphazardly join forces into a makeshift team, their trauma is taken seriously, coalescing into the film’s climactic battle that pits the reluctant heroes against The Void, who weaponises each of their subconscious against them. The Void is Depression, by any other name—it’s the dark voice inside that tells each of our anti-heroes that they are worthless, unlovable, guilty, and alone. In order to beat him they have to reach out with empathy to themselves first and then to each other, and literally hold each other in a tight embrace as a reminder that they are not alone. What wins the day is friendship, empathy, and love, not unlike the last season of My Hero Academia, which I also loved last year, or Superman, which I’m about to get into below.
I cried BUCKETS while watching Thunderbolts* in the UK’s largest IMAX screen alongside my Bucky Barnes-obsessed friend, who has since made this film her entire personality (affectionate), and honestly, I’ve also been thinking about it ever since. Again, it’s a delightful little irony that the megalithic Disney/MCU would come out with a narrative so introspective and empathetic, especially at a time that loneliness and isolation is rampant among the film’s core audience of young men. I really hope that watching this film inspired people to reach out and be less alone in their struggles, and that the financial hit Disney took with it won’t keep us from seeing more of these characters in the future.
Also! A fun fact I noticed while listening to the soundtrack was that the film’s main theme is a reversed version of the main Avengers theme; just listen to the first few seconds of both themes and you’ll hear it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Jzgp1jNiQ
Superman+
A good Superman movie?? In this economy?? Hallelujah!
I love a lot about what this film does with the core Superman premise. It gets Clark right, down to his farm boy roots and dorky kindness. It gets Superman right: his power isn’t unbeatable, and it isn’t even the most powerful thing about him (spoiler: it’s the dorky kindness). It gets Lex Luthor right—especially for our times—by having him be a smart but petty tech billionaire with an overinflated ego, someone who funds an invasion and even starts a pocket dimension on a whim, without once thinking of the consequences. It even gets Jimmy Olsen right simply by bringing him out of the margins where he’s been relegated for the last several Superman adaptations—and it’s actually really funny that he’s the one guy with the most game in this film, and that that’s how he gets to help out.
The structure of the film is an absolute delight, too. From the very start, we are thrown into the midst of a losing fight for Superman, which is a bold choice, as is having Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane already set up (and she even knows about him being Superman!). We don’t spend any time whatsoever on origin stories, budding relationship exploration, or long-winded exposition—we simply hit the ground running, and find out the particulars as we go along. It is assumed we know who Superman is, because… we all know who Superman is. And the themes around identity, responsibility, community, and how we should treat each other are laid bare without pretence, very directly speaking to the audience about contemporary problems we’re all facing day to day. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air not to be treated like an idiot, frankly.
There are a couple of things I don’t like about it though. For one, the film feels very busy, with so many characters and subplots and easter eggs thrown in, that if you blink you’ll definitely miss something. Relatedly, not all of those characters or subplots are treated equally, because there simply isn’t enough screen time to go around for everything. So the Justice Friends get the short shrift, as do Papa and Mama Kent, as does Krypton6, so that we can focus on the personal and political stakes that Clark/Superman has to overcome.
This is another superhero story with empathy at its heart, where the answer to even the most cosmic problems is… just be kind. Kindness is punk rock. As one of my favourite YouTube video essayists put it, this Superman is the American hero we desperately need right now. Someone who will stand up for what’s right even when the rest of the world tells him not to, someone with an unshakeable moral compass that only points to goodness. Watch that whole video actually, Dove does such a fantastic job analysing the cultural geography that plays into this film, and how it all ties together to bring us this ray of f*cking sunshine:
All this to say, I love that James Gunn can make a superhero movie that aims to appeal broadly but doesn’t feel like it panders to the lowest available denominator, and that he had the guts to (a) make the story feel relevant to our current times, what with all the invasions/”wars” going on right now that are purely happening for profit and that no one is doing anything to stop 🙄, and (b) leave us with a message of hope, that we can imagine a kinder world and that we can be the instruments of making that vision a reality. That kindness can be punk rock.
Dare I say, this was the movie that made me go, “huh, maybe the genre isn’t dead yet”, which… please, let it not be dead, I really like superheroes!
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Mickey 17: I enjoyed this a lot, particularly for its world-building and Robert Pattinson’s performance. Unfortunately I think the Bong Joon-Ho-ness of it all kind of undercuts the story in favour of very on-the-nose political commentary, which was fun in the moment but in retrospect kinda leaves me a bit… “meh!”, probably because the current climate is so much worse than when this movie was made, and making fun of things/people just isn’t enough right now. So I don’t think this will be getting one of my spots, but it’s still totally worth seeing, if you haven’t!
- Fantastic Four – First Steps: I also enjoyed this a lot, especially in light of B-Mask’s excellent Fantastic Four video from a few years back which explained the classic comics and got me up to speed on the characters. It’s an honest-to-God decent, good Marvel movie, which as I keep saying is a rare sight these days, but that being said… I liked the stuff I talked about up top way more than this one, not to mention the TV seasons, so I just think it gets edged out by the competition.
- Hamnet: Technically an SFF movie! The trailer had me weeping, but the movie left me cold somehow, perhaps because it’s a little too obvious in its attempts to make people cry (Mark Kermode said it best! The bit with the song at the very end irked me too because I recognised it, and the moment was actually completely ruined for me.) It does have some wonderful and atmospheric visuals where it comes to the speculative aspect of it, and the soundtrack by Max Richter is predictably phenomenal (if only they’d used his original song for the climactic ending of the film!!), but it just didn’t move me in the ways I thought it would, so it’s a miss.
The “I haven’t seen these yet” caveat+
- K-Pop Demon Hunters: Yes, I know, somehow, I still haven’t seen this movie. I’m assuming it’ll get nominated to high heaven, so I’ll watch it ahead of voting, I promise.
- Weapons: I’ve heard fantastic things about this, and my husband is a big WKUK fan, so I might be watching this soon and revising my thoughts.
- Wicked: For Good: I liked the first film well enough, and I hear that a LOT happens in the second half of the musical, so I’m tentatively putting this on a hold list until I watch it. I don’t know if it would edge out any of my favourites, realistically speaking, but I suppose there is always room for surprises!
Long Form: Non-Film/TV
B-Mask’s “The REAL Thunderbolts Story: Marvel’s Greatest Scam“*
This is a 2.5 hour love letter to comics, and the first in a five-part series that tells the story of the real Thunderbolts from the comic books (a team that bears very little resemblance to the one portrayed in the recent MCU film discussed above). It features complex animations drawing from the original comic book art, as well as a full cast of voice actors bringing the characters to life with their performances.
* I’m personally torn on whether this would qualify for BDP-LF or BRW (seeing as it is technically a fanwork, and not an original work), but either way it is nothing short of a masterpiece—I wrote more about it in my 2025 underrated Hugo picks post, if you’re interested.
Short Form: TV Episodes
A caveat: my reasoning around nominating a particular episode is kind of like nominating my favourite chapter of a novel. Especially with how a lot of the prestige TV shows are made nowadays, individual episodes function as chapters in a longer story, so they have to be considered in the context of the wider narrative they’re a part of. If they are from a second, third, or even last season of a long-running show, even more so.
Also—and this might be a slightly spicy take—I personally don’t like that a lot of Hugo voters seem to only watch the individual episodes on the eventual shortlist without any context, and then complain that they didn’t get what was going on. That’s because context matters, and while I understand that it would take a lot of time to watch an entire season (or even several!) to be able to appreciate a single episode… if you want your vote to be informed, that’s the job, innit?
This has happened several times to me, where there’s an episode on the shortlist from a show I don’t watch (and have no intention of watching—sorry Lower Decks), so I just skip it and don’t put it in my ballot at the end, or rank it below my own favourites. I do the same with sequels to books I haven’t read, out of respect for the work itself as well as its author, but that’s just me I guess! 🤷🏻♀️
Anyway, here are some thoughts about my favourite episodes of speculative TV from this year, under spoiler tags for obvious reasons.
Two episodes from Stranger Things, Season 5+
‘Chapter Four: Sorcerer’
I loved, loved, loved this episode. The moment Will uses his new power… it gave me goosebumps, it was so good—and the fight sequence in front of the gate to the Upside Down is incredible. Rather than the writing, though, I want to praise the actors’ performances and the work of the crew who worked on the practical effects, stunts, and complicated cinematography in this episode. Especially given more recent revelations about how the Duffers went into production with season 5 without having ironed out the ending, and the stress that added to the poor production crew, I think any flowers should really be going to them for making such an outstanding piece of TV despite the challenges.
‘Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz’
Yes, the scene in this photo feels a little ludicrously long considering they’re both on the run and about to be caught by the Big Bad, but I loved the heart of this relationship and the character development for both Holly and Max in this episode. I had also seen the Stranger Things play in London a couple of years back, and this episode eliminated the issues I had with the world-building in that, which at first had seemed to contradict the revelations in season 4 about Vecna/Henry Creel’s agency as a villain and his role in shaping the Upside Down… I was glad to see that in fact all the loose threads from the various seasons did connect, and that the strands from the play were relevant too.
Various episodes from Severance, Season 2+
S2E4: ‘Woe’s Hollow’
I mentioned this episode in my discussion of the series earlier, but let me get into it here: this is one of the best episodes of TV ever made, period, and I will fight you on this. I don’t know if it would stand alone in any capacity, considering the weird tone is already a lot to deal with and there’s a lot of plot and character interaction that picks up from where the last season left off, not to mention a big-time betrayal that ends up echoing through the rest of season 2.
I spent a good chunk of the beginning wondering if this was a simulator or a dream sequence because it didn’t fully make sense for our protagonists to be outside the Lumon offices, and the uncanny doppelgangers guiding them through the forest seemed almost dreamlike, but the reality was much more sinister in the end, which tracks. If there’s a single episode from this show I’d nominate, it’d be this one.
S2E8: ‘Sweet Vitriol’
People hate this episode because it’s slow and follows an unlikeable antagonist whom we are invited to empathise with, and that’s precisely the reason I like it. First of all, we get way more insight into the Lumon cult corporation from Harmony Cobel, who ostensibly grew up in the cult and has invested her whole life into the company’s welfare. This is also where we begin to see cracks form in her resolve as an antagonist, as she has realised that the company sees her as an expendable cog despite her lifelong investment and dedication, and so she decides to fight them, to prove that this little cog is actually so important, it might well bring the whole house down.
It’s interesting also for thematic reasons, outside of the show’s world. On an individual level, the image of someone who grew up in poverty while idolising a particular company, then making their entire life revolve around it so as to gain favour and socioeconomic mobility, gaining that and then losing it when the company no longer sees them as valuable, is unfortunately too relatable. So is seeing a small town that once had its own industry and community be taken over by a mega corporation and become completely dependent on it, eventually falling into destitution once the corporation pulls their activities out of the town. The actual commentary here is silent, but extremely powerful.
I don’t think Cobel’s about-turn is enough to fully make her an anti-hero, but I really enjoyed this episode for all the insight it gave us both into her and the world of Severance outside of Lumon HQ.
S2E10: ‘Cold Harbor’
There is a strong argument to be made that the season two finale is absolutely worth a nomination as well, making this a really tough choice. Two seasons’ worth of mystery solving and internal corporate espionage culminate in this one-hour episode where our protagonists clash with one another and with the antagonists, and it’s just adrenaline all the way down.
Some spoilery thoughts here.While the big questions have been answered (where is Mark’s wife? what is Cold Harbor? what are they doing with all those sheep?), so many more remain. Is there a way to save the innies at all, if Lumon ends up falling? Can Mark S. and Helly R. ever hope to have a life outside these walls? And what happens to Gemma now that she’s out, even though she has 24 distinct, hand-crafted personalities inside her?
There’s actually a great take I hadn’t come across before I sat down to write this, and that is that the finale actually inverts the Orpheus & Eurydice narrative of Mark and Gemma, by having Mark’s innie actually choose to stay behind in Lumon so he can be with Helly. It’s less of a lack of faith and more of a conscious decision, which perhaps makes it even more tragic as Gemma watches her husband (sort of) run toward danger and another woman, leaving her alone at the exit, screaming for him to come back.
Having written about the other episodes already, I do think ep4 is a stronger contender purely from a craft/vibes standpoint, whereas the finale is more typical in many ways, as it focuses on exposition and plot and is faster paced. YMMV here, for sure, but I’m inclined to pick ep4 over this one, now that I think about it.
Two episodes from Pluribus, Season 1+
Episode 1: “We is Us”
It’s not often that a TV pilot stands on its own two feet well. It’s even less common for the film-making to be so good that one must gasp in awe at the choreography, cinematography, and editing, multiple times throughout the course of the episode. One of my biggest peeves is when a TV pilot is so mired in exposition that there is no room for characters or atmosphere until the next episode because they simply have to give you the setup quickly—it ends up feeling flat and boring and frankly, it puts me off more than it entices me to keep watching until it gets better.7
Well, this episode does none of that.
Gilligan’s forte is silent scenes that actually speak volumes. There is so much storytelling in this episode that has no words; we watch an intergalactic viral hive mind sequence take over the Earth in perfectly synchronised movement, and the storytelling is in the silence, the perfect unison, and the eerie smiles as the hive mind consciousness flattens the individuals inside. A lesser writer would put exposition in dialogue, possibly giving too much information for where we are in the story, but Gilligan knows that less is more. We get just enough to hook us in, and the rest is pure atmosphere and of course, character.
Carol is introduced as a grumpy romantasy author, a lesbian in a loving relationship who constantly finds reasons to be miserable, much to her partner’s chagrin. When the hive mind sequence is spread via planes in the air, Carol loses her partner, and simultaneously the world. The panic that ensues is completely understandable, and it gets worse at every turn as she is met with more and more hive mind people, but no one else like her. What a place for a pilot to leave us in! Aren’t you hooked just by reading this?? GO WATCH THIS SHOW!
Episode 7: “The Gap”
The title refers to a real place that Manousos (pictured) has to cross, but also I suppose to the gap between Carol and others at this point in the show. This is another masterfully crafted episode with a dual narrative point of view, where Carol continues her life in Albuquerque while Manousos is making his slow way up through South and Central America towards Carol, crossing cities, climbing mountains, and trudging through thick, treacherous jungles, all while refusing the hive mind’s help at every opportunity.
Some spoilery thoughts here.At first, it’s admirable; he won’t even take gas without paying for it somehow, even though everything he comes across is at his disposal. Soon enough, however, his steadfastness turns into stubbornness that does more harm to him than good. When he gets seriously injured in the jungle (something that was completely preventable, had he accepted the hive mind’s help and transited through safer means),
Meanwhile, Carol stoically endures complete and total isolation for a long time as a result of the hive mind evacuating the whole metro area of Albuquerque, which happened when Carol hurt one of them (and by extension, all of them) quite badly while trying to find answers. She is given resources and sustenance remotely, and for a while enjoys her peaceful environment, going around town and doing whatever she feels like… until she finally cracks under the pressure of extreme loneliness, and asks the hive mind to come back.
It’s an incredibly powerful moment actually, seeing someone as stubborn sturdy as Carol finally admit that she can’t live her whole life completely cut off from other people, even though she hates the hive mind on principle, and can’t wrap her mind around accepting this status quo. In fairness, she makes it to about a month and a half, which is pretty long, but her isolation was also so complete that there were zero people around her for that whole time—an unfathomable experience that’s so well depicted on screen. I personally love the rooftop golf scene as an example of how utterly devoid of people the landscape is, a mundane sort of post-apocalyptic image.
This is probably my favourite episode in season 1, and even think it could be presented without context and still mostly work alright for new viewers… Though I’d still hope that people would watch the whole season anyway. If I had to pick one episode to represent the series as a whole, I’d say it’s this one.
Short Form: Non-TV
‘Songs No One Will Hear’ by Arjen Lucassen (music album)
I wrote a fair amount about this pre-apocalyptic concept album in my underrated Hugo recommendations post; here’s a snippet:
The result is an album that grapples with the essence of the human condition (something Lucassen is very adept at), asking what makes life worth living from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters as they try to come to terms with the impending end of the world—including those who think it’s all a hoax, those who embrace it, and those who rage against the dying of the light. It straddles a weird and fun line between diegetic/in-world music that’s on the radio and telling the story as a sung-through musical, which is a little different than what you might expect, particularly for a progressive rock album. But that’s the Arjen Lucassen guarantee: big questions, big emotions, and a sound that isn’t afraid to change dramatically when necessary, even mid-song. Full of theatricality, Songs No One Will Hear is in some ways very similar to Lucassen’s Ayreon albums, but retains its own identity both musically and thematically.
We’ve been known to nominate SFF music albums when they arise, and on occasion those musicians have even responded to being recognised by fandom—seeing Clipping live in Helsinki was fun!—so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, though perhaps it is a bit of a left field suggestion for most Hugo voters as a progressive rock concept album.
While he’s extremely popular in his own niche, most of Lucassen’s fans aren’t in SF fandom and vice versa, something that I would love to help shift by talking about his work more to Hugo voters and talking to Ayreon/Lucassen fans more about joining our community and coming to Worldcon, especially as the next few years are looking quite international. Lucassen’s very obvious Golden Age influences are bound to have pointed many of his fans to the genre, so the bridge is already half-built.
I’m sure that I’ll be one of very few people longlisting this album, but 🤷🏻♀️! I really think If you see just a single, solitary vote for it in the full data, know that it was me!
Footnotes
- Per the WSFS Constitution, clauses 3.8.2 and 3.8.3. ↩︎
- In addition to the more fannish post I linked above, I found another really cool essay about the Barbican as Coruscant from an architect who works in film and TV. ↩︎
- A special shoutout to Joshua James, who played the doctor who tortured Bix Caleen with the sounds of distant massacres; I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since I saw him in Treasure Island at the National Theatre back in 2015 or so, and make a point to see him in every play he’s in when I can. He had a stint as Dr Brenner in Stranger Things: The First Shadow recently which I unfortunately missed, but I bet he was perfect! ↩︎
- I’d like to thank Octothorpe’s Alison Scott for her recommendation to see the film in an IMAX theatre, as the experience was truly spectacular. ↩︎
- There is another Black Widow character played by Olga Kurilenko who turns up for literally five minutes, but she is so not present in the rest of the film that I’m not even going to go into it. If it weren’t for Yelena and Alexei, I’d say that movie had zero lasting impact on the MCU, given how late into Natasha’s journey we got it (literally after she was canonically killed off), lol (sarcastic). ↩︎
- I still don’t know how to feel about the plot twist around Krypton and Clark’s biological parents, brief as it was. I think it is intended to maximise the contrast between where Clark hails from and where he grew up and how that affected his identity, and the discomfort it creates is probably very intentional from Gunn. ↩︎
- I call this “pilot syndrome”, and it’s one of my least favourite phenomena in media. ↩︎
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Battle for the Ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation 2026
The two Best Dramatic Presentation categories are among my favourites in the Hugos, because I consume a lot of SFF media and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about them. Since my post last year about why I had wanted Loki S2 to win a Hugo in 2024 (which I was working on for a while but ended up not posting it in time for it to sway anyone), I’ve been toying with the idea of producing more writing around some of my favourite things from each year, in case it helps anybody—least of all me, in getting it all out of my system.
I know I’m posting this with one day to go before nominations (these take so long for me! I must develop a better system for next year 🤔), but I’m really writing this to sound out my own thoughts about the DP categories this year, because it is absolutely bananas with how stacked they both are. There have been some truly great speculative television shows and films, stuff that I’m sure we’ll still be talking about for years to come, and making decisions to boil my favourite media down to just 5 per category—especially given the fiddliness of Long Form and Short Form where TV is concerned, which I’ll get to in a sec—is going to be excruciatingly difficult for me.
So come along on a journey with me as I parse my thoughts, and who knows! Maybe I’ll argue my way to your heart about some of this, or tell you about something you hadn’t heard of before—some of which I’ve already written about before, but I’m getting ahead of myself!
Let me know what your ballot looks like, and if you’re nominating any of the below shows, films, and other dramatic works, or if you’re including other things entirely. I’m curious!
TV series and the Long Form/Short Form debate
A big question for many fen every year is “do I nominate one episode from a TV series that stands on its own or that adequately represents the show in Short Form, or do I nominate the whole season in Long Form because it’s one complete narrative, and isolating one chapter of it would be unfair?”
Understandably, it’s a tough one; when a show inevitably gets votes in both categories, it can lead to headaches for the Hugo Administrating Team as they have to sift through the numbers and ultimately decide which category it should be nominated in1, which I don’t envy at all. But at the same time, as a voter, I have to go with what my heart says and name my favourite episodes in Short Form, regardless of whether I’ve also named the show/season as a whole in Long Form, because if enough others have put that same episode down, then that’s what’ll make it through to the shortlist, and I would want my vote to count towards those totals.
All that to say: if you expected a clear stance from me on this, HA! I’m afraid I don’t have one 😇—and to be perfectly honest, this is exactly the sort of thing where people’s mileage will vary the most.
My personal method of deciding whether to nominate entire TV seasons rather than one specific episode is purely based on ~vibes~, on whether or not I thought the season works better in its totality than through its individual parts, versus cases where one outstanding episode eclipses all the others for me. Not all shows are written the same, of course, and those that favour a longer narrative arc (as a lot of prestige TV does nowadays) tend to find their way on my long form ballot more often than not, as opposed to the more episodic writing that isn’t as popular now but used to be ubiquitous in the pre-streaming era.
Ultimately, you may agree or disagree with me on my reasoning for some of my choices below, whether on the LF/SF question or my actual opinions of the various media, and that’s fair enough. I welcome discussion in the comments, but please keep it civil!
Jump to:
- Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
- Long Form: Films
- Long Form: Non-Film/TV
- Short Form: TV Episodes
- Short Form: Non-TV
Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
You might see episodes from some of these further down in the episode/short form discussion.
Andor, Season 2+
This is kind of my front-runner among the TV seasons for the Long Form category. Overall, I enjoyed it slightly more than season 1 for a few reasons: first of all, the pacing was much more even, with a little bit more action and intrigue peppered throughout the season as opposed to having several quieter mini-arcs that slowed things down in places; and crucially, there was a lot less dithering from Cassian Andor, our reluctant protagonist, who finally comes into his own as a rebel after being passively tossed about this way and that in the first season. The agency he has in this one makes him much more interesting as a character, and brings him on the same level as other players in the budding rebellion front, like Mon Mothma and Luthen Rael. In fact, with all the different character arcs completed, Andor finally becomes what Rogue One always wanted to be: a testament to the great sacrifices necessary for revolution to take root.
I liked a lot of what went down in this season as tensions continued ramping up between the Empire and the Rebellion; the Ghorman subplot was outstanding, especially with Dedra and Cyril’s journeys as instruments of Imperial oppression and violence, as was Mon Mothma’s arc from quiet resistance financier to full-on political rebel on the run, with her heartbreaking arc where she realises the personal cost of rebellion. None of the individual episodes in season 2 came even close to the intensity or narrative brilliance of One Way Out, which was hands down my favourite episode of season 1, but that’s okay—I think this season works so much better in its totality, that I’ll be happy to nominate it wholesale.
I still need to re-watch Rogue One actually, to see if my (very mid) opinion on it changes at all, but ultimately I’m just really happy this show was made, and that it looked and felt amazing throughout. It’s probably my favourite Star Wars story, period, and I am so chuffed that so much of it was filmed in the UK (in locations I know and visit all the time, including my old workplace!2), and is full of incredibly talented and classically trained British theatre actors who fill the space with their physicality and make their performances memorable even in the smallest of roles3.
Severance, Season 2+
Another really strong contender for this category. If you ask me which TV show might win the LF Hugo between this, Andor, or Pluribus, my money would probably be on Severance, even if I personally prefer Andor thematically and Pluribus cinematically. There’s no doubt Severance is an absolute masterpiece of television—nay, of cinema—and the fact that the most anti-capitalist story of our time is coming directly from the big tech megacorp Apple is an irony that is as delicious as it is hilarious.
Aside from its bonkers world-building (which still has so many unanswered questions!), this season of Severance also dove pretty deep into its characters, whom we only got to know a bit in season 1. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but there’s a handful of moments in this season that go SO HARD—particularly that one slow episode that everyone else hated for some reason, where we follow Patricia Arquette’s character as she goes to her dingy home town and fills us in on the cult lore around Lumon Industries, and of course the team building episode in which our intrepid heroes actually go outside, but it’s all weird in that trademark Lumon way where nothing really fully makes sense, and it leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable, like something’s not quite aligned right.
But yeah, the world-building, man. It’s something else. I was glued to my screen and my mind was running a mile a minute trying to join the dots and figure out the answers to the show’s mysteries, much like our heroes consolidate memories refine macrodata—remember, the work is mysterious and important—and the excitement of getting it just before the show confirmed it was super fun. Yet, finally understanding what macrodata refinement is was actually a really tragic moment, and everything that happens after that made my heart break for the innies who are stuck living a half-life they can’t escape, on pain of death.
Ultimately, what I loved the most about the second season of Severance is its staunch anti-capitalist messaging that speaks to the average office worker today regardless of where they may be in the world, because corporate manipulation knows no borders:
- A job is a job, not a family.
- The company you work for does not deserve blind, cult-like loyalty.
- Your life is more than just work, and compartmentalising your work self and your out-of-work self might be a band-aid solution, but it doesn’t really work in the end.
- You are you, with all your complex layers of self, even if your corporate overlords (…or just your line manager 🤐) want you to think otherwise, or to act otherwise so you can fit into their office culture.
- Basically, it’s all dumb, and you deserve to live, not just to survive so you can punch your clock card and get meaningless little bonuses like finger traps or waffle parties.
This relatability is what keeps me hooked, and what I think elevates the show from pretty sci-fi to a classic of our times. It’s definitely got my vote.
Pluribus, Season 1+
God, talk about another cinematic masterpiece. When Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul‘s Vince Gilligan said he was working on a new show (which he was writing specifically for Rhea Seahorn to star in), I was crossing my fingers and my toes that it would be sci-fi, and Pluribus has completely blown my expectations out of the water. Not only does it mark Gilligan’s return to science fiction for the first time since The X-Files, but he brings his now-trademark cinematic visual language to it, full of tight choreography and nuanced subtext through visual and music cues, which is what made BB & BCS so special.
The result is an unnerving combination of horror, absurdist humour, and subtle world-building, centered around a complex character named Carol Sturka, who is one of only a few humans not to join the weird hive mind connection that takes over all other human beings on the planet, and doesn’t want to even entertain the idea. I’ve seen many reviews call her unlikable and unrelatable, and while the first part may be true (I was really tired of her contrarian nature in the first half of the season), I think there’s something more going on here than just a selfish white American woman who expects the world to move just for her.
The thing is, Vince Gilligan does not talk down to his audience; he expects us to keep up and to pick up what he’s putting down, whether that’s subtle digs at the publishing industry (it is truly hilarious to me that the protagonist of this show is an actual romantasy author!), not-so-subtle digs about community building and the harm humanity has done to the planet and to each other (particularly around resource distribution, iykyk), and questions about human nature that we are left to ponder: would you trade world peace for the complete flattening of human culture? Are we capable of retaining what makes us human while not actively harming the world around us, or each other? What is humanity, really, or human nature even?
Big stuff coming from an Apple TV show, once again; should I even be surprised at this point?
I think the long game of this show is going to be Carol’s character development from grumpy selfish miser to someone who genuinely cares about other people—a reverse Walter White, if you will. Gilligan is all about the narrative arc, and he has been known to deliver some of the best narrative arcs in TV ever, even if they take a while to stick the landing. I have faith that he is cooking something we haven’t even yet begun to poke at, if Better Call Saul is any indication, and between the already great writing and the show’s superlative production value, I think Pluribus is going to be a low-key modern classic. Vince has my vote, now and always.
My Hero Academia: The Final Season+
I wrote about this extensively in my Hugo ballot recommendations post a couple of months ago, so I’ll pull a quote from that as to why I loved it so much:
Y’all, what can I say: this has been my favourite anime of the last decade, and the fact it is ending has had me in my feelings for months. I’ve been deeply invested emotionally for many years, watching the simulcasts on the same day as the anime airs in Japan since around season 2, and this last season has been all payoff for almost ten years’ worth of story. Every Saturday from October 4th till December 13th, I tuned in and bawled my eyes out for 20 minutes straight, which for an anime aimed at teenage boys is an absolute feat. Defying every expectation, it stuck the landing for every little story beat, every subplot, and every theme set up over its ten year tenure perfectly, making it one of my absolute favourite stories in the superhero genre.
This is definitely one of those where context is essential, so I don’t think it can be viewed in a vacuum and appreciated to the same extent as having watched all previous seven seasons. You can try, but it wouldn’t be worth it just for the awards. Just watch the show so the ending can hit you like a ton of bricks in the best way possible, even if you miss the deadline. It’s fun, it’s moving, it’s made with so much love for American comics through a uniquely Japanese perspective. I can’t recommend it enough, and it’ll definitely be on my Long Form ballot even if I’m one of ten people who put it there 🤷🏻♀️
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Silo, Season 2: It’s definitely not as tight as season 1, and it was missing some stuff from the books that may well turn up in season 3. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot I enjoyed about this season, but unfortunately it’s simply weaker when Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette isn’t on screen, and there’s a lot of that unfortunately. I’m certainly looking forward to what season 3 will be adapting, and to see what format that will take, as I think they’re either condensing or axing the second half of book 2 to go straight to the dual narrative of book 3, which I have mixed feelings about.
- Murderbot: I never got into the books because of tonal whiplash (MB’s violence and misanthropy coated in dry humour just didn’t work for me), and while I thought the TV show was a little better in that regard, ultimately I thought the show was just okay. I didn’t actively dislike it, mind, but I watched most of it on a plane ride, didn’t finish it, and haven’t felt like picking it back up since. The story just doesn’t grab me, I think, and I never felt particularly attached to or compelled by any of the characters… and I’m okay with that 🤷🏻♀️. Not everything is for everyone! I expect it’ll be mass-nominated by all the book fans anyway based on the online discourse I’ve seen, so it won’t miss my vote.
- Invasion, Season 3: I didn’t even know this was out, lmao! I was deeply invested while watching seasons 1 and 2 (even though I disliked quite a few of the characters), but as soon as I was done with it I promptly forgot about it—and Apple TV didn’t even let me know that it was back on. Whomst can I shake until they fix the marketing situation over there?! Christ on a cracker!
- Stranger Things, Season 5: To my own surprise, I didn’t like this season nearly as much as season 4, let alone season 1, and so I will not be considering it for the Long Form category (including the last episode, which would qualify under Long Form on its own due to being 128 MINUTES LONG 🙄). It’s turned out to be one of those things where, while I enjoyed it a fair bit in the moment, the longer I think about it the more my feelings about it seem to change, and the ending has left me a bit… conflicted, shall we say. But it did have some great episodes in the middle especially, so I will consider a couple of them in the Short Form category.
Long Form: Films
Sinners+
This was probably my favourite SFF film of last year. Not only is it atmospheric, fun, and lush with cross-border folkloric world-building (Hoodoo magic and Irish vampires?! yes please!), but the story touches so many themes that a regular popcorn movie won’t even veer towards, and it does so brilliantly.
All the many layers of the Black and POC experience in the South during the Prohibition era (and beyond) are crystallised in the character arc of each ensemble cast member, with some absolutely outstanding performances by Hailee Steinfeld (whose character Mary is biracial, and torn between safety and belonging), Michael B. Jordan (who plays identical twins Smoke and Stack so well he walked away with an Oscar for it), and Wunmi Mosaku in particular as Smoke’s wife Annie (she’s such an underrated performer, but I’m so glad to see her actually flex her acting skills after her appearance in Loki). We’re talking themes like the push and pull of religion and its role in both keeping communities together and also oppressing them, the safety of BIPOC in a white supremacist society, and even the immigrant experience… the truth is your average blockbuster would never—but this is Ryan Coogler, and he won’t sugar-coat things for a mainstream audience, instead telling a story only he could tell, filled with truth, complexity, and nuance, something I really wish more filmmakers would embrace nowadays.
The film’s protagonist, Sammie (Miles Caton) has a preternatural gift with music, and the plot revolves around a juke joint Smoke and Stack put together, and the connection that music can create across time and even culture—with a wonderful supernatural twist.
One of my favourite moments is when the villain Remmick (an immortal Irish vampire played by Jack O’Connell) turns up at their juke joint and cries with joy at the emotions Sammie’s music has brought him after years of numbness. He talks about his own experience of colonialism at the hands of the British Empire and the subsequent erasure of Irish culture through the centuries, which is a very real thing—but he’s also a predator who has been making his way through the land trying to trap people and turn them into vampires, chased away by indigenous people who could tell he was a monster before attacking a couple who are Klan members. It’s clear that he doesn’t want Sammie’s music in order to connect people, but to use it as a tool on his quest to propagate a vampire race, and that seemingly sweet moment of connection is exposed as the performative allyship that it is.
There are some phenomenal action sequences too, with the last third of the film keeping me on the edge of my IMAX seat4. Genuinely, this film was such a breath of fresh air: delightfully complex but also fun, in ways that cinema just doesn’t dare to be right now. I was sad they didn’t win all the awards they were up for, but perhaps we can give it a Hugo instead.
Frankenstein+
©️ Netflix 2025I have a full review of this here, but basically: the SFF-ness of this is lush, as expected from a Guillermo Del Toro movie, and for the most part it works well as an adaptation of the book. As I mention in my other post, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the NT’s theatre adaptation, which I still consider the ultimate version of this story, but it does similar things with the characters as Penny Dreadful, which is my runner-up favourite, save for the very end, and it’s that ending that makes the whole thing fall short for me, unfortunately.
To quote myself:
Why do we sing sad songs, when we know their ending is unhappy? When our instinctual yearning for a happy ending is met with the inevitability of human flaws getting in the way, that emotional release we experience is what my ancestors called catharsis. As the audience we accept that because of who these characters are, they would always make these choices and lead the story to the same outcome, time and again, even though we’d like them to change, to choose better, so they can be happy in the end.
What makes Frankenstein compelling in any iteration is its core conflict: Victor’s refusal to acknowledge the Creature as human, despite the fact that the Creature is deeply human, as much as his creator would like to think otherwise. We are invited to empathise with the Creature’s plight, to see how he thinks and feels, how he desires things we all do: safety, friendship, love. Victor is incapable of recognising this, and so the two clash eternally. Such is the tragedy, and no matter what minor changes are made to it, the good adaptations always recognise the impasse between the two at the end. It’s what makes the story tick.
My ultimate issue with the way Del Toro chose to end his adaptation of Frankenstein is that it ultimately robs us of our deserved catharsis by artificially resolving the incontrovertible stalemate between the two leads, giving us a happy(ish) ending in which Victor, at death’s door, forgives the Creature for the violence and destruction he’s wrought, apologises for what he did to him, and urges him to live on, free of guilt, yet completely alone. The Creature then walks off into the Arctic sunrise, liberated from his vendetta yet devastated at losing his creator.
It’s a lovely thought in principle, a Del Toro-ism about accepting one’s nature and walking away from one’s painful past, and if it were an original story without baggage I’d be all for it—after all, The Shape of Water had similar, pro-monster themes of letting go of trying to fit into a world that won’t accept you anyway, and I ate that up voraciously. But here, in taking a tragedy that is so classic and ingrained, loading it with a bunch of new traumas and subplots, and then resolving it all with a little monologue, the ending robs the story of its true conclusion, fundamentally missing the point of the source text, and doing a disservice both to Victor and the Creature.
I still think it’s a strong contender in the category, and definitely one of my favourite SFF movies I saw last year, despite my issues with it. However, given all my favourite TV shows above, I think I might eschew giving this one of my ballot spots, but I won’t be disappointed to see it on the final ballot, should it make it through.
Thunderbolts*+
I loved this movie A LOT, you guys, and it made me very sad that it flopped at the box office. I don’t blame people for being fatigued with Marvel’s mediocre superhero slop, but they should have given this movie a chance at the very least, because it might not have been the movie we wanted, but it was definitely the movie we needed right now.
(c) Disney/Marvel Studios, 2025I was very surprised with how deep it went into the trauma our various superheroes and anti-heroes have sustained through their previous adventures, and the level of empathy with which it treated them all:
- Yelena Belova, the last surviving Black Widow5, starts off depressed and morose, aimless, dissatisfied with running around and blowing things up for people with nothing to show for it except a path of destruction.
- Her and Natasha Romanoff’s father figure, Alexei Shostakov, is facing the music that his “Red Star” superhero persona is nothing but a figment of a bygone era, and is living a meagre life as a limo driver while reminiscing about his glory days.
- John Walker, the temporary Captain America replacement later dubbed “U.S. Agent”, is dealing with guilt after slaughtering innocent bystanders using Cap’s vibranium shield during the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, all while struggling through early parenthood.
- The Winter Soldier—Bucky Barnes—is running for office, in an attempt to turn his newfound and shaky inner peace into something productive. Yet, something keeps niggling at him about the power vacuum left in the wake of the Avengers disappearing, and he can’t help but get involved in ways political candidates really shouldn’t. See: taking a huge machine gun and riding a motorbike out to the desert to find out who is behind these shenanigans. Tut tut, Mr Congressman.
- Oh, there’s also Ava Star/Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, probably my least favourite Marvel movie to date, whom I completely forgot about before watching this movie and while writing this review. Oops! Her thing is that she is constantly phasing in and out of a solid existence, and she has to keep shouting about how traumatised she is with no need for subtext because they know we’ve all forgotten about her and need to be reminded of her struggles. Normally I’d be mad at that, but they are not wrong this time 😅
And then, there’s Bob.
(c) Disney/Marvel, 2025Bob is a new guy, recruited to be experimented on in hopes of becoming a superhero. He seems normal, average even, and he reluctantly joins our motley crew as they escape from a trap set by their employer—but under the surface he carries a deep wound, a gash that opens up to swallow him whole and turns him into The Void, his mysterious alter ego who awakens when Bob’s absolutely OTT superpowers kick in. The rest, as they say, is plot.
There’s a lot of (predictably dark) humour in this, and I was surprised with how much I liked these characters once they were given enough room to be protagonists, rather than minor antagonists in someone else’s story. While they haphazardly join forces into a makeshift team, their trauma is taken seriously, coalescing into the film’s climactic battle that pits the reluctant heroes against The Void, who weaponises each of their subconscious against them. The Void is Depression, by any other name—it’s the dark voice inside that tells each of our anti-heroes that they are worthless, unlovable, guilty, and alone. In order to beat him they have to reach out with empathy to themselves first and then to each other, and literally hold each other in a tight embrace as a reminder that they are not alone. What wins the day is friendship, empathy, and love, not unlike the last season of My Hero Academia, which I also loved last year, or Superman, which I’m about to get into below.
I cried BUCKETS while watching Thunderbolts* in the UK’s largest IMAX screen alongside my Bucky Barnes-obsessed friend, who has since made this film her entire personality (affectionate), and honestly, I’ve also been thinking about it ever since. Again, it’s a delightful little irony that the megalithic Disney/MCU would come out with a narrative so introspective and empathetic, especially at a time that loneliness and isolation is rampant among the film’s core audience of young men. I really hope that watching this film inspired people to reach out and be less alone in their struggles, and that the financial hit Disney took with it won’t keep us from seeing more of these characters in the future.
Also! A fun fact I noticed while listening to the soundtrack was that the film’s main theme is a reversed version of the main Avengers theme; just listen to the first few seconds of both themes and you’ll hear it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Jzgp1jNiQ
Superman+
A good Superman movie?? In this economy?? Hallelujah!
I love a lot about what this film does with the core Superman premise. It gets Clark right, down to his farm boy roots and dorky kindness. It gets Superman right: his power isn’t unbeatable, and it isn’t even the most powerful thing about him (spoiler: it’s the dorky kindness). It gets Lex Luthor right—especially for our times—by having him be a smart but petty tech billionaire with an overinflated ego, someone who funds an invasion and even starts a pocket dimension on a whim, without once thinking of the consequences. It even gets Jimmy Olsen right simply by bringing him out of the margins where he’s been relegated for the last several Superman adaptations—and it’s actually really funny that he’s the one guy with the most game in this film, and that that’s how he gets to help out.
The structure of the film is an absolute delight, too. From the very start, we are thrown into the midst of a losing fight for Superman, which is a bold choice, as is having Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane already set up (and she even knows about him being Superman!). We don’t spend any time whatsoever on origin stories, budding relationship exploration, or long-winded exposition—we simply hit the ground running, and find out the particulars as we go along. It is assumed we know who Superman is, because… we all know who Superman is. And the themes around identity, responsibility, community, and how we should treat each other are laid bare without pretence, very directly speaking to the audience about contemporary problems we’re all facing day to day. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air not to be treated like an idiot, frankly.
There are a couple of things I don’t like about it though. For one, the film feels very busy, with so many characters and subplots and easter eggs thrown in, that if you blink you’ll definitely miss something. Relatedly, not all of those characters or subplots are treated equally, because there simply isn’t enough screen time to go around for everything. So the Justice Friends get the short shrift, as do Papa and Mama Kent, as does Krypton6, so that we can focus on the personal and political stakes that Clark/Superman has to overcome.
This is another superhero story with empathy at its heart, where the answer to even the most cosmic problems is… just be kind. Kindness is punk rock. As one of my favourite YouTube video essayists put it, this Superman is the American hero we desperately need right now. Someone who will stand up for what’s right even when the rest of the world tells him not to, someone with an unshakeable moral compass that only points to goodness. Watch that whole video actually, Dove does such a fantastic job analysing the cultural geography that plays into this film, and how it all ties together to bring us this ray of f*cking sunshine:
All this to say, I love that James Gunn can make a superhero movie that aims to appeal broadly but doesn’t feel like it panders to the lowest available denominator, and that he had the guts to (a) make the story feel relevant to our current times, what with all the invasions/”wars” going on right now that are purely happening for profit and that no one is doing anything to stop 🙄, and (b) leave us with a message of hope, that we can imagine a kinder world and that we can be the instruments of making that vision a reality. That kindness can be punk rock.
Dare I say, this was the movie that made me go, “huh, maybe the genre isn’t dead yet”, which… please, let it not be dead, I really like superheroes!
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Mickey 17: I enjoyed this a lot, particularly for its world-building and Robert Pattinson’s performance. Unfortunately I think the Bong Joon-Ho-ness of it all kind of undercuts the story in favour of very on-the-nose political commentary, which was fun in the moment but in retrospect kinda leaves me a bit… “meh!”, probably because the current climate is so much worse than when this movie was made, and making fun of things/people just isn’t enough right now. So I don’t think this will be getting one of my spots, but it’s still totally worth seeing, if you haven’t!
- Fantastic Four – First Steps: I also enjoyed this a lot, especially in light of B-Mask’s excellent Fantastic Four video from a few years back which explained the classic comics and got me up to speed on the characters. It’s an honest-to-God decent, good Marvel movie, which as I keep saying is a rare sight these days, but that being said… I liked the stuff I talked about up top way more than this one, not to mention the TV seasons, so I just think it gets edged out by the competition.
- Hamnet: Technically an SFF movie! The trailer had me weeping, but the movie left me cold somehow, perhaps because it’s a little too obvious in its attempts to make people cry (Mark Kermode said it best! The bit with the song at the very end irked me too because I recognised it, and the moment was actually completely ruined for me.) It does have some wonderful and atmospheric visuals where it comes to the speculative aspect of it, and the soundtrack by Max Richter is predictably phenomenal (if only they’d used his original song for the climactic ending of the film!!), but it just didn’t move me in the ways I thought it would, so it’s a miss.
The “I haven’t seen these yet” caveat+
- K-Pop Demon Hunters: Yes, I know, somehow, I still haven’t seen this movie. I’m assuming it’ll get nominated to high heaven, so I’ll watch it ahead of voting, I promise.
- Weapons: I’ve heard fantastic things about this, and my husband is a big WKUK fan, so I might be watching this soon and revising my thoughts.
- Wicked: For Good: I liked the first film well enough, and I hear that a LOT happens in the second half of the musical, so I’m tentatively putting this on a hold list until I watch it. I don’t know if it would edge out any of my favourites, realistically speaking, but I suppose there is always room for surprises!
Long Form: Non-Film/TV
B-Mask’s “The REAL Thunderbolts Story: Marvel’s Greatest Scam“*
This is a 2.5 hour love letter to comics, and the first in a five-part series that tells the story of the real Thunderbolts from the comic books (a team that bears very little resemblance to the one portrayed in the recent MCU film discussed above). It features complex animations drawing from the original comic book art, as well as a full cast of voice actors bringing the characters to life with their performances.
* I’m personally torn on whether this would qualify for BDP-LF or BRW (seeing as it is technically a fanwork, and not an original work), but either way it is nothing short of a masterpiece—I wrote more about it in my 2025 underrated Hugo picks post, if you’re interested.
Short Form: TV Episodes
A caveat: my reasoning around nominating a particular episode is kind of like nominating my favourite chapter of a novel. Especially with how a lot of the prestige TV shows are made nowadays, individual episodes function as chapters in a longer story, so they have to be considered in the context of the wider narrative they’re a part of. If they are from a second, third, or even last season of a long-running show, even more so.
Also—and this might be a slightly spicy take—I personally don’t like that a lot of Hugo voters seem to only watch the individual episodes on the eventual shortlist without any context, and then complain that they didn’t get what was going on. That’s because context matters, and while I understand that it would take a lot of time to watch an entire season (or even several!) to be able to appreciate a single episode… if you want your vote to be informed, that’s the job, innit?
This has happened several times to me, where there’s an episode on the shortlist from a show I don’t watch (and have no intention of watching—sorry Lower Decks), so I just skip it and don’t put it in my ballot at the end, or rank it below my own favourites. I do the same with sequels to books I haven’t read, out of respect for the work itself as well as its author, but that’s just me I guess! 🤷🏻♀️
Anyway, here are some thoughts about my favourite episodes of speculative TV from this year, under spoiler tags for obvious reasons.
Two episodes from Stranger Things, Season 5+
‘Chapter Four: Sorcerer’
I loved, loved, loved this episode. The moment Will uses his new power… it gave me goosebumps, it was so good—and the fight sequence in front of the gate to the Upside Down is incredible. Rather than the writing, though, I want to praise the actors’ performances and the work of the crew who worked on the practical effects, stunts, and complicated cinematography in this episode. Especially given more recent revelations about how the Duffers went into production with season 5 without having ironed out the ending, and the stress that added to the poor production crew, I think any flowers should really be going to them for making such an outstanding piece of TV despite the challenges.
‘Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz’
Yes, the scene in this photo feels a little ludicrously long considering they’re both on the run and about to be caught by the Big Bad, but I loved the heart of this relationship and the character development for both Holly and Max in this episode. I had also seen the Stranger Things play in London a couple of years back, and this episode eliminated the issues I had with the world-building in that, which at first had seemed to contradict the revelations in season 4 about Vecna/Henry Creel’s agency as a villain and his role in shaping the Upside Down… I was glad to see that in fact all the loose threads from the various seasons did connect, and that the strands from the play were relevant too.
Various episodes from Severance, Season 2+
S2E4: ‘Woe’s Hollow’
I mentioned this episode in my discussion of the series earlier, but let me get into it here: this is one of the best episodes of TV ever made, period, and I will fight you on this. I don’t know if it would stand alone in any capacity, considering the weird tone is already a lot to deal with and there’s a lot of plot and character interaction that picks up from where the last season left off, not to mention a big-time betrayal that ends up echoing through the rest of season 2.
I spent a good chunk of the beginning wondering if this was a simulator or a dream sequence because it didn’t fully make sense for our protagonists to be outside the Lumon offices, and the uncanny doppelgangers guiding them through the forest seemed almost dreamlike, but the reality was much more sinister in the end, which tracks. If there’s a single episode from this show I’d nominate, it’d be this one.
S2E8: ‘Sweet Vitriol’
People hate this episode because it’s slow and follows an unlikeable antagonist whom we are invited to empathise with, and that’s precisely the reason I like it. First of all, we get way more insight into the Lumon cult corporation from Harmony Cobel, who ostensibly grew up in the cult and has invested her whole life into the company’s welfare. This is also where we begin to see cracks form in her resolve as an antagonist, as she has realised that the company sees her as an expendable cog despite her lifelong investment and dedication, and so she decides to fight them, to prove that this little cog is actually so important, it might well bring the whole house down.
It’s interesting also for thematic reasons, outside of the show’s world. On an individual level, the image of someone who grew up in poverty while idolising a particular company, then making their entire life revolve around it so as to gain favour and socioeconomic mobility, gaining that and then losing it when the company no longer sees them as valuable, is unfortunately too relatable. So is seeing a small town that once had its own industry and community be taken over by a mega corporation and become completely dependent on it, eventually falling into destitution once the corporation pulls their activities out of the town. The actual commentary here is silent, but extremely powerful.
I don’t think Cobel’s about-turn is enough to fully make her an anti-hero, but I really enjoyed this episode for all the insight it gave us both into her and the world of Severance outside of Lumon HQ.
S2E10: ‘Cold Harbor’
There is a strong argument to be made that the season two finale is absolutely worth a nomination as well, making this a really tough choice. Two seasons’ worth of mystery solving and internal corporate espionage culminate in this one-hour episode where our protagonists clash with one another and with the antagonists, and it’s just adrenaline all the way down.
Some spoilery thoughts here.While the big questions have been answered (where is Mark’s wife? what is Cold Harbor? what are they doing with all those sheep?), so many more remain. Is there a way to save the innies at all, if Lumon ends up falling? Can Mark S. and Helly R. ever hope to have a life outside these walls? And what happens to Gemma now that she’s out, even though she has 24 distinct, hand-crafted personalities inside her?
There’s actually a great take I hadn’t come across before I sat down to write this, and that is that the finale actually inverts the Orpheus & Eurydice narrative of Mark and Gemma, by having Mark’s innie actually choose to stay behind in Lumon so he can be with Helly. It’s less of a lack of faith and more of a conscious decision, which perhaps makes it even more tragic as Gemma watches her husband (sort of) run toward danger and another woman, leaving her alone at the exit, screaming for him to come back.
Having written about the other episodes already, I do think ep4 is a stronger contender purely from a craft/vibes standpoint, whereas the finale is more typical in many ways, as it focuses on exposition and plot and is faster paced. YMMV here, for sure, but I’m inclined to pick ep4 over this one, now that I think about it.
Two episodes from Pluribus, Season 1+
Episode 1: “We is Us”
It’s not often that a TV pilot stands on its own two feet well. It’s even less common for the film-making to be so good that one must gasp in awe at the choreography, cinematography, and editing, multiple times throughout the course of the episode. One of my biggest peeves is when a TV pilot is so mired in exposition that there is no room for characters or atmosphere until the next episode because they simply have to give you the setup quickly—it ends up feeling flat and boring and frankly, it puts me off more than it entices me to keep watching until it gets better.7
Well, this episode does none of that.
Gilligan’s forte is silent scenes that actually speak volumes. There is so much storytelling in this episode that has no words; we watch an intergalactic viral hive mind sequence take over the Earth in perfectly synchronised movement, and the storytelling is in the silence, the perfect unison, and the eerie smiles as the hive mind consciousness flattens the individuals inside. A lesser writer would put exposition in dialogue, possibly giving too much information for where we are in the story, but Gilligan knows that less is more. We get just enough to hook us in, and the rest is pure atmosphere and of course, character.
Carol is introduced as a grumpy romantasy author, a lesbian in a loving relationship who constantly finds reasons to be miserable, much to her partner’s chagrin. When the hive mind sequence is spread via planes in the air, Carol loses her partner, and simultaneously the world. The panic that ensues is completely understandable, and it gets worse at every turn as she is met with more and more hive mind people, but no one else like her. What a place for a pilot to leave us in! Aren’t you hooked just by reading this?? GO WATCH THIS SHOW!
Episode 7: “The Gap”
The title refers to a real place that Manousos (pictured) has to cross, but also I suppose to the gap between Carol and others at this point in the show. This is another masterfully crafted episode with a dual narrative point of view, where Carol continues her life in Albuquerque while Manousos is making his slow way up through South and Central America towards Carol, crossing cities, climbing mountains, and trudging through thick, treacherous jungles, all while refusing the hive mind’s help at every opportunity.
Some spoilery thoughts here.At first, it’s admirable; he won’t even take gas without paying for it somehow, even though everything he comes across is at his disposal. Soon enough, however, his steadfastness turns into stubbornness that does more harm to him than good. When he gets seriously injured in the jungle (something that was completely preventable, had he accepted the hive mind’s help and transited through safer means),
Meanwhile, Carol stoically endures complete and total isolation for a long time as a result of the hive mind evacuating the whole metro area of Albuquerque, which happened when Carol hurt one of them (and by extension, all of them) quite badly while trying to find answers. She is given resources and sustenance remotely, and for a while enjoys her peaceful environment, going around town and doing whatever she feels like… until she finally cracks under the pressure of extreme loneliness, and asks the hive mind to come back.
It’s an incredibly powerful moment actually, seeing someone as stubborn sturdy as Carol finally admit that she can’t live her whole life completely cut off from other people, even though she hates the hive mind on principle, and can’t wrap her mind around accepting this status quo. In fairness, she makes it to about a month and a half, which is pretty long, but her isolation was also so complete that there were zero people around her for that whole time—an unfathomable experience that’s so well depicted on screen. I personally love the rooftop golf scene as an example of how utterly devoid of people the landscape is, a mundane sort of post-apocalyptic image.
This is probably my favourite episode in season 1, and even think it could be presented without context and still mostly work alright for new viewers… Though I’d still hope that people would watch the whole season anyway. If I had to pick one episode to represent the series as a whole, I’d say it’s this one.
Short Form: Non-TV
‘Songs No One Will Hear’ by Arjen Lucassen (music album)
I wrote a fair amount about this pre-apocalyptic concept album in my underrated Hugo recommendations post; here’s a snippet:
The result is an album that grapples with the essence of the human condition (something Lucassen is very adept at), asking what makes life worth living from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters as they try to come to terms with the impending end of the world—including those who think it’s all a hoax, those who embrace it, and those who rage against the dying of the light. It straddles a weird and fun line between diegetic/in-world music that’s on the radio and telling the story as a sung-through musical, which is a little different than what you might expect, particularly for a progressive rock album. But that’s the Arjen Lucassen guarantee: big questions, big emotions, and a sound that isn’t afraid to change dramatically when necessary, even mid-song. Full of theatricality, Songs No One Will Hear is in some ways very similar to Lucassen’s Ayreon albums, but retains its own identity both musically and thematically.
We’ve been known to nominate SFF music albums when they arise, and on occasion those musicians have even responded to being recognised by fandom—seeing Clipping live in Helsinki was fun!—so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, though perhaps it is a bit of a left field suggestion for most Hugo voters as a progressive rock concept album.
While he’s extremely popular in his own niche, most of Lucassen’s fans aren’t in SF fandom and vice versa, something that I would love to help shift by talking about his work more to Hugo voters and talking to Ayreon/Lucassen fans more about joining our community and coming to Worldcon, especially as the next few years are looking quite international. Lucassen’s very obvious Golden Age influences are bound to have pointed many of his fans to the genre, so the bridge is already half-built.
I’m sure that I’ll be one of very few people longlisting this album, but 🤷🏻♀️! I really think If you see just a single, solitary vote for it in the full data, know that it was me!
Footnotes
- Per the WSFS Constitution, clauses 3.8.2 and 3.8.3. ↩︎
- In addition to the more fannish post I linked above, I found another really cool essay about the Barbican as Coruscant from an architect who works in film and TV. ↩︎
- A special shoutout to Joshua James, who played the doctor who tortured Bix Caleen with the sounds of distant massacres; I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since I saw him in Treasure Island at the National Theatre back in 2015 or so, and make a point to see him in every play he’s in when I can. He had a stint as Dr Brenner in Stranger Things: The First Shadow recently which I unfortunately missed, but I bet he was perfect! ↩︎
- I’d like to thank Octothorpe’s Alison Scott for her recommendation to see the film in an IMAX theatre, as the experience was truly spectacular. ↩︎
- There is another Black Widow character played by Olga Kurilenko who turns up for literally five minutes, but she is so not present in the rest of the film that I’m not even going to go into it. If it weren’t for Yelena and Alexei, I’d say that movie had zero lasting impact on the MCU, given how late into Natasha’s journey we got it (literally after she was canonically killed off), lol (sarcastic). ↩︎
- I still don’t know how to feel about the plot twist around Krypton and Clark’s biological parents, brief as it was. I think it is intended to maximise the contrast between where Clark hails from and where he grew up and how that affected his identity, and the discomfort it creates is probably very intentional from Gunn. ↩︎
- I call this “pilot syndrome”, and it’s one of my least favourite phenomena in media. ↩︎
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Battle for the Ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation 2026
The two Best Dramatic Presentation categories are among my favourites in the Hugos, because I consume a lot of SFF media and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about them. Since my post last year about why I had wanted Loki S2 to win a Hugo in 2024 (which I was working on for a while but ended up not posting it in time for it to sway anyone), I’ve been toying with the idea of producing more writing around some of my favourite things from each year, in case it helps anybody—least of all me, in getting it all out of my system.
I know I’m posting this with one day to go before nominations (these take so long for me! I must develop a better system for next year 🤔), but I’m really writing this to sound out my own thoughts about the DP categories this year, because it is absolutely bananas with how stacked they both are. There have been some truly great speculative television shows and films, stuff that I’m sure we’ll still be talking about for years to come, and making decisions to boil my favourite media down to just 5 per category—especially given the fiddliness of Long Form and Short Form where TV is concerned, which I’ll get to in a sec—is going to be excruciatingly difficult for me.
So come along on a journey with me as I parse my thoughts, and who knows! Maybe I’ll argue my way to your heart about some of this, or tell you about something you hadn’t heard of before—some of which I’ve already written about before, but I’m getting ahead of myself!
Let me know what your ballot looks like, and if you’re nominating any of the below shows, films, and other dramatic works, or if you’re including other things entirely. I’m curious!
TV series and the Long Form/Short Form debate
A big question for many fen every year is “do I nominate one episode from a TV series that stands on its own or that adequately represents the show in Short Form, or do I nominate the whole season in Long Form because it’s one complete narrative, and isolating one chapter of it would be unfair?”
Understandably, it’s a tough one; when a show inevitably gets votes in both categories, it can lead to headaches for the Hugo Administrating Team as they have to sift through the numbers and ultimately decide which category it should be nominated in1, which I don’t envy at all. But at the same time, as a voter, I have to go with what my heart says and name my favourite episodes in Short Form, regardless of whether I’ve also named the show/season as a whole in Long Form, because if enough others have put that same episode down, then that’s what’ll make it through to the shortlist, and I would want my vote to count towards those totals.
All that to say: if you expected a clear stance from me on this, HA! I’m afraid I don’t have one 😇—and to be perfectly honest, this is exactly the sort of thing where people’s mileage will vary the most.
My personal method of deciding whether to nominate entire TV seasons rather than one specific episode is purely based on ~vibes~, on whether or not I thought the season works better in its totality than through its individual parts, versus cases where one outstanding episode eclipses all the others for me. Not all shows are written the same, of course, and those that favour a longer narrative arc (as a lot of prestige TV does nowadays) tend to find their way on my long form ballot more often than not, as opposed to the more episodic writing that isn’t as popular now but used to be ubiquitous in the pre-streaming era.
Ultimately, you may agree or disagree with me on my reasoning for some of my choices below, whether on the LF/SF question or my actual opinions of the various media, and that’s fair enough. I welcome discussion in the comments, but please keep it civil!
Jump to:
- Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
- Long Form: Films
- Long Form: Non-Film/TV
- Short Form: TV Episodes
- Short Form: Non-TV
Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
You might see episodes from some of these further down in the episode/short form discussion.
Andor, Season 2+
This is kind of my front-runner among the TV seasons for the Long Form category. Overall, I enjoyed it slightly more than season 1 for a few reasons: first of all, the pacing was much more even, with a little bit more action and intrigue peppered throughout the season as opposed to having several quieter mini-arcs that slowed things down in places; and crucially, there was a lot less dithering from Cassian Andor, our reluctant protagonist, who finally comes into his own as a rebel after being passively tossed about this way and that in the first season. The agency he has in this one makes him much more interesting as a character, and brings him on the same level as other players in the budding rebellion front, like Mon Mothma and Luthen Rael. In fact, with all the different character arcs completed, Andor finally becomes what Rogue One always wanted to be: a testament to the great sacrifices necessary for revolution to take root.
I liked a lot of what went down in this season as tensions continued ramping up between the Empire and the Rebellion; the Ghorman subplot was outstanding, especially with Dedra and Cyril’s journeys as instruments of Imperial oppression and violence, as was Mon Mothma’s arc from quiet resistance financier to full-on political rebel on the run, with her heartbreaking arc where she realises the personal cost of rebellion. None of the individual episodes in season 2 came even close to the intensity or narrative brilliance of One Way Out, which was hands down my favourite episode of season 1, but that’s okay—I think this season works so much better in its totality, that I’ll be happy to nominate it wholesale.
I still need to re-watch Rogue One actually, to see if my (very mid) opinion on it changes at all, but ultimately I’m just really happy this show was made, and that it looked and felt amazing throughout. It’s probably my favourite Star Wars story, period, and I am so chuffed that so much of it was filmed in the UK (in locations I know and visit all the time, including my old workplace!2), and is full of incredibly talented and classically trained British theatre actors who fill the space with their physicality and make their performances memorable even in the smallest of roles3.
Severance, Season 2+
Another really strong contender for this category. If you ask me which TV show might win the LF Hugo between this, Andor, or Pluribus, my money would probably be on Severance, even if I personally prefer Andor thematically and Pluribus cinematically. There’s no doubt Severance is an absolute masterpiece of television—nay, of cinema—and the fact that the most anti-capitalist story of our time is coming directly from the big tech megacorp Apple is an irony that is as delicious as it is hilarious.
Aside from its bonkers world-building (which still has so many unanswered questions!), this season of Severance also dove pretty deep into its characters, whom we only got to know a bit in season 1. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but there’s a handful of moments in this season that go SO HARD—particularly that one slow episode that everyone else hated for some reason, where we follow Patricia Arquette’s character as she goes to her dingy home town and fills us in on the cult lore around Lumon Industries, and of course the team building episode in which our intrepid heroes actually go outside, but it’s all weird in that trademark Lumon way where nothing really fully makes sense, and it leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable, like something’s not quite aligned right.
But yeah, the world-building, man. It’s something else. I was glued to my screen and my mind was running a mile a minute trying to join the dots and figure out the answers to the show’s mysteries, much like our heroes consolidate memories refine macrodata—remember, the work is mysterious and important—and the excitement of getting it just before the show confirmed it was super fun. Yet, finally understanding what macrodata refinement is was actually a really tragic moment, and everything that happens after that made my heart break for the innies who are stuck living a half-life they can’t escape, on pain of death.
Ultimately, what I loved the most about the second season of Severance is its staunch anti-capitalist messaging that speaks to the average office worker today regardless of where they may be in the world, because corporate manipulation knows no borders:
- A job is a job, not a family.
- The company you work for does not deserve blind, cult-like loyalty.
- Your life is more than just work, and compartmentalising your work self and your out-of-work self might be a band-aid solution, but it doesn’t really work in the end.
- You are you, with all your complex layers of self, even if your corporate overlords (…or just your line manager 🤐) want you to think otherwise, or to act otherwise so you can fit into their office culture.
- Basically, it’s all dumb, and you deserve to live, not just to survive so you can punch your clock card and get meaningless little bonuses like finger traps or waffle parties.
This relatability is what keeps me hooked, and what I think elevates the show from pretty sci-fi to a classic of our times. It’s definitely got my vote.
Pluribus, Season 1+
God, talk about another cinematic masterpiece. When Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul‘s Vince Gilligan said he was working on a new show (which he was writing specifically for Rhea Seahorn to star in), I was crossing my fingers and my toes that it would be sci-fi, and Pluribus has completely blown my expectations out of the water. Not only does it mark Gilligan’s return to science fiction for the first time since The X-Files, but he brings his now-trademark cinematic visual language to it, full of tight choreography and nuanced subtext through visual and music cues, which is what made BB & BCS so special.
The result is an unnerving combination of horror, absurdist humour, and subtle world-building, centered around a complex character named Carol Sturka, who is one of only a few humans not to join the weird hive mind connection that takes over all other human beings on the planet, and doesn’t want to even entertain the idea. I’ve seen many reviews call her unlikable and unrelatable, and while the first part may be true (I was really tired of her contrarian nature in the first half of the season), I think there’s something more going on here than just a selfish white American woman who expects the world to move just for her.
The thing is, Vince Gilligan does not talk down to his audience; he expects us to keep up and to pick up what he’s putting down, whether that’s subtle digs at the publishing industry (it is truly hilarious to me that the protagonist of this show is an actual romantasy author!), not-so-subtle digs about community building and the harm humanity has done to the planet and to each other (particularly around resource distribution, iykyk), and questions about human nature that we are left to ponder: would you trade world peace for the complete flattening of human culture? Are we capable of retaining what makes us human while not actively harming the world around us, or each other? What is humanity, really, or human nature even?
Big stuff coming from an Apple TV show, once again; should I even be surprised at this point?
I think the long game of this show is going to be Carol’s character development from grumpy selfish miser to someone who genuinely cares about other people—a reverse Walter White, if you will. Gilligan is all about the narrative arc, and he has been known to deliver some of the best narrative arcs in TV ever, even if they take a while to stick the landing. I have faith that he is cooking something we haven’t even yet begun to poke at, if Better Call Saul is any indication, and between the already great writing and the show’s superlative production value, I think Pluribus is going to be a low-key modern classic. Vince has my vote, now and always.
My Hero Academia: The Final Season+
I wrote about this extensively in my Hugo ballot recommendations post a couple of months ago, so I’ll pull a quote from that as to why I loved it so much:
Y’all, what can I say: this has been my favourite anime of the last decade, and the fact it is ending has had me in my feelings for months. I’ve been deeply invested emotionally for many years, watching the simulcasts on the same day as the anime airs in Japan since around season 2, and this last season has been all payoff for almost ten years’ worth of story. Every Saturday from October 4th till December 13th, I tuned in and bawled my eyes out for 20 minutes straight, which for an anime aimed at teenage boys is an absolute feat. Defying every expectation, it stuck the landing for every little story beat, every subplot, and every theme set up over its ten year tenure perfectly, making it one of my absolute favourite stories in the superhero genre.
This is definitely one of those where context is essential, so I don’t think it can be viewed in a vacuum and appreciated to the same extent as having watched all previous seven seasons. You can try, but it wouldn’t be worth it just for the awards. Just watch the show so the ending can hit you like a ton of bricks in the best way possible, even if you miss the deadline. It’s fun, it’s moving, it’s made with so much love for American comics through a uniquely Japanese perspective. I can’t recommend it enough, and it’ll definitely be on my Long Form ballot even if I’m one of ten people who put it there 🤷🏻♀️
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Silo, Season 2: It’s definitely not as tight as season 1, and it was missing some stuff from the books that may well turn up in season 3. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot I enjoyed about this season, but unfortunately it’s simply weaker when Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette isn’t on screen, and there’s a lot of that unfortunately. I’m certainly looking forward to what season 3 will be adapting, and to see what format that will take, as I think they’re either condensing or axing the second half of book 2 to go straight to the dual narrative of book 3, which I have mixed feelings about.
- Murderbot: I never got into the books because of tonal whiplash (MB’s violence and misanthropy coated in dry humour just didn’t work for me), and while I thought the TV show was a little better in that regard, ultimately I thought the show was just okay. I didn’t actively dislike it, mind, but I watched most of it on a plane ride, didn’t finish it, and haven’t felt like picking it back up since. The story just doesn’t grab me, I think, and I never felt particularly attached to or compelled by any of the characters… and I’m okay with that 🤷🏻♀️. Not everything is for everyone! I expect it’ll be mass-nominated by all the book fans anyway based on the online discourse I’ve seen, so it won’t miss my vote.
- Invasion, Season 3: I didn’t even know this was out, lmao! I was deeply invested while watching seasons 1 and 2 (even though I disliked quite a few of the characters), but as soon as I was done with it I promptly forgot about it—and Apple TV didn’t even let me know that it was back on. Whomst can I shake until they fix the marketing situation over there?! Christ on a cracker!
- Stranger Things, Season 5: To my own surprise, I didn’t like this season nearly as much as season 4, let alone season 1, and so I will not be considering it for the Long Form category (including the last episode, which would qualify under Long Form on its own due to being 128 MINUTES LONG 🙄). It’s turned out to be one of those things where, while I enjoyed it a fair bit in the moment, the longer I think about it the more my feelings about it seem to change, and the ending has left me a bit… conflicted, shall we say. But it did have some great episodes in the middle especially, so I will consider a couple of them in the Short Form category.
Long Form: Films
Sinners+
This was probably my favourite SFF film of last year. Not only is it atmospheric, fun, and lush with cross-border folkloric world-building (Hoodoo magic and Irish vampires?! yes please!), but the story touches so many themes that a regular popcorn movie won’t even veer towards, and it does so brilliantly.
All the many layers of the Black and POC experience in the South during the Prohibition era (and beyond) are crystallised in the character arc of each ensemble cast member, with some absolutely outstanding performances by Hailee Steinfeld (whose character Mary is biracial, and torn between safety and belonging), Michael B. Jordan (who plays identical twins Smoke and Stack so well he walked away with an Oscar for it), and Wunmi Mosaku in particular as Smoke’s wife Annie (she’s such an underrated performer, but I’m so glad to see her actually flex her acting skills after her appearance in Loki). We’re talking themes like the push and pull of religion and its role in both keeping communities together and also oppressing them, the safety of BIPOC in a white supremacist society, and even the immigrant experience… the truth is your average blockbuster would never—but this is Ryan Coogler, and he won’t sugar-coat things for a mainstream audience, instead telling a story only he could tell, filled with truth, complexity, and nuance, something I really wish more filmmakers would embrace nowadays.
The film’s protagonist, Sammie (Miles Caton) has a preternatural gift with music, and the plot revolves around a juke joint Smoke and Stack put together, and the connection that music can create across time and even culture—with a wonderful supernatural twist.
One of my favourite moments is when the villain Remmick (an immortal Irish vampire played by Jack O’Connell) turns up at their juke joint and cries with joy at the emotions Sammie’s music has brought him after years of numbness. He talks about his own experience of colonialism at the hands of the British Empire and the subsequent erasure of Irish culture through the centuries, which is a very real thing—but he’s also a predator who has been making his way through the land trying to trap people and turn them into vampires, chased away by indigenous people who could tell he was a monster before attacking a couple who are Klan members. It’s clear that he doesn’t want Sammie’s music in order to connect people, but to use it as a tool on his quest to propagate a vampire race, and that seemingly sweet moment of connection is exposed as the performative allyship that it is.
There are some phenomenal action sequences too, with the last third of the film keeping me on the edge of my IMAX seat4. Genuinely, this film was such a breath of fresh air: delightfully complex but also fun, in ways that cinema just doesn’t dare to be right now. I was sad they didn’t win all the awards they were up for, but perhaps we can give it a Hugo instead.
Frankenstein+
©️ Netflix 2025I have a full review of this here, but basically: the SFF-ness of this is lush, as expected from a Guillermo Del Toro movie, and for the most part it works well as an adaptation of the book. As I mention in my other post, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the NT’s theatre adaptation, which I still consider the ultimate version of this story, but it does similar things with the characters as Penny Dreadful, which is my runner-up favourite, save for the very end, and it’s that ending that makes the whole thing fall short for me, unfortunately.
To quote myself:
Why do we sing sad songs, when we know their ending is unhappy? When our instinctual yearning for a happy ending is met with the inevitability of human flaws getting in the way, that emotional release we experience is what my ancestors called catharsis. As the audience we accept that because of who these characters are, they would always make these choices and lead the story to the same outcome, time and again, even though we’d like them to change, to choose better, so they can be happy in the end.
What makes Frankenstein compelling in any iteration is its core conflict: Victor’s refusal to acknowledge the Creature as human, despite the fact that the Creature is deeply human, as much as his creator would like to think otherwise. We are invited to empathise with the Creature’s plight, to see how he thinks and feels, how he desires things we all do: safety, friendship, love. Victor is incapable of recognising this, and so the two clash eternally. Such is the tragedy, and no matter what minor changes are made to it, the good adaptations always recognise the impasse between the two at the end. It’s what makes the story tick.
My ultimate issue with the way Del Toro chose to end his adaptation of Frankenstein is that it ultimately robs us of our deserved catharsis by artificially resolving the incontrovertible stalemate between the two leads, giving us a happy(ish) ending in which Victor, at death’s door, forgives the Creature for the violence and destruction he’s wrought, apologises for what he did to him, and urges him to live on, free of guilt, yet completely alone. The Creature then walks off into the Arctic sunrise, liberated from his vendetta yet devastated at losing his creator.
It’s a lovely thought in principle, a Del Toro-ism about accepting one’s nature and walking away from one’s painful past, and if it were an original story without baggage I’d be all for it—after all, The Shape of Water had similar, pro-monster themes of letting go of trying to fit into a world that won’t accept you anyway, and I ate that up voraciously. But here, in taking a tragedy that is so classic and ingrained, loading it with a bunch of new traumas and subplots, and then resolving it all with a little monologue, the ending robs the story of its true conclusion, fundamentally missing the point of the source text, and doing a disservice both to Victor and the Creature.
I still think it’s a strong contender in the category, and definitely one of my favourite SFF movies I saw last year, despite my issues with it. However, given all my favourite TV shows above, I think I might eschew giving this one of my ballot spots, but I won’t be disappointed to see it on the final ballot, should it make it through.
Thunderbolts*+
I loved this movie A LOT, you guys, and it made me very sad that it flopped at the box office. I don’t blame people for being fatigued with Marvel’s mediocre superhero slop, but they should have given this movie a chance at the very least, because it might not have been the movie we wanted, but it was definitely the movie we needed right now.
(c) Disney/Marvel Studios, 2025I was very surprised with how deep it went into the trauma our various superheroes and anti-heroes have sustained through their previous adventures, and the level of empathy with which it treated them all:
- Yelena Belova, the last surviving Black Widow5, starts off depressed and morose, aimless, dissatisfied with running around and blowing things up for people with nothing to show for it except a path of destruction.
- Her and Natasha Romanoff’s father figure, Alexei Shostakov, is facing the music that his “Red Star” superhero persona is nothing but a figment of a bygone era, and is living a meagre life as a limo driver while reminiscing about his glory days.
- John Walker, the temporary Captain America replacement later dubbed “U.S. Agent”, is dealing with guilt after slaughtering innocent bystanders using Cap’s vibranium shield during the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, all while struggling through early parenthood.
- The Winter Soldier—Bucky Barnes—is running for office, in an attempt to turn his newfound and shaky inner peace into something productive. Yet, something keeps niggling at him about the power vacuum left in the wake of the Avengers disappearing, and he can’t help but get involved in ways political candidates really shouldn’t. See: taking a huge machine gun and riding a motorbike out to the desert to find out who is behind these shenanigans. Tut tut, Mr Congressman.
- Oh, there’s also Ava Star/Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, probably my least favourite Marvel movie to date, whom I completely forgot about before watching this movie and while writing this review. Oops! Her thing is that she is constantly phasing in and out of a solid existence, and she has to keep shouting about how traumatised she is with no need for subtext because they know we’ve all forgotten about her and need to be reminded of her struggles. Normally I’d be mad at that, but they are not wrong this time 😅
And then, there’s Bob.
(c) Disney/Marvel, 2025Bob is a new guy, recruited to be experimented on in hopes of becoming a superhero. He seems normal, average even, and he reluctantly joins our motley crew as they escape from a trap set by their employer—but under the surface he carries a deep wound, a gash that opens up to swallow him whole and turns him into The Void, his mysterious alter ego who awakens when Bob’s absolutely OTT superpowers kick in. The rest, as they say, is plot.
There’s a lot of (predictably dark) humour in this, and I was surprised with how much I liked these characters once they were given enough room to be protagonists, rather than minor antagonists in someone else’s story. While they haphazardly join forces into a makeshift team, their trauma is taken seriously, coalescing into the film’s climactic battle that pits the reluctant heroes against The Void, who weaponises each of their subconscious against them. The Void is Depression, by any other name—it’s the dark voice inside that tells each of our anti-heroes that they are worthless, unlovable, guilty, and alone. In order to beat him they have to reach out with empathy to themselves first and then to each other, and literally hold each other in a tight embrace as a reminder that they are not alone. What wins the day is friendship, empathy, and love, not unlike the last season of My Hero Academia, which I also loved last year, or Superman, which I’m about to get into below.
I cried BUCKETS while watching Thunderbolts* in the UK’s largest IMAX screen alongside my Bucky Barnes-obsessed friend, who has since made this film her entire personality (affectionate), and honestly, I’ve also been thinking about it ever since. Again, it’s a delightful little irony that the megalithic Disney/MCU would come out with a narrative so introspective and empathetic, especially at a time that loneliness and isolation is rampant among the film’s core audience of young men. I really hope that watching this film inspired people to reach out and be less alone in their struggles, and that the financial hit Disney took with it won’t keep us from seeing more of these characters in the future.
Also! A fun fact I noticed while listening to the soundtrack was that the film’s main theme is a reversed version of the main Avengers theme; just listen to the first few seconds of both themes and you’ll hear it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Jzgp1jNiQ
Superman+
A good Superman movie?? In this economy?? Hallelujah!
I love a lot about what this film does with the core Superman premise. It gets Clark right, down to his farm boy roots and dorky kindness. It gets Superman right: his power isn’t unbeatable, and it isn’t even the most powerful thing about him (spoiler: it’s the dorky kindness). It gets Lex Luthor right—especially for our times—by having him be a smart but petty tech billionaire with an overinflated ego, someone who funds an invasion and even starts a pocket dimension on a whim, without once thinking of the consequences. It even gets Jimmy Olsen right simply by bringing him out of the margins where he’s been relegated for the last several Superman adaptations—and it’s actually really funny that he’s the one guy with the most game in this film, and that that’s how he gets to help out.
The structure of the film is an absolute delight, too. From the very start, we are thrown into the midst of a losing fight for Superman, which is a bold choice, as is having Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane already set up (and she even knows about him being Superman!). We don’t spend any time whatsoever on origin stories, budding relationship exploration, or long-winded exposition—we simply hit the ground running, and find out the particulars as we go along. It is assumed we know who Superman is, because… we all know who Superman is. And the themes around identity, responsibility, community, and how we should treat each other are laid bare without pretence, very directly speaking to the audience about contemporary problems we’re all facing day to day. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air not to be treated like an idiot, frankly.
There are a couple of things I don’t like about it though. For one, the film feels very busy, with so many characters and subplots and easter eggs thrown in, that if you blink you’ll definitely miss something. Relatedly, not all of those characters or subplots are treated equally, because there simply isn’t enough screen time to go around for everything. So the Justice Friends get the short shrift, as do Papa and Mama Kent, as does Krypton6, so that we can focus on the personal and political stakes that Clark/Superman has to overcome.
This is another superhero story with empathy at its heart, where the answer to even the most cosmic problems is… just be kind. Kindness is punk rock. As one of my favourite YouTube video essayists put it, this Superman is the American hero we desperately need right now. Someone who will stand up for what’s right even when the rest of the world tells him not to, someone with an unshakeable moral compass that only points to goodness. Watch that whole video actually, Dove does such a fantastic job analysing the cultural geography that plays into this film, and how it all ties together to bring us this ray of f*cking sunshine:
All this to say, I love that James Gunn can make a superhero movie that aims to appeal broadly but doesn’t feel like it panders to the lowest available denominator, and that he had the guts to (a) make the story feel relevant to our current times, what with all the invasions/”wars” going on right now that are purely happening for profit and that no one is doing anything to stop 🙄, and (b) leave us with a message of hope, that we can imagine a kinder world and that we can be the instruments of making that vision a reality. That kindness can be punk rock.
Dare I say, this was the movie that made me go, “huh, maybe the genre isn’t dead yet”, which… please, let it not be dead, I really like superheroes!
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Mickey 17: I enjoyed this a lot, particularly for its world-building and Robert Pattinson’s performance. Unfortunately I think the Bong Joon-Ho-ness of it all kind of undercuts the story in favour of very on-the-nose political commentary, which was fun in the moment but in retrospect kinda leaves me a bit… “meh!”, probably because the current climate is so much worse than when this movie was made, and making fun of things/people just isn’t enough right now. So I don’t think this will be getting one of my spots, but it’s still totally worth seeing, if you haven’t!
- Fantastic Four – First Steps: I also enjoyed this a lot, especially in light of B-Mask’s excellent Fantastic Four video from a few years back which explained the classic comics and got me up to speed on the characters. It’s an honest-to-God decent, good Marvel movie, which as I keep saying is a rare sight these days, but that being said… I liked the stuff I talked about up top way more than this one, not to mention the TV seasons, so I just think it gets edged out by the competition.
- Hamnet: Technically an SFF movie! The trailer had me weeping, but the movie left me cold somehow, perhaps because it’s a little too obvious in its attempts to make people cry (Mark Kermode said it best! The bit with the song at the very end irked me too because I recognised it, and the moment was actually completely ruined for me.) It does have some wonderful and atmospheric visuals where it comes to the speculative aspect of it, and the soundtrack by Max Richter is predictably phenomenal (if only they’d used his original song for the climactic ending of the film!!), but it just didn’t move me in the ways I thought it would, so it’s a miss.
The “I haven’t seen these yet” caveat+
- K-Pop Demon Hunters: Yes, I know, somehow, I still haven’t seen this movie. I’m assuming it’ll get nominated to high heaven, so I’ll watch it ahead of voting, I promise.
- Weapons: I’ve heard fantastic things about this, and my husband is a big WKUK fan, so I might be watching this soon and revising my thoughts.
- Wicked: For Good: I liked the first film well enough, and I hear that a LOT happens in the second half of the musical, so I’m tentatively putting this on a hold list until I watch it. I don’t know if it would edge out any of my favourites, realistically speaking, but I suppose there is always room for surprises!
Long Form: Non-Film/TV
B-Mask’s “The REAL Thunderbolts Story: Marvel’s Greatest Scam“*
This is a 2.5 hour love letter to comics, and the first in a five-part series that tells the story of the real Thunderbolts from the comic books (a team that bears very little resemblance to the one portrayed in the recent MCU film discussed above). It features complex animations drawing from the original comic book art, as well as a full cast of voice actors bringing the characters to life with their performances.
* I’m personally torn on whether this would qualify for BDP-LF or BRW (seeing as it is technically a fanwork, and not an original work), but either way it is nothing short of a masterpiece—I wrote more about it in my 2025 underrated Hugo picks post, if you’re interested.
Short Form: TV Episodes
A caveat: my reasoning around nominating a particular episode is kind of like nominating my favourite chapter of a novel. Especially with how a lot of the prestige TV shows are made nowadays, individual episodes function as chapters in a longer story, so they have to be considered in the context of the wider narrative they’re a part of. If they are from a second, third, or even last season of a long-running show, even more so.
Also—and this might be a slightly spicy take—I personally don’t like that a lot of Hugo voters seem to only watch the individual episodes on the eventual shortlist without any context, and then complain that they didn’t get what was going on. That’s because context matters, and while I understand that it would take a lot of time to watch an entire season (or even several!) to be able to appreciate a single episode… if you want your vote to be informed, that’s the job, innit?
This has happened several times to me, where there’s an episode on the shortlist from a show I don’t watch (and have no intention of watching—sorry Lower Decks), so I just skip it and don’t put it in my ballot at the end, or rank it below my own favourites. I do the same with sequels to books I haven’t read, out of respect for the work itself as well as its author, but that’s just me I guess! 🤷🏻♀️
Anyway, here are some thoughts about my favourite episodes of speculative TV from this year, under spoiler tags for obvious reasons.
Two episodes from Stranger Things, Season 5+
‘Chapter Four: Sorcerer’
I loved, loved, loved this episode. The moment Will uses his new power… it gave me goosebumps, it was so good—and the fight sequence in front of the gate to the Upside Down is incredible. Rather than the writing, though, I want to praise the actors’ performances and the work of the crew who worked on the practical effects, stunts, and complicated cinematography in this episode. Especially given more recent revelations about how the Duffers went into production with season 5 without having ironed out the ending, and the stress that added to the poor production crew, I think any flowers should really be going to them for making such an outstanding piece of TV despite the challenges.
‘Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz’
Yes, the scene in this photo feels a little ludicrously long considering they’re both on the run and about to be caught by the Big Bad, but I loved the heart of this relationship and the character development for both Holly and Max in this episode. I had also seen the Stranger Things play in London a couple of years back, and this episode eliminated the issues I had with the world-building in that, which at first had seemed to contradict the revelations in season 4 about Vecna/Henry Creel’s agency as a villain and his role in shaping the Upside Down… I was glad to see that in fact all the loose threads from the various seasons did connect, and that the strands from the play were relevant too.
Various episodes from Severance, Season 2+
S2E4: ‘Woe’s Hollow’
I mentioned this episode in my discussion of the series earlier, but let me get into it here: this is one of the best episodes of TV ever made, period, and I will fight you on this. I don’t know if it would stand alone in any capacity, considering the weird tone is already a lot to deal with and there’s a lot of plot and character interaction that picks up from where the last season left off, not to mention a big-time betrayal that ends up echoing through the rest of season 2.
I spent a good chunk of the beginning wondering if this was a simulator or a dream sequence because it didn’t fully make sense for our protagonists to be outside the Lumon offices, and the uncanny doppelgangers guiding them through the forest seemed almost dreamlike, but the reality was much more sinister in the end, which tracks. If there’s a single episode from this show I’d nominate, it’d be this one.
S2E8: ‘Sweet Vitriol’
People hate this episode because it’s slow and follows an unlikeable antagonist whom we are invited to empathise with, and that’s precisely the reason I like it. First of all, we get way more insight into the Lumon cult corporation from Harmony Cobel, who ostensibly grew up in the cult and has invested her whole life into the company’s welfare. This is also where we begin to see cracks form in her resolve as an antagonist, as she has realised that the company sees her as an expendable cog despite her lifelong investment and dedication, and so she decides to fight them, to prove that this little cog is actually so important, it might well bring the whole house down.
It’s interesting also for thematic reasons, outside of the show’s world. On an individual level, the image of someone who grew up in poverty while idolising a particular company, then making their entire life revolve around it so as to gain favour and socioeconomic mobility, gaining that and then losing it when the company no longer sees them as valuable, is unfortunately too relatable. So is seeing a small town that once had its own industry and community be taken over by a mega corporation and become completely dependent on it, eventually falling into destitution once the corporation pulls their activities out of the town. The actual commentary here is silent, but extremely powerful.
I don’t think Cobel’s about-turn is enough to fully make her an anti-hero, but I really enjoyed this episode for all the insight it gave us both into her and the world of Severance outside of Lumon HQ.
S2E10: ‘Cold Harbor’
There is a strong argument to be made that the season two finale is absolutely worth a nomination as well, making this a really tough choice. Two seasons’ worth of mystery solving and internal corporate espionage culminate in this one-hour episode where our protagonists clash with one another and with the antagonists, and it’s just adrenaline all the way down.
Some spoilery thoughts here.While the big questions have been answered (where is Mark’s wife? what is Cold Harbor? what are they doing with all those sheep?), so many more remain. Is there a way to save the innies at all, if Lumon ends up falling? Can Mark S. and Helly R. ever hope to have a life outside these walls? And what happens to Gemma now that she’s out, even though she has 24 distinct, hand-crafted personalities inside her?
There’s actually a great take I hadn’t come across before I sat down to write this, and that is that the finale actually inverts the Orpheus & Eurydice narrative of Mark and Gemma, by having Mark’s innie actually choose to stay behind in Lumon so he can be with Helly. It’s less of a lack of faith and more of a conscious decision, which perhaps makes it even more tragic as Gemma watches her husband (sort of) run toward danger and another woman, leaving her alone at the exit, screaming for him to come back.
Having written about the other episodes already, I do think ep4 is a stronger contender purely from a craft/vibes standpoint, whereas the finale is more typical in many ways, as it focuses on exposition and plot and is faster paced. YMMV here, for sure, but I’m inclined to pick ep4 over this one, now that I think about it.
Two episodes from Pluribus, Season 1+
Episode 1: “We is Us”
It’s not often that a TV pilot stands on its own two feet well. It’s even less common for the film-making to be so good that one must gasp in awe at the choreography, cinematography, and editing, multiple times throughout the course of the episode. One of my biggest peeves is when a TV pilot is so mired in exposition that there is no room for characters or atmosphere until the next episode because they simply have to give you the setup quickly—it ends up feeling flat and boring and frankly, it puts me off more than it entices me to keep watching until it gets better.7
Well, this episode does none of that.
Gilligan’s forte is silent scenes that actually speak volumes. There is so much storytelling in this episode that has no words; we watch an intergalactic viral hive mind sequence take over the Earth in perfectly synchronised movement, and the storytelling is in the silence, the perfect unison, and the eerie smiles as the hive mind consciousness flattens the individuals inside. A lesser writer would put exposition in dialogue, possibly giving too much information for where we are in the story, but Gilligan knows that less is more. We get just enough to hook us in, and the rest is pure atmosphere and of course, character.
Carol is introduced as a grumpy romantasy author, a lesbian in a loving relationship who constantly finds reasons to be miserable, much to her partner’s chagrin. When the hive mind sequence is spread via planes in the air, Carol loses her partner, and simultaneously the world. The panic that ensues is completely understandable, and it gets worse at every turn as she is met with more and more hive mind people, but no one else like her. What a place for a pilot to leave us in! Aren’t you hooked just by reading this?? GO WATCH THIS SHOW!
Episode 7: “The Gap”
The title refers to a real place that Manousos (pictured) has to cross, but also I suppose to the gap between Carol and others at this point in the show. This is another masterfully crafted episode with a dual narrative point of view, where Carol continues her life in Albuquerque while Manousos is making his slow way up through South and Central America towards Carol, crossing cities, climbing mountains, and trudging through thick, treacherous jungles, all while refusing the hive mind’s help at every opportunity.
Some spoilery thoughts here.At first, it’s admirable; he won’t even take gas without paying for it somehow, even though everything he comes across is at his disposal. Soon enough, however, his steadfastness turns into stubbornness that does more harm to him than good. When he gets seriously injured in the jungle (something that was completely preventable, had he accepted the hive mind’s help and transited through safer means),
Meanwhile, Carol stoically endures complete and total isolation for a long time as a result of the hive mind evacuating the whole metro area of Albuquerque, which happened when Carol hurt one of them (and by extension, all of them) quite badly while trying to find answers. She is given resources and sustenance remotely, and for a while enjoys her peaceful environment, going around town and doing whatever she feels like… until she finally cracks under the pressure of extreme loneliness, and asks the hive mind to come back.
It’s an incredibly powerful moment actually, seeing someone as stubborn sturdy as Carol finally admit that she can’t live her whole life completely cut off from other people, even though she hates the hive mind on principle, and can’t wrap her mind around accepting this status quo. In fairness, she makes it to about a month and a half, which is pretty long, but her isolation was also so complete that there were zero people around her for that whole time—an unfathomable experience that’s so well depicted on screen. I personally love the rooftop golf scene as an example of how utterly devoid of people the landscape is, a mundane sort of post-apocalyptic image.
This is probably my favourite episode in season 1, and even think it could be presented without context and still mostly work alright for new viewers… Though I’d still hope that people would watch the whole season anyway. If I had to pick one episode to represent the series as a whole, I’d say it’s this one.
Short Form: Non-TV
‘Songs No One Will Hear’ by Arjen Lucassen (music album)
I wrote a fair amount about this pre-apocalyptic concept album in my underrated Hugo recommendations post; here’s a snippet:
The result is an album that grapples with the essence of the human condition (something Lucassen is very adept at), asking what makes life worth living from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters as they try to come to terms with the impending end of the world—including those who think it’s all a hoax, those who embrace it, and those who rage against the dying of the light. It straddles a weird and fun line between diegetic/in-world music that’s on the radio and telling the story as a sung-through musical, which is a little different than what you might expect, particularly for a progressive rock album. But that’s the Arjen Lucassen guarantee: big questions, big emotions, and a sound that isn’t afraid to change dramatically when necessary, even mid-song. Full of theatricality, Songs No One Will Hear is in some ways very similar to Lucassen’s Ayreon albums, but retains its own identity both musically and thematically.
We’ve been known to nominate SFF music albums when they arise, and on occasion those musicians have even responded to being recognised by fandom—seeing Clipping live in Helsinki was fun!—so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, though perhaps it is a bit of a left field suggestion for most Hugo voters as a progressive rock concept album.
While he’s extremely popular in his own niche, most of Lucassen’s fans aren’t in SF fandom and vice versa, something that I would love to help shift by talking about his work more to Hugo voters and talking to Ayreon/Lucassen fans more about joining our community and coming to Worldcon, especially as the next few years are looking quite international. Lucassen’s very obvious Golden Age influences are bound to have pointed many of his fans to the genre, so the bridge is already half-built.
I’m sure that I’ll be one of very few people longlisting this album, but 🤷🏻♀️! I really think If you see just a single, solitary vote for it in the full data, know that it was me!
Footnotes
- Per the WSFS Constitution, clauses 3.8.2 and 3.8.3. ↩︎
- In addition to the more fannish post I linked above, I found another really cool essay about the Barbican as Coruscant from an architect who works in film and TV. ↩︎
- A special shoutout to Joshua James, who played the doctor who tortured Bix Caleen with the sounds of distant massacres; I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since I saw him in Treasure Island at the National Theatre back in 2015 or so, and make a point to see him in every play he’s in when I can. He had a stint as Dr Brenner in Stranger Things: The First Shadow recently which I unfortunately missed, but I bet he was perfect! ↩︎
- I’d like to thank Octothorpe’s Alison Scott for her recommendation to see the film in an IMAX theatre, as the experience was truly spectacular. ↩︎
- There is another Black Widow character played by Olga Kurilenko who turns up for literally five minutes, but she is so not present in the rest of the film that I’m not even going to go into it. If it weren’t for Yelena and Alexei, I’d say that movie had zero lasting impact on the MCU, given how late into Natasha’s journey we got it (literally after she was canonically killed off), lol (sarcastic). ↩︎
- I still don’t know how to feel about the plot twist around Krypton and Clark’s biological parents, brief as it was. I think it is intended to maximise the contrast between where Clark hails from and where he grew up and how that affected his identity, and the discomfort it creates is probably very intentional from Gunn. ↩︎
- I call this “pilot syndrome”, and it’s one of my least favourite phenomena in media. ↩︎
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Battle for the Ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation 2026
The two Best Dramatic Presentation categories are among my favourites in the Hugos, because I consume a lot of SFF media and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about them. Since my post last year about why I had wanted Loki S2 to win a Hugo in 2024 (which I was working on for a while but ended up not posting it in time for it to sway anyone), I’ve been toying with the idea of producing more writing around some of my favourite things from each year, in case it helps anybody—least of all me, in getting it all out of my system.
I know I’m posting this with one day to go before nominations (these take so long for me! I must develop a better system for next year 🤔), but I’m really writing this to sound out my own thoughts about the DP categories this year, because it is absolutely bananas with how stacked they both are. There have been some truly great speculative television shows and films, stuff that I’m sure we’ll still be talking about for years to come, and making decisions to boil my favourite media down to just 5 per category—especially given the fiddliness of Long Form and Short Form where TV is concerned, which I’ll get to in a sec—is going to be excruciatingly difficult for me.
So come along on a journey with me as I parse my thoughts, and who knows! Maybe I’ll argue my way to your heart about some of this, or tell you about something you hadn’t heard of before—some of which I’ve already written about before, but I’m getting ahead of myself!
Let me know what your ballot looks like, and if you’re nominating any of the below shows, films, and other dramatic works, or if you’re including other things entirely. I’m curious!
TV series and the Long Form/Short Form debate
A big question for many fen every year is “do I nominate one episode from a TV series that stands on its own or that adequately represents the show in Short Form, or do I nominate the whole season in Long Form because it’s one complete narrative, and isolating one chapter of it would be unfair?”
Understandably, it’s a tough one; when a show inevitably gets votes in both categories, it can lead to headaches for the Hugo Administrating Team as they have to sift through the numbers and ultimately decide which category it should be nominated in1, which I don’t envy at all. But at the same time, as a voter, I have to go with what my heart says and name my favourite episodes in Short Form, regardless of whether I’ve also named the show/season as a whole in Long Form, because if enough others have put that same episode down, then that’s what’ll make it through to the shortlist, and I would want my vote to count towards those totals.
All that to say: if you expected a clear stance from me on this, HA! I’m afraid I don’t have one 😇—and to be perfectly honest, this is exactly the sort of thing where people’s mileage will vary the most.
My personal method of deciding whether to nominate entire TV seasons rather than one specific episode is purely based on ~vibes~, on whether or not I thought the season works better in its totality than through its individual parts, versus cases where one outstanding episode eclipses all the others for me. Not all shows are written the same, of course, and those that favour a longer narrative arc (as a lot of prestige TV does nowadays) tend to find their way on my long form ballot more often than not, as opposed to the more episodic writing that isn’t as popular now but used to be ubiquitous in the pre-streaming era.
Ultimately, you may agree or disagree with me on my reasoning for some of my choices below, whether on the LF/SF question or my actual opinions of the various media, and that’s fair enough. I welcome discussion in the comments, but please keep it civil!
Jump to:
- Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
- Long Form: Films
- Long Form: Non-Film/TV
- Short Form: TV Episodes
- Short Form: Non-TV
Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
You might see episodes from some of these further down in the episode/short form discussion.
Andor, Season 2+
This is kind of my front-runner among the TV seasons for the Long Form category. Overall, I enjoyed it slightly more than season 1 for a few reasons: first of all, the pacing was much more even, with a little bit more action and intrigue peppered throughout the season as opposed to having several quieter mini-arcs that slowed things down in places; and crucially, there was a lot less dithering from Cassian Andor, our reluctant protagonist, who finally comes into his own as a rebel after being passively tossed about this way and that in the first season. The agency he has in this one makes him much more interesting as a character, and brings him on the same level as other players in the budding rebellion front, like Mon Mothma and Luthen Rael. In fact, with all the different character arcs completed, Andor finally becomes what Rogue One always wanted to be: a testament to the great sacrifices necessary for revolution to take root.
I liked a lot of what went down in this season as tensions continued ramping up between the Empire and the Rebellion; the Ghorman subplot was outstanding, especially with Dedra and Cyril’s journeys as instruments of Imperial oppression and violence, as was Mon Mothma’s arc from quiet resistance financier to full-on political rebel on the run, with her heartbreaking arc where she realises the personal cost of rebellion. None of the individual episodes in season 2 came even close to the intensity or narrative brilliance of One Way Out, which was hands down my favourite episode of season 1, but that’s okay—I think this season works so much better in its totality, that I’ll be happy to nominate it wholesale.
I still need to re-watch Rogue One actually, to see if my (very mid) opinion on it changes at all, but ultimately I’m just really happy this show was made, and that it looked and felt amazing throughout. It’s probably my favourite Star Wars story, period, and I am so chuffed that so much of it was filmed in the UK (in locations I know and visit all the time, including my old workplace!2), and is full of incredibly talented and classically trained British theatre actors who fill the space with their physicality and make their performances memorable even in the smallest of roles3.
Severance, Season 2+
Another really strong contender for this category. If you ask me which TV show might win the LF Hugo between this, Andor, or Pluribus, my money would probably be on Severance, even if I personally prefer Andor thematically and Pluribus cinematically. There’s no doubt Severance is an absolute masterpiece of television—nay, of cinema—and the fact that the most anti-capitalist story of our time is coming directly from the big tech megacorp Apple is an irony that is as delicious as it is hilarious.
Aside from its bonkers world-building (which still has so many unanswered questions!), this season of Severance also dove pretty deep into its characters, whom we only got to know a bit in season 1. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but there’s a handful of moments in this season that go SO HARD—particularly that one slow episode that everyone else hated for some reason, where we follow Patricia Arquette’s character as she goes to her dingy home town and fills us in on the cult lore around Lumon Industries, and of course the team building episode in which our intrepid heroes actually go outside, but it’s all weird in that trademark Lumon way where nothing really fully makes sense, and it leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable, like something’s not quite aligned right.
But yeah, the world-building, man. It’s something else. I was glued to my screen and my mind was running a mile a minute trying to join the dots and figure out the answers to the show’s mysteries, much like our heroes consolidate memories refine macrodata—remember, the work is mysterious and important—and the excitement of getting it just before the show confirmed it was super fun. Yet, finally understanding what macrodata refinement is was actually a really tragic moment, and everything that happens after that made my heart break for the innies who are stuck living a half-life they can’t escape, on pain of death.
Ultimately, what I loved the most about the second season of Severance is its staunch anti-capitalist messaging that speaks to the average office worker today regardless of where they may be in the world, because corporate manipulation knows no borders:
- A job is a job, not a family.
- The company you work for does not deserve blind, cult-like loyalty.
- Your life is more than just work, and compartmentalising your work self and your out-of-work self might be a band-aid solution, but it doesn’t really work in the end.
- You are you, with all your complex layers of self, even if your corporate overlords (…or just your line manager 🤐) want you to think otherwise, or to act otherwise so you can fit into their office culture.
- Basically, it’s all dumb, and you deserve to live, not just to survive so you can punch your clock card and get meaningless little bonuses like finger traps or waffle parties.
This relatability is what keeps me hooked, and what I think elevates the show from pretty sci-fi to a classic of our times. It’s definitely got my vote.
Pluribus, Season 1+
God, talk about another cinematic masterpiece. When Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul‘s Vince Gilligan said he was working on a new show (which he was writing specifically for Rhea Seahorn to star in), I was crossing my fingers and my toes that it would be sci-fi, and Pluribus has completely blown my expectations out of the water. Not only does it mark Gilligan’s return to science fiction for the first time since The X-Files, but he brings his now-trademark cinematic visual language to it, full of tight choreography and nuanced subtext through visual and music cues, which is what made BB & BCS so special.
The result is an unnerving combination of horror, absurdist humour, and subtle world-building, centered around a complex character named Carol Sturka, who is one of only a few humans not to join the weird hive mind connection that takes over all other human beings on the planet, and doesn’t want to even entertain the idea. I’ve seen many reviews call her unlikable and unrelatable, and while the first part may be true (I was really tired of her contrarian nature in the first half of the season), I think there’s something more going on here than just a selfish white American woman who expects the world to move just for her.
The thing is, Vince Gilligan does not talk down to his audience; he expects us to keep up and to pick up what he’s putting down, whether that’s subtle digs at the publishing industry (it is truly hilarious to me that the protagonist of this show is an actual romantasy author!), not-so-subtle digs about community building and the harm humanity has done to the planet and to each other (particularly around resource distribution, iykyk), and questions about human nature that we are left to ponder: would you trade world peace for the complete flattening of human culture? Are we capable of retaining what makes us human while not actively harming the world around us, or each other? What is humanity, really, or human nature even?
Big stuff coming from an Apple TV show, once again; should I even be surprised at this point?
I think the long game of this show is going to be Carol’s character development from grumpy selfish miser to someone who genuinely cares about other people—a reverse Walter White, if you will. Gilligan is all about the narrative arc, and he has been known to deliver some of the best narrative arcs in TV ever, even if they take a while to stick the landing. I have faith that he is cooking something we haven’t even yet begun to poke at, if Better Call Saul is any indication, and between the already great writing and the show’s superlative production value, I think Pluribus is going to be a low-key modern classic. Vince has my vote, now and always.
My Hero Academia: The Final Season+
I wrote about this extensively in my Hugo ballot recommendations post a couple of months ago, so I’ll pull a quote from that as to why I loved it so much:
Y’all, what can I say: this has been my favourite anime of the last decade, and the fact it is ending has had me in my feelings for months. I’ve been deeply invested emotionally for many years, watching the simulcasts on the same day as the anime airs in Japan since around season 2, and this last season has been all payoff for almost ten years’ worth of story. Every Saturday from October 4th till December 13th, I tuned in and bawled my eyes out for 20 minutes straight, which for an anime aimed at teenage boys is an absolute feat. Defying every expectation, it stuck the landing for every little story beat, every subplot, and every theme set up over its ten year tenure perfectly, making it one of my absolute favourite stories in the superhero genre.
This is definitely one of those where context is essential, so I don’t think it can be viewed in a vacuum and appreciated to the same extent as having watched all previous seven seasons. You can try, but it wouldn’t be worth it just for the awards. Just watch the show so the ending can hit you like a ton of bricks in the best way possible, even if you miss the deadline. It’s fun, it’s moving, it’s made with so much love for American comics through a uniquely Japanese perspective. I can’t recommend it enough, and it’ll definitely be on my Long Form ballot even if I’m one of ten people who put it there 🤷🏻♀️
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Silo, Season 2: It’s definitely not as tight as season 1, and it was missing some stuff from the books that may well turn up in season 3. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot I enjoyed about this season, but unfortunately it’s simply weaker when Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette isn’t on screen, and there’s a lot of that unfortunately. I’m certainly looking forward to what season 3 will be adapting, and to see what format that will take, as I think they’re either condensing or axing the second half of book 2 to go straight to the dual narrative of book 3, which I have mixed feelings about.
- Murderbot: I never got into the books because of tonal whiplash (MB’s violence and misanthropy coated in dry humour just didn’t work for me), and while I thought the TV show was a little better in that regard, ultimately I thought the show was just okay. I didn’t actively dislike it, mind, but I watched most of it on a plane ride, didn’t finish it, and haven’t felt like picking it back up since. The story just doesn’t grab me, I think, and I never felt particularly attached to or compelled by any of the characters… and I’m okay with that 🤷🏻♀️. Not everything is for everyone! I expect it’ll be mass-nominated by all the book fans anyway based on the online discourse I’ve seen, so it won’t miss my vote.
- Invasion, Season 3: I didn’t even know this was out, lmao! I was deeply invested while watching seasons 1 and 2 (even though I disliked quite a few of the characters), but as soon as I was done with it I promptly forgot about it—and Apple TV didn’t even let me know that it was back on. Whomst can I shake until they fix the marketing situation over there?! Christ on a cracker!
- Stranger Things, Season 5: To my own surprise, I didn’t like this season nearly as much as season 4, let alone season 1, and so I will not be considering it for the Long Form category (including the last episode, which would qualify under Long Form on its own due to being 128 MINUTES LONG 🙄). It’s turned out to be one of those things where, while I enjoyed it a fair bit in the moment, the longer I think about it the more my feelings about it seem to change, and the ending has left me a bit… conflicted, shall we say. But it did have some great episodes in the middle especially, so I will consider a couple of them in the Short Form category.
Long Form: Films
Sinners+
This was probably my favourite SFF film of last year. Not only is it atmospheric, fun, and lush with cross-border folkloric world-building (Hoodoo magic and Irish vampires?! yes please!), but the story touches so many themes that a regular popcorn movie won’t even veer towards, and it does so brilliantly.
All the many layers of the Black and POC experience in the South during the Prohibition era (and beyond) are crystallised in the character arc of each ensemble cast member, with some absolutely outstanding performances by Hailee Steinfeld (whose character Mary is biracial, and torn between safety and belonging), Michael B. Jordan (who plays identical twins Smoke and Stack so well he walked away with an Oscar for it), and Wunmi Mosaku in particular as Smoke’s wife Annie (she’s such an underrated performer, but I’m so glad to see her actually flex her acting skills after her appearance in Loki). We’re talking themes like the push and pull of religion and its role in both keeping communities together and also oppressing them, the safety of BIPOC in a white supremacist society, and even the immigrant experience… the truth is your average blockbuster would never—but this is Ryan Coogler, and he won’t sugar-coat things for a mainstream audience, instead telling a story only he could tell, filled with truth, complexity, and nuance, something I really wish more filmmakers would embrace nowadays.
The film’s protagonist, Sammie (Miles Caton) has a preternatural gift with music, and the plot revolves around a juke joint Smoke and Stack put together, and the connection that music can create across time and even culture—with a wonderful supernatural twist.
One of my favourite moments is when the villain Remmick (an immortal Irish vampire played by Jack O’Connell) turns up at their juke joint and cries with joy at the emotions Sammie’s music has brought him after years of numbness. He talks about his own experience of colonialism at the hands of the British Empire and the subsequent erasure of Irish culture through the centuries, which is a very real thing—but he’s also a predator who has been making his way through the land trying to trap people and turn them into vampires, chased away by indigenous people who could tell he was a monster before attacking a couple who are Klan members. It’s clear that he doesn’t want Sammie’s music in order to connect people, but to use it as a tool on his quest to propagate a vampire race, and that seemingly sweet moment of connection is exposed as the performative allyship that it is.
There are some phenomenal action sequences too, with the last third of the film keeping me on the edge of my IMAX seat4. Genuinely, this film was such a breath of fresh air: delightfully complex but also fun, in ways that cinema just doesn’t dare to be right now. I was sad they didn’t win all the awards they were up for, but perhaps we can give it a Hugo instead.
Frankenstein+
©️ Netflix 2025I have a full review of this here, but basically: the SFF-ness of this is lush, as expected from a Guillermo Del Toro movie, and for the most part it works well as an adaptation of the book. As I mention in my other post, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the NT’s theatre adaptation, which I still consider the ultimate version of this story, but it does similar things with the characters as Penny Dreadful, which is my runner-up favourite, save for the very end, and it’s that ending that makes the whole thing fall short for me, unfortunately.
To quote myself:
Why do we sing sad songs, when we know their ending is unhappy? When our instinctual yearning for a happy ending is met with the inevitability of human flaws getting in the way, that emotional release we experience is what my ancestors called catharsis. As the audience we accept that because of who these characters are, they would always make these choices and lead the story to the same outcome, time and again, even though we’d like them to change, to choose better, so they can be happy in the end.
What makes Frankenstein compelling in any iteration is its core conflict: Victor’s refusal to acknowledge the Creature as human, despite the fact that the Creature is deeply human, as much as his creator would like to think otherwise. We are invited to empathise with the Creature’s plight, to see how he thinks and feels, how he desires things we all do: safety, friendship, love. Victor is incapable of recognising this, and so the two clash eternally. Such is the tragedy, and no matter what minor changes are made to it, the good adaptations always recognise the impasse between the two at the end. It’s what makes the story tick.
My ultimate issue with the way Del Toro chose to end his adaptation of Frankenstein is that it ultimately robs us of our deserved catharsis by artificially resolving the incontrovertible stalemate between the two leads, giving us a happy(ish) ending in which Victor, at death’s door, forgives the Creature for the violence and destruction he’s wrought, apologises for what he did to him, and urges him to live on, free of guilt, yet completely alone. The Creature then walks off into the Arctic sunrise, liberated from his vendetta yet devastated at losing his creator.
It’s a lovely thought in principle, a Del Toro-ism about accepting one’s nature and walking away from one’s painful past, and if it were an original story without baggage I’d be all for it—after all, The Shape of Water had similar, pro-monster themes of letting go of trying to fit into a world that won’t accept you anyway, and I ate that up voraciously. But here, in taking a tragedy that is so classic and ingrained, loading it with a bunch of new traumas and subplots, and then resolving it all with a little monologue, the ending robs the story of its true conclusion, fundamentally missing the point of the source text, and doing a disservice both to Victor and the Creature.
I still think it’s a strong contender in the category, and definitely one of my favourite SFF movies I saw last year, despite my issues with it. However, given all my favourite TV shows above, I think I might eschew giving this one of my ballot spots, but I won’t be disappointed to see it on the final ballot, should it make it through.
Thunderbolts*+
I loved this movie A LOT, you guys, and it made me very sad that it flopped at the box office. I don’t blame people for being fatigued with Marvel’s mediocre superhero slop, but they should have given this movie a chance at the very least, because it might not have been the movie we wanted, but it was definitely the movie we needed right now.
(c) Disney/Marvel Studios, 2025I was very surprised with how deep it went into the trauma our various superheroes and anti-heroes have sustained through their previous adventures, and the level of empathy with which it treated them all:
- Yelena Belova, the last surviving Black Widow5, starts off depressed and morose, aimless, dissatisfied with running around and blowing things up for people with nothing to show for it except a path of destruction.
- Her and Natasha Romanoff’s father figure, Alexei Shostakov, is facing the music that his “Red Star” superhero persona is nothing but a figment of a bygone era, and is living a meagre life as a limo driver while reminiscing about his glory days.
- John Walker, the temporary Captain America replacement later dubbed “U.S. Agent”, is dealing with guilt after slaughtering innocent bystanders using Cap’s vibranium shield during the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, all while struggling through early parenthood.
- The Winter Soldier—Bucky Barnes—is running for office, in an attempt to turn his newfound and shaky inner peace into something productive. Yet, something keeps niggling at him about the power vacuum left in the wake of the Avengers disappearing, and he can’t help but get involved in ways political candidates really shouldn’t. See: taking a huge machine gun and riding a motorbike out to the desert to find out who is behind these shenanigans. Tut tut, Mr Congressman.
- Oh, there’s also Ava Star/Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, probably my least favourite Marvel movie to date, whom I completely forgot about before watching this movie and while writing this review. Oops! Her thing is that she is constantly phasing in and out of a solid existence, and she has to keep shouting about how traumatised she is with no need for subtext because they know we’ve all forgotten about her and need to be reminded of her struggles. Normally I’d be mad at that, but they are not wrong this time 😅
And then, there’s Bob.
(c) Disney/Marvel, 2025Bob is a new guy, recruited to be experimented on in hopes of becoming a superhero. He seems normal, average even, and he reluctantly joins our motley crew as they escape from a trap set by their employer—but under the surface he carries a deep wound, a gash that opens up to swallow him whole and turns him into The Void, his mysterious alter ego who awakens when Bob’s absolutely OTT superpowers kick in. The rest, as they say, is plot.
There’s a lot of (predictably dark) humour in this, and I was surprised with how much I liked these characters once they were given enough room to be protagonists, rather than minor antagonists in someone else’s story. While they haphazardly join forces into a makeshift team, their trauma is taken seriously, coalescing into the film’s climactic battle that pits the reluctant heroes against The Void, who weaponises each of their subconscious against them. The Void is Depression, by any other name—it’s the dark voice inside that tells each of our anti-heroes that they are worthless, unlovable, guilty, and alone. In order to beat him they have to reach out with empathy to themselves first and then to each other, and literally hold each other in a tight embrace as a reminder that they are not alone. What wins the day is friendship, empathy, and love, not unlike the last season of My Hero Academia, which I also loved last year, or Superman, which I’m about to get into below.
I cried BUCKETS while watching Thunderbolts* in the UK’s largest IMAX screen alongside my Bucky Barnes-obsessed friend, who has since made this film her entire personality (affectionate), and honestly, I’ve also been thinking about it ever since. Again, it’s a delightful little irony that the megalithic Disney/MCU would come out with a narrative so introspective and empathetic, especially at a time that loneliness and isolation is rampant among the film’s core audience of young men. I really hope that watching this film inspired people to reach out and be less alone in their struggles, and that the financial hit Disney took with it won’t keep us from seeing more of these characters in the future.
Also! A fun fact I noticed while listening to the soundtrack was that the film’s main theme is a reversed version of the main Avengers theme; just listen to the first few seconds of both themes and you’ll hear it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Jzgp1jNiQ
Superman+
A good Superman movie?? In this economy?? Hallelujah!
I love a lot about what this film does with the core Superman premise. It gets Clark right, down to his farm boy roots and dorky kindness. It gets Superman right: his power isn’t unbeatable, and it isn’t even the most powerful thing about him (spoiler: it’s the dorky kindness). It gets Lex Luthor right—especially for our times—by having him be a smart but petty tech billionaire with an overinflated ego, someone who funds an invasion and even starts a pocket dimension on a whim, without once thinking of the consequences. It even gets Jimmy Olsen right simply by bringing him out of the margins where he’s been relegated for the last several Superman adaptations—and it’s actually really funny that he’s the one guy with the most game in this film, and that that’s how he gets to help out.
The structure of the film is an absolute delight, too. From the very start, we are thrown into the midst of a losing fight for Superman, which is a bold choice, as is having Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane already set up (and she even knows about him being Superman!). We don’t spend any time whatsoever on origin stories, budding relationship exploration, or long-winded exposition—we simply hit the ground running, and find out the particulars as we go along. It is assumed we know who Superman is, because… we all know who Superman is. And the themes around identity, responsibility, community, and how we should treat each other are laid bare without pretence, very directly speaking to the audience about contemporary problems we’re all facing day to day. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air not to be treated like an idiot, frankly.
There are a couple of things I don’t like about it though. For one, the film feels very busy, with so many characters and subplots and easter eggs thrown in, that if you blink you’ll definitely miss something. Relatedly, not all of those characters or subplots are treated equally, because there simply isn’t enough screen time to go around for everything. So the Justice Friends get the short shrift, as do Papa and Mama Kent, as does Krypton6, so that we can focus on the personal and political stakes that Clark/Superman has to overcome.
This is another superhero story with empathy at its heart, where the answer to even the most cosmic problems is… just be kind. Kindness is punk rock. As one of my favourite YouTube video essayists put it, this Superman is the American hero we desperately need right now. Someone who will stand up for what’s right even when the rest of the world tells him not to, someone with an unshakeable moral compass that only points to goodness. Watch that whole video actually, Dove does such a fantastic job analysing the cultural geography that plays into this film, and how it all ties together to bring us this ray of f*cking sunshine:
All this to say, I love that James Gunn can make a superhero movie that aims to appeal broadly but doesn’t feel like it panders to the lowest available denominator, and that he had the guts to (a) make the story feel relevant to our current times, what with all the invasions/”wars” going on right now that are purely happening for profit and that no one is doing anything to stop 🙄, and (b) leave us with a message of hope, that we can imagine a kinder world and that we can be the instruments of making that vision a reality. That kindness can be punk rock.
Dare I say, this was the movie that made me go, “huh, maybe the genre isn’t dead yet”, which… please, let it not be dead, I really like superheroes!
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Mickey 17: I enjoyed this a lot, particularly for its world-building and Robert Pattinson’s performance. Unfortunately I think the Bong Joon-Ho-ness of it all kind of undercuts the story in favour of very on-the-nose political commentary, which was fun in the moment but in retrospect kinda leaves me a bit… “meh!”, probably because the current climate is so much worse than when this movie was made, and making fun of things/people just isn’t enough right now. So I don’t think this will be getting one of my spots, but it’s still totally worth seeing, if you haven’t!
- Fantastic Four – First Steps: I also enjoyed this a lot, especially in light of B-Mask’s excellent Fantastic Four video from a few years back which explained the classic comics and got me up to speed on the characters. It’s an honest-to-God decent, good Marvel movie, which as I keep saying is a rare sight these days, but that being said… I liked the stuff I talked about up top way more than this one, not to mention the TV seasons, so I just think it gets edged out by the competition.
- Hamnet: Technically an SFF movie! The trailer had me weeping, but the movie left me cold somehow, perhaps because it’s a little too obvious in its attempts to make people cry (Mark Kermode said it best! The bit with the song at the very end irked me too because I recognised it, and the moment was actually completely ruined for me.) It does have some wonderful and atmospheric visuals where it comes to the speculative aspect of it, and the soundtrack by Max Richter is predictably phenomenal (if only they’d used his original song for the climactic ending of the film!!), but it just didn’t move me in the ways I thought it would, so it’s a miss.
The “I haven’t seen these yet” caveat+
- K-Pop Demon Hunters: Yes, I know, somehow, I still haven’t seen this movie. I’m assuming it’ll get nominated to high heaven, so I’ll watch it ahead of voting, I promise.
- Weapons: I’ve heard fantastic things about this, and my husband is a big WKUK fan, so I might be watching this soon and revising my thoughts.
- Wicked: For Good: I liked the first film well enough, and I hear that a LOT happens in the second half of the musical, so I’m tentatively putting this on a hold list until I watch it. I don’t know if it would edge out any of my favourites, realistically speaking, but I suppose there is always room for surprises!
Long Form: Non-Film/TV
B-Mask’s “The REAL Thunderbolts Story: Marvel’s Greatest Scam“*
This is a 2.5 hour love letter to comics, and the first in a five-part series that tells the story of the real Thunderbolts from the comic books (a team that bears very little resemblance to the one portrayed in the recent MCU film discussed above). It features complex animations drawing from the original comic book art, as well as a full cast of voice actors bringing the characters to life with their performances.
* I’m personally torn on whether this would qualify for BDP-LF or BRW (seeing as it is technically a fanwork, and not an original work), but either way it is nothing short of a masterpiece—I wrote more about it in my 2025 underrated Hugo picks post, if you’re interested.
Short Form: TV Episodes
A caveat: my reasoning around nominating a particular episode is kind of like nominating my favourite chapter of a novel. Especially with how a lot of the prestige TV shows are made nowadays, individual episodes function as chapters in a longer story, so they have to be considered in the context of the wider narrative they’re a part of. If they are from a second, third, or even last season of a long-running show, even more so.
Also—and this might be a slightly spicy take—I personally don’t like that a lot of Hugo voters seem to only watch the individual episodes on the eventual shortlist without any context, and then complain that they didn’t get what was going on. That’s because context matters, and while I understand that it would take a lot of time to watch an entire season (or even several!) to be able to appreciate a single episode… if you want your vote to be informed, that’s the job, innit?
This has happened several times to me, where there’s an episode on the shortlist from a show I don’t watch (and have no intention of watching—sorry Lower Decks), so I just skip it and don’t put it in my ballot at the end, or rank it below my own favourites. I do the same with sequels to books I haven’t read, out of respect for the work itself as well as its author, but that’s just me I guess! 🤷🏻♀️
Anyway, here are some thoughts about my favourite episodes of speculative TV from this year, under spoiler tags for obvious reasons.
Two episodes from Stranger Things, Season 5+
‘Chapter Four: Sorcerer’
I loved, loved, loved this episode. The moment Will uses his new power… it gave me goosebumps, it was so good—and the fight sequence in front of the gate to the Upside Down is incredible. Rather than the writing, though, I want to praise the actors’ performances and the work of the crew who worked on the practical effects, stunts, and complicated cinematography in this episode. Especially given more recent revelations about how the Duffers went into production with season 5 without having ironed out the ending, and the stress that added to the poor production crew, I think any flowers should really be going to them for making such an outstanding piece of TV despite the challenges.
‘Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz’
Yes, the scene in this photo feels a little ludicrously long considering they’re both on the run and about to be caught by the Big Bad, but I loved the heart of this relationship and the character development for both Holly and Max in this episode. I had also seen the Stranger Things play in London a couple of years back, and this episode eliminated the issues I had with the world-building in that, which at first had seemed to contradict the revelations in season 4 about Vecna/Henry Creel’s agency as a villain and his role in shaping the Upside Down… I was glad to see that in fact all the loose threads from the various seasons did connect, and that the strands from the play were relevant too.
Various episodes from Severance, Season 2+
S2E4: ‘Woe’s Hollow’
I mentioned this episode in my discussion of the series earlier, but let me get into it here: this is one of the best episodes of TV ever made, period, and I will fight you on this. I don’t know if it would stand alone in any capacity, considering the weird tone is already a lot to deal with and there’s a lot of plot and character interaction that picks up from where the last season left off, not to mention a big-time betrayal that ends up echoing through the rest of season 2.
I spent a good chunk of the beginning wondering if this was a simulator or a dream sequence because it didn’t fully make sense for our protagonists to be outside the Lumon offices, and the uncanny doppelgangers guiding them through the forest seemed almost dreamlike, but the reality was much more sinister in the end, which tracks. If there’s a single episode from this show I’d nominate, it’d be this one.
S2E8: ‘Sweet Vitriol’
People hate this episode because it’s slow and follows an unlikeable antagonist whom we are invited to empathise with, and that’s precisely the reason I like it. First of all, we get way more insight into the Lumon cult corporation from Harmony Cobel, who ostensibly grew up in the cult and has invested her whole life into the company’s welfare. This is also where we begin to see cracks form in her resolve as an antagonist, as she has realised that the company sees her as an expendable cog despite her lifelong investment and dedication, and so she decides to fight them, to prove that this little cog is actually so important, it might well bring the whole house down.
It’s interesting also for thematic reasons, outside of the show’s world. On an individual level, the image of someone who grew up in poverty while idolising a particular company, then making their entire life revolve around it so as to gain favour and socioeconomic mobility, gaining that and then losing it when the company no longer sees them as valuable, is unfortunately too relatable. So is seeing a small town that once had its own industry and community be taken over by a mega corporation and become completely dependent on it, eventually falling into destitution once the corporation pulls their activities out of the town. The actual commentary here is silent, but extremely powerful.
I don’t think Cobel’s about-turn is enough to fully make her an anti-hero, but I really enjoyed this episode for all the insight it gave us both into her and the world of Severance outside of Lumon HQ.
S2E10: ‘Cold Harbor’
There is a strong argument to be made that the season two finale is absolutely worth a nomination as well, making this a really tough choice. Two seasons’ worth of mystery solving and internal corporate espionage culminate in this one-hour episode where our protagonists clash with one another and with the antagonists, and it’s just adrenaline all the way down.
Some spoilery thoughts here.While the big questions have been answered (where is Mark’s wife? what is Cold Harbor? what are they doing with all those sheep?), so many more remain. Is there a way to save the innies at all, if Lumon ends up falling? Can Mark S. and Helly R. ever hope to have a life outside these walls? And what happens to Gemma now that she’s out, even though she has 24 distinct, hand-crafted personalities inside her?
There’s actually a great take I hadn’t come across before I sat down to write this, and that is that the finale actually inverts the Orpheus & Eurydice narrative of Mark and Gemma, by having Mark’s innie actually choose to stay behind in Lumon so he can be with Helly. It’s less of a lack of faith and more of a conscious decision, which perhaps makes it even more tragic as Gemma watches her husband (sort of) run toward danger and another woman, leaving her alone at the exit, screaming for him to come back.
Having written about the other episodes already, I do think ep4 is a stronger contender purely from a craft/vibes standpoint, whereas the finale is more typical in many ways, as it focuses on exposition and plot and is faster paced. YMMV here, for sure, but I’m inclined to pick ep4 over this one, now that I think about it.
Two episodes from Pluribus, Season 1+
Episode 1: “We is Us”
It’s not often that a TV pilot stands on its own two feet well. It’s even less common for the film-making to be so good that one must gasp in awe at the choreography, cinematography, and editing, multiple times throughout the course of the episode. One of my biggest peeves is when a TV pilot is so mired in exposition that there is no room for characters or atmosphere until the next episode because they simply have to give you the setup quickly—it ends up feeling flat and boring and frankly, it puts me off more than it entices me to keep watching until it gets better.7
Well, this episode does none of that.
Gilligan’s forte is silent scenes that actually speak volumes. There is so much storytelling in this episode that has no words; we watch an intergalactic viral hive mind sequence take over the Earth in perfectly synchronised movement, and the storytelling is in the silence, the perfect unison, and the eerie smiles as the hive mind consciousness flattens the individuals inside. A lesser writer would put exposition in dialogue, possibly giving too much information for where we are in the story, but Gilligan knows that less is more. We get just enough to hook us in, and the rest is pure atmosphere and of course, character.
Carol is introduced as a grumpy romantasy author, a lesbian in a loving relationship who constantly finds reasons to be miserable, much to her partner’s chagrin. When the hive mind sequence is spread via planes in the air, Carol loses her partner, and simultaneously the world. The panic that ensues is completely understandable, and it gets worse at every turn as she is met with more and more hive mind people, but no one else like her. What a place for a pilot to leave us in! Aren’t you hooked just by reading this?? GO WATCH THIS SHOW!
Episode 7: “The Gap”
The title refers to a real place that Manousos (pictured) has to cross, but also I suppose to the gap between Carol and others at this point in the show. This is another masterfully crafted episode with a dual narrative point of view, where Carol continues her life in Albuquerque while Manousos is making his slow way up through South and Central America towards Carol, crossing cities, climbing mountains, and trudging through thick, treacherous jungles, all while refusing the hive mind’s help at every opportunity.
Some spoilery thoughts here.At first, it’s admirable; he won’t even take gas without paying for it somehow, even though everything he comes across is at his disposal. Soon enough, however, his steadfastness turns into stubbornness that does more harm to him than good. When he gets seriously injured in the jungle (something that was completely preventable, had he accepted the hive mind’s help and transited through safer means),
Meanwhile, Carol stoically endures complete and total isolation for a long time as a result of the hive mind evacuating the whole metro area of Albuquerque, which happened when Carol hurt one of them (and by extension, all of them) quite badly while trying to find answers. She is given resources and sustenance remotely, and for a while enjoys her peaceful environment, going around town and doing whatever she feels like… until she finally cracks under the pressure of extreme loneliness, and asks the hive mind to come back.
It’s an incredibly powerful moment actually, seeing someone as stubborn sturdy as Carol finally admit that she can’t live her whole life completely cut off from other people, even though she hates the hive mind on principle, and can’t wrap her mind around accepting this status quo. In fairness, she makes it to about a month and a half, which is pretty long, but her isolation was also so complete that there were zero people around her for that whole time—an unfathomable experience that’s so well depicted on screen. I personally love the rooftop golf scene as an example of how utterly devoid of people the landscape is, a mundane sort of post-apocalyptic image.
This is probably my favourite episode in season 1, and even think it could be presented without context and still mostly work alright for new viewers… Though I’d still hope that people would watch the whole season anyway. If I had to pick one episode to represent the series as a whole, I’d say it’s this one.
Short Form: Non-TV
‘Songs No One Will Hear’ by Arjen Lucassen (music album)
I wrote a fair amount about this pre-apocalyptic concept album in my underrated Hugo recommendations post; here’s a snippet:
The result is an album that grapples with the essence of the human condition (something Lucassen is very adept at), asking what makes life worth living from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters as they try to come to terms with the impending end of the world—including those who think it’s all a hoax, those who embrace it, and those who rage against the dying of the light. It straddles a weird and fun line between diegetic/in-world music that’s on the radio and telling the story as a sung-through musical, which is a little different than what you might expect, particularly for a progressive rock album. But that’s the Arjen Lucassen guarantee: big questions, big emotions, and a sound that isn’t afraid to change dramatically when necessary, even mid-song. Full of theatricality, Songs No One Will Hear is in some ways very similar to Lucassen’s Ayreon albums, but retains its own identity both musically and thematically.
We’ve been known to nominate SFF music albums when they arise, and on occasion those musicians have even responded to being recognised by fandom—seeing Clipping live in Helsinki was fun!—so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, though perhaps it is a bit of a left field suggestion for most Hugo voters as a progressive rock concept album.
While he’s extremely popular in his own niche, most of Lucassen’s fans aren’t in SF fandom and vice versa, something that I would love to help shift by talking about his work more to Hugo voters and talking to Ayreon/Lucassen fans more about joining our community and coming to Worldcon, especially as the next few years are looking quite international. Lucassen’s very obvious Golden Age influences are bound to have pointed many of his fans to the genre, so the bridge is already half-built.
I’m sure that I’ll be one of very few people longlisting this album, but 🤷🏻♀️! I really think If you see just a single, solitary vote for it in the full data, know that it was me!
Footnotes
- Per the WSFS Constitution, clauses 3.8.2 and 3.8.3. ↩︎
- In addition to the more fannish post I linked above, I found another really cool essay about the Barbican as Coruscant from an architect who works in film and TV. ↩︎
- A special shoutout to Joshua James, who played the doctor who tortured Bix Caleen with the sounds of distant massacres; I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since I saw him in Treasure Island at the National Theatre back in 2015 or so, and make a point to see him in every play he’s in when I can. He had a stint as Dr Brenner in Stranger Things: The First Shadow recently which I unfortunately missed, but I bet he was perfect! ↩︎
- I’d like to thank Octothorpe’s Alison Scott for her recommendation to see the film in an IMAX theatre, as the experience was truly spectacular. ↩︎
- There is another Black Widow character played by Olga Kurilenko who turns up for literally five minutes, but she is so not present in the rest of the film that I’m not even going to go into it. If it weren’t for Yelena and Alexei, I’d say that movie had zero lasting impact on the MCU, given how late into Natasha’s journey we got it (literally after she was canonically killed off), lol (sarcastic). ↩︎
- I still don’t know how to feel about the plot twist around Krypton and Clark’s biological parents, brief as it was. I think it is intended to maximise the contrast between where Clark hails from and where he grew up and how that affected his identity, and the discomfort it creates is probably very intentional from Gunn. ↩︎
- I call this “pilot syndrome”, and it’s one of my least favourite phenomena in media. ↩︎
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Seeking advice, please boost for assistance
I know someone who is currently #separated from his wife/family (solely by his wife's choice) and is living alone in an apartment, where I expect he will spend the #Christmas holidays. He is very depressed, so when I ask him what he might like for Christmas, his response is always "nothing." If you have ever been in this situation or know someone who has, do you have any advice for me to help create a holiday care package that would be useful and meaningful? TIA!
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CW: Confiance en soi, disparition, croyances négatives 🧶
…
Notre système nerveux est câblé pour générer du sens à partir d'un flux d'informations discontinues, incertaines, parfois ambiguës. Pour cela, notre cerveau utilise des croyances probabilistes qui lui permettent de filtrer ses informations sensorielles, mais qui sont profondément perturbées dans la dépression.Si nous souffrons de dépression, nous sommes constamment traversé·es par des pensées sombres. Nous pouvons ainsi avoir tendance à croire que nous n'avons aucune valeur, que nous avons commis des erreurs terribles, que nos proches nous rejettent ou que notre condition est un fardeau sur leurs épaules dont nous devons les libérer.
Ces croyances sont aussi au centre de ce que l’on appelle les “ruminations” — un terme qui décrit le caractère répétitif, circulaire de notre contenu mental. Ces ruminations nous enferment progressivement dans un espace de plus en plus restreint. Elles se renforcent elles-mêmes, alimentent des convictions de plus en plus négatives, envahissant tout le spectre de notre esprit.
Ces croyances dépressives sont cruciales, car elles sont souvent associées à l'aggravation du trouble et aux risques de passage à l'acte suicidaire qui est responsable chaque année d'environ 800 000 morts à travers le monde.Tout un champ de recherches menées notamment par l'équipe de la psychologue Tali Sharot à University College London, s'est penché sur l'origine de nos croyances. La majorité des études réalisées chez des sujets ne souffrant pas de dépression ont montré que nous sommes collectivement biaisés dans la mise à jour de nos croyances.
Nous sommes beaucoup plus sensibles aux informations positives que négatives lorsque nous ajustons nos croyances personnelles. Ce biais dans la mise à jour des croyances a ainsi tendance à favoriser des croyances positives à propos de nos propres compétences, de nos propres expériences. Nous avons ainsi plutôt tendance à croire que nous sommes meilleur·e conducteur·es, meilleur·es amant·es, meilleur·es en sport que la réalité de nos performances. Ce biais est présent dans toutes les civilisations, avec toutefois des variations selon les groupes considérés. On sait que les hommes ont tendance à avoir un biais positif plus tenace que les femmes. Le biais positif est également plus fort chez les descendant·es de colons en comparaison avec les Japonais·es.
Cela pourrait être quand même, de façon plus fondamentale, une manière efficace de nous protéger finalement contre les malheurs du monde. Si nous percevions à tout moment, de manière réaliste, les dangers du monde qui nous entoure, alors notre santé mentale serait probablement bien plus fragile. Nous serions constamment anxieux, terrifiés par tout ce qui pourrait nous frapper.Ce mécanisme protecteur pour notre santé mentale disparaît lorsque l'on souffre de dépression. L’équipe de Tali Sharot, puis plus tard celle de Tobias Kube et Winfried Rief, a montré que la dépression réduisait la capacité à mettre à jour ces croyances après des informations positives. Cette disparition du positif a pu faire même dire à certains psychiatres qu'il existait une forme de réalisme dépressif, au sens où la dépression offrait un regard sans concession sur le monde.
On ne sait pas si ce pseudo-réalisme dépressif est lié à une attention accrue pour les stimuli négatifs ou à une plus grande porosité des croyances pour ces informations défavorables.…
#réalisme #optimisme #confianceEnSoi #autoDépréciation #Bienêtre #savoir #science #psychologie #neurosciences #cerveau #suicidaire #suicide #dépression #ruminations #confiance #biais #croyances #santéMentale #dévalorisation
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143 km/h wo :traffic_de_274_80: gilt. – Könnte 480 € + 1 Monat Fahrverbot + 2 Punkte in Flensburg kosten.
Aber der Richter wird sicherlich Mitleid haben mit dem armen Lieferfahrer und ihm einen großzügigen Rabatt einräumen. Oder?
Die Presse jubelt: "REKORD" https://fuerthaktuell.de/landkreis-fuerth/9945/143-statt-80-km-h-bei-langenzenn-kastenwagenfahrer-stellt-negativrekord-bei-blitzmarathon-auf/
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Self-Titled Summer | Clothilde (1967/2013, France)
Our next Self-Titled Summer spotlight is on number 911 on The List, submitted by arratoon. Here’s a quick rundown:
- Point of origin(s): “Clothilde” was a stage name/persona briefly worn by Élisabeth Beauvais (b. 1948). The daughter of 50s actress/singer Gisèle Parry and writer/journalist and radio/TV producer Robert Beauvais, at an early age Beauvais was frequently around famous French actors and up-and-coming French pop stars. One day, Germinal Tenas (b. 1947), then an up-and-coming music producer, was at the family house to work on a TV soundtrack with Parry. He had been searching for a French girl to sing his songs, particularly “une fille qui aurait une voix douce et jolie qui dirait en même temps des choses horribles dans un genre détaché” (“a girl with a very soft beautiful voice and who at the same time could say horrible things in a semi-detached way”).[1] The moment he saw Beauvais, without even hearing her voice, he decided she fit the bill, and began to pester Beauvais into agreeing to his project. Beauvais was very reluctant and only at the behest of her mother unwillingly went through with an audition and then contract signing with the Vogue record label. At the time, Beauvais was rather upset about the entire thing, and took every opportunity to let the rather demanding Tenas know that – she was a shy and depressed teenager, she didn’t like the Clothilde persona, the lyrics, or that she had essentially no say in the project, and she had dreams of singing her own music more along the lines of Françoise Hardy, i.e., the direct opposite of Tenas’ vision. Tenas, however, saw Beauvais’ anger and rebellion against him as serving the Clothilde persona, and so he did not bother looking for another singer. In the end, Beauvais recorded two EPs plus an Italian single under the Clothilde name, all in 1967. The s/t album we look at here, put out by Born Bad Records in 2013, compiled those releases, over 45 years later.
- Tasting notes: French 60s girl pop, anti-yé-yé, subversive lyrics full of dark humour and double-entendres, odd instrumentation including musical saws, anti-Françoise Hardy (or, “Françoise Hardy on acid”[2])
- Standout track: “Saperlipopette”, also “La Vérité, Toute La Vérité” which probably has the best instrumentation (I’m also a sucker for Beauvais’ “hey!”s). Note that the last two songs are Italian versions of tracks 1 and 3; I’m not sure of the quality of Beauvais’ Italian, but I personally prefer “Qualcosa Che Non Va?” to “La Chanson Bête Et Méchante” because the repeating response “hin hin” in the background sounds less creepy than the original French, lol.
- Where are they now?: Beauvais refused to tour as Clothilde and generally avoided answering calls from Vogue, so the project only lasted one year (the last of a handful of TV appearances was January 1968). Beauvais essentially disappeared from the public eye following the Clothilde project, and wouldn’t record anything else for 15+ years (though these recordings were never released). Tenas continued (and, I believe, continues) to work as a producer and composer. According to the (rather extensive) interview linked below, there are no hard feelings between the two and, at least at the time of the interview (presumably done around the time this compilation was released), they are actually friends.
- Websites: Interview with Beauvais on Born Bad Records website, Wikipedia
Happy listening!
- Songlink: Clothilde – Clothilde (note: the compilation can also be found under the title French Swinging Mademoiselle)
- Discogs: Clothilde – Clothilde
- Tenas quote and translation from: www.bornbadrecords.net/releases/clothilde-queen-of-the-french-swinging-mademoiselle-1967/. ↩︎
- Quote from: radioherbetendre.blogspot.com/2013/07/clothilde.html. ↩︎
#1960s #ÉlisabethBeauvais #chanson #Clothilde #France #FrenchPop #GerminalTenas #music #musicDiscovery #psychedelicRock #selftitled #YéYé
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A risk taking society
In my previous Dutch postings I talked about our society taking certain risks.
Not only teenagers get an information overload and seem to be hard-wired to take risks. Today’s teens are “stressed out” but also a lot of adults get bombarded with a lot of decision-making factors though frequently underestimate the value of privacy and its attendant risks, and it’s taking a toll. Over the last five years, more people got into conflicts, there’s been a steady increase in the number of anti-depressants prescribed and we could notice a lot more self-killings.For a lot of things which come over us the last few years several individuals and groups gave early warnings. As there were te concerned nature lovers who gave notices about potential nuclear dangers and anthropologists who gave scientific proof of expecting difficulties in groups of people or economists who warned about the exchange market propensity for risk-taking without liability which were both dismissed as paranoid anticipation of low-probability events.
Some existential risks
Effective risk management is central to economic efficiency. Yet major players in the last crises have insisted that they should not be held accountable for risks they underestimated.
Extreme weather disasters, especially floods, are on the rise (see Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding). For certain religious people it is a normal sign of the End-times, but it does not mean for them we do have to ignore neither the risks nor the ways to avoid certain risks. Climate change will compound existing weather-related risks, but the consumers do have to be aware how they can influence the weather and environmental situations.
Dirk Geldof, writer of:” not more but better” writes in his blog that it is normal to a community to produce more risks than they actual can keep under control. Being able or not to control creates already taking in the risks. Not wanting to see the possibility of danger or to neglect the chance on damage is the vanity of man that puts himself above possible incidents or plots. We cannot see next to climate change or global warming, globalization and imminent dualisation, increasing freedom and far-reaching individualization, growing time pressure and the explosion of diversity in our cosmopolitan cities.
<img class="thumbimage " style="border: 0 none;" src="http://www.eoearth.org/files/122301_122400/122398/200px-Ulrich_Beck.jpg" alt="The sociologist Ulrich Beck. Photo: Munich University” width=”200″ height=”164″ border=”0″ />The sociologist Ulrich Beck
We now are confronted with our world as a global risk society. The notion ‘risk society‘ is such metaphor because it prompts us to look in an other way to our world and our society, with a focus on the risks that we – unless we not otherwise can – would preferably not like to see. Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck brought up this element of the risk society which could be “a society increasingly preoccupied with the future (and also with safety), which generates the notion of risk,” or that community which in a systematic way shall try to deal with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernisation itself. Beck sees a dynamic that is driven by an increase in risks and in the ability of science to detect increasingly minute risks, leading to a fundamental re-ordering of social positions in society, and to a transformation in the cultural meanings of risk. These authors argue that whilst humans have always been subjected to a level of risk – such as natural disasters – these have usually been perceived as produced by non-human forces. But we should be aware that after creation man got the change to take care of mother earth. It was given to him on loan. Man had to give name to plants and animals but had also to respect them. And that is were it all went wrong. Man thought he could do anything and it would not be so important which impact it had on nature. The last decennia the materialistic man became so greedy and so ruthless that he thought he could concur anything in this world. Giddens and Beck argue that it is possible for societies to assess the level of risk that is being produced, or that is about to be produced, but hey looked over the fact that most people are not interested into the damage done for future generations.
The aim to get a better life and the aspiration to enjoy life more has brought an attitude of trying to fins as many as possible way to enlighten and to make this life as easy as possible. But then we do have to ask at what cost. The way how we use the raw material and how we handle the feedstock are things we can not put aside. We should be fully aware how we handle the products of nature. End 60ies we came already on the streets to utter our voice, but then everybody laughed with our naïvety. The dangers we pointed at for the nuclear waste, the disgraceful use of nature, the danger of trying to modify natural products, the creation of so many by-products … everything was washed away as not important or something ridiculous small.
In certain sense, we would not have to complain for objectively seen we never before in the history had such a realm and have been so good insured . In the Netherlands, Belgium and in the European countries the last 25 years is the wealth, the purchasing power and the consumption doubled!
Traditional institutions and structures have shaped people’s lives for ages and gave them the symbols that provided meaning, place and purpose in society, giving order to their lives and forming tight social communities. In the name of individual freedom and autonomy structures of these traditional societies became challenged in the 17th century when the individual began to emerge as the center of life. The common, traditional comprehension of life as lived within a we within traditional institutions was replaced by a new focus, the I. The children from the 60ies boom were even more focused on that own self, and their children became the battlefield and the buying out product of the divorced couples. Early modernity championed the rights and freedoms of the individual; as this new understanding entered the imagination of modern societies it began to effect and then replace these traditional structures and institutions with new ones that shaped people
in very different ways. in the new industrial societies the extended family all but disappeared to be replaced by the small, nuclear family. Work and family were separated and most of the relationships were now in the form of more impersonal, work-related and contract-type relationships. Previously the family as a group of people, and the community as a parish, or the community of the village became not any more interested in the others of the community. The personal contacts diminished and the ‘we’ was displaced by the social contracting ‘I’ who now was going to give loyalty to professional organizations, church groups, work places and other social institutions, but from the 21st century also grow further away from those organisations. The churches became more empty and lots of people left God and His business. But by not being interested any more in His Laws and values they thought they had gained a new liberty and permission to do all those things that they wanted to do which could give them fun. Entertainment has become the main factor, and today we can notice that some people change partner as they change underpants. Values, good morals and ethics were lost and most of the people were most concerned about themselves. We now can find loyalty to institutions
and structures to one in which meaning and identity are grounded in the self as the primary agent of meaning; a shift to the I primary agent of meaning.
For companies the worker has become an economical object without any further value then the economical statistics. The human part of the worker has become of no value at all. If we are not careful this economical asset is to conquer every bodies life.On socio-economic terms we have the luxury that already more than 60 years we did not have to encounter war in our own environment. The wars we saw on television were far from our bed and having no share in it made us not divide and gave us no reason to complain. Many do not to be hungry but many live in obfuscate poverty in Belgium and the Netherlands, but also in the surrounding countries, by which it so luxurious country Germany certainly can not escape. We have private-insurances systems for our houses, our car, our holiday, our right assistance, a possible unemployment, our pension and our savings, funeral insurance and name but on.
With all this scientific and electronic gadgets is it still not that the distribution is directly tied to social class, with those at the top getting more and those at the bottom getting less. And are those who give those false micro-credits not misusing their high standards of economical higher position to create a mist of a possible intangible future? Should we not be more concerned with the distribution of “bads” instead with the distribution of “goods” —namely, the realization of untoward risks? Because many risks (e.g., mudslides, nuclear fallout, economic crises) do not respect class boundaries, everyone is, therefore, equally at risk. This dissolving of social class means that social actors are “individualized,” thrown on their own without the collective identity of social class.
I am aware that by engaging in its traditional role of generating new discoveries and new technologies, science inevitably creates and adds to existing risks but at the same time, science is the principal institution for detecting and analysing risks, especially those that are subtle. This misalignment of science’s roles is recognized by the, now, “individualised,” free-floating social actor who undertakes actions, such as in a social movement, to continuously pressure and reinvent scientific and social institutions.
Nowhere can we see the shift of the social fight and the failing from the existing institutions as clear as by the climate change. The industrialised countries should also be aware what they bring over the third world countries and the desserts and flood lands they create. People should be aware what consequences their traffic and consumerism has on the effects of our climate.
To live nicely or to lead a good life that would not damage the life of others shall confront us with the conscious choices we must make. The ‘must’ choose became an essential risk factor in our society. With the continuing risk making a wrong choice and the returning question how to handle that risk. The problem is that we with our very selfish capitalist society sit saddled with a group by which everybody had to see only for his own nest.We have a common interest, but at the same time we sit with the unequal distribution of wealth and risks and thus per definition with conflicts. Therefore also a question of ecological justice is the whole methodology of the ecological foot print per definition. It goes over interests conflicts. That makes the discussion over the posts-Kyoto-agreements also so difficult. The bigger danger is, that the fight over the question who is responsible and who must do the most efforts would lead to the fact that we are much too late and do much too little efforts.
As Freudenburg added, specialization has increased so much since the invention of the streetcar that perhaps the most salient risks of contemporary life are those associated with what he has called “recreancy,” or institutional failure—“the failure of institutional actors to carry out their responsibilities with the degree of vigour necessary to merit the societal trust they enjoy.” Citizens of an increasingly interdependent world, accordingly, need to be able to ‘count’ on not just the physical machinery they use, but also whole armies of specialists, most of whom they will never meet and who are expected to have forms of expertise that ordinary citizens may not be competent to judge, let alone have the ability to control.We have the freedom to think and to act, but we do have to use this freedom wisely and always have to be aware of the consequentions of our acts. We should be careful of the social impacts of energy dependence and of the global ecological footprint for the things we do and which we need. We should always have to weigh up. And we should not loose tract that man proposes but God disposes.
The recent nuclear disasters should be the trigger to get people think more about the risks the previous generation has taken and the risks we our willing to take in consideration of those who shall have to continue living after us. This will mean that we have to consider threats from physical, chemical, and biological agents and from a variety of human activities as well as natural events. We shall not have to accept new technologies just like that because they seem to make live easier or would bring a cheaper solution. We should be aware of the dangers of gene technology, nuclear power, mobile communication, voltaic cells, climate change issues, invasive species, and food hazards. We cannot be blind for the financial crisis, environmental pollution, terrorism, and health and social policy. More and more we should analyse risks of concern to individuals, to public and private sector organizations, and to society at various geographic scales. We have to take up our responsibility!
Like Yacov Haimes, University of Virginia said: “The challenge is that for many of the public, risk engulfs lots of mystery and misunderstanding and misperception. In particular we need to address the element of modeling; we have to see how to model the system,
how to understand it better. Only then can we really do proper risk assessment,
management, and communication. So the question is, How do we answer the question what are the impacts of current decisions on the jobs given that life is dynamic, all systems are changing, they are all under risk and uncertainty, and our decision must be adaptive and must be incremental at the time?”I always say “Freedom is respecting the freedom of others”. We now do have to look for the risks we may take and we may encounter by continuing our way and by trying to come to a better way of living, not only for ourselves but for the whole world.
The law sets boundaries and the boundaries define what you must do … but those same boundaries are supposed to define and affirmatively defend the dry ground of freedom, which we have to cherish, where people can go forward focusing on their goals, including taking reasonable risks all day long, and be accountable not by law but by those who deal with them about whether they’re good at their jobs and whether they want to deal with them. That idea has been lost. Most people have also put aside the Laws of God, the Helper and Deliverer, and by doing that they have taken away a sure guideline to make the best out of life.Previously:
Japan’s nuclear disaster reason to think twiceand about this subject of taking risks, in Dutch:
- Nemen van Risico door de maatschappij
- Energie met vergiftigd geschenk
Also read:
Risks, Radiation and Regulation+++
Related articles
- Writing about “Agnotology, Ignorance and Uncertainty” (ignoranceanduncertainty.wordpress.com)
In philosophy and mathematics the dominant formal framework for dealing with unknowns has been one or another theory of probability. However, Max Black’s ground-breaking 1937 paper proposed that vagueness and ambiguity are distinguishable from each other, from probability, and also from what he called “generality.” The 1960’s and 70’s saw a proliferation of mathematical and philosophical frameworks purporting to encompass non-probabilistic unknowns, such as fuzzy set theory, rough sets, fuzzy logic, belief functions, and imprecise probabilities.
Ellsberg’s classic 1961 experiments demonstrated that people’s choices can be influenced by how imprecisely probabilities are known (i.e., “ambiguity”), and his results have been replicated and extended by numerous studies.
Several studies have suggested that Knightian uncertainty (ambiguity) and risk differentially activate the ventral systems that evaluate potential rewards (the so-called “reward center”) and the prefrontal and parietal regions, with the latter two becoming more active under ambiguity. Other kinds of unknowns have yet to be widely studied in this fashion but research on them is emerging. Nevertheless, the evidence thus far suggests that the human brain treats unknowns as if there are different kinds. - Risky Business: Why Teens Need Risk to Thrive and Grow (psychologytoday.com)
According to a recent study by University College London, risk-taking behavior peeks during adolescence, suggesting that teens are “programmed” to take risks more often than other age groups. The same study also found that teens took risks because they liked the thrill of risk-taking as opposed to not being able to understand the consequences of their behavior.Risk-taking and rule-breaking is linked to developmental changes in the brain that serve to help teens become healthy, analytical adults. Thus, a certain amount of positive risk-taking is necessary for adolescents to fulfill their universal need for independence, developing a separate identity, and testing authority.
- How far do we want to go, take risks for ourselves and for others? We should know that climate change has “possible security implications”. Heat, Drought, Famine All Part of Coming ‘Exponential’ Increase Of Climate-Related Disasters (treehugger.com)
The collective global response, taking the lead of nations on the Security Council no doubt, has been obviously been inadequate, even as donor nations themselves are not in the middle of their own climate-induced crises (the current US heatwave notwithstanding). - Flood victims ‘fear climate change’ (confused.com)
People are more likely to think they are vulnerable to the effects of climate change if they have had floods in their neighbourhood, such as those in summer 2007 which led to a large number of claims on home insurance policies. They are also more likely to believe that global warming is a problem.
Psychologist Dr Alexa Spence, at the University of Nottingham, said: “We know that many people tend to see climate change as distant, affecting other people and places.“However, experience of extreme weather events like flooding have the potential to change the way people view climate change, by making it more real and tangible and ultimately resulting in greater intentions to act in sustainable ways.
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#ClimateChange #Consumer #Consumerism #Crises #Disaster #Ecology #Egoism #EnvironmentAndEcology #ExtremeWeather #Family #Freedom #God #Human #Modernisation #Morality #nuclearDanger #NuclearEnergy #nuclearWaste #Risk #RiskSociety #UlrichBeck #UnitedStates #Work -
Mother Crone – Embrace the Death Review By TwelveLately, I’ve been listening to quite a bit of depressing music. Between Meadowlands, Qroba, and Exequiae, the themes of melancholy, death, and despair have been having quite the run ’round these parts. So it figures my review of the day is Embrace the Death—why turn away from a theme that’s doing well? This is the sophomore full-length release from U.S.-based Mother Crone, over a decade after their debut Awakening, and, if my research is accurate, with a completely different lineup. The topic of the day is clear, and Mother Crone approach it with a blend of doom, stoner, progressive, and groove metal. It’s always exciting to see what a band can do with a refreshed vision, lineup, and style, and apparently, grim topics are strong performers these days. How do Mother Crone compare to their contemporaries?
That my depend on how we define “contemporaries;” while Mother Crone share subject matter with the aforementioned groups, stylistically they have more in common with their own stated influences, Pink Floyd, Pantera, and Alcest (among others). As mentioned earlier, the sound on Embrace the Death is fairly well-rooted in stoner metal, with elements of doom, progressive, and groove naturally creeping in to fit the topic. Guitarists Edoardo Curatolo and Joe Frothingham (also vocals) oscillate between light, introspective play and a burlier, more aggressive approach, and Frothingham’s singing is the same. A lot of the album’s stoner and doom metal leanings actually owe to bassist Preston Wilson and drummer Charlier Romano, whose slower, grimier playing grounds the music in a progressive sort of styling. Together, the result is something at times aggressive, at times introspective, and always atmospheric in some way.
Embrace the Death by Mother Crone
But the best parts of “Embrace the Death” are unquestionably the album’s quieter moments, where Mother Crone embraces the doom and the atmosphere fully. The title track is the best example; here, Frothingham takes a break from what my father would affectionately call shouting in tune to do his best Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth) impression and guide the listener through a somber acceptance of the inevitable. The plaintive guitars, soft singing, and rumbling bass give way to subtle, beautiful melodies that grow organically. Not that the heavier moments are not welcome ones—”Fever Stone” is a more traditional, groove-led rocker that demonstrates a nearly opposite side of Mother Crone’s sound, the one that channels Pantera more than Opeth or Alcest. “Eye of Providence” is the middle track for the sound, best blending riffs, atmosphere, and heaviness. In all, Mother Crone don’t really sound like any of their influences, but bring forth something in the odd space between them all, something surprisingly affecting, sometimes heavy, sometimes airy, and often both at once.
Another thing I can say about Embrace the Death is that it is a fairly front-loaded album. In particular, the trio of “Fever Stone,” “Embrace the Death,” and “Unto the Dawn” is a powerful one-two-three hit of Mother Crone’s sound, from burly, melodic aggression to more plaintive, introspective atmospheres. Towards the end of Embrace the Death, however, I think Mother Crone loses sight of their strengths. “Inner Keep” in particular is an example of a song that could have used more editing than it received, clocking in at eleven minutes without making the impression I think it means to. “Celestial Light” is a beautiful closer for the album, but tonally feels a bit out of place. Perhaps if more of Embrace the Death leaned towards its title track sound it would fit better, but as is, it feels like the two extremes of the Mother Crone sound are more in competition with each other than blending into a unified listening experience. It’s all good music, but as a full album, I think there’s too much back and forth between aggressive and plaintive music to feel as “complete” as it could have felt.
Still, there is a clear journey through Embrace the Death, and, despite its grim title and concept, it’s a fun and reasonably thought-provoking listen. Mother Crone was not on my radar before now, but I’ll be paying attention to them for certain in the future. At best, this sophomore is a beautiful, compelling, and contemplative work of atmospheric metal; and otherwise, it is “only” good. Hopefully this new lineup sticks around for a bit—I’ll be looking forward to album three for sure.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
#2026 #30 #Alcest #AmericanMetal #DoomMetal #EmbraceTheDeath #GrooveMetal #Mar26 #MotherCrone #Opeth #Pantera #PinkFloyd #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #StonerMetal
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self-release
Websites: mothercrone.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/mothercronemusic
Releases Worldwide: March 4th, 2026 -
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What do you call a feeling that's like nostalgia but for a time you don't miss, and in fact hated?
I love the music of my youth, The #Offspring and #SkunkAnanzi and #GreenDay and #TheVerve and... You get it.
Which may sound odd from the guy who loves #powerwolf and #brothersofmetal.
Well it's because I'm happy. But I was miserable when that music was current. I was closeted, depressed and deeply unhappy. I was filled with impotent rage. That music let me express all that in healthy ways. It was an outlet that undoubtedly saved my life several times.
I dont have nostalgia for that time. I hated it. But I still love the music that helped me survive it.
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Troche prywaty, jak ktos nie lubi takich wpisow to moze pominac.
Jak narazie ten rok jest pelen zmian na plus. Miniony weekend po raz kolejny uswiadomil mi, jak bardzo w swoim zyciu potrzebuje pelnego zaangazowania w imprezy i zycie towarzyskie. Juz pomijajac spontan spotkania z ekipa z fan page #WulgarnyGracz, uczestnictwo w #BoatParty to byl kolejny piekny punkt tych wakacji i tego roku.
Jeszcze rok temu taki wyjazd (Boat Party) kojarzyl by mi sie z nastepujacymi natretnymi myslami i lękami: po co ja sie tam pcham? czy bede pasowal do takiego eleganckiego towarzystwa? a jak nikt mi nie pomoze zeby sie dostac na statek? a jak bedzie brzydka pogoda? tylko zmarnuje kase, bede sie zle bawil, na drugi dzien bede zmeczony, bla, bla, bla... WYMOWKI! No, ale te wymowki nie wziely sie znikac - miesiace zycia w chronicznym stresie, stany lękowe, otarcie sie o depresje (szczegolnie sezonową), podloze, ktore wzielo sie z okreslonych warunkow w dziecinstwie, w koncu pandemia i brak imprez... zdziczalem. ;) Z #SunriseFestival tez rok temu wracalem przybity, a w tym roku z zupelnie innym nastawieniem.
W sobote, w srodku rejsu sie rozpadalo, w koncu Maciek (organizator) stwierdzil, ze lepiej sie schowac na pokladzie restauracyjnym, bo na dachu statku robi sie niebezpiecznie. Po 20 minutach potrzebnych na przelaczenie sprzetu impreza ruszyla dalej i bylo GENIALNIE.
Serio, pojscie na terapie to najlepsze co moglem dla siebie zrobic w ciagu ostatnich 5 lat. Pomoglo mi przywrocic stabilnosc emocjonalna i ulozyc sobie, co jest w moim zyciu najwazniejsze i najbardziej mi potrzebne - wspolne przezywanie muzyki z innymi. A ja chyba rozwaze az zrobienie sobie za jakis czas tatuazu z tej okazji... 😅 (takze @tsumidesho - pewnie sie bede odzywal za jakis czas z paroma pytaniami i prosba o polecajke :D )
(nie bylem pewien, ktory utwor bardziej pasuje do tego wpisu, wiec wrzucam oba, ktore mi przyszly do glowy):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjmKjINRVwo
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Tohle si dejte. Fakt. Hlavně ti, kterým připadá, že ESG nebo GD mají nějaký smysl.
Po dnešku jsem měl hezkou depku(kecám, netrpím skutečnými depresemi, ale víte, jak to myslím). Po tomhle článku si jdu hledat stoličku a provaz. Evropa je v prdeli. Ale totálně v prdeli.
#^Proboha, proč jsou všichni překvapeni? Zbrojař Hynek ostře o Trumpovi a reakci Evropy | Aktuálně.czŠéf české Asociace obranného a bezpečnostního průmyslu je příkrý k chování vrcholových evropských institucí a bank.
#ESG #GD -
The "big, beautiful bill" fulfills JD Vance’s incredibly depressing vision of patriotism
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/big-beautiful-bill-vance-immigration-ice-rcna216161
This unholy bunch is taking the soul out of America. Its whole history is built upon immigration and creating chances... the current hillbilly resentment is attacking everything the USA are. It will be weaker if they are allowed to finish this job. Small and ugly — and, un-American. Rome is about to fall...
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Die ehemalige Bundessprecherin von Die Grünen Österreich,
Madeleine Petrovic, sendete Grußworte zur Kundgebung der Impfgegner-Partei #MFG. Sie raunte dabei von Pharmalobby und Langzeitschäden.Frau Petrovic sitzt als Expertin (für Tierschutz) im deutschen Bundesministerium für Gesundheit.
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A #Labour #win is now looking likely at the next #general #election, but at what cost?
"the message from Labour HQ seems reminiscent of a military government that has taken control after an unruly revolution – order must be restored. But at what cost?"
"What is emerging is a party that has traded principle for power"
"Labour wants your #votes and your funding, but not your dreams, your fears, your appeals for your future"
Too many depressing truths in this powerful piece by #Nesrine #Malik
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/12/labour-win-general-election-party-defeat
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Stuck in the Filter: July 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
If you thought June was hot, you aren’t ready for what July has in store. The thin metallic walls of these flimsy ducts warp and soften as the sweltering environs continue to challenge the definition of “habitable.” But I must force my minions to continue their work, as this duty is sacred. Our ravenous appetites cannot be slaked without the supplementary sustenance the Filter brings!
Thankfully, we rescued just enough scraps to put together a meager spread. Enjoy in moderation!
Kenstrosity’s Blackened Buds
Echoes of Gloom // The Mind’s Eternal Storm [July 12th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Queensland isn’t my first thought when considering locales for atmospheric black metal. A genre so often built upon frigid tones and icy melodies feels incongruous to the heat and beastliness of the Australian landscape. Yet, one-man atmoblack act Echoes of Gloom persists. Masterminded by one Dan Elkin, Echoes of Gloom evokes a warm, muggy, and morose spirit with debut record The Mind’s Eternal Storm. But unlike many of the atmospheric persuasion, Echoes of Gloom also injects a classic heavy metal attack and a vaguely punky/folky twist into their formula to keep interest high (“Immortality Manifest,” “Throes of Bereavement I”). Furthermore, Echoes of Gloom weaponizes their energetic take on depressing atmoblack such that even as my head bounces to the riffy groove of surprisingly propulsive numbers like “The Wandering Moon” and “Great Malignant Towers of Delirium,” a palpable pall looms ever present, sapping all color from life as I witness this work. This in turn translates well to the long form, as demonstrated by the epic two-part “Throes of Bereavement” suite and ripping ten-minute closer “Wanderer of the Mind’s Eternal Storm,” boasting dynamics uncommon in the atmospheric field. In sum, if you’re the kind of metal fan that struggles with the airier side of the spectrum, The Mind’s Eternal Storm might be a good place to start.
Witchyre // Witchy Forest Dance Contest [July 14th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Germany’s Witchyre answer a question nobody asked but everyone should: what would happen if black metal and dance music joined forces? With debut LP Witchy Forest Dance Contest, we get to experience this mad alchemy firsthand, and it is an absolute joy! The staunchly anti-fascist Witchyre take the raw sound everyone knows and pumps it full of groove, bounce, and uninhibited fun for a raucous 46 minutes. Evoking equal parts Darude and Darkthrone, bangers like “Let There be Light…,” “Witchy Forest Dance Party,” and “Lost in a Dream” burst with infectious energy that feels demonic and exuberant at the same time. The raw production of the metallic elements shouldn’t work with the glossy sheen of electronic doots, but Witchyre’s often pop-punky song structure that develops as these divergent aesthetics collide adeptly bridges the gap (“Spirits Twirling,” “The Vampire Witch,” “Dragon’s Breath”). My main gripe is that even at a reasonable 46 minutes, each song feels a bit bloated, and some dance elements feel recycled in multiple places (“The Spirits Robbed My Mind”). But don’t let that scare you away. Witchyre is a delightful little deviation from convention fit for fans of Curta’n Wall and Old Nick, and everyone should give it a whirl just for fun!
Owlswald’s Hidden Hoots
Sheev // Ate’s Alchemist [July 11th, 2025 – Ripple Music]
While stoner can be hit-or-miss, Ripple Music often delivers the goods. And with Berlin’s Sheev, they can add another notch to their sativa-flavored belt. Since 2017, the four-piece has been brewing their unique, progressive-infused stoner rock sound. On their second full-length, Ate’s Alchemist, Sheev doubles down on their sonic elixir, with a throwback prog-rock vibe that evokes the likes of Yes and Jethro Tull, but with heavy doses of grunge, jam and modern rock. Vocalist Nitzan Sheps’ provides a stripped-down and authentic performance, sounding like a cross between Muse’s Matt Bellamy and Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley. The rhythm section is particularly great here. Drummer Philipp Vogt’s kit work is exceptionally musical, with intricate cymbal patterns on tracks like “Elephant Trunk,” “Cul De Sac,” and “King Mustard II” that fuel deep-pocket grooves. He also provides Tool-like syncopated rhythms on tracks like “Tüdelüt” and “Henry” that lock with bassist Joshan Chaudhary. Chaudhary’s bass playing is rare in its prominence and clarity in the mix. He maintains a tight pocket while also venturing out regularly with nimbler, adventurous flurries that highlight his technical skill. Yeah, a couple of the longer songs get a little lost, but the album is packed with killer musicianship and vocal hooks that stick with you, so it barely matters. Overall, Sheev has delivered a solid record that I’ll be spinning a lot—and you should too.
Dephosphorus // Planetoktonos [July 18th, 2025 – Selfmadegod Records/7 Degrees Records/Nerve Altar]
Space…the final grind-tier. On their fifth album, Planetoktonos (“Planetkiller”), Greek astro-grind quartet Dephosphorus rejects normal grind classifications and instead annihilates worlds with a brutal, interstellar collision of grind, blackened death, and hardcore. Taking inspiration from the harsh sci-fi of James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse, Planetoktonos is a relentless twenty-eight-minute assault—a sonic asteroid belt of thick, menacing distortion and time-warped drumming that channels Dephosphorus’ raw, furious energy. “The Triumph of Science and Reason” and “After the Holocaust” attack with the ruthless speed of Nasum while others, such as “The Kinetics of a Superintelligence Explosion,” “Hunting for Dyson Spheres,” and “Calculating Infinity,” punctuate sludgy aggression with razor-sharp, shredding passages reminiscent of early Mastodon that offer contrasting technical and rhythmic hostility. Vocalist Panos Agoros’ despairing howls are a particular highlight, full of a gravelly, blackened urgency that sounds the alarm for an interplanetary attack. Gang vocals on tracks like “Living in a Metastable Universe” and “The Kinetics of a Superintelligence Explosion” add extra weight to his frantic performance, proving Dephosphorus can incinerate worlds and still have a blast doing it. Raw, intense, and violent, Planetokonos is a must-listen for fans seeking Remission-era energy.
Tyme’s Tattered Treats
Mortual // Altars of Brutality [July 4th, 2025 – Nuclear Winter Records]
From the fetid rainforests of Costa Rica, San Jose’s Mortual dropped their sneaky good death metal debut, Altar of Brutality, on Independence Day this year. Free of frills and fuckery, Justin Corpse and Master Killer—both have guitar, bass, and vocal credits here—go for the jugular, providing swarms of riffs entrenched in filthy, Floridian swamp waters and powdered with Jersey grit. Solo work comes fast, squealy, and furious as if graduated from the Azagthothian school of shred (“Dominion of Eternal Blasphemy,” “Skeletal Vortex”), as hints of early Deicide lurk within the chugging chunks of “Altar of Brutality” and whiffs of early Monstrosity float amongst the speedier nooks and crannies of “Divine Monstrosity.”1 Incantationally cavernous, the vocals fit the OSDM mold to a tee, sitting spaciously fat and happy within Dan Lowndes’ great mix and master, which consequently draws out a bestial bass sound that permeates the entirety of Altar of Brutality with low-end menace. Chalo’s (Chemicide) drum performance warrants particular note, as, from the opening tom roll of “Mortuary Rites,” he proceeds to bash skulls throughout Altar of Brutality’s swift thirty-five-minute runtime with a brutal blitz of double-kicking and blast-beating kit abuse. Embodying a DIY work ethic that imbues these tracks with youthful energy and a wealth of death metal character, Mortual aren’t looking to reinvent the wheel as much as they’d like to crush you under its meaty treads, over and over again.
Stomach // Low Demon [July 18th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Droney, doomy, sweaty, and sludgy as fuck, Stomach’s blast furnace second album, Low Demon, is the antithesis of summer-fun metal. Hailing from Geneva, Illinois, Stomach is drummer/vocalist John Hoffman (Weekend Nachos) and guitarist Adam Tomlinson (Sick/Tired, Sea of Shit), who capably carry out their cacophonous work in such a way as to defy the fact that they’re only a duo.2 At volume, and believe me, you’ll want to crank this fucker to eleven, Low Demon will have you retching up all that light beer you drank by the pool and crying for yer mom, as “Dredged” oozes, rib-rattling from the speakers, a continuous, four-and-a-half-minute chord-layered exercise in exponentially applied tonal pressure. With five tracks spanning just over forty-three minutes, there’s not a lot on Low Demon that’s in a hurry, and aside from sections of up-tempo doom riffs (“Get Through Winter”) and some downright grindery (“Oscillate”) offering respite from the otherwise crushing wall of sound, listening to Stomach is akin to being waterboarded with molasses. Heavy influences from Earth, Sunn O))), Crossed Out, and Grief—whose Come to Grief stands as a sludge staple—form the basis for much of Stomach’s sound, and while Primitive Man and Hell draw apt comparisons as well, I’m guessing you know what you’re getting into by now. Maniacally cinematic and far from light-hearted, Stomach’s Low Demon was everything I didn’t think I needed during this hot and humid-as-an-armpit-in-hell summer.
Killjoy’s Flutes of Fancy
Braia // Vertentes de lá e cá [July 10th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Bruno Maia is one of the most inventive and hardworking musicians that I know of. Best known for the whimsical Celtic folk metal of Tuatha de Danann, he also has his own folk rock side project, Braia. Vertentes de lá e cá explores the rich history and culture of the Minas Gerais state in his native country, Brazil.3 Bursting with more sweetness than a ripe mango, Vertentes de lá e cá sports a huge diversity of musical styles and instruments. A combination of flute, viola, and acoustic guitar forms the backbone of most of the songs, like the Irish jigs in “Vertentes” or the flitting melodies of “Princesa do Sul.” My ears also detect accordion (“O Cururu do Ingaí”), saxophone (“Serra das Letras”), harmonica (“Hipólita”), banjo (“Carrancas”), and spacey synth effects (“Pagode Mouro”). That last one might sound out of place, but it makes more sense after learning of the local tales of extraterrestrial encounters. Maia sings in only two of the twelve tracks (“Emboabas” and “Rei do Campo Grande”), but all 41 minutes should be engaging enough for listeners who are typically unmoved by instrumental music. Though thematically focused on one specific location, Vertentes de lá e cá deserves to be heard by the entire world.
Storchi // By Far Away [July 25th, 2025 – Self-Release]
I would guess that the “experimental” tag causes some degree of trepidation within most listeners. However, occasionally an artist executes a fresh new vision so confidently that I can’t help but wonder if it’s secretly been around for a long time. Storchi, an instrumental prog group from Kabri, Israel, utilizes a flute in creative ways. Its bright, jazzy demeanor almost functions as a substitute for a vocalist in terms of expressiveness and personality. The Middle Eastern flair combined with modest electronic elements reminds me of Hugo Kant’s flute-heavy multicultural trip-hop. The chunky palm-muted guitar and bass borrow the best aspects of djent alongside eccentrically dynamic drum tempos. There is premeditation amidst the chaos, though. The triplet tracks “Far,” “Further,” and “Furthest” scattered throughout By Far Away each offer a unique rendition of the same core flute tune. “Lagoona” and “Smoky” make good use of melodic reprisals at the very end to neatly close the loop on what might have otherwise felt like more disjointed songs. Despite frequent and abrupt stylistic shifts, Storchi manages to make the 31-minute runtime of By Far Away feel more enjoyable than jolting. Flute fanatics should take note.
ClarkKent’s Addictive Addition
Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway // Addicted to the Violence [July 19th, 2025 – Scarred for Life]
Since System of a Down disbanded, guitarist Daron Malakian has gone on to release 3 full-length albums under the moniker Scars on Broadway between 2008 and 2025. This spinoff project has proven Malakian to be the oddball of the group, and this goofiness hasn’t mellowed since SOAD’s debut released 27 years ago. The energetic set of tunes on Addicted to the Violence mixes nu-metal, groove rock, and pop with plenty of synths to create some fun and catchy beats. Sure, you have to delve through some baffling lyrics,4 such as when Malakian sings that there’s “a tiger that’s riding on your back / And it’s singing out ‘Rawr! Rawr!'” (“Killing Spree”). Malakian also turns to the familiar theme of drug addiction that he and Serj have explored from “Sugar” to “Heroine” to “Chemicals.”5 This time around, it’s “Satan Hussein,” where he mixes Quaaludes and Vicodin with Jesus Christ. To offset the repetition within songs, Malakian has the sense to mix things up. There’s the nu-metal cuts of “Satan Hussein” and “Destroy the Power,” featuring energetic vocalizations and grooves, but there’s also a lot of pop (“You Destroy You”). The riffs may not be as wild or creative as times past, but Addicted to the Violence makes use of a variety of instruments that keep things fresh, from an organ (“Done Me Wrong”) to a mandolin (“You Destroy You”) to some sweet synth solos. There’s even a brief saxophone appearance to conclude the album. Yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking: “This sounds awesome!”
#2025 #7DegreesRecords #AddictedToTheViolence #AliceInChains #AltarsOfBrutality #AmericanMetal #AteSAlchemist #AtmosphericBlackMetal #AustralianMetal #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #Braia #BrazilianMetal #ByFarAway #Chemicide #CostaRicanMetal #CrossedOut #CurtaNWall #Dance #Darkthrone #DaronMalakianAndScarsOnBroadway #Darude #DeathMetal #Deathgrind #Deicide #Dephosphorus #Doom #DoomMetal #Drone #Earth #EchoesOfGloom #EDM #ExperimentalMetal #FolkMetal #FolkRock #GermanMetal #Gindcore #GreekMetal #Grief #GrooveMetal #Hardcore #Hell #HugoKant #InstrumentalMetal #IsraeliMetal #JethroTull #Jul25 #LowDemon #Mastodon #MelodicBlackMetal #Monstrosity #Mortual #Muse #Nasum #NerveAltar #NuMetal #NuclearWinterRecords #OldNick #Planetoktonos #PopMetal #PrimitiveMan #ProgressiveMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #RippleMusic #ScarredForLife #SeaOfShit #SelfRelease #SelfmadegodRecords #Sheev #SickTired #Sludge #SludgeMetal #Stomach #StonerDoom #StonerMetal #Storchi #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SunnO_ #SystemOfADown #TheMindSEternalStorm #Tool #TuathaDeDanann #VertentesDeLáECá #WeekendNachos #WitchyForestDanceContest #Witchyre #Yes
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Zabte mě! Oddám se třeba samotnému Luciferovi, jen když to za mě vyplní!
#DaňovýPortál #Proč!? #BohaJeho #Trpím #Bída #Zmar #Smutek #Nechuť #Byrokracie
#Očistec #KonecVšeho #Deprese #Rezignace #Nechci!!!! -
Enshittification, Privacy Experiments and Excuses
It feels like we’re watching the real-time enshittification of yet another platform. If you’ve been following the latest drama, you already know Discord is firmly in the hot seat.
The current flashpoint is Discord’s new identity verification system. The company initially claimed that age-verification data — including facial scans — would remain on-device. That reassurance didn’t last long. Users were instead directed to Persona, a third-party identity provider that does receive a copy of that data.
Persona isn’t just a neutral infrastructure provider either. The company is backed by Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel. Whether or not you think that matters personally, it’s information many users would have liked before being asked to hand over biometric data.
When questioned about the mismatch between their messaging and reality, Discord fell back on a familiar defence: this is just an experiment.
A Familiar Pattern
We’ve seen this story play out before. The browser wars were an early warning sign.
Remember when Brave Browser gained momentum as the privacy-first alternative? It didn’t take long for the cracks to appear. Brave was caught injecting affiliate codes into URLs, quietly earning referral revenue from crypto exchanges without clear user consent. That’s without even touching the long-running controversy around its founder, Brendan Eich, and his short, turbulent tenure as CEO of Mozilla.
The pattern is depressingly consistent:
build trust → capture the user base → monetise that trust once leaving becomes painful.Discord now feels like it’s entering that phase. And people are noticing.
If you’re tired of being part of someone else’s product experiment, here’s where users are actually drifting.
The Alternatives
Stoat (formerly Revolt)
Stoat has emerged as the privacy-hardcore option following its rebrand late last year.
Pros: No phone number. No email. Just sign up and chat. It feels like a return to the early internet, when joining a space didn’t require handing over your identity.
Cons: It’s still very much in beta. Mobile support is rough around the edges, and the user base is small — though growing.
Root
Root is the closest thing to a drop-in Discord replacement.
Pros: Familiar UI, polished experience, and features like server tabs. It’s the easiest transition for people who don’t want to relearn how chat apps work.
Cons: It’s centralised and venture-capital backed. That doesn’t mean it’s bad today, but it does mean the enshittification timer is already running. You may just be moving to the next Discord — early.
Fluxer
Fluxer is a fast-moving open-source contender.
Pros: Web-first, lightweight, and refreshingly low-friction. You can even create an unclaimed account with no email or password just to explore. It’s AGPLv3-licensed, with self-hosting on the roadmap.
Cons: No native mobile apps yet (the web app works well), and it’s still under heavy development, so the occasional bug is part of the deal.
Matrix / Element
Matrix, usually accessed through Element, is the heavyweight of decentralised chat.
Pros: You control your data. No single company owns the network, and end-to-end encryption is standard.
Cons: Onboarding is still a hurdle. Choosing a homeserver, managing keys, and understanding federation quickly weeds out non-technical users. Powerful — but not beginner-friendly.
Steam Chat
The path of least resistance.
Pros: You already have Steam Chat installed. Voice quality is excellent, and it integrates directly with the games you’re playing.
Cons: It’s barebones. No persistent communities, no real server structure, and none of the ecosystem features Discord users expect.
Enclave
Enclave often comes up in privacy-focused discussions.
Pros: Strong emphasis on secure, private connectivity and controlled access.
Cons: It feels more like a networking solution than a social space. There’s little of the casual, community-driven feel that gamers or creators tend to want.
The Network Effect Problem
Online platforms are always in motion. We moved from IRC to Skype, from Skype to TeamSpeak and Mumble, and eventually from those to Discord.
The technology is rarely the hard part — the people are.
A platform only works when your community moves with you. You can pick the most ethical, decentralised, open-source option available, but if your friends, raid team, or moderation crew stay put, you probably will too.
Right now, we’re in a fragmentation phase. The monolith is cracking, but the next standard hasn’t emerged yet.
Where We Go Next
Discord doesn’t disappear overnight. Platforms rarely do. They erode slowly — one “experiment” at a time — until staying feels worse than leaving.
If this moment made you pause, that’s probably the point. You don’t have to delete your account today, but you can start asking harder questions about who you’re trusting with your identity, your community, and your data.
So where are you experimenting instead? Are you testing Stoat, Fluxer, Matrix, or something else entirely — or are you waiting to see how far Discord pushes before you move?
Drop your thoughts below. The fragmentation phase only ends when people start comparing notes.
https://tjcasey.vivaldi.net/2026/02/17/the-great-discord-exodus-where-do-we-go-next/
#brave #chat #communities #discord #element #enclave #fluxer #gaming #matrix #root #steam #stoat
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As depressing as it is to be flooded with doom content all the time, it kinda proves, in a roundabout way, that humans are good people on average. If we weren't, we wouldn't need this gigantic propaganda machine to try and, often unsuccessfully!, convince us that people are bad and things are hopeless so why bother trying (here, get enraged about crap that doesn't matter and that you can't do anything about instead!)
This level of propaganda doesn't just happen by accident. And it's clearly not just a representation of humanity and the world either. It's misdirection. And it's necessary to try and break our spirit.
Because the billionaires and the fascists and the epsteins of the world fear nothing more than our humanity. Our beingness. Because what's inherent in us is truth and love and solidarity and care and oneness with nature. It takes SO MUCH to suppress that, and it only ever works temporarily. Then the weeds pop back up through cracks in the foundations of Empire.
:acab:
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Free download codes:
Vinnie-Dangerous - I was depressed today...
"Dedicating this to fans of Hip-Hop going through something, suffering in silence and want to be heard!"
#bandcampcodes #rap #hiphop #undergroundrap #conscioushiphop #music
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Free download codes:
Vinnie-Dangerous - I was depressed today...
"Dedicating this to fans of Hip-Hop going through something, suffering in silence and want to be heard!"
#bandcampcodes #rap #hiphop #undergroundrap #conscioushiphop #music