Some media we want to put into our brains.

Steph wants to consume:

• The House of Binding Thorns, Aliette de Bodard — This is the second  book in a series about Fallen Angels in Paris, colonialism and war. Aliette is a member of the SEAzn diaspora (Vietnamese division), and it shows in her characters and some of the themes and plots and I’m excited to read this next installment.
• John Wick 2 — JOHN WICK 2.
• Twin Peaks –– I have never seen Twin Peaks, so I started season one this weekend just past. It opens with Joan Chen gazing at herself in a mirror, and I’m excited to consume the existing episodes and then move into the new episodes with the rest of the world. I have a healthy appreciation of Lynch, and surrealism, and the history of serialised TV, and I am ready to be a part of this zeitgeist.
• The Silent Invasion, James Bradley — I loved Bradley’s last book, Clade, a look at our climate change future. This one is the first in a YA trilogy featuring aliens colonising Earth, and as always with a colonisation narrative by a white person I’m trepiditious but prepared.
• Ecopunk – speculative tales of radical futures — a collection of optimistic short stories in our climate change dystopia.
• The Young Pope — I just really love amazing debauched religious shenanigans, okay. (I have also described this as ‘batshit pope business’ which is also not wrong.)
• The new Lorde album.

Liz is eager for:

• Freedom Swimmer by Wai Chim, a YA novel by a Chinese-Australian author set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This has been on my list for ages, and I found it at the library just last night.
• The Next Step: multiple people have told me that this series, new to Australian Netflix, is basically a Canadian version of Dance Academy. I love Dance Academy, I love Canadian YA, I’m in.
• Season 2 of Underground: I really loved season 1, a thriller about a group of slaves who escape from a Georgia plantation and make their way north via the underground railway. Season 2 is hitting Stan weekly, and I’m going to binge it as soon as it’s complete.
• We Were Tomorrow, an upcoming Australian science fiction series. It looks quite terrible, but features a couple of Dance Academy alumni, and also, it’s Australian SF TV, of course I’m going to watch it.
• Thor: Ragnarok: I was honestly going to boycott Thor 3, because I’m not happy at it receiving government funding at the expense of actual local films. But I love director Taika Waititi almost as much as I love Chris Hemsworth’s stupid face, and it has this amazing 1990s Australian kids TV aesthetic, which, coincidentally is also a 1980s mainstream Hollywood aesthetic.

Please tell us what else we should be excitedly waiting for! Especially if it’s #ownvoices or just really excellent.