The psychic soup we all live in is absurd as fuck, and I love to death any object—a play, a book, a podcast, a comic, a film, a song, a video game, a DnD campaign—that tackles the absurdity in ways that delight and devastate (not always at the same time).

What kind of stories am I drawn to? I’m soaked in the circumstances of my birth. I am post-irony and pro-sincerity. I don’t have the patience for anything that doesn’t traffic in empathy. Some key aesthetic elements guaranteed to pull me in: history not as a backward-facing, look-how-far-we’ve-come congratulatory exercise, but as a forward-facing constant study of how to better the human experience. Stylized ways of depicting stress, grief, self-loathing and despair without stigmatizing or romanticizing mental illness. Friends having a low-stakes good time together (particularly when the friends are members of groups that have historically only been depicted as suffering and stereotypical). And lots of variations on those themes.