Inspired by Slashpages, a canon is a body of media that defines an individual. Formative works, if you will. These are not necessarily favorites, although there's some of that in here too. Anyway, here's some of the media that has shaped who I am.
A product of the peak oil blogosphere, this book was painful to read. Before reading it, I was just another liberal, convinced that tech was going to save us from our impending climate doom. I had to grieve the person who died after reading this. I don't recommend it anymore, not least of which because Jensen is a TERF.
Similar to the first one, this also changed my outlook on the world and my place in it. Orlov now supports the Russian war in Ukraine, and so I can't recommend it in good conscience.
I read this during 2020, and boy howdy did it change my perspective on activism, social groups, and how we can take action in the world. I still wholeheartedly recommend this one, and its' sequel, Holding Change.
This novel rekindled my love of fantasy and more generally fiction at a time when I wasn't reading much at all. Depression, social isolation, and physical disabilities left me unable to function for long outside of our home, which at the time was a 30 foot sailboat docked in an out of the way marina. The Lies of Locke Lamora, with its intricate world-building, robust character depictions, and seamlessly witty one-liners, captured my imagination and helped me dream again when everything seemed impossible.
Hoo boy. This series was not good by any stretch of the imagination, plus the author was a total creep and it really comes out in his writing. But I'm including it here anyway because it occupied so much of my time and thoughts when I was a kid. I tried to collect literally everything he had ever published, which led to me reading some stuff that was extremely age-inappropriate, even if I didn't know it at the time. But I liked fantasy, and I liked puns, and my great-uncle introduced the series to me as a way to get me more interested in sci-fi and fantasy (his own special interest), and it worked. I would never recommend them, but they're a part of me, and they're part of why I've learned to be a bit more discerning about my fiction.
I almost didn't include this one, but it was between this and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series. This one won out because the first book was loaned to me by my best friend throughout all of high school and 8th grade, and I kept it for years after that, too.
This is actually available to read for FREE online! The second volume (issues #6-9 of the Original Quest) was a constant companion when I was a teenager and it has absolutely formed a core part of my sensibilities as both a writer and reader of fantasy. Plus there's poly & queer rep!
It feels trite now to say this changed my perspective on the world, since V has been so thoroughly memed and twisted to more conservative ends than he ever was meant to embody. But when I read this, the movie hadn't come out yet, and I wanted to read it in advance of seeing it. Gods, it just doesn't compare. Everything is sharper, more insightful, more real. It feels less like a fairy tale and more like a punch in the gut. Alan Moore's kind of a creep, but if you haven't seen the movie, I recommend reading this first. It's much more anarchist, for one.
Similarly, it feels like a no-brainer for a trans person to have Ranma 1/2 on their canon list. I only ever owned the first volume, and it was the first time I had seen tits in print (so much titty). I owned it at the same time as Elfquest, and would frequently re-read both of them until the panels were burned into my brain. I wished so desperately to be Ranma, to be able to change my body basically at will, to not be trapped as a girl. And hey, now I have! (Why did it take me so long to realize I was trans?)
Another trans masculine staple, Victor/Victoria introduced me to the very concept of trans masculinity and FtM crossdressing. I still harbor a deep desire to turn a straight man gay.
I love this corny-ass movie. It's a weird premise, it goes weird places, and it's not nearly as queer as it could be. Shit, now I want to write a fanfic... Anyway, it hits a lot of the same notes as Mad Men did for me, sparking an interest in 1950s-era media and the masks we wear in an authoritarian world.
My favorite in the "mindfuck" genre of film-making and Cronenberg in particular. Absolutely a bonkers film from start to finish, but in a deliberate way, not really absurdist like some. (Fight Club was my original intro to the genre, but I like the surrealism of Naked Lunch more.)
My introduction to the horror genre. I never really delved too deeply into horror movies, particularly because I don't like the gross-out nature of some of the effects. But I got very horny for Bruce Campbell in this early film which led to me watching as much of his work as I could find, most of which was god-awful. For what it's worth, I did eventually find horror I enjoy, specifically psychological horror like 1408 (2007).
My first introduction to anime, Sailor Moon captured my imagination and focus for at least a decade, and it still holds a special place in my heart. I watched the dub before school every morning, and watched fansubs my friend imported from Malaysia in high school. Some friends and I became convinced we were Sailor Scouts (I was Mars, because I was very quick to anger), which led to my first real friend group drama and was generally kind of shit. Once S came out, I felt incredibly drawn to Haruka, or Sailor Uranus, a girl who dresses as a boy (gee I wonder why?) and is in a lesbian relationship with Michiru, or Sailor Neptune. It's strange to think how "scandalous" that was back in the late 90s. It was also the basis for my first forays into fanfiction (sadly lost in the great reckoning of Geocities).
I have a lot of good memories and associations with this show, and it's one show where I can put on any episode and almost immediately know where I am in the series. (Not as much as some, but a lot more than usual for me and my AuDHD brainsieve.) It's a show I shared with my dad, who is notoriously picky, and it's one that I used to watch through every few years. It's a comfort show, but it's also very hopeful. I still think about the Bell Riots and how Trek's Earth relates to our own, even without the magic of replicators and transporters.
This is another series I used to rewatch every few years, although I've fallen off since we cancelled Netflix. I started watching it when I was going back to college, and it led to me wanting to investigate drug use among housewives in the 1950s & '60s for my history degree, but that never panned out. It also led to several deep conversations with my grandmother about her experiences during that era, and for that I am very grateful.
Buffy is one of the only series I actually grew up with. I watched the first episodes as they were being broadcast, I went to watch parties at my friends' houses, where they gushed about David Boreanaz's Angel and I just kinda nodded along. I identified most strongly with Willow, as a nerdy outcast girl myself, but I didn't really like Xander (none of the cast were very attractive to me, except for Buffy and Giles, and even that was tepid). The series informed a lot of my sensibilities when it comes to urban fantasy, and fed into a long fascination with werewolves and other supernatural phenomena. If you've never seen it, and aren't familiar with the very cringe nature of 90s TV (in retrospect, of course, it was normal to us), I don't recommend it. But if you're willing to bear through the miserable 4th season, it has a lot of fun ideas to explore, but I would never call it "good". Also, fuck Joss Whedon, the sexist asshat.
This is the album I encountered when I first started dating my husband, and it's one of the few that he will still sing along to. It's part of the soundtrack that goes along with Endgame and Reinventing Collapse (see in Books, above), that sort of doomer-adjacent emotion paired with indie folk sound. Some of my earliest memories with my husband are singing along to this album, and it's on every roadtrip playlist.
I first heard a song off this album in the dining hall of my college campus. I was always alone that year, and it just sounded so beautiful and haunting that I had to pirate it immediately. I have cried to several tracks at various points in my life, especially "Set Fire to the Third Bar". Unfortunately their music became pretty ubiquitous in mid-'00s fan videos and in TV shows, so it's kinda overplayed at this point.
This album was a bridge between my childhood delight in Weird Al and Dr. Demento's comedy music, and my teen interest in swing, ska, and punk. The first album I ever bought with my own money, and still has one of the best bangers I know, "Sequence Erase".