On today's episode we are talking about dystopian stratified societies and "layered cities". Our tentpoles this week are An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, the Snowpiercer movie (the original one), and “To the Victor, The Spoil” by Annakovsky.

What We’re Into Lately

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

The Devil Comes Courting by Courtney Milan

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

marigolds by colbub

Avatar: The Last Airbender fic

Rogue One fic

Hikaru no Go

Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell

City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Imperial Coroner

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

Other Stuff We Mentioned

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

“Dixit Dominus” by George Frideric Handel

Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan

Dragon Ball

Persona 5

Embers by Vathara

The Untamed

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean

Parasite

Space Sweepers 

This post by missellewoods

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Lara Elena Donnelly’s Amberlough series 

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Avatar

The Unbroken  by C. L. Clark

“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing” by Shiv Ramdas

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin

"Victory Condition" by astolat

Les Mis (musical)

Les Miserables (disambiguation)

For Next Time

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Content Warnings

Sexual assault, racism, and slavery in An Unkindness of Ghosts

Violence, child harm in Snowpiercer

Sex trafficking, attempted suicide, and adult/minor relationship in “To the Victor, The Spoil”

General warnings for discussion in the episode: the spectre of pedophilia, cannibalism, classism and prejudice (as well as all above listed warnings from the tentpoles)

Transcription

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Thank you to our team of scribes for their great work!