It's our 25th episode, and so we're going to discuss an anime that is very important to us, and which is absolutely a foundational text in the wizards vs lesbians idiom. We could fill up multiple podcasts talking about this show, and just might, if provoked.

It's another retro episode! This one to takes us back to gay London in the 1990s, where a queer cab driver named Rainbow is being haunted not only by her variously-kosher gaggle of aunts but by an actual dybbuk, unleashed upon her to fulfill a centuries-old curse. It's Good Omens but Jewish and with lesbians - what's not to like?

It's an accidental holiday episode! The Raven and the Reindeer is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen by T Kingfisher, AKA Ursula Vernon, furry webcomic artist of the old school. And it's great - keeps all the weirdness of the original and adds a whole shovelful of gay.

The rare modern contemporary wizards vs lesbians novel, set here and now. It's about a young woman of Malaysian Chinese descent who returns to Penang under difficult circumstances and has to deal, among other things, with the ghost of her grandmother. An extremely solid piece of work: If you have any litfic snobs in your circle, this is the one to break 'em in with.

It's Foundryside! This is a book that we think might have been better as an anime, or an action movie, or a miniseries, or a comic - pretty much anything but a very long novel that seems to care mostly about setting up the pieces for the very long series of sequels to come. But we might think that because it has the best action sequence writing of any book we've discussed so far, and also because the lesbian has a wisecracking inanimate object companion to help her in her anti-wizard cause.

In a slight departure for us we are discussing a romance novel - a romance novella, in fact - a romance novella starring a werebear who works at Vogue. It's self-identified "chick lit" but it's also Wizards vs Lesbians, or at least close enough, so we discuss it (and also spend quite a long time talking about the theory that queer desire itself is the revolutionary moment.)

So, what if the founder of the Ming Dynasty was a lesbian? That is the question this book dares to ask, and it does a really good job answering it. A rollicking, morally complex historical fantasy which is one of my favorite contemporary books we've read for this project.

A mainline wizards vs lesbians empire narrative, this one, set in fantasy South Asia. It's a long old read but the characters are good - particularly the colonial governor's wife, a hall of fame eminence gris.

It's our first ever bonus episode! This series was initially disqualified due to lack of lesbians but our guest, the author P.H. Lee, argues that the lesbianism is subtextual. Whether that's true or not, this is a classic SF series for a reason and contains both a bromance for the ages between our adventure librarian hero and her barbarian companion and some premium wizard behavior.

Retro episode! In this one we tackle a forgotten classic of 90s cyberpunk, recommended by a listener. It's insane and we had a tremendous amount of fun with it. (Thanks to Isaac's internet son Olive for providing the intro and inspiring him to make a busload of terrible techno jingles.)