Things I like

A very disjointed reclist. If you know me personally it is also very predictable, probably.

Web originals:

(2017): Can't even explain this without spoiling it. It's sci-fi of some kind.

Birgworld: Cute fuzzy aliens and their cultures.

Blightseed: My favourite fantasy setting at the moment. A low fantasy soap opera with really fleshed-out cultures and chararcters, political drama, grounded, detailed worldbuilding, and specbio, all in one!

Mystery Flesh Pit National Park: Found footage sci-fi/analog horror. An eldritch abomination is found beneath Texas, and turned into a tourist destination and mine. Consequences ensue.

Luke Humphris' work: Animated shorts about wholesome cosmic horror.

A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: Resources on the logistics of ancient and pre-modern history.

Worldbuilding Notes: Various fantasy cultures, and some conlangs.

Biblaridion: Detailed conlangs and conlanging resources, and a very very good specbio project that follows the evolution of a biosphere from abiogenesis to the development of sapience (it also tricks you into learning evolutionary biology).

Artifexian: Resources on conlanging and geographical worldbuilding.

Serina: A world is seeded with canaries and grasses, which evolve over 200+ million years to create a rich biosphere.

Comics:

(2024-): Hard sci-fi slice of life about an alien aerospace engineer from Jupiter. Go read the worldbuilding writeups and the older comics, too!

(2013-): A cyborg wakes up with no memories, surrounded by corpses in the middle of the desert.

The Priestwife (2022-): a fantasy/horror comic.

Sakana (2010-): a slice-of-life rom-com set in the Tsukiji Fish Market.

Dungeon Meshi (2014-2023): Hungry dungeon spelunkers eat the dungeon.

Raruurien (2017-2024): a fantasy slice-of-life about a small family dealing with a recent loss.

(2015-2019): Scientists on Mars confront internal seas both literal and metaphorical.

Scenes From Imagined Films: Snapshots of everyday life.

TF2 comics

Video games:

Mouthwashing (2024): A cargo spaceship crashes into an asteroid, and things get much worse from there.

Terraria (2011): A sandbox classic!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017): An open-world classic! (Is eight years long enough to be a classic?)

TV shows:

Babylon Berlin (2017-): Weimar Germany! Haunted detectives! Political drama! Great characters! Amazing set and costume design! The most immersive historical drama I've ever seen! WATCH IT NOW

BBC Merlin (2008-2012): A loose adaptation of Arthurian legend. I have fond memories of it.

Stranger Things (2016-): 80s kids on bikes, interdimensional beastes, and D&D, among other things.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (2019-2023): A fortysomething gay couple navigates work life, their relationship, queer culture and identity in modern Tokyo, and delicious recipies. Apparently this started as a manga, but I saw the show first and liked it more so I'll put it here.

Andor (2022-2025): What if Star Wars was only about fascism, the dark depressing backdrop to the silly 70s kitsch was taken to its logical extreme, and there was no mention of the force, Jedi, or lightsabers? (I am sure many people have told you to watch this already. Watch it! Even if you don't know anything about Star Wars!)

Books:

David Crystal - How Language Works (2007): Nonfiction. An accessible overview of a wide range of linguistics topics. This book got me into linguistics so it will always have a special place in my heart.

Rebecca Wragg Sykes - Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art (2020): Nonfiction. A detailed description of Neanderthal culture, and how scientists reconstruct it.

Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet On The Western Front (1929): (Semi-autobiographical) fiction. WWI from the perspective of a German soldier, and how the war changes him. Also, it has some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read.