Five by five

Day 01 → Your favorite song
Day 02 → Your favorite movie
Day 03 → Your favorite television program

( The future )

Lolol, "television program"? What is this, the 60s? Lulz.

Anywho. WHAT AN IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION SIGH. I'm going to go with the old tried and true: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy was the first show I ever got involved with in that way where you keep buying DVDs and watch episodes over and over and know certain ones by heart and fall ass over teakettle in love with characters and relationships and spend most of your waking hours thinking about one Faith Lehane, cough. Buffy began my still-burning love affair with Joss (the boss) and introduced me to numerous actors that continue to be Relevant To My Interests (Eliza, Boreanaz, Alyson, James, Nathan, to name just a few). But far beyond that, it introduced me to a new way of storytelling (particularly through this medium), the heartwrenching drama wrapped in a swirl of incredibly clever humor, the fantasy mixed with all too real emotion. It made me cry like my heart was going to come out of my chest. It made me feel, and it STILL makes me feel, whether it be heartache or joy.

♥♥♥

The knife had broken because it had at last met something it couldn't cut

Day 01 → Your favorite song
Day 02 → Your favorite movie
>Day 03 → Your favorite television program
Day 04 → Your favorite book

( The future )

Oh dear. Another toughie. I was an ENORMOUS bookworm when I was a kid - through high school, really, I could pretty much be found with a book in my hand at any point in my day that didn't explicitly require being in a class or talking to people. I was also a massive re-reader so I've read some books 5 or 10 times. So I have some favorites from my childhood that probably wouldn't still have the same power. But I think I have an answer...

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. Now these have never gotten old. I reread them pretty recently, and I can pick them up and reread them at any time really. They're the only old books that I made SURE came to grad school with me - I have an incredibly battered copy of the three books in paperback. There's something about the uniqueness of vision that propels these books above and beyond so many of their peers. Pullman constructs incredible characters to inhabit that world, so you feel grounded and emotionally invested. And the two primary characters, Will and Lyra, are CHILDREN, but he doesn't treat them as inferior - instead he takes their unique experiences and constructs them as full human beings. We watch them literally grow up in the course of the story. And they fall in love, and it is beautiful and fumbling and pure and exquisite. But back to the world-building - the beings that Mary Malone encounters in a parallel world, the mulefa, are some of the most exquisite "other" beings that I have ever encountered in fiction. The concept of a daemon is enrapturing and so deftly handled. I'm sure that a lot of the religious threads go right over my head, but despite that, these books are a thoroughly enveloping experience that I feel for a long time after every read. And the ending is one of those that makes me sob every goddamn time, even though I know exactly what's coming. I think I cry for a whole chapter. Ugh my heart.

I think we can pull out a theme here - if something makes me cry really hard, I love it. Idk! I'm a sucker for the well-done tragedy. When it feels earned, and I feel invested enough to lose myself to that grief, then I think a story has truly succeeded. It's an interesting metric but it's certainly held true for all of my preferences! (Exception: Boondock Saints, haha)

Runner up: Anything by Guy Gavriel Kay. ANYTHING. He transports me!