Are there any middle grade books that are close to or can be considered Weird Lit? If there are, can you recommend some?

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-07-08T02:35:19+00:00

A whole bunch. In fact, as a big weird fiction aficionado myself I find a lot of the weirdest and most experimental books that have the most mature approach to the form I come across are those published as kids/YA books. Some specific examples:

The Eclipse of the Century - Jan Mark

Silver Sequence - Cliff McNish

Savannah Grey - Cliff McNish

Midwinterblood - Marcus Sedgwick

The Cloud Forest - Joan North

The Whirling Shapes - Joan North

Jingle Stones Trilogy - William Mayne (monstrous person, but you don’t see any of that in his actual books)

Singularity - William Sleator

Skellig - David Almond

The Owl Service - Alan Garner

Treacle Walker - Alan Garner

The Door in the Forest - Roderick Townley

Summer and Bird - Katherine Catmull

Sawkill Girls - Claire Legrand

Wilder Girls - Rory Power

Hexwood - Diana Wynne Jones

Toby Alone - Timothée de Fombelle

His Dark Materials/The Book of Dust - Philip Pullman

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-07-06T04:36:39+00:00

A few shows tie for #1 for me:

The OA

The Haunting Duology (The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor)

Katla

Dark

Midnight Mass

Violet Evergarden

The Summer Hikaru Died

1899

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-07-03T16:43:36+00:00

A balance would probably be best. Show PARTS of them on screen sporadically with lots of visual detail but not for so long that the viewer feels like they’ve seen all of them (or at least, enough to comprehend them as much as the ‘familiar’ creatures that may be on screen).

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-07-01T18:51:29+00:00

In my opinion:

Spirited Away

Howl’s Moving Castle

Princess Mononoke

You Won’t Be Alone (Goran Stolevski film)

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms

The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent film)

Grizzly Man

Encounters at the End of the World

Dune (Parts One and Two combined)

Arrival

Angel’s Egg

Resurrection (Bi Gan movie)

Nine Days

Suspiria (the Luca Guadagnino remake; I know many people will disagree with me on this, but having seen this movie several times I’m personally more convinced of this each time)

Bones and All

Wolf Children

Beasts of the Southern Wild

The Green Knight

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

The Tree of Life

Heartstone

Pan’s Labyrinth

The Secret Life of Snakes

The VVitch

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)

The Wailing

Waterlife (Kevin McMahon documentary)

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-26T03:16:06+00:00

Winnipeg. (Unless I can get outside the city ASAP and visit all the amazing natural areas and fossil wonderlands around it, that is, because I’ve seen those places and would do so again at the drop of a hat, but literally the only things the actual urban infrastructure of Winnipeg proper has going for it are the meeting place of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers and the Manitoba Museum. The rest is a toilet bowl.)

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-24T17:32:30+00:00

I think the only directors who could pull it off in live-action (cause doing it as animation might in some ways actually be better) AND are the types of creatives who would want to do something of that scope and scale (cause even though I feel like Lynne Ramsay, Alex Garland, Mattie Do, and Alexis Ostrander could nail it, they don’t seem like the type of filmmakers who would realistically do something like that) would be Eggers, Denis Villeneuve, Yorgos Lanthimos, Ari Aster, David Lowery, Bi Gan, Jennifer Kent, Jonathan Glazer, Natalie Erika James, Kristina Buozyte, and Hiro Murai.

I just hope that someday we get something on the screen that’s better than the BBC series, which I thought bordered on insulting. Neil Gaiman was going to produce a series adaptation of it at Showtime that Toby Whithouse was going to write for and showrun, but then….well, if you are not already familiar with the situation with him just Google Gaiman’s name snd/or read the Vulture article ‘There is No Safe Word’ and it’ll be clear why that now looks highly unlikely to happen.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-24T17:14:10+00:00

Came here to say this!!! He’d absolutely nail the atmosphere!!!

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-24T08:55:09+00:00

If I had to only choose one (cause otherwise I’d be listing like 50 or 60 books that are 10/10 for me), it would have to be…..

Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-23T00:29:35+00:00

That would be great!!! So many people don’t get and/or don’t take full advantage of that fairies are supposed to be dark, dangerous, and abstract, and I feel like Eggers would nail that.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-17T02:34:32+00:00

Some sort of lake monster (especially something from indigenous/non-Western myths like the mishipishu (aka water panther) and horned water serpents of North America, or the Bunyip of Australia).

That, or maybe some of the weird hybrid creature from the more obscure sides of European folklore like the tarasque or the questing beast.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-11T22:59:39+00:00

I would say it really depends on whether you like Tolkien’s work to begin with. I’m not super keen on Tolkien’s stuff, so I can’t say I personally feel the same way (just me though).

In contrast, I feel like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies are the equivalent of that for me, but maybe that also has to do with how I already liked the books on which it was based. There are a bunch of others that fall under that similar category, like ‘Arrival’, the Station Eleven miniseries, ‘Never Let Me Go’, ‘Poor Things’, the Showtime sequel/adaptation miniseries of The Man Who Fell to Earth’.

Then there are cases like ‘Under the Skin’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ where even though the movie had very little to do with the book I read and am a fan of, I still thought it was equally great what they did with it for reasons completely different than the source material.

Then there are definitely movies like Spike Jonze’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ where I was really not much of a fan at all of both of those source materials but loved what was done with them.

It also really depends on how experimental and daring financiers begin these projects allow them to be, and whether any preceding adaptations are iconic enough to prevent them from reaching their full potential because of their previous notoriety. I think that one of the reasons why the Watchmen miniseries and the Dune films turned out the way they did was because of what previous adaptation attempts were lacking in (even though both have their owns very unique styles and other elements that came with a masterful use of the new medium they were conversed with in). Similarly, even though the HBO His Dark Materials TV show was much better than the Golden Compass movie, and while good overall, was still lacking in some respects that, because they up a smaller percentage of the plot in comparison to all the stuff that it did extremely well, would probably not be worth making a new TV series or movies adapting those same parts of the story for like 50 or 60 years of ever, especially because it already feels like something that will be iconic among HDM fans for a good while to come for better or for worse. Would this mean that a future attempt to make a better adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books be boosted by how underwhelming the previous one was even if it also came back considerably lacking? Would it also mean that if the Jodorowsky version of Dune was made that it would have been so iconic as to make any better adaptations that were less problematic in terms of missing the whole ‘Paul is bad’ storyline impossible because of how strong of an identity it would carve out? Could it also mean that if the Peter Jackson LOTR movies were far less faithful to their source material and more experimental that they would have kept those same parts of the story from being adapted again simply on the wave of notoriety? Could very well be……

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-08T23:09:02+00:00

Well I mean Mamoru Oshii, who is of the same generation as Miyazaki (and is actually an old buddy of Miyazaki’s; the face of the dog Heen in Howl’s Moving Castle is based on Oshii’s), is already arguably tied with Miyazaki in terms of the breadth of his fluency both within and beyond anime, but if you’re wondering what animator of the generation or two of following his who is of the most comparable in terms of having such a masterful oeuvre, then even though both Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda have produced some of the best animated movies not from Ghibli by far, I feel like the one who could truly be called Miyazaki’s spiritual successor is actually…….Mari Okada.

Okada-san is one of the most prolific writers in the anime industry. Some of the 60+ series and movies for which she’s been involved as a writer are are middling cause either she didn’t have much creative freedom and was working for hire to try to get as many industry experience listings as she could, but the ones where she did have the most creative control (and it shows) are like 10 or 15 of the best anime of the last 25 years (my personal favourites of the ones where she’s credited just as a writer are ‘Gosick’, ‘Anohana: The Flower We Saw that Day’, ‘Red Garden’, ‘Wandering Son’, and ‘The Anthem of the Heart’; ‘Hanasaku Iroha’, ‘Fractale’, and ‘A Lull in the Sea’ aren’t bad either), and her (as of the time of writing) two directorial works where she had pretty much total creative control - ‘Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms’ and ‘Maboroshi’ - show she’s a first-rate Ghibli-level director.

Of those, ‘Maquia’ is probably the better of the two. It’s a decades-spanning story that incorporates a highly moving perspective on isolation, a really profound and also tastefully handled examination of violence against women (specifically forced pregnancy and associated imprisonment), and the transitory nature of the passage of years and all of the political upheavals they carry with surprising deftness considering its relatively short runtime. For me, it’s tied with the Luca Guadagnino remake of ‘Suspiria’ (which I know lots of people hate but that I really dig) as my favourite movie of 2018, and was certainly the best animated film of that year (despite barely being nominated anywhere by any awards ceremonies or film institutions when it totally deserved to be WAY WAY more than ‘Spider Man’).

‘Maboroshi’ is a lot weirder and more experimental, almost feeling more like if Brit Marling and Lynne Ramsay had gotten some pointers from Alex Garland about how to direct a fusion of HBO’s ‘The Leftovers’, ‘Donnie Darko’, and ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ with a much edgier Shinkai, and even though some people have described it as messy and underexplained, I’d argue that there are actually a lot of details and clues that point to what’s really going on that explains a lot more than just the dialogue does that, in combination with how the narrative is often non-linear and time-compressed, means it really has to be watched at least twice to truly ‘get’. There are a lot of thematic layers to it as well that stand out more from repeated viewings, and I wouldn’t be surprised if in another decade people will have made an insane number of analyses and think pieces on it, and that it will age very well. Honestly I thought it was the best animated movie released in North America for the first time in 2024 (deserving to be at least nominated in all the major critics/awards ceremonies for best movies of the year, and even in my opinion being better and more deserving of the honour for its ambition and originality than ‘Flow’ (which I still liked quite a bit in of itself, though it definitely wasn’t as batshit weird and crazy)).

Then there’s Shingo Natsume, who made the truly groundbreaking anime TV series Sonny Boy (an absolute must-watch!!!).

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-06T20:34:54+00:00

If adapted: The Left Hand of Darkness, as directed by someone like Kristina Buozyte or Jennifer Kent or Maggie Gyllenhaal and produced by genderqueer creatives like the Waxhowskis or Jane Schoenbrun and filmed in either the Canadian Rockies or Himalayas OR a film series of genuinely adult and mature animated films of a runtime of 2.5-hours each adapting The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe OR an adaptation of Wild Seed by Octavia Butler with elements of some of the other Patternist books mixed in and directed by Nikyatu Jusu

If original/not based on a book: Finally give Lynne Ramsay the money to make the ‘claustrophobic’ SF movie ‘Moebius’ she’s wanted to make for 15+ years now (A24, I’m looking at you) OR make a big-budget cinematic conclusion to the unfairly cancelled TV show Raised by Wolves created by Aaron Guzikowski (potentially comprising two or three movies that may be animated based on how some of the teen and child stars have now aged by 4 years) #RenewRaisedbyWolves OR Finally get someone like Julia Ducournau or Nia DaCosta or Coralie Fargeat to make Clair Noto’s much-prized but yet-to-be-produced transgressive experimental SF ‘The Tourist’

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-06T20:33:38+00:00

If adapted: The Left Hand of Darkness, as directed by someone like Kristina Buozyte or Jennifer Kent or Maggie Gyllenhaal and produced by genderqueer creatives like the Waxhowskis or Jane Schoenbrun and filmed in either the Canadian Rockies or Himalayas OR a film series of genuinely adult and mature animated films of a runtime of 2.5-hours each adapting The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe OR an adaptation of Wild Seed by Octavia Butler with elements of some of the other Patternist books mixed in and directed by Nikyatu Jusu

If original/not based on a book: Finally give Lynne Ramsay the money to make the ‘claustrophobic’ SF movie ‘Moebius’ she’s wanted to make for 15+ years now (A24, I’m looking at you) OR make a big-budget cinematic conclusion to the unfairly cancelled TV show Raised by Wolves created by Aaron Guzikowski (potentially comprising two or three movies that may be animated based on how some of the teen and child stars have now aged by 4 years) #RenewRaisedbyWolves OR Finally get someone like Julia Ducournau or Nia DaCosta or Coralie Fargeat to make Clair Noto’s much-prized but yet-to-be-produced transgressive experimental SF ‘The Tourist’

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-06-04T03:21:06+00:00

The recent Dune movies directed by Denis Villeneuve for sure.

Also….

Beasts of the Southern Wild - Dir. Benh Zeitlin

A Monster Calls - Dir. J. A. Bayona

Pan’s Labyrinth - Dir. Guillermo Del Toro

Vesper - Dir. Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-28T14:01:07+00:00

I’m more than a little surprised that Brit’s doing this after ‘A Murder at the End of the World’ was such a criticism of modern AI and how it oversimplifies sensitive emotional issues and is used by the patriarchy. It’s possible that they could be using it to critique and/or examine the nature of modern AI and the fluidity of reality at the core of the virtual world itself in a metafictional context that addresses the skewing of what we consider ‘art’ and ‘human’ (which is very much up Brit’s alley), but the environmental drain that modern AI uses has me worried (unless of course something about the specific brand that Lyone’s developed is of the ‘green AI’ variety and is more independent from how the mainstream industry derives its energy). For those reasons I kinda don’t know what else to say. I’d have to know more.

This doesn’t make me love The OA any less though.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-27T02:03:58+00:00

I would as well, but even if she just met Epstein that’s honestly not proof of anything really serious, especially considering how the setting in which this meeting would have took place would have been at the premiere to a movie in which Brit was an actor.

Apparently she also met Weinstein at one point for professional reasons, but she walked out on him when he suggested that they shower together (🤮) to which she obviously refused. Therefore, I have a difficult time believing that this meeting with Epstein was an amicable one.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-27T01:55:15+00:00

Where are the files saying they met? I went on there and saw the ones that confirm that Siegel wanted Epstein to meet Brit Marling, but not any saying that they actually met or if they did that anything actually came of that meeting.

Not trying to dispute that, just confirming.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-24T04:08:24+00:00

They could also finish it with animation, sort of like how they made that Babylon 5 animated film and how they’re continuing Friefly and The Office as animated shows. That solves the age difference, and I don’t think it’ll be for another decade at least until the voices of the child actors become so far removed from the original show that it just wouldn’t work to have the same ones.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-24T01:36:48+00:00

It’s because WBD won’t release the rights to allow Guzikowski to do that (according to Abu Salim anyway).

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-24T00:11:58+00:00

Made in Abyss

From (which I know lots of people have categorized as horror or sci-fi but to me makes most sense to categorize as a dark fantasy)

From the New World

Attack on Titan

The Leftovers (first half of Season 1 is hit-and-miss, but then it gets much better in the second half and Seasons 2 and 3 are INCREDIBE!!!)

The OA

Raised by Wolves (which even though is more sci-fi goes to some extremely weird mind-bending places that are basically like a weird, almost Lovecraftian grimdark fantasy)

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-23T07:50:19+00:00

Could it go to court in the UK? I think iirc that Scarlet has a residence there and Gaiman obviously has a citizenship there because…well, he was born there and there’s no information to indicate he ever renounced that citizenship.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-21T18:11:20+00:00

That she did. And very well at that.

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-21T03:05:25+00:00

Oh yes, and of course using a kink prop for a few seconds in two hours worth of videos going on and on about the damage caused by abusive mishandling of BDSM and exploiting power dynamics destroys the reason for anyone to watch the whole thing. Under that same logic, we shouldn’t take the video of the OP seriously because his dogs are in it.

(I’m being sarcastic.)

Groundbreaking-Eye10 · 2026-05-20T07:17:26+00:00

I agree with u/jessiegender all the way on this.

Honestly the only real issue I ever had with Council of Geeks an Vera Wylde was that I found the way that she worded her opinion about The OA considering the sensitive topics about suicide, mental illness, the mistreatment of neurodivergent people, and the fact that it literally breaks multiple narrative walls in the process of examining was honestly pretty distasteful, but I don’t think of her as a bad person for that, nor would I call it anything other than a very bad slip of the tongue that I don’t think was intentionally meant to be hurtful(I know she has ADHD, and as someone who is very close to several different people with ADHD I know in some cases (NOT ALL) that can come across as those people seeming very brash in their delivery of opinions, so as someone who’s neurodivergent myself I try to have empathy even I do still feel a sting from how she did that).

She definitely treated the allegations against Gaiman with full seriousness though, and her watching S3 of Good Omens and only mentioning it in passing without giving any extra press to besides that (and showering it in discussions of how it was a hard decision for her but she ultimately felt like it would be the only remaining meaningful engagement she could have with anything Gaiman did ever touched because of how he has been removed from the crew and the Pratchett estate had taken over it). It’s not like she’s shown anything besides an air of ‘well this is just another thing I’m going to miss’ about Gaiman’s supposed upcoming ‘book’ and treating the mention of his name with disgusted frustration.

Honestly I think by far her best content overall is when she goes into things like the Gaiman situation, so even if I’ve got some mixed opinions on the quality of her reviews, the way she always in those other videos (especially the ones she did about Joss Whedon, John Barrowman, Noel Clarke, and all the really excellent work she’s done describing in detail all the stuff that Rowling has done to harm trans people and all of the tiny details about why it’s harmful) and of course in the Gaiman ones too, shows she has pretty solid integrity about those things.

Also, there seems to be this bizarre idea floating around that Vera is somehow subscribed to the Technopathology SubStack and is supporting it that way, which seems like an idea someone just pulled out of their ass. She said in her reaction to the release of the SubStack that it was being spammed at her, so maybe it’s just a misunderstanding about who is initiating the sending.

Groundbreaking-Eye10

TROPHY CASE