Best of 2018 in Media
Jan. 1st, 2019 04:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaI write this every year and, very occasionally, actually post it in a timely fashion. Here's the best media which I consumed, but which was probably not released, in 2018.
I read 156 books in 2018, down from last year (176), and I don't mind. It was a long, awful year; I forgive myself all perceived imperfections.
In the first half of the year, my mother and I were working through Shakespeare's entire oeuvre, a strenuous but productive project; this fell apart as my dad's illness progressed, but my tentative plan is to resume in the second half of 2019. I had no other reading goals in 2018, unlike 2016, where I made active aims not to read white men, and 2017, where I aimed to make half of my books by authors of color. But the work I did in those years persists in my TBR and reading instincts, despite the Shakespeare project and the hell that was 2018. ~30% of the books I read were by PoC, ~67% of the books I read were not by cis men, and these metrics have limited value; prioritizing marginalized identities has also meant a shift towards works in translation, away from white women, and towards queer identities and neurodivergence that doesn't shake out into easy statistics. Perhaps I'll adjust my recordkeeping in 2019 to fit these evolving goals.
Anyway! I read some really phenomenal books this year, some engaging series not here listed but still enjoyed, and, most remarkably, a number of 5-star books, which indicates something between objective perfection and a text that made me love it so much as to forget all objectivity or even criticisms. These best-of-the-best were all 5 stars:
Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner
To say a book made me cry or laugh in public feels like too easy praise, makes it seem loud or mawkish; this is neither. It's graceful, playful, critical; the language is precise, the humor lively. The wish fulfillment functions both as social criticism and an escape, and transforms a quiet, charming text into something remarkable.
Mortal Fire, Elizabeth Knox
I've compared this more than once to Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, a connection I draw because of similar demographic but mostly because they capture wonder, discovery, and self-creation in parallel ways. This does smart thing with magic and its protagonist is smart with magic—a marriage of worldbuilding to character arc makes for a phenomenal conclusion.
Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant, Diana Wynne Jones
I read the entire Chrestomanci series this year, and they're all fun. But these two books are a rung above—Wynne writes great magic and big endings and critical, compassionate characterization, and it's that balance, and her fine humor, that make these so very good.
An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon
Not one of the 5-stars (the ending isn't flawless), but so vibrant and so angry, the sort of book that reminds that a laundry-list of marginalized identities isn't virtue signaling but is an intimate lived experience—wrapped, sometimes, in the intriguing trappings of a generation ship.
Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
A masterclass in intersectionality, in no ways dated, in fact still progressive. And beautifully written! Lorde's insistence on being self-possessed while being self-interrogative is vibrant, present, demanding.
William Shakespeare
Relegated only to honorable mentions because I imagine he will be on this list next year—but these early plays were in no ways a warm up or a limitation: I discovered text I'd previously overlooked, and they were remarkable.
Nods also to: C.J. Cherryh, reoccurring name on these lists; Carol, Patricia Highsmith; Deep Dark Fears, Fran Krause; the act of reading series, which I took to late, which frequently makes for lesser individual books, but which has a distinct cumulative value.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Perfect in every poly, right down to the round, plastic-looking, individual leaves. The action elements suffer, but the puzzle aspects, the level design, the artificial and superbly detailed interactive-diorama environments, made this the purest and most charming game I played in 2018.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
To my surprise, this may be the best open world game. It's beautiful, fluid, introspective; absolutely underwritten, but with mechanics that mostly compensate, and the steady, significant time I sunk into it was justified. I love the Korok most of all, and the fact that it's obligatory collectibles which bring the world to life.
Stardew Valley multiplayer
Stardew Valley has been on my best-of before (in 2016), but multiplayer was a completely different experience and perhaps the only thing that could improve the game. It was engaging and demanding, from the planned minutiae of early-game multitasking to the perfect, practiced synergy of managing a maximum-capacity farm. I played this with Teja, and it's one of the best friend-things we've done.
Pokemon Gold and Silver beta sprites
"But this isn't a game, really!" And that's fair. But Gen 2 has always been my favorite gen, and the spark of life that came with this discovery, the chance to see favorites anew, to glimpse a parallel-universe Pokemon and consider how the games and designs are made and why they work, was fantastic.
Pikmin series
My Nintendo-discovery, which began with Kirby and then with Zelda, extended into this franchise and I loved every bit of it: the use of scale, the absurdness and cuteness set against the fridge horror. "Lots of tiny pieces making up a whole" is top-tier aesthetic, and even better when the tiny pieces have idle animations.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
This is what games should do when they set out to explore the strange and titillating and unique elements of mental illness/minority experience: do actual research; create a better, more immersive product as a result. This is small, maybe too modest, but what it does right it does superbly.
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Not only was this a rewatch, it's a rewatch I started 2017—and it's still my favorite visual media of 2018. The strongest Star Trek, the one that holds up best, the one with tropes and dynamics and worldbuilding and characters I most love. It was necessary escapism and catharsis when I needed it most, and the work of processing my dad's diagnosis would have been different and worse without it.
Great British Bake Off
I'm surprised this hasn't been on a best-of before, but it makes sense—these are a little slight, a little fluffy. But slight, fluffy, warm, kind, and mindless was what I needed in late 2018, and (re)watching everything on Netflix provided exactly that.
The Good Place seasons 1-2
This surprised me: sincerely funny; sincerely unexpected and/or clever plot progression. I haven't been so consistently engaged in a new show, least of all a comedy, in a while.
The Witch
I didn't get around to many films this year, and have forgotten all of them but this: a film that crept up on me, that works better in retrospect, which uses its ending to transform its dirty, dire tone into wish fulfillment and an aesthetic strength.
Killing Eve season 1
"Hannibal but ladies and jokes" turns out to be a delight, hardly redundant, beautifully indulgent in its tropes and unexpectedly successful in tone. Sandra Oh is phenomenal, inhabiting Eve's flaws and desires and fluid internal conflict so convincingly.
Books
I read 156 books in 2018, down from last year (176), and I don't mind. It was a long, awful year; I forgive myself all perceived imperfections.
In the first half of the year, my mother and I were working through Shakespeare's entire oeuvre, a strenuous but productive project; this fell apart as my dad's illness progressed, but my tentative plan is to resume in the second half of 2019. I had no other reading goals in 2018, unlike 2016, where I made active aims not to read white men, and 2017, where I aimed to make half of my books by authors of color. But the work I did in those years persists in my TBR and reading instincts, despite the Shakespeare project and the hell that was 2018. ~30% of the books I read were by PoC, ~67% of the books I read were not by cis men, and these metrics have limited value; prioritizing marginalized identities has also meant a shift towards works in translation, away from white women, and towards queer identities and neurodivergence that doesn't shake out into easy statistics. Perhaps I'll adjust my recordkeeping in 2019 to fit these evolving goals.
Anyway! I read some really phenomenal books this year, some engaging series not here listed but still enjoyed, and, most remarkably, a number of 5-star books, which indicates something between objective perfection and a text that made me love it so much as to forget all objectivity or even criticisms. These best-of-the-best were all 5 stars:
Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner
To say a book made me cry or laugh in public feels like too easy praise, makes it seem loud or mawkish; this is neither. It's graceful, playful, critical; the language is precise, the humor lively. The wish fulfillment functions both as social criticism and an escape, and transforms a quiet, charming text into something remarkable.
Mortal Fire, Elizabeth Knox
I've compared this more than once to Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, a connection I draw because of similar demographic but mostly because they capture wonder, discovery, and self-creation in parallel ways. This does smart thing with magic and its protagonist is smart with magic—a marriage of worldbuilding to character arc makes for a phenomenal conclusion.
Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant, Diana Wynne Jones
I read the entire Chrestomanci series this year, and they're all fun. But these two books are a rung above—Wynne writes great magic and big endings and critical, compassionate characterization, and it's that balance, and her fine humor, that make these so very good.
Honorable Mentions in Books
An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon
Not one of the 5-stars (the ending isn't flawless), but so vibrant and so angry, the sort of book that reminds that a laundry-list of marginalized identities isn't virtue signaling but is an intimate lived experience—wrapped, sometimes, in the intriguing trappings of a generation ship.
Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
A masterclass in intersectionality, in no ways dated, in fact still progressive. And beautifully written! Lorde's insistence on being self-possessed while being self-interrogative is vibrant, present, demanding.
William Shakespeare
Relegated only to honorable mentions because I imagine he will be on this list next year—but these early plays were in no ways a warm up or a limitation: I discovered text I'd previously overlooked, and they were remarkable.
Nods also to: C.J. Cherryh, reoccurring name on these lists; Carol, Patricia Highsmith; Deep Dark Fears, Fran Krause; the act of reading series, which I took to late, which frequently makes for lesser individual books, but which has a distinct cumulative value.
Video Games
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Perfect in every poly, right down to the round, plastic-looking, individual leaves. The action elements suffer, but the puzzle aspects, the level design, the artificial and superbly detailed interactive-diorama environments, made this the purest and most charming game I played in 2018.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
To my surprise, this may be the best open world game. It's beautiful, fluid, introspective; absolutely underwritten, but with mechanics that mostly compensate, and the steady, significant time I sunk into it was justified. I love the Korok most of all, and the fact that it's obligatory collectibles which bring the world to life.
Stardew Valley multiplayer
Stardew Valley has been on my best-of before (in 2016), but multiplayer was a completely different experience and perhaps the only thing that could improve the game. It was engaging and demanding, from the planned minutiae of early-game multitasking to the perfect, practiced synergy of managing a maximum-capacity farm. I played this with Teja, and it's one of the best friend-things we've done.
Honorable mentions in video games
Pokemon Gold and Silver beta sprites
"But this isn't a game, really!" And that's fair. But Gen 2 has always been my favorite gen, and the spark of life that came with this discovery, the chance to see favorites anew, to glimpse a parallel-universe Pokemon and consider how the games and designs are made and why they work, was fantastic.
Pikmin series
My Nintendo-discovery, which began with Kirby and then with Zelda, extended into this franchise and I loved every bit of it: the use of scale, the absurdness and cuteness set against the fridge horror. "Lots of tiny pieces making up a whole" is top-tier aesthetic, and even better when the tiny pieces have idle animations.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
This is what games should do when they set out to explore the strange and titillating and unique elements of mental illness/minority experience: do actual research; create a better, more immersive product as a result. This is small, maybe too modest, but what it does right it does superbly.
Visual Media
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Not only was this a rewatch, it's a rewatch I started 2017—and it's still my favorite visual media of 2018. The strongest Star Trek, the one that holds up best, the one with tropes and dynamics and worldbuilding and characters I most love. It was necessary escapism and catharsis when I needed it most, and the work of processing my dad's diagnosis would have been different and worse without it.
Great British Bake Off
I'm surprised this hasn't been on a best-of before, but it makes sense—these are a little slight, a little fluffy. But slight, fluffy, warm, kind, and mindless was what I needed in late 2018, and (re)watching everything on Netflix provided exactly that.
Honorable Mentions in Visual Media
The Good Place seasons 1-2
This surprised me: sincerely funny; sincerely unexpected and/or clever plot progression. I haven't been so consistently engaged in a new show, least of all a comedy, in a while.
The Witch
I didn't get around to many films this year, and have forgotten all of them but this: a film that crept up on me, that works better in retrospect, which uses its ending to transform its dirty, dire tone into wish fulfillment and an aesthetic strength.
Killing Eve season 1
"Hannibal but ladies and jokes" turns out to be a delight, hardly redundant, beautifully indulgent in its tropes and unexpectedly successful in tone. Sandra Oh is phenomenal, inhabiting Eve's flaws and desires and fluid internal conflict so convincingly.
