Best of 2024 in Media

[juushika]

Books

Again, I did not track my reading stats in detail in 2024. According to my Goodreads Year in Books, I read 165 books totaling 31,186 pages, but this excludes a number of texts. For example, I finally got a local library card and discovered their zine collection; I've only read a handful, but what a fascinating/flawed little subculture in their offerings. I also read a few more game manuals, started but haven't yet finished some manga series, and this year I spent a larger than usual amount of time reading (and writing!) fanfic.

Many of these uncounted texts are short and wouldn't significantly effect my metrics. There's also a number of picture books in my 165-count. However stats shake out, this is a lighter reading year than is usual for me. Much of the time I would of spent reading, I spent writing instead.

Rereads: 12+. DNFs: 4+, not accounting manga series that I either will or won't try again later. Demographics: a mystery to us all. Favorites: a surprising number; I don't know if reading fewer books meant that I was more picky (suspect not) or if they were just lucky reads. Anyway, here they are:

My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell
I started 2024 off strong. This is a nuanced, incredibly immersive depiction of a student/teacher relationship, deeply embedded in the protagonist's changing view of that relationship, and that's what has stuck with me: its particular, remarkable moments, often recontextualized, even as they occur.

Our Share of the Night, Mariana Enriquez
A tour de force, split between family saga, the politics of power, and a robust speculative element. Without the balance between these parts, it would be a miserable drag; instead it's compelling and ruthless.

The World Cannot Give, Tara Isabella Burton
Toxic queer female friendships at boarding school, and the search for meaning: trashy, stylized, deeply my jam. Two five-stars from the same author is remarkable; when Burton is speaking my language, I'm listening hard.

Zetsuai 1989 and Bronze - Zetsuai since 1989, Minami Ozaki
This is an unusual favorite, because is objectively often total trash, a product of its time and of problems with the genre; there's a lot to laugh at, here. But it is also one of those foundational works which is indicative of why the genre keeps me coming back. A chaotic masterwork of obsessive, toxic love that does some things that still feel like unusual executions of its tropes.

Margaret Wise Brown
A deep dive into a picture book author already gives away that their work is remarkable; and Brown's is. She has a penchant for lists, think Goodnight Moon, for particular details in thoughtful arrangement; a quiet mundanity with emotional weight. Atop that, many of her books have been re-illustrated or were edited posthumously, providing fascinating insight into the relationship between text and art in picture books. My favorites, excluding the obvious: The Dead Bird, Two Little Trains, When The Wind Blew, and Night and Day.

Freeze Tag, Caroline B. Cooney
A most remarkable YA thriller, based on a fairy tale and carrying that ethos forward even when setting it against the social dramas of its genre; it creates a surprising sense of weirdness and horror. And Cooney's voice is remarkable, evocative and abrupt.

Leech, Hiron Ennes
I love a book that's willing to get weird, and this does it in its worldbuilding, which is cogent, complete, and still deeply, ingeniously bonkers: body horror, parasites, post-apocalyptic far future societies, and an identity that moves chaotically from federated to singular—everything but a kitchen sink. As a bonus, the audiobook is a phenomenal performance, dynamic and adjusting to suit accents and the changing protagonist, all without dipping into caricature.

Honorable Mentions in Books

The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany
A book about fairyland which feels truly magical, magical in atmosphere and structure and world, is a rare gift.

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Danielle L. McGuire
A punishing and necessary reframing of the role that women played in the civil rights movement; the best nonfiction I read all year.

The Shiny Narrow Grin, Jane Gaskell
I'm a sucker for early examples of a trope and how they inform the development of the genre, so the relationship between this and Klause's The Silver Kiss and the growth of the sympathetic vampire and YA paranormal romance is fascinating—and Gaskell's voice is uniquely strange.

The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohammed
This may as well have been written just for me: creepy forest, in autumn, with folklore and fairies and a deep pall of horror. I look forward to rereading it in autumns to come.

The Haunted Dollhouse, Terry Berger, David Berger, Karen Coshof
I read a fair number of picture books, particularly seeking weird and scary picture books, and it doesn't get weirder than this. Unique, inexplicable, utterly delightful; a forgotten gem.

The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
Luxuriously, infuriatingly slow and person-focused within a delightfully ridiculous thriller plot, this has some of the best characters I've encountered in recent memory.

A Guest in the House, Emily Carroll
There's unlikely to be a Carroll I don't like, but I read a bumper crop of graphic novels this year and this was easily the best—because of Carroll's touch, because it was willing to be gestural and borderline unexplained, set effectively against a surprising-for-Carroll mundane setting.

Last to Leave the Room, Caitlin Starling
I quibbled with this, and yet what it does well is explicitly to my taste: identity and interpersonal relationships as defined by care, harm, and social power, with a weird speculative concept and some truly creepy moments.

"Spar," Kij Johnson
Slipping in under the wire, a short story about the permeability of human/alien sexual (non-)relationships, invasive and discomforting and surprisingly convincing.

Games

The vast majority of the games on this list were ones I watched, not played. My partner played a lot of games this year, and I spent my solo gaming time writing, instead.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver remaster, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 remaster
It was great to go into the remasters having finally watched Blood Omen; the "lesser" games in this series are less successful, and Blood Omen is very retro, but it retains the hallmarks of plot, setting, atmosphere, and voice acting, and so enriches the series overall. And the remasters are, effectively, perfect: one good and one great game, upscaled while preserving their character, enriched by the gift of an archive of everything from unfinished levels to, my favorite, original studio recordings of the voice actors, which are a privilege to watch.

The Last of Us remake
Allow me to come in almost as late as possible to say this universally acclaimed game is really good. Not all of its dramatic beats work for me, but it leads with and commits wholly to its narrative, to its central relationship. I'm grateful that some Sony exclusives are making their way to PC, and the remake is stupid beautiful, and I can't wait to see the second game in 2025.

Silent Hill 2 Remake
My cozy game of the year: I would watch high resolution journeys through the fog and into the nightmare dimension with a flawless horror soundtrack forever; these were the best naps I had all year. This feels more than is faithful, which I like in a remake, preserving tone and atmosphere above all.

Days Gone
Defying all expectations (mixed reviews, zombies), this is the best open world title I've seen in some time. It avoids many of the pitfalls of the Ubisoft open world framework by making its storylines closely bound, has a clever AI gimmick in the hordes, sidesteps many boring zombie tropes, and has the most naturalistic dialog I've ever seen in game, a bold and endearing stylistic choice that really sells already strong characters. I kept waiting for this to fuck up, and it's not perfect, but it handles society rebuilding and disability with surprising care. And it's set in the PNW!

Pacific Drive
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Pacific Northwest car version, quirky and tender and creepy, with a stellar retro aesthetic, solid game loop, and true bond player/car bond. What a great year for games set where I live! They make me feel a certain way.

Alan Wake II
I couldn't stand the first Wake game, but love Control; this is exactly where I wanted Wake to go, how I wanted to see the franchises unite. It maintains some imperfect, often forgettable mechanics, but an AWE as a lived experience is all I could have hoped: trippy, self-swallowing, evocative in aesthetic. And! More PNW!

Honorable Mentions in Games

Crow Country
Unique among many retro games for its unique camera mechanic, which, in a puzzle/exploration game, gives navigation an ongoing sense of discovery. The speculative/mystery plot is cooky but committed, which means it's actually solvable by its own internal logics.

Tormented Souls
Of the retro-style horror games of the year, this is the silliest and, so help me, the best. It grows on you: ridiculously excessive on every possible vector, from cluttered mansion to creepy twins and time travel and medical horror, it manages to be campy but sincere horror and stupidly fun. And janky, but that's part of the retro-style charm.

Chants of Sennaar
The puzzle mechanic of this game (decipher glyphs from context and social cues) delight me; this scratched an itch given to me by Tunic and by learning sitelen pona: language as worldbuilding.

Slay the Princess
What a fantastic use of a visual novel and wrong ends as a format, and a non-CG art style which is accessible, stylized, dynamic, beautiful, able to get so weird. I only watched an LP of this, and should probably delve deeper, but it's fantastic.

Citizen Sleeper
This feels like a solo TTRPG as a video game, and I'm compelled by that, by what gamified formats can enable a solo-ish project, how minimal a game can be and maintain game elements.

Clock Tower
I love an early example of a genre that explains huge chucks of the genre in retrospect, and this did that and then some, because some of its mechanics (the degree of randomness in each run; the requirements to have need of an item in order to collect/use the item) feel like they've never been used elsewhere to this degree.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Like Clock Tower, I enjoy the surprise of a "never seen a game quite like this" from a retro title. The narrative structure here is incredibly unique, and well suits a Lovecraftian premise.

Mouthwashing
Unexpected restraint, given the subject matter and the many ways in which this isn't remotely restrained; a kind of restrained that doesn't mean subtle, with clear but grateful messaging even within the capitalism pastiche and gore.

We Know the Devil
I watched this on account of a fic exchange and then spent too long crying about it. A phenomenal set of inspirations and tone, with viciously aspirational themes: the violence and catharsis of being forced to confront self-actualization.

Bloom by Litza Bronwyn
In a year of discovering solo RPJs, this one is remarkable for the thoughtful depth of its prompts and its overlap with fandom; RPG as transformative work is nothing new, but this proves why that premise works.

Elegy by Miracle M
In a year of discovering solo RPGs, this is the one I could play on and off for years. A loving mishmash of vampire RPGs, set up to create a dynamic campaign with a lot of ongoing momentum, overflowing with an excess of style.

Visual Media

Scavengers Reign
My watch of the year, this is a remarkable achievement both of actual speculative evolution and of what the genre makes you feel: the wonder, the impossible scale and interconnection and alien verisimilitude of the natural world. It made me cry, what, three times? For its beauty; for the terrible awe of potential.

L.A. Confidential
Living up to all my culturally osmosed hype, this has noir vibes in thoughtful, indulgent abundance. And it has an OT3, and honestly that's what tips me from "fun watch!" to "I read fanfic for this."

The Legend of Vox Machina
Of course I was going to love this; and I did love this. It's the art of adaptation on fascinating display, as well as an insight into the success of the first campaign compared to later ones, namely: the sheer, giddy angst. So the first season, which is the most faithful & most angsty, is the best, but the whole show was fantastic.

Great British Bake-Off series 15
This is the best GBBO series in recent history by a long shot. Less of (although never none of) what make the show excruciating, but, more importantly, a stellar group of contestants in both ability and personality. This one just hits different: refreshing, honest, joyous.

Christine, Duel, The Hitcher
It was a great year to watch a film about men and cars; extremely queer movies about men, and violence, and cars. Each once delightful, and even better when set against one another.

Honorable Mentions in Visual Media

Face/Off
The platonic ideal of a Nicholas Cage movie: big concept, delightfully dumb lines ("I'd like to take his face, off"), unrepentant commitment. Weirdly sexy interpersonal dynamics? Title. His face ... off! I loved this.

Starman
When picking up a retro speculative film, I want to wonder "what in the fuck" when I'm done; and I did, here. The interpersonal implications of both the premise and the ending make this linger.

The Hunger
It has taken me far too long to see this, and I knew I'd enjoy it, and I did; no real surprises, since its imprint (tone, aesthetic, interpersonal dynamics) linger in vampire media, but as lovely to luxuriate in as the bed looks to be.

Pokemon Concierge
Look, I have nothing deep to say about Pokemon stop motion dioramas. Everyone wants to live in the Pokemon world, right? This is an imagining of just how that would feel, of course it's cozy, of course it's beyond charming. It has furret!

The Maxx
This reminded me of watching Aeon Flux: I would always rather a total dedication to weird and stylized than anything predictable, so, good news then!

The Italian Job (1969)
I love the remake and do not like funny movies and so was not primed to best like this, but I came for car shenanigans and received them in increasingly loving abundance; and, I relearned: I don't like humor, but I do like British humor.

Music

My top songs of 2024. Unusually, songs with lyrics won out by a large margin; I've gotten better at writing to lyrics & spent a lot of my writing time farming tracks for my Moody playlist. I also took a chunk of time to write a story set in ~2004/5, and so listened to a lot of 1990s-2005 alternative, a profound and surprisingly insightful nostalgia-binge.

My favorite new finds of the year were Medicine Boy and Crywolf. My favorite game soundtrack was Pacific Drive, because Silent Hill II really ought not count.

Comments

[rionaleonhart]

I really enjoyed reading this entry! Glad you enjoyed The Last of Us, which I love, and the Silent Hill 2 remake, which I'm looking forward to and/or terrified of playing at some point. And We Know the Devil is so weird and interesting and atmospheric!

You've made me curious about Days Gone, now! I've heard good things about Chants of Sennaar and Slay the Princess, too.

[juushika]

Hey, thank you!

Days Gone is a weird one! I think my overwhelmingly positive option is largely based in expecting it to be bad and then having it be good for exactly the reasons it could have been bad, because it intentionally engages things that made me go :/ (toxic masculinity, women in refrigerators, and the particular mix of "liberal" and conservative inherit to its setting which interacts in complex/icky ways with a narrative about social destruction and rebuilding). That gives it a kind of slow start, toxic vibes in a crapsack world until, finally, things start to change.

But that's not a disrecommendation! I loved it. I think it's fascinating set against other zombie stories interested in social rebuilding and in the question of how an inherently violent setting sculpts the work of rebuilding within it; it doesn't try to have the gravitas of The Last of Us but it's still in conversation with The Last of Us, among other titles (I thought a lot about Day of the Triffids). And, fannishly, the line delivery & mocap has a sort of naturalistic, memetic rhythm that makes the character interactions ridiculously charming.