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. ( Read more. )

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.

A year's-best before February? Is it, indeed, early January? Every year I post a list like this: Here's the best media I encountered, but which probably was not released, in 2022.

Books

I read 244 texts in 2022; not by even the most generous definition could all those be called "books." ( Demographics. )

These Violent Delights, Micah Nemerever
Those texts that feel written for me leave me at a loss, put on the spot: is this the best book? how does it measure up objectively? But the truth is that I don't care. I loved this; it was a phenomenal way to end the year, and I treasure its indulgences.

The Northern Caves, nostalgebraist
The massive book hangover this gave me made it one of the more memorable reading experiences of the year. That juncture of nostalgia and criticism, revelation and desolation, grabbed and shook my little brainmeats like a dog toy.

Nonfiction on audio
It was a banner year for this format; while repainting the majority of a house, I read over 40 books on audio, almost all nonfiction, mostly true crime but with a sprinkling of memoir and science. I'm grateful for their company. The best were:

Couple Found Slain: After a Family Murder, Mikita Brottman (get real, real mad about the consequences of an insanity defense and state-mandated institutionalization!)

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Adam Higginbotham (realize how profoundly awful was Soviet control of Ukraine & be afraid of acute radiation syndrome!)

Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York, Elon Green (forgotten serial murderer, except actually it's, most delightfully, about the history of the queer community)

Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control , Stephen Kinzer (a very human view of the profoundly unethical, dehumanizing research of MKUltra)

Consent: A Memoir by Vanessa Springora (abuse memoir about the arts culture that enables and abets the grooming of adolescents, written with unforgiving clarity)

A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, Reginald Dwayne Betts (prison memoir from a poet; my first prison memoir, and very productive)

Video game manuals
Tunic got me into reading game manuals, and it was a blast. See this post for complete list and longer thoughts, but the TL;DR: quality varies, of course, but the sense of potential in a game manual is unrivaled.

Honorable Mentions in Books

As You Wish, Cary Elwes
Pure comfort reading; I could listen to those involved in the making of the Princess Bride talk about their love of the Princess Bride forever—they seem to view it as fondly as I do.

Happy Sugar Life, Tomiyaki Kagisora
Why is manga always so overwritten? Nonetheless I loved this: a fun horror romp through codependency and unusually intimate relationships, with saccharine pastel stylings that create a fun contrast.

The Scholomance series, Naomi Novik
Novik's worldbuilding style is so satisfying, and the ethical thought experiment of this, giving one person such ridiculous levels of power that it's possible to entertain a one-person-saves-the-world fantasy, but at incredible cost.... I found this series really satisfying.

Noumena series, Lindsay Ellis
Truth of the Divine took this from iddy wish fulfillment to bitter, mean desperation, and the one atop the other is delicious. It feels weird to mark as favorite a series that's not yet complete, but I loved the second book so much.

Compromise, Assimbya
And it feels weird to put a friend's fic on a best-of list, but finally reading this was my culmination of fondly watching other people read Dracula Daily and thinking about source not just a literature but as conversation; and this enriches that conversation immensely.

Games

Tunic
I played this back in March and went, well, that's GOTY. I love media that hits this way, that I know I'll love & then do. Tunic I love for its wonder: this isn't the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia re: classic video games, but the actual feeling of potential and discovery. I went crazy for this thing, 100%'d it (within reason) (that is, collectables and most achieves, and reading deep lore online, but not personally translate the runes), wouldn't stop talking about it. The manual conceit made me pick up a while new hobby, as above. Remarkable.

Signalis
GOTY runner-up; we haven't yet replayed for more/truer ending(s), or it might beat out Tunic. (This is the first of many favorites that I didn't play myself but instead watched my partner play.) Oh, I loved this: it's so cerebral and yet its internal logic is impeccable, the answer to every asinine Resident Evil puzzle. The relationship between puzzle structure, enemies, and lore is brilliant. The plot is everything I want in iterative/cyclical narratives, especially of the android variety. As is a running theme, I love a crapsack and/or decaying and/or meat world, and this! this is all of the above. [This space intentionally left blank.]

Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Old Blood, The New Colossus, and Youngblood
I was actively opposed to these games for years because I didn't trust them to handle the subject matter in any tolerable way. But Jacob Geller has talked about them so much, positively, as a Jew!, so I took the risk, and: They're powerful and so well-balanced, a ridiculous power fantasy of Nazi-killing where Nazis aren't a blank stand-in for guilt-free target but are worth killing precisely because they're Nazis; where the good guys are good, and empowered, particularly for the reasons Nazis hate them.

Scorn
Because this is another watched-not-played, I was spared any less stellar bits, like combat. But oh, I loved this. Crapsack worlds that are also meat worlds, my beloved; and this is so intricate, so embodied, so gratuitous in that intimate, unsettling way that I want body horror to be.

Character.AI
This is a pretty advanced neural language model chatbot that's currently free to use. What's the game? The game is "talk to chatbot." But a cogent conversations with artificial personalities is my dream, and this comes impressively close.

Honorable Mentions in Games

Exo One
I'm a sucker for being terrified by the infinite size of space, and this is a game about flying as a tiny little spacepod across vast alien landscapes and between asteroids, with themes to match. It's a little indie title with associated limitations, but it gave me such a feeling.

Hollow Knight
My partner replayed this at my request and I liked it better the second time around; Souls-likes benefit from a closer eye, obviously, and it this was a more thorough and complete run. And I am a sucker for this style of worldbuilding—not so much the "tease apart the lore" bit as the "cycles of loss destroying an already-sundered world; but still, your role has meaning" part. Also the aesthetics of this game are phenominal.

Death's Door
I don't think about the plot of this a ton, and generally lack the investment in this that I have in most Souls-likes. But it's so impeccably cute & the soundtrack is great; a fantastic experience in the moment.

Visual Media

Adventure Time
I tried watching this some years ago, and the first season or two were fine. But watching the entire run with someone? Well, it turns out widely acclaimed cartoons are good, actually; we loved this. There's an corollary to rule of cool which says something like "rule of batshit crazy, if all of it matters": the short format, joke endings, and buck-wild worldbuilding mean that anything is possible, but the overarching plot & knack for call-backs means that it all has meaning. It's so fun & sincerely satisfying.

Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space
If I could live in any fictional world.... Look, this is a weird adaptation, both summarizing and retelling and altering the original run; and there's more plot, but somehow it doesn't manage to be any less weird or even to answer more questions. And yet! I loved this, loved its slow mundane pace and bizarro world and cotton-candy body horror.

Star Trek: Lower Decks
This actually gets modern Trek, it understands how to reflect lovingly on prior Trek without turning into a vain nostalgia machine; refocusing on the nobodies is the counterbalance I needed to every time I got really mad about Disco; it's actually funny. We burned through this in, like, two weeks.

NoClip
My takeaway from discovering this channel and devouring their documentaries is that games are hard to make; very hard, and made by people that love games. I don't mean people who own ginormous AAA studios; I mean that games are actually made by ridiculously overworked normal people who really love the medium. These two tenets are obvious but so ubiquitous and fundamental that they've altered how I view games.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
This is utterly unbothered by happy endings, and that's as it should be: cyberpunk ought always be a larger-than-life technicolor grimdark capitalist shitshow. Great characters, great action, but what I love best is seeing what narratives can achieve when they're more concerned with good writing than with being nice or open to easy sequels.

Honorable Mentions in Visual Media

Squid Game
The particular way this handles cliffhangers is stupid. But boy howdy to I love a deadly game, and this is a great one: ridiculous aesthetics played against gratuitous gore, bucketloads of social commentary—all very much my jam.

Arcane
I've watched a lot of "cartoons for kids, but actually delightful as an adult, especially because an adult is able to appreciate the meteoric rise in queer content over the years" lately, and frankly I love those more. But the ability for a Western cartoon to be 300% for adults, actually; to be ruthlessly grim with gorgeous, intricate art.... Well. Turns out that's pretty great.

Knives Out and Glass Onion
I do not have any deep take here; I just love murder mysteries and cathartic social commentary/revenge fantasies, and the right level of camp. And a sequel that isn't bad!

Music

My Spotify top songs of 2022 is almost an identical list to last year's. It wasn't a big music year, and when I was listening it was to my usual playlists in the usual cycles.

Every year, sometimes super duper late, I write this list. Here's the best media I consumed, but which was probably not released (or even new to me!), in 2020. There sure are a lot of books.

Books

I read ~243 books in 2020. That's an intentional step down from last year's 374, but higher than expected; my prior average was ~150 a year. ( Reading wrap-up musing. )

The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, Ursula K. Le Guin
Crossing the last Hainish book off of my TBR would have been more bittersweet had this not been so good. The series has incredible breadth, but never enough—and this answers that, peering into the cracks in civilizations in a way that insists on increasingly dynamic, diverse worlds. Ratings are meaningless, but this was my my first five-star of the year and one of the only short story collections to ever warrant that rating.

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
I'm an easy sell on exploring infinite spaces conceptually; what amazed me here is how solid it is in execution without feeling overworked—it's a delicate, balanced, beautiful little book. Again ratings mean nothing, but this is my last 5-star review of the year, and what a high note to end on.

Memoirs of a Spacewoman, Naomi Mitchison
I love when a longtime entry on my TBR is worth the wait. The literal feminist elements have grown dated, but the underlying approach absolutely fulfills this intent: high-concept alien worldbuilding (fun!) with a fundamentally social, interpersonal, communicative, sexual lens (engaging, satisfying!).

Elemental Logic series, Laurie J. Marks
I came to these when I needed to distracted by a totally different world that still interrogated what it means to inhabit, be response for, and change a world. They had a significant positive impact on a shitty year.

Edward Gorey
Bind-ups make Gorey's work so accessible and encourage a deep-dive into his experimentation, running themes, and the conversation between his books. He's like "what if potato chips were also a satisfying, complete meal"—tiny, addictive, even repetitive, but substantial.

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, Chris Van Allsburg
Some childhood favorites live up to their memory, and this is literally about spinning a single illustration into an entire imagined narrative—which is childhood memory in a nutshell.

Honorable Mentions in Books

The Steerswoman series, Rosemary Kirstein
This was on my list in 2016 (and maybe one day I will actually give it a proper review), but let it be known that it is even better upon reread: the reveals are so well plotted; the beauty of revelation is more keenly felt for anticipating it. I don't know that I've ever had such a successful reread, which is no small achievement.

Goth & Goth (manga), Otsuichi
The novel was on my list in 2015 when I first read it. Rereading both it and the manga together only makes me wish I'd also rewatched the film—this is one of my favorite stories and I love how it alters/reinforces in iteration.

Vita Nostra, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
Inversions of the magical school trope & I have since hit it off, but this is where I first encountered it and it continues to be my gold standard—not because it's a perfect book, but because what it does with this trope is so thorny that it entangles even the reader in its broken logic and magical transformation.

Blame!, Nihei Tsutomu
The film adaptation was on my list in 2017; the manga is a different beast entire. A nod to the mention of NaissanceE and Control, below, which pushed me to read this. In what turned out to be a year of conceptualizing the inconceivable infinite, this was one of the least plotty but most memorable.

Carmilla, Sheridan Le Fanu
I love the new insights prompted by a reread, but I also love when a reread lives up to every memory—and this is as rich, sensual, unsettling, and gratifying as I remember it to be. What better possible takeaways could there be from this particular book?

A Phantom Lover, Vernon Lee
Queer women writing women in horror makes for exceptional character sketches—unprettied; compelling. I can't wait to read more Lee; I feel like I'm saving her as a future gift for myself.

When I Arrived at the Castle, Emily Carroll
This makes me wish all of Carroll's work were standalone and written first for the page (some of her comics are more successful in their original scrolling digital format) because it's nearly flawless—a visceral, intimate fairytale-horror.

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter
This is that perfect storm of repeated failed reviews: what more could I say about this famous thing? and how can I describe such a fierce pleasure? I love this now more than ever—such excesses! such productive thematic contradiction between stories!

Pennterra, Judith Moffett
Like Memoirs of a Spacewoman, this was another longterm TBR resident that met all those years of expectation. My notes read "alien/human sex book" and boy howdy is it that—a complex, uneasy, but fundamentally joyful and compassionate exploration of entirely alien, very thorough sex.

Leopold and Loeb: The Crime of the Century, Hal Higdon
Consider this the thematic cousin to Graham's So Brilliantly Clever, on this list in 2015: this crime also fascinates me; this treatment is thorough, sympathetic, and never exculpatory. It handles the queer elements with particular grace.

Games

NaissanceE
I played this back in February, called it as my game of year then, and I was right. This is my every fear of heights, falling, scale, and insignificance embodied in a breathing human form and a massive inimical space. I've never had such a visceral reaction to a game. I've linked to it before, but I found this through Jacob Geller's video, which is great and speaks to elements that worked for me. The game is free! Play it!

Control
I watched my partner play this, and watching spared me from most of its flaws re: actual gameplay. But what it achieves beyond those flaws is entirely up my alley and contributed to a good year for media about inhospitable architecture and existential dread. I love best Jesse's response to the unknown: that she seeks it doesn't render it any less dangerous, but she still seeks it—the unknown is her home and companion.

Anodyne 2: Return to Dust
Playstation-era graphics are highly underexploited as nostalgia bait; I love the 3D aesthetic. I streamed this for Teja and read all the dialogue aloud, which made me/us linger over the game more than we would have otherwise. I did more grief processing in playing this game than I have in the entire time since my dad died. Dust is sin, dust makes us mortal—and all that means is that dust is life.

Honorable Mentions in Games

Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I don't put this under honorable mentions to discredit it—it came out at just the right time and reshaped my quarantine. But I stopped playing it over summer because I needed to transition away from that coping method and because I don't enjoy the cycle of preemptive investment created by seasonal patches. I hope this will be on my best of list next year, when I can return to the completed game.

Ooblets
I was really anticipating this and played it in early access—indeed it's everything I hoped for: wholesome, excessively quirky, stupidly cute. But I'm not keeping up with patches for the same reason as AC:NH; I'll return when it's finished.

Human Fall Flat
I played a lot of co-op games this year. This was unlike the rest: puzzles instead of gunplay or gamified progression, so we spent less time with it, but also cooperative, creative, with hilariously squishy funsics—it was some of the purest fun I had all year.

Luigi's Mansion series
The joy of playing a Nintendo franchise is watching the gameplay improve and the environments grow ever more lovingly detailed; the joy of this series in specific is unmitigated spoop. The combination is a Halloween delight that immersed me in my favorite season.

Visual Media

Hannibal
This was on my list in 2015 and has secretly been there in every intervening year because I kept rewatching it while building forward in the series and working up the courage to finish season 3—because I love this show so much that more is overwhelming and the idea of it ending is even worse. Ironically s3 was the perfect answer to that anxiety, reflecting obsessively over the series in the same way I do and then ending so, so well.

The Untamed
I was a reluctant sell on this, both for its viral popularity and for its cold open, which works in retrospect is a cheesy, confusing introduction. But it got me so good. The long, slow, tragic, intimate burn of it pays back that initial investment hundredfold, and I'm delighted that their solution to adapting under censorship was to create a plethora of queer subtext even where it doesn't exist in the source material.

Honorable Mentions in Visual Media

Jacob Geller
I sure do love a video essay, but Geller's precise fascination with existential horror and his penchant for "wait, hold on, I promise they're related" interconnections between stories and subjects is so much my style that in a very alternate universe this could be my channel—meanwhile in this universe, I have the videos without the massive effort of making them.

Big-concept SF B-movies
I'm talking Cube's survival game or Coherence's parallel worlds with a twist ending. These were my answer to quarantine: their tension mirrors real life but the engaging-to-ridiculous high concept premises distract from it entirely. The very best of these was Predestination, which is so queer, surprisingly clever, and a strong adaptation of a promising but dated work.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
"This is so good," I said with a sense of confused wonder after every episode (after the first handful). My standards were set for Voltron: Legendary Defender: watchable, sometimes good, but a little dumb and/or constrained by format. What I got is something that feels intentional from the onset, with consistent, slow, delicate character growth and a joyful lived diversity.

A Portrait of a Lady on Fire
The female gaze as a reciprocal dynamic, the careful details, the perfect balance of its ending--this left me clarified and sobbing.

Music

Here's my Spotify Wrapup for 2020. In autumn I made a long, messy playlist of the spooky/edgy/Southern Gothic trash I listen to every autumn; in autumn I also made music a big part of my daily activities, so this is the bulk of my top 100.

The other highlight was Cereal Dreamers: Spooky Stories, a collaborative (made to order? royalty free?) collection of spoopy background music that I find incredibly charming.

These are, and I swear it's (almost definitely) true, the final crossposts. Hurrah! Hurray!


( Are the Fuddles nice people? )


( Talking Cats: The Musical with my family. )


( Interpersonal relationships, trauma, hurt comfort, and socio-political commentary in Cherryh )

The very great catch-up post.

March, 7: Saw the Twilight Sad in concert
at the Doug Fir. Most of the bands I see with Dee are ones I don't much listen to or only listen to live; I have never yet been disappointed by a performance. This is in part because Dee has great taste, and in part because live music is its own energy and sound—and this show was a great example. The energy flow between musicians and audience was joyful and near palpable; the band was so obviously happy to be there, with us, and I felt somewhat responsible for that—a phenomenal experience.

March 8: Made trip to Corvallis
A brief one, as it was right before finals week for Devon. The very first thing that happened as I walked in the door: Devon's mom asked, "oh, how is Mamakitty doing?" and Devon went "WELP it seems I forgot to tell you something." A weird trip, not entirely in a bad way; I missed seeing my sister but did see my parents.

( Family Stuff under the cut. )

March 13: Traveled back to Portland, got sick
Started with a tolerable cough; remained a tolerable cough until directly after:

March 21: Saw The Decemberists in concert
I can't remember how many times I've seen them, now. Many! At least four, if you count Meloy's solo show. I occasionally listen to them, but not often; Meloy's twang sounds raw on record. But I adore them live, and this concert was no exception. It was in the Keller Auditorium, which is quite stately, but they still got everyone on their feet. Their concerts are performance art, despite the minimal performance (whale excepted): presence, energy, vivid dark humor, self-awareness, an appetite for the absurd, a proactive engagement with content and audience.

Then was really sick
Polite of it to wait until I had free time to be miserable. Complaining about a cold feels trite, because no one enjoys them. But post-Mama, still unsure how I've recovered; post-travel, which is exhausting even if positive; post-two big, beautiful, but energetic concerts: I'm already bereft of energy and cluttered with unexamined feelings, and being ill and nigh unable to sleep didn't help.

My saving grace is that I've been consuming a lot of engaging, enjoyable media—and while I don't have the energy to spend time in my own life, escaping into another is welcome. The problem is that I should be reviewing, or at least making note of, all I've consumed, but I feel disorganized and feeble, and can't set my thoughts to order. So, I thought, writing some of that down may help, and I wrote.

My grandfather's funeral was a few weeks ago. Everyone in my nuclear family went but me; I went to Corvallis to watch my parent's house and the family dog while they were away. My impression is that this is the best decision I could've made; it sounds like the funeral was a minor nightmare, too much alcohol and grief and drama in one place; I would have found it extremely stressful, and that's not how I want to remember my grandfather. Jamie and I meanwhile had a fine few days of watching bad TV and walking in autumn weather.

Hanukkah began the night before Thanksgiving this year—very early! I was down in Corvallis Wednesday/Thursday/Friday last week, and then came back up so that I could watch the house and approximately one thousand cats (kittens, man, they're like a dozen cats in one small cat body) while Dee went up to visit her family over the weekend and Devon did Thanksgiving with his extended family on Saturday. My family and I had latka for the first night of Hanukkah, traditional French Toast on Thanksgiving morning, and a very relaxed Thanksgiving dinner that night. The weather has been starkly cold, dry and bright and on the edge of freezing, just what I needed to clear my mind in between too much socialization. The menorah has been burning each night both at my parent's house and at Dee's house here in Portland.

Hanukkah's early date has made me extremely sensitive to how easily it (the holiday, Judaism, take your pick) is overlooked—that sense that with Thanksgiving passed we're all now preparing for the "holiday season," but half of mine is nearly over, and so "holiday" obviously reads as "somewhat secular Christmas." I celebrate secular Christmas, too! with enthusiasm. But the erasure is needling me, this time around.

I think it's reasonably safe to say I've been in another depressive episode these last few months. Given the accommodations in the rest of my life, these episodes are mild now—pedestrian, even: something between ennui and anxiety, a suffused discontent and sadness with the catharsis of a breakdown. The best recourse is just to try to stay out of my own head, thus the constant reading and TV watching and gaming. I got worse and better—see: the catharsis of a breakdown—while in Corvallis, which was expected because even family stuff stresses me out. Been listening to Kelli Schaefer's Black Dog when I'm hopeful; Nick Drake's Black Eyed Dog the rest of the time.

The day after I sent an application to the Feral Cat Coalition, I discovered that Gillian is declawed. She was trying to knead my leg and it wasn't happening; the next day I was able to hold her paw and try to extend her claws, and there are none. I suppose that's why her feet look so small and deformed; this is the first time I've had close contact with a declawed cat, and of course I knew it was wrong but I didn't really understand it until now, and it makes my heart ache. We're assuming that if declawed, she's likely also neutered.

Instead, the next step is to take her to a vet to have her checked for a microchip—because as Dee has argued, she may have previous, fantastic, bereaved owners that adopted her already declawed. If those owners were the ones that declawed her ... well, I'm trying not to think of that. If she's not microchipped (I've already checked local and online lost pet postings), we're seriously considering getting her treated for fleas and taking her in—probably as soon as we have her checked for a microchip, because a declawed cat shouldn't be outdoors. We'll still take in Mama come cold weather, which would mean three active cats and one geriatric confined cat. Whether or not this happens depends on whether Devon is willing/able to subsidize more of the animal upkeep fees, because Gillian would essentially be ... mine.

I'm unsure how I feel about this. Scratch that, I know how I feel: terrified.

Last weekend Devon came up with all the rest of the stuff I had in storage. He had been digging in the garage for my box of stored clothes, because I've been looking hard are reassessing, and essentially reclaiming, my self-presentation (which has caused me a great amount of financial anxiety, as such things cost money); instead he unearthed everything I had left in boxes after my moves from Portland apartment to Corvallis townhouse to Devon's parents's house and it was ... overwhelming. Fantastic, cathartic, but also a lot of busywork to sort a dozen boxes and now my room is a mess because I need to figure out better storage options and guys I am hip-deep in books I really am. So there's that: I'm already exhausted from having to be Productive, Responsible Adult.

The process towards August was years and years of wanting and months of planning and then a whirlwind of actually doing. Gillian showed up on our porch just a few weeks ago, and then I named her and now I love her. I go out with a book and sit with her, and I press my forehead to hers and I want the best for her. I've been looking at various neutering/vet check/adoption options for her, even using the phone, even though it would be much easier just to do nothing. But right now, every possible answer is terrifying: whether she has owners, and whether they deserve to have her; the finances and responsibility of another cat; what her presence and safety means to my heart. I want someone else to be able to make these decisions for me, but no one can. (Me: DEVON WHAT DO. Devon: Well, she does seem like a fantastic cat! Me: YOU ARE NOT HELPING.)

Tonight I'm on the train to Corvallis, even though I saw Devon just last weekend. He was supposed to have this Friday off, but doesn't; it doesn't matter, because we want to be together and I would love to leave my messy room and all these troubles behind for a few days, and let him take care of me while I do nothing at all remotely related to being a Productive, Responsible Adult. And when I get back, maybe I'll know what's happening with money and cats, and Gillian can go in a box and to the vet—but right now I should just start laundry, and that I think I can do.

And all the things I don't want they're full
Of love and longing

Yesterday night, Dee, Devon, and I saw Florence + the Machine.

I saw Florence + the Machine.

I cannot overstate the importance of this music in my life; it is how I became friends with Dee and why I live here now and a vast part of how I aim to live at all; her first album means the world to me, and Dog Days are Over is one of my formative songs. I've written about her too many times (1, 2, 3). I never got to see her first tour (but I have a shirt! Dee got it for me, and it is heather gray and orangey-pink and literally the worst thing for my complexion, and I love it to pieces), but I got to see this one.

I've been doing a fair bit better lately in the realm of depression and back pain, but we've had a few busy days and when Devon is here my defenses all drop and I tend to dredge up lingering ick, hoping, perhaps, that he can cure it. I was tired and couldn't find the shirt I wanted to wear and we got there almost but not quite lateish and had seats in the far back with almost no visibility and they were out of chocolate ice cream and I worried—I worried hard—that this event that I had looked forward to for so long and needed so badly to be Important, as important to me as her music , would be an opportunity lost to my incredible potential for melancholy.

And when she came on stage the whole audience stood and I, at just over 5 feet, could see nothing over the sea of heads; not an inch of the stage.

But Florence is not music for missing out—not just because I love it but because it is about living life with spirit and abandon and foolishness and love and the whole of your heart. I put on my shoes, and Devon and I made a loop out through the back, through the food court, and in towards the heart of the audience. And when the stage came into view and I could actually see Florence, blue and red and glowing against the stage, I burst into tears.

Most of the audience stayed standing through the entire show, and what had been precious space became almost abundant, and we shared breathing room with strangers and found a place at the tail end of the truly enthusiastic, foot-of-the-stage crowd. I haven't actually been hugely fond of Ceremonials so far, but—again, I always do this with F+tM—I heard each song as if for the first time, and all of them said that that was exactly where I needed to be: not feeling despondent in the back, but watching and raising my hands towards hers and singing along to Dog Days in the same full-throated voice she taught me.

F+tM songs are two things: whole-hearted euphoria and fear. They are dedication and failure, they are giving yourself over and being terrified of the thought. In the same way that Stephen Dedalus's epiphanies contradict one another without losing one whit of their individual truth, there's nothing hypocritical in the fact that you can swear to live life fully in one breath and then cry with the next. One is the price we pay for the other; we are our own human sacrifices, raised up, offered to the sky.

I live in the moment, and too easily forget one half for the other. These last few months haven't been difficult so much as they've been a vague and endless Swamps of Sadness, and I can get immured there and forget that I have seen glimpses of the other side. But I was there, yesterday, in the crowd, and I have been reminded.

And I am so, so thankful.

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off

I have been having one hell of a roller coaster ride over here man let me tell you.

Devon was up on Saturday, but didn't stay until Sunday because he's fighting some sort of cold/allergy/sinus infection thing of ick. It was fantastic to see him and I spent half the day in tears. So I said that Portland and I have unfinished business. Devon-long-distance and I have unfinished business and Whitman and I have unfinished business too, and this last week has been a particularly strong reminder of all of that. Normally I have a poor memory, which I may call a pain in the ass but actually rely on to protect me because as it turns out, the last (oh say) ten years of my life? really not worth remembering. This last week has been nothing at all like those years, but there's been so much emotional turmoil that sometimes it's hard to tell, and...

It's just that I remember it all.

Examples wouldn't help you or me—because they aren't your memories, and because fuck no I do not want to dwell on them. But all of it, everything about my time here in Portland, everything about seeing Devon this weekend, reminds me of something else, some random thing that I've done a perfectly good job of forgetting these last few years. Not every memory is awful, but each one is tied a past that is, and so all of it, even the nostalgia, it fucking hurts and scares me.

But after Devon left, Dee hung out with me in the living room for a few hours and we just talked. I talked, I rambled, I touched on some of why this is so difficult and scary, and it was distracting and cathartic and wonderful bonding time. I didn't have to ask for it, I don't know if I expected it, but—ah, this is what friends do, isn't it? They're there for each other. That's still a revelation for me, a surprise—that I have friends; that this is what that means. On Sunday we went walking, in the glorious and gentle overcast weather, we went to Starbucks and poked at awesome stores and had that sort of perfect day where you do exactly what you want, purely because you want to, and come away feeling satisfied, which is no small thing. At night we watched The Dark Crystal and it was fucking fantastic. These things surprise me, too. Happiness always does.

And then today I thought I'd ride on that high—the high of discovering that Devon can leave without the world crashing down upon my shoulders, the high of having loved ones and being happy—by writing a book review and making dinner and attempting my version of productivity, and instead I was singularly nonfunctional and after a mini-breakdown I just decided to lock myself in my room and pretend I didn't exist anymore, at least for a few hours, and ain't that just the hallmark of mental fucking health. It's hard for me to talk about these things with her—to talk about the wild ride of the brain crazies, because I find it difficult to work these things out in words; to explain the effect they have on me and why I don't want to leave my room, because I fucking hate to admit the truth about myself because I just don't like that truth very much, you know? And so I repay her love by being the bad non-communicative friend ... but on the flipside I come out feeling a little better, a bit more prepared to try again.

I feel it all I feel it all
I feel it all I feel it all
The wings are wide the wings are wide
Wild card inside wild card inside

Oh I'll be the one who'll break my heart
I'll be the one to hold the gun

I've sort of flayed myself alive here: I've opened myself up to the thin air and it hurts like a motherfuck, believe you me. And when I see in there, I don't like it all. It's almost enough to make me wish I didn't know it was there. But I did this to myself and so I can't regret it—and not just because I don't want to look like an ungrateful coward, unhappy even when she gets what she wants; but because I did it because I wanted to. I want this opportunity and this pain. I want to work things out and embrace these new experiences and give myself the chance to become myself. (I want the dog days to be over, if you will.) That doesn't make it any easier, though.

I love you more
I love you more
I don't know what I knew before
But now I know I wanna win the war

So it's been an intense couple of days is all I'm saying. And beautiful. And awful. And intense.

And I think I caught Dev's cold thing.

P.S. Sometimes in the process of writing all these things out I manage to resolve them, at least a bit, at least temporarily, in my head. Almost all the time I manage to tire myself out. That can make my replies to comments absent and/or slow. But those comments are still so welcome and productive and beloved, and I don't want anyone to think otherwise, even if I can't always express it.

Sending an introduction to Florence + the Machine email to my father, who keeps asking "What is Florence + the Machine?" given that he keeps running into her—on my shirt on the cruise, on TV during the Oscars when we were over for dinner last night. Crying like a child (well not a child, of course: like a woman, growing) while I listen to "Dog Days Are Over" from the list of videos I've dig up videos to include. Ah, what else is new? You'd think eventually this would wear off, this unavoidable swell of emotion but ah—not yet. Despite myself I'm not really complaining, but it did make it ... well, difficult really, to include that track in my email. It felt almost too personal, almost too raw.

Have yet to reach sniffling, but I'm miles deep into the land of shivering and aching. I'm probably running a fever, but I don't know for sure. I much prefer this to mucus: I have a lot of experience dealing with pain, especially muscle aches and general stiffness. With pain, I have high tolerances and many ways to cope. Mucus: less so. But I tell you, today of all days? Today, the one day in my menstrual cycle where I get cramps? When my cramps always show up not in my stomach but my lower back? Fuck you too, body; fuck you.

At least my chocolate is dairy-free and therefore safe, because I need it today.

Ironically, I look lovely today. My hair is gorgeous and my pain-drained (even) pale(r) skin tone is quite flattering against it, and despite the discomfort of today I slept well last night and my eyes are clear. I tend not to think I'm beautiful, in part because few people, especially women, in this culture ever do, in part because I don't fit my own aesthetic taste. But I am sufficiently divorced from my appearance, for better or worse, that sometimes I see my reflection and know, objectively, that I look pretty good. Today has been like that all day long. I guess ... uh, I'll just have to come down with colds more often?

I am Posty McPosterton today, I know. Tumblr has been teaching me to think it little blurbs as well as overlong essays, which is an improvement I suppose—but it does mean you all have to suffer my list of A Billion Things To Say.