Things I Read/Played/Watched In 2023
BOOKS
- Judas Unchained (started 10/22, finished 1/23) - fun space opera. Love the weird little author tics in this one, like constantly referring to it as "enzyme-bonded concrete". We get it bro this takes place in the future you can just call it concrete.
- Altered Carbon (1/23) - kinda slipped through my brain, I watched the show beforehand and they had similar effects. Enjoyable, not much to report back on.
- Joyful Militancy (started 12/22, finished 3/23) - book club, interesting, mixed feelings.
- The Dispossessed (4/23) - book club read, this inspired me quite a bit.
- Labyrinths (7/23) - started it a while ago but lost my copy and never finished. Just as incredible as everyone says.
- Feed (sometime in summer) - (audiobok). God, this is the most 2011 book imaginable. A world where blogging was still seen as a sustainable career. Fun, dumb zombie romp.
- The Ministry For The Future (8/23) - book club. Kind of a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks"-type book, which meant I had plenty of issues with it, but it works well as a provocation. Very of its time - some of its hypotheses fell flat pretty much immediately after it was published and COVID happened. Still, love to see a book that makes no bones about how brutal and violent change can be, and that pretty much openly endorses eco-terrorism. Wild that this was on Obama's books of the year.
- The Lost Villlage (8/23) - (audiobook). Nice little horror story, the real horror is, as always, other people. Lady goes back to an abandoned village where everyone disappeared, slowly uncovers the truth as she and her documentary team are tormented by a strange being.
- Uprooted (9/23) - (audiobook). Fun little ~twisted~ retelling of Grimm stories. Extremely polish.'
- Throne of Glass series (8-9-10/23) - if there isn't a gender studies book comparing Sarah Maas and Brandon Sanderson there should be. This is extremely dumb and fun and probably setting horrible expectations for young women.
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed(9-10/23) - book club. Kind of a "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks", but led to some good discussions in the session. Still a bit difficult to determine where authority can and should be enforced, and I think doing ongoing/adult education in South America is probably pretty different from the way we operate as teachers in the American university system.
- Disappearance at Devil's Point (10/23ish?) - (audiobook) fun, more than a little depressing. Ghost story where the ghost is - get this - trauma. Does seem to, at least to my spotty memory, capture how fucked up 13-year-olds are pretty well.
- Anatomy (10/23ish?) - (audiobook) not terribly memorable, little romance/gothic horror Victorian thing. Wanted something breezy to fall asleep to and it delivered.
- The Long Earth (10/23ish?) - (audiobook) really enjoyed this! Less Pratchett-y than I might have hoped, but conceptually fun and not too terribly intense. Lost interest about halfway through the second book.
- The City & The City (11/23) - (audibook, book club).
- Red Rising Series (started 12/23) - (audiobook) dumb fun, pretty well-written, great action sequences.
GAMES
- Cultist Simulator - what if sunless skies was a deckbuilder, and also the most addictive game i've ever played in my fucking life
- Overwatch 2 -one of these days i'm gonna get out of bronzei finally made it to silver and then baldur's gate came out and i stopped playing
- Roadwarden - fun, kind of a frustrating mix of roguelike and regular game but i guess that's on me for choosing the mode that wasn't "just enjoy the story". will probably play again so i can see what the "good ending" is like. update: i played it again and my ending was still bad
- Lacuna - nice lil cyberpunk noir. extremely chill, got the "good ending" in a 4 hour playthrough. lovely pixel art style.
- Curse of the Golden Idol - fun mystery game! Some Return of the Obra Dinn vibes.
- Beacon Pines - cute little eldritch horror game, part of the growing list of narrative games that probably got made because Disco Elysium did so well
- Dredge - see above, but for fishing
- Pathologic 2 (started 2/23) - this goes so hard but I'm afraid to start it up again because of how long it takes me to complete even the simplest act without dying.
- Baldur's Gate 3: wooof this game has me down bad. ticks just about every box
- Doki Doki Literature Club: Little bit of Undertale Lite going on here. Love a postmodern video game.Could maybe do a bit more to directly critique the tropes it's operating in(nevermind i didn't do the full monica ending before writing this, holy shit that hits. powerful uuse of silence, timing, tarkovskian intentionally making the waiting unpleasant). all done in renpy too - this is really good inspo for mozilla project
- You and Me and Her - read this was the logical next step to DDLC so I bought it on JAST and it mostly hits really well - love the fourth wall breaking, love games that are critical of games, enforcing things like saves and changing the way the game itself works at different breakpoints, hyper-critical of the player themselves. Wish i had not bought the uncensored version (or that there were a version somewhere between "for children" and "intermittent hentai") because it get real gross at points but I guess there's still a skip button, and maybe the level of grossness adds to how much the stuff about player agency hits, IDK. Certainly made me feel bad.
- Scarlet Hollow - hey, a non-anime VN! This is really well done, beautiful art style, actually well-written, seems to accept the affordances of Ren'Py and not try to do too much with it.
- Sucker For Love - goofy lil Cthulhu dating sim. Just working my way through the VN world and trying to see what I can get out of it for my own game.
- Life and Suffering of Sir Brante - (still on my VN research kick). Well-written and compelling game that's, well, entirely just choices, which was cool! Sometimes choices can matter too much, though. It became an absolute fucking slog just to try and get a halfway decent ending, restarting and clicking through chapters over and over again. It kind of takes the fun out of "choices matter" when you only get a variation on the bad ending over and over again unless you're following a guide - a little more freedom of choice, or at least just letting you go back one choice at a time instead of an entire chapter, would have made me less pissed off by the end. Anyway, after staying up til 2am repeating chapters over and over and mostly dying or getting the "murder revolution" ending, I managed to get the French revolution ending where I held the city for a year then got executed but my name lived on in history. Could be worse, I guess!
- Book of Hours - I guess I can get into cozy/crafting games as long as they have enough of a literary veneer and occult world-building. Who knew??
- Clannad - this really is the fuckin' Moby Dick of visual novels. I was brought to tears multiple times by this fucking game! Tomoyo and Kotomi routes probably hit the hardest, but really no bad ones so far (I've been putting off Kappei which is famously the worst one). Ending honestly didn't do it as much for me as others said it would, but ultimately worth the playthrough.
- Slay the Princess - Jonny Sims doing voice work in a conceptual game about videogame tropes? Loved it.
- Chaos Head: Noah - Mostly enjoyed this, but I think I started to burn out on visual novels around this point. Uniquely pathetic main character. Still pretty annoyed at all these games that really just require you to follow a guide to figure out how to get to the true ending.
- Chaos Child - I respect what it was doing, trying to take the hero's narrative of the first game and turn it on its head. A solid counter to the toxic ideas that a lot of media around NEET-types suddenly becoming heroes propagate. Still, it was such a fucking bummer to play that I didn't end up finishing.
- AI: The Somnium Files - Finally, a visual novel with more interaction than just clicking, and a fuckin' decision tree view that saved me having to follow a guide! Great design, zany, likable characters, fun to play through. Looking forward to the sequel when I get around to it.
- Sekiro: started this in December and quickly realized I was not ready for the commitment it'll take. I'll come back to it when I have an uninterrupted month or two to learn attack patterns.
MUSIC
- Going to stop tracking this because these days I don't keep up with new music enough for this to be particularly interesting.
TV
I promise I don't only watch anime but I've been on a kick lately. Sue me.
- The Rehearsal (started 2022, finished 1/3/23) - jesus fucking christ! not sure if i want to be nathan or kill nathan
- Jujutsu Kaisen (1/23) - idk why people like this so much. it's fine.
- Chainsaw Man (2/23) - this fucken slapped
- Demon Slayer (2/23) - also fucken slapped
- Gurren Lagann (started 1/23, haven't finished) - idk man this seems like something that would have hit a lot better if I watched it when it was coming out. Kept waiting for it to
get good
and eventually gave up around episode 18. - My Hero Academia (up to date on season 6) - Look man it's a good shonen what do you want from me
- Shadow and Bone (3/23, didn't finish) - I remember being really into the first season of this but I think that was pandemic madness, this show sucks so bad lmao
- The Rings of Power (2/23, didn't finish) - they spent so much money to make everything look like absolute dogshit
- The Last of Us (3/23) - pretty perfectly replicated the experience of the game, in that I really enjoyed most of it but the ending left a sour taste in my mouth. The game's problem was its attitude towards player agency, the show just kinda rushed the ending when it needed time to breathe.
- Kill La Kill (2/23)
- Bastard!! (3/23)
- Steins;Gate (4/23) - an decent time-traveling show?? AND an anime with a halfway decent romance??? Sign me TF up
- Serial Experiments;Lain (4/23) - idk if it blew me away as much as i expected it to but it slaps pretty hard. The internet makes us all monsters
- Seven Deadly Sins (started 4/23) - this was okay at first but i kinda burned out on it once the loli shit started to take off
- Yellowjackets (started 3/23) - they don't miss!
- Black Knight (6/23-8/23) - dumb fun post-apocalyptic k-drama
- dragon prince (6/23 - 8/23) - brain off mode, its Diet Avatar
- Little Witch Academia (9/23-11/23) - very sweet, really incredible hand-drawn animation style. Update: got to season 2 and why does this show have the most pro-union/anti-technology politics of all anime ever
- Fairy Tail (started 9/23) - mostly keeping it on for background noise while I do other stuff but it is nice to have an MC whose primary concern is making rent and her friends being dipshits. Didn't finish.
- Monster (started 5/23) - extremely good but K and I were watching it together and she lost interest. Will probably just end up finishing it myself.
- Alone (started 8/23) - same deal. About the only reality show that doesn't make me cringe too hard to keep watching, actually somewhat inspiring. Just been putting it on intermittently, will probably binge it at some point.
- Zom 100 (9/23) - really liked this, hope the production issues don't prevent it from getting a second season.
- Re: Zero (11/23) - I don't think I like Isekai very much but this was entertaining.
- From (11/23) - I enjoyed this a lot! What if lost, but it's a town in the midwest no one can leave and there are skinwalkers. Pretty batshit insane show but it's a lot of fun, and remembering that Harold Perrineau exists got us to start watching Lost again.
- Lost (started 12/23) - this is a nice after-dinner show for K and I. Just the right amount of interesting to keep my attention without requiring much intellectual effort.