In which the voices & visions of others are allowed into my head
Overall MVPs: BotNS, Diamond is Unbreakable, Chainsaw Man, Partizan, America's Playground, Gloomhaven, Void Stranger, Armored Core, Cobalt Core, Janelle Monáe, Julian Cope, Siouxsie, X-Ray Spex,
Lit:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Ended up being a very fun read; it's extremely long, but the total page count wasn't so much the issue as how slow the start was. The thing really takes off when Jonathan Strange finally shows up, which unfortunately is about 200 pages in. Did an amazing job walking the tightrope of making the "rules" of the magic seem systematic on some level, while at no point actually tipping its hand as to how that system works. Lotta fantasy authors don't have that kind of discipline
Palo Alto
Educational in a lot of aspects, particularly around the Herbert Hoover stuff. Slightly scuffed up by finding Malcom Harris really obnoxious on twitter
Book of the New Sun
Picked up because these are spoken very highly of, by a critical mass of people whose taste I trust. Was a great time to be going through these this year with Shelved by Genre podcast as a companion guide. The Catholicism referencing in these is alternately grating and interesting business--by Citadel, it gets pretty overwhelming, but during Claw of the Conciliator, and especially Sword of the Lictor, the prose itself does an incredible job carrying the thing through.
Lovecraft
Box checked, reference filled in, basically. He had an extremely limited bag of tricks, but occasionally managed to put it to good use, and he's clearly an important influence node for genrework. His racism is almost not interesting to talk about because of how not subtle he is with it.
Urth of the New Sun
Man, speaking of lovecraft referencing, this got very Call of Cthulhu at parts near the end.
There's some sections of this that are at least interesting, but most of it just continues along the same lines as end of Citadel, which was a bummer. Jesus allegories as time loops as God's Plan, not my favorite kind of thing.
mangas
Shelby's not an anime guy, and I don't have the space in my day to be watching a bunch of cartoons all on my own, but I can read mangas at a decent clip. One of these days I'll probably branch beyond shonen stuff, but also I'm interested in checking out Berserk next, so.... whatever, going at my own pace
JJBA 1-5, stalled on 6
Years ago, I bounced pretty hard off the Part 1 anime, but thanks to manga being faster to go through, I just brute-forced the remainder of that story so I could get to these "Stands" that I've heard so much about.
- I. Phantom Blood: Really boring, doesn't mix it up very much
- II. Battle Tendency: extremely funny and good. Joseph Joestar is a very very fun bastard to be following around, and the pillar men are delightful
- III. Stardust Crusaders: Lol here's the stands, but they're all tarot and egyptian gods instead of the music references. Very uneven, some of it is excellent, and other parts of it are basically unreadable
- IV. Diamond is Unbreakable: holy fuck Araki had The Stuff for this entire run, incredibly well-realized stakes and pacing
- V. Golden Wind: hot streak came to an end. This was a mess
- VI. Stone Ocean: Stalled out around here, which unfortunately I understand part VII is supposed to be really good. Having a hard time getting into the setting, prison/the fundamental injustice of a frameup story is tough for me to get into
Chainsawman*
jesus christ this is so mean and funny
Hunter x Hunter
Picked up because why else a podcast was coming out about it by people that I like, then I ended up blitzing through the thing. Went directions I was really, really not expecting, though still a lot of it gets bogged down with annoying shonen moves. By the time I'd caught up with the whole thing, it had basically just been doing Stand battles with the numbers filed off, and while a lot of jjba stand battles end on ass-pulls, I still prefer that those are presented as puzzles rather than "time for a training montage" situations.
Movies:
Coupla cult docs
Shelby's not a serial killer/true crime person, but she is very fascinated by cults, which means I watch along with quite a few of these. Some interesting takeaways, there's pretty clear patterns that keep showing up:
- Got a central figurehead person, maybe a second-in-command, then an inner circle structure that mostly exists to funnel money to the top (1a. Cults are fundamentally there to be money-making enterprises for the people at the top)
- Weirdness about body image. Part of a common suite of shit to keep people hungry & tired.
- Inexplicable weirdness and obsessiveness about gender and gender roles; keeps cropping up in circumstances that don't seem to otherwise serve a purpose for the belief structure
Grease
It's fiiiiiiiiine. The ending scene's been analyzed to death, but Rizzo's great
Grease 2
Early Michelle Pfeiffer! And featuring this extremely funny song:
Footloose
The way 80s movies get lumped together in memory means there was no way to know until watching it that instead of being a fun time capsule the way most of them are, Footloose is actually legitimately extremely good, and everyone should watch it
Mona Lisa Smile
Crazy good cast of women who aren't in movies enough anymore. Kirsten Dunst still shows up in stuff every now and then, but I feel like it's been a while since I've seen Maggie Gyllenhaal or Julia Stiles.
Mama Mia
Not as fun of a stoned rewatch as I was hoping it would be
Hungers Game
These were smarter than I'd kind of expected them to be. Never read or watched back when the series was a going concern, but I remember there being a lot of discussion/scoffing about how the main character's "not a hero, come on people", so I was surprised to actually watch the thing and find the property itself actually quite engaged in that question. Like it's not impressive to notice that, that's very clearly what the property is presenting you with for your grappling pleasure. "The thing tells you how to argue about the thing" Homestuck Made This World taught me about that framing
Eat Pray Love
Shelby called me a nerd for this, but there's a part during the Italy section where during a food montage, there's a swell of opera music, and that music is specifically the Queen of the Night Aria from The Magic Flute, one of the most famous opera bits of all time, they put in on the voyager disc etc, and it was composed by noted Austrian: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote the thing in goddamn German. And boy if I don't find that just completely fucking damning to the movie's credibility as something culturally enriching or intellectually inspiring. All these pretensions of Having Something to Say about how we live our lives in the rat race of corporate America, and then in reaching for the laziest possible opera reference they fuck up something extremely fucking simple, because at the end of the day, this is meant to be slop served up to an audience that's not going to know the difference. Lowest Common Denominator with a high opinion of itself.
I'm not even an opera guy, I just fucking paid attention in 7th grade music class
Closer
Clearly this was originally written as a play. Super dialogue-heavy, and there's some pacing weirdness in between scenes that would flow better on stage. Incredibly good cast, fun that in a story about envy and sexual insecurity that the best sexual chemistry was between the two characters that don't fuck each other, Clive Owen and Jude Law
Ocean's 12
First time watching it in a minute, really felt like the actors were just making up scenes day of, while otherwise just being on vacation
John Wick 4*
Delighted to see Donnie Yen in this, though I don't know why he's so obsessed with playing blind characters when he's in american movies. Felt like most of the fights could have been trimmed a bit, like there'd be big "react to this" moments, that then get repeated a bunch of times
Teen Witch
Hilariously bad, a total hoot start to finish. Features this iconic scene, which is maybe the third most insane thing that this movie throws at you:
Fasts & Furiouses
Never managed to see V onward before. Exclusively stoned viewing. Point Break is better than all of these by far, but Vin Diesel and Paul Walker play off each other really good, and I got legitimately very emotional at their tribute/send-off scene for Walker in VI
Supes:
--antmin 3*
It wasn't good, but I thought it was extremely interesting that this was the one that finally caused mainstream audiences to turn against these movies, because it didn't really stand out to me as that much worse than the average for these
--Guardians 3*
and all the same, it's nice to go to Tha Movies with friends
--spiderverse 2*
Runtime + cliffhanger really uncalled for, but goddamn what a good-looking movie. A beaut
indy 5 lol*
Awful! Fleabag's trying, but her character makes no sense. I did laugh a lot at how hard they went writing shia lebouf's character out of the franchise
Barbenheimer*
Oppenheimer: Long, but I was into it, and there was a fair amount of actual meat to chew over afterward. Cillian Murphy looking more and more like David Byrne by the day.
Barbie: Sure Gosling was funny, but idk if anybody's going to remember this shit two years from now. Kinda exceeded my expectations, but I'm not in agreement with people I know who thought it was legitimately Good
The Addams Family
Man I didn't remember this movie at all. What a cast!
Young Frankenstein
Still pretty funny
Godzilla Minus One
Shockingly incredibly good. Godzilla-as-metaphor-for-nuclear-weapons is pretty well-worn ground, but this one kicks it up even further by setting the stuff in the immediate aftermath of WWII and making it about Gozilla-as-metaphor-for-grappling-with-PTSD-and-survivor's-guilt, and then actually selling that well
Shovelware Christmas Movies
Shelby and I got a tradition by this point. We're not hallmark purists, we'll watch netflix straight-to-streaming crap too. Did you know the Australians make these kinds of movies too? We do now.
TV:
Succession
I got a confession... I did not watch the last couple episodes of this. And I'm not interested in going back for them either. I was right with it up until the end, but then HBO changed their stupid branding, forced us to switch apps, and then I forgot the password and didn't want to bother with recovery until a while later. Once this wrapped up, it stopped being water cooler chat, and once it stopped being water cooler chat, I really really stopped giving a shit (Long Live Matthew Macfayden, though, clear MVP)
White Lotus
The writing and the casting each have particular strengths that cover for each other's weaknesses pretty well
Couples Therapy
Fun little voyeuristic watch, actual couples in couples therapy having agreed to sessions being televised. Hits a place somewhere between reality TV gawking and legitimately interesting conversation prompts
The Great
We keep stalling out on this, which is maybe an issue because I actually do like it alright. Nicholas Hoult is really fun to watch in this in a way that I feel about zero other performances from him
Podcasts:
If Books Could Kill*
Good bile to exercise to, rides a very thin line of being actually entertaining vs. just showing me stuff to get pissed off about
[Friends at the Table]: Partizan
Spent back half of last year getting caught back up with the table friends, got through Twilight Mirage, and extremely glad I did, because Partizan's some of the best stuff they've made. Firing on all cylinders, the Prison Team episodes operationalizing very well in game mechanics an extremely fucked and hilarious energy
[FatT]: Palisade*
First time since the Hieron days that I've been listening as the episodes release. Not quite the same oomf as Partizan, but I'm still having a blast, and the last few episodes in particular have had me hooting & hollering
[FatT]: Bluff City: America's Playground
Allowed into the FatT main feed from behind the paywall, which was a great decision, convinced me to subscribe to the patreon. Some of the funniest stuff I've listened to in a long time
Media Club Plus
FatT members talking Hunter x Hunter, which got me reading it.
Shelved by Genre*
Excellent companion piece for BotNS, and I am unbelievably excited for them to do Earthsea next, since that's a series I've actually got some prior familiarity with
Relentless Picnic's back?!
pls
Games:
Elden Ring
Way more different from Dark Souls rhythm than I expected, but is still kind of a burdensome FromSoft production for better or worse. I don't begrudge 'em being hard, I just struggle to find the uninterrupted time that these games tend to call for
Zelda TotK*
one of those that was crazy engaging for like six weeks until hitting a wall where I couldn't stand to turn it back on again. Not that it got hard, just burned out on it
Diablo IV*
God damn shit fuck I should have trusted my gut and given it a miss. So boring, crazy waste of time and money.
Inscryption
I was annoyed at first with the way that this game started great, then started pulling arg/meta/4th-wall stuff, but weirdly the postgame free mode got my goodwill back to a place where I kind of want to replay the interstitial story stuff
Armored Core VI*
Honestly answered my big complaint about fromsofts by structuring gameplay into short missions. Super fun, and more replayable than I thought it'd be able to achieve. Not much else to say about it, thing's solid!
Void Stranger*
Shoutout @Kaybee for recommending this, bc it’s extremely my kind of thing. It's got puzzles, it's got meta-(in a good way!)-puzzles, it's got outside-the-box pathfinding, secret endings, big naturals, whole bunch of stuff to get lost in. One of the secrets reset my game progress & unlock codes! wasn't happy about that! One ending had gratuitous nudity (woo!), but also made clear that it & further secrets were tied up in the lore of the dev's other game property that I've never played, which was kind of a drag. Will probably pick back up at some point to see if I can 100% the crystals, I'd just kind of hit a wall where I couldn't stand to comb through all the floors one-by-one, not taking the cool shortcuts I’d picked up. Easy GOTY for me
BG3*
I think… I might not be a fan of Larian as a studio. I had very conflicting feelings on DOS2, and this has a lot of the same frustrations without the novel combat and buildcrafting systems to hide behind. Looting & inventory management is annoying, too many build-critical items are tucked behind random shopkeepers (would have preferred them delivered as quest rewards or weird crafting shenanigans so I wouldn't have to so thoroughly scan every single nook and cranny of the map), and party management is inexcusably painful for how much of a solved problem that's been in other, way older games.
Final Profit*
Very Idle Game, for better or worse. Satisfying for number to go up, jokes have a good hit rate, but not a fan of how many systems require transacting stuff one at a time, when the demands of gameplay involve you trying to move hundreds at once. Seems unkind to my game hardware
Cobalt Core*
"Like a combination of Slay the Spire and FTL", and boy that description about covers the entire thing. Bones are StS systems, but leveraged onto a spatial grid that demands positioning awareness. Deck options depend on which crew members selected; ship skeleton impacts a lot of how to approach gameplay. Cleared the story run, and the randomize button keeps replay interesting
Tabletop and Board Games:
Gloomhaven
Played both tabletop and digital versions, which each has certain upsides. Digital is extremely nice for clarifying how certain rules operate, and is way faster to set up and run scenarios, but the tabletop’s just a nice satisfying space to spend time with, makes the teamwork more fun
Twilight Imperium
Only played once this year, was supposed to be an 8-hour game, turned into a 14-hour session, I went home angry, had dreams about playing the game some more, then had a brutal come-down over the next few days obsessively reading through the wiki and gnawing on my leg
Music:
Gizzard:
--PetroDragonic Apocalypse*
I think Rat's Nest must have somehow been an entry point for a lot of people, the way I see people hype it up, but this was a lot more intricate & fun, very good "I'm angry at work today" music
--The Silver Cord*
Weirdly the electronica's not as good of focus music for me as when they’re being bigger music theory nerds. Curious to see how they end up implementing these songs for live sets
1001 Albums Generator 5s and interesting 4s club
(sorted by when the list served them up to me)
- Madonna: Ray of Light
- Julian Cope: Peggy Suicide
- Janelle Monáe: The ArchAndroid
- Johnny Cash: At San Quentin Prison & At Folsom Prison
- Siouxsie And The Banshees: Juju
- Queen A Night At The Opera
- Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove
- Songhoy Blues: Music in Exile
- Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand
- Genesis: Selling England By The Pound
- Miles Davis: In A Silent Way
- Miles Davis: Bitches Brew
- The Police: Synchronicity
- Jimi Hendrix: Electric Ladyland
- Meat Loaf: Bat Out Of Hell
- Beatles: Abbey Road
- Supertramp: Crime of the Century
- Depeche Mode: Violator
- NiN: The Downward Spiral
- Kate Bush: The Dreaming
- X-Ray Spex: Germfree Adolescents
- White Denim: D
- The Kinks: Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
- The Offspring: Smash
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Murder Ballads
- Kraftwerk: Autobahn
- Led Zeppelin IV
- Garbage: Garbage
- Michael Jackson: Off the Wall
- TV On The Radio: Desperate youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
- Fishbone: Truth And Soul
- Radiohead: OK Computer
- Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells
- Can: Future Days
- Destiny's Child: Survivor
- Herbie Hancock: Head Hunters
- Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
- Björk: Debut
- Portishead: Dummy
Playlist of highlights here. This thing is over 40 hours long, so I have not been able to go in and double-check whether most of these actually hold up.
