every now and then i'll be halfway through one of these and go "damn, this blog feels like a little bit of a shrine to consumerism". talking about media is kind of odd because in person, if i havent experienced what something is but my friends think i should check it out myself, i just want to know 1. is it good and 2. are there any content warnings for it (is it scary or gorey or does it cover some really heavy topics). i'll then check it out; if i like it i'll finish it, if i don't i will generally give up on it, unless its a movie. the really fun media analysis part then comes when you sit down for a cup of tea or wine or something and talk about it with your friend and other people who have seen it. the actual conversation part of it i think is where the value lies (as well as the piece of media itself, or course). talking about stuff in this kind of non-conversational manner is super different to that and honestly just feels self indulgent sometimes, which i suppose it is. it is frankly really fun to just put my thoughts down and construct a page that i think looks cool to read through and reflects my personality in a strange way. i like general journalling stuff but i do strive to keep myself pretty anonymous here, and besides that i think sharing art and projects are some of the only other big ways to get yourself out there. i could put up musings on world events or financial advice but i dont want to do that

i'm not really going anywhere with this i suppose! maybe im just trying to work through how i kind of feel like a dork blogging like this. in any case, i wanted to make a big post of some of the stuff i really liked this year! i feel like the spotify wrapped is kind of soulless and also not particularly helpful because i barely use spotify anymore, and then i was like huh, i guess i should talk about everything else as well

top 5 albums

no dogs allowed sidney gish

it's been a weird year for me! and this has very quickly become one of my go-to albums for when i'm feeling a bit shit. the sound of the album is warm and twee but the lyrics sometimes fall into something a bit more depressed and fatalistic - i don't subscribe to the move of listening to sad music when you're feeling sad, but listening to happy music with melancholic lyrics does make me feel a bit of camaraderie (or empathy, or something of that nature)

imaginal disk - magdalena bay

i think my review of this album back in september sums up my main feelings about it. even after listening to it another ten or so times i still get that "oh man, i love this track" feeling with every song on the album and it (as well as that one kesha single) have been pretty instrumental to turning me around to pop music, something im super excited to check out further in 2025

a greater bliss - wordclock

i've gone over this one a couple of times while writing this blogpost, and it's honestly a bit hard to put a finger on why a greater bliss is so good. their sound reminds me of four tet in terms of instrumentation but its general vibe is a little more dreamlike. in any case, it quickly became my go-to "ambient but not too droney" album of the year

the skyrim soundtrack - jeremy soule

i've previously been a bit embarassed by just how much i've listened to this album, but i've gotta be honest to myself - this album is excellent. i dont really care for the combat tracks, but the environmental ones, which make up the vast majority, are some of the best bits of compositional ambient that i've ever heard. the specific styles vary between tracks to better reflect the untamed wilds, the hustle and bustle of towns, or the spooky and desolate feelings of caves and the frigid north, and i think it was a great introduction for me into the different flavours of ambient music. i still have a particular soft spot for arctic ambient subgenre because of this album

reactor - femtanyl

femtanyl currently makes eps that are more like compilations of the last ten of their tracks - it's my main complaint with their works. i would love something more cohesive because i really believe they're one of the best people making breakbeat / hardcore music in 2024, but i suppose all we can really do is cross our fingers and hope for the best. danny brown's track is absolutely incredible and i would love to see the two collaborate more, but the rest of the album is clearly both an extremely high energy fun experience and also a clear improvement on their previous work

games

disco elysium

i finished it! finally! this game is rightfully considered an absolute classic by a lot of people, but its (initial) slow pacing and lack of explicit direction stopped me from getting through it the first time. that is, however, my only real complaint with the game. it's an extremely interesting group of characters interacting in an extremely interesting world. the setting slowly opens up as you play - it initially looks really familiar, but more layers appear the deeper you look - it's an echo of our industrial revolution, but with some changes made to suit the more physical differences to the world. i liked the strange and esoteric computing systems they use and the vehicles that seem to sit squarely between a ford model t and a car more at home in cyberpunk 2077. every element of the game has been very intentionally thought out to integrate with the overall experience, and its pretty happily one of the best things ive played in recent memory

mutazione

i stumbled onto mutazione by complete accident some time last year and did the exact same thing as i did with disco elysium: downloaded and played a pirated copy for a couple of hours, forgot it existed because it wasn't in my steam library, reinstalled windows and lost the save, remembered it, bought it on steam, and then powered through in the space of a week. i dont think disco elysium and mutazione would be a fair fight in terms of writing and story structure, but mutazione still succeeded at sucking me into the lives of a lovely little community of interesting little characters with interpersonal complexity and mysterious pasts.

you do unfortunately spend a lot of time walking back and forth in fairly linear paths from the kind of town hub, which isnt amazingly engaging, and each segment day tends to be a bit of a checklist of checking in on each character and seeing how theyre going, but that's also not necessarily the required experience, and i honestly thought that missing some of the context might make the whole thing a bit more absorbing

alba

what a shock! i'd seen this one recommended a couple of times before but thought the whole thing looked a little bit too twee and tumblr to be actually enjoyable (more about my general feelings on media that can be described as "twee" and "tumblr" as someone who is both very twee and very tumblr in the near future). to my surprise, the story part of the game didnt feel like it was beating you over the head with a highschooler's conservation essay, and the game part of the game took an extremely simple exploration template and spiced it up with a birdwatching mechanic to carry you when the curiosity for whats around the corner isn't quite enough. the story is short and simple but totally works with the positive vibe the game was going with, and the nod / shake head mechanic is perhaps one of my favourites of the year.

jusant

i originally jumped on this because the climbing mechanic looked interesting, and it mostly is, but what kept me around was the drip feed of mysterious and intriguing worldbuilding tidbits. for those unaware, jusant is about ascending a giant tower that used to be home to a weird climbing-based society. the environmental storytelling is lovely as you begin to piece together how they made their lives worked and their integration with the strange flora and fauna of the tower. the gameplay is also really cool! it strikes a good balance between interesting minute-by-minute feel without becoming a climbing simulation (although i am pretty interested in cairn, which leans way more in the simulation direction). the final result is a comfortable puzzle, broken up with gorgeous vistas and sifting through an extremely intersting world. i super enjoyed my time with it!

the big catch: tacklebox

god, what can i say about the big catch: tacklebox that i havent said already? i have a pretty sizeable summary of my thoughts on this site, but the short version is that this is one of the most engaging and slickest movement platformers i've ever played. i played it for 1-2 hours every day until i'd completed the game - which is, i remind you, a demo for a game that isn't out yet. i'm unbelievably excited for the full release of the big catch, hopefully some time in 2025 🤞

movies

humanist vampire

i'll be honest, humanist vampire seeking consenting suicidal person was a film i initially watched for the name, but i was surprised at how much fun it actually was! the whole thing is a bit quiet and the interactions feel slow and considered, which makes a lot of sense for a film about two young and introverted people. the score by pilou is excellent! and the visuals are all dark and moody without being oppressive

i saw the tv glow

i saw a live screening of this and jesus christ it was the queerest event i've been to in a while. deep analysis on the themes and metaphor of the film aside, i saw the tv glow is visually gorgeous and the way that the story unfolds had me on the edge of my seat. the queer angle to it mostly resonated with me and resonated very heavily with my capital T friends, and i loved

the wild robot

a friend invited me to this fairly unprompted and i was initially a bit sceptical, but it seems that dreamworks is keeping the pressure up with the 3d animation revival in 2024! the wild robot is based on a childrens series of the same name about a home assistant robot from the future that accidentally washes up on a deserted island and learns to care for the wild animals that live there. i felt like the overall plot was pretty easy to guess, but the animation was full of so many lovely little style decisions and bits of incredible choreography and i couldnt stop bothering my friend about it for the next couple of days. if you see it for yourself, keep a good eye on the scene where the fox crawls down into their warren - the way the camera and character weave through the undergrowth and roots had me stunned

arrietty

arrietty is commonly considered one of the lesser ghibli films, but i really appreciated how its considered and simple story let the animation and illustration decisions shine. the tiny people trope is always a goldmine of creative opportunities, and ghibli (unsurprisingly) commits to it super well. my favoure touch was the way that the tiny teapot pours out a single blob of tea because of the surface tension at that scale. it would be an easy detail to overlook but they nailed it

the sweet east

the sweet east is this super interesting discussion of a bunch of different angles of american culture in our current year. the main character lillian strikes off from a school excursion to washington dc and stumbles her way into punks, white supremacists, film writers and an incel compound. the film displays a satirical but otherwise fairly (textually) uncritical version of all of these groups, focusing instead on the absurdity of each. i gather some people were critical of its not explicitly condemning the neo-nazis it depicts, as well as its kind of breakneck surreal feeling, but i absolutely adored it

books

dune - frank herbert

yeah okay, i get it. frank herbert's space feudalism universe is absolutely incredible and despite it dwelling on the details quite a bit (tolkien style), and also being kind of weird, the story had me super locked in from the first third or so. my watch / read sequence was dune part 1 -> dune the book -> dune part 2 (the two films cover the entirety of the film's plot, for reference), and it was honestly a kind of awesome way to do it. a lot of the stranger elements were in the second half, so getting to read frank's original vision and then see how denis villeneuve made them a bit more palatable was super cool. i did read dune messiah and am about halfway through children of dune, but theyre much more obtuse political dramas and much less my speed, unfortunately

activation degradation - marina j lostetter

activation degradation is this super interesting exploration into non binary and agender identity through the lens of a lab-grown organic robot in the far flung sci-fi future. it does feel a little tumblr-ey every now and then in the ways that it draws attention to some characters queerness, but i found it pretty minimal and easy to look past. the whole thing felt like a pretty excellent deep dive from a unique perspective (i dont really consider myself agender) and it got me thinking about finding books to better get an idea of what it's like to be polyamorous or ftm transgender!

the stars now unclaimed - drew williams

i got a chain across the dawn (the second book in this series) last year from a pop up book shop and absolutey LOVED it, so i ordered in its prequel in 2024. drew makes these wonderfully self-indulgent space operas which are a great break from the heady, philosophical stuff that you can get lost in as a fan of sci-fi, but they also build wonderfully interesting worlds, depicting a universe of aliens coexisting and merging cultures. it's super great stuff and i'm excited to read the firmament of flame next year!

retrospective

i try to avoid going too crazy on personal stuff here, but god 2024 was a mixed bag. i broke up with my partner of 11 years, which has been well documented on this blog lol

the feeling of simultaneously loving someone for being super fun to be around and having a wealth of shared experience together, but also feeling like a you're a weird footnote in their life was truly eating me alive. on top of that, they had little interest in working towards making things better, despite plenty of effort on my part, which makes it feel even worse when it appears that theyre totally fine somehow and in another relationship already. it's insane to go from being in a couple your entire adult life to suddenly being single in your late 20s, and honestly my biggest shock of the year is finding out that i am someone that people find attractive and want to spend time with. the concept had become completely foreign to me.

okay all that whingy shit aside, 2024 was also an amazing year for meeting new people and experiencing new things. i've been the kind of person who jumps at any opportunity to do something unique or interesting for a while, but needing to get out of my own head more than ever kicked that shit into complete overdrive. i started doing gig posters for friends, i went to a movie night in a sewer, i dressed as a priest to a rave and i headed to japan for my first international trip in five years! i met so many lovely and incredible new people this year, made art that i was proud of, and tried my best to not sweat the small stuff.

i'm currently writing this from an inter-city train between nagano and iiyama with a suitcase full of art books and a stomach full of onigiri. i hope your 2025 is starting equally well!