2025 in Review

What a godsforsaken shitass dogfuck year. 

Sorry for opening on a downer, but I need to get this out of my system. I will attempt to focus on the positive later but there was very little to go around even when factoring out The Everything.

Previous Years: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

d12 ways 2025 has fucked me over

1. One of our cats died from a tumor so rare that the vet gave us a discount because it qualified as a teaching experience. Three cats in three years. At this point I feel like it’s either a curse or something in the fucking water, though we don’t even have the benefit of clean correlation because all three of them died in entirely different ways.
2. Partner got a new job she doesn't like.
3. My car died (the transmission was already dying, but then the battery went fucked while I was out driving in fucking January, and I had to be jumped twice just to get back home - was stalling out every time I came to a stop.)
4. My partner’s car died. (Don’t know what happened to this one)
5. Car dealership yanked us around for days, forcing us to make multiple Ubers across the city for no fucking reason. Fucking hate cars so god damn much.
6. Multiple friends in and out of mental health crises, job loss, divorce.
7. Partner had to get her gallbladder removed, then had to be rushed back to the ER a few weeks for an after-effect. (She’s doing okay now)
8. Some chucklehead tried a bit of Western Union fraud as a treat.
9. Our other cat has kidney disease, so now the odds are rising that will have a fourth cat loss in as many years.
10. Database migration plus the holiday season is making work a nightmare, and now they’re getting after me for slipping performance - yeah, no shit my performance is slipping, I am fucking stressed.
11. After a 2152-day clean streak, I get covid two weeks before Christmas.
12. Dealer’s fucking choice.

So that’s been my year.

Leslie Stone transcription project

With the first pass complete on most of the short stories, I’ve got the longer novellas left and that has slowed things a decent amount. Still, it’s been a fun project (as evidenced by my previous posts) and I’m glad I’ve gotten myself into it - it’s a good way to relax when the mind goblins are at their worst and I can’t focus on anything else or do anything productive.

Superman (2025)

Of all the many, many things I adored about this movie, the one that has stuck with me is the bit in the faux-interview  when Lois is grilling him about his previous interference in global politics. Clark’s frustration at her line of questioning reads very strongly to me as “oh, this Superman is on the spectrum” in a very true-to-life way. To Clark, the logic of his moral universe is as simple and as natural as breathing; people were dying, and he needed to stop it. Political ramifications be damned people were fucking dying; that’s enough reason for him to step in, and he genuinely doesn’t understand why anyone would have a problem with that. The thought is alien to him. 

What a good movie.

Bloodywood

Dana Dan gets the coveted "song that got me through the year" slot, for reasons that will be immediately obvious to anyone who has heard that song and also read this blog.

Naked Gun (2025)

It is so nice to watch a movie that understands how to do a proper gag. My dad would have loved it. If a joke doesn’t land for you there’s a new one in a few seconds, it’ll be fine.

Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc

Very glad they did this as a movie, I don’t think it’d be possible to pull it off with TV show pacing and still have it work. Chainsaw go brrrrrrrr indeed.

The year of Lovecraft 

An unintended trend, but it got me writing so that’s a net positive. Probably something to do with The Horrors. Something something, art that’s flawed in interesting ways will get me to engage even when I’m a vocal critic of the art. Always funny how that works.

The Year of PIE

Technically most of last year was this as well. If nothing else, it's been extremely educational.

A great year for video games*

While the greater industry seems rapidly accelerating towards a mass extinction event, anyone who exists on the fringe of that ecosystem is feasting like a king. So long as itch isn’t getting forced into a blind panic by Mastercard and Australian Christofascists. Or Steam doesn’t arbitrarily decide to axe your specific game for vaguely-defined and spurious reasons.

The MiniSalties

• Get in Losers We’re Going to Fight God: Expedition 33
• Greatest Disappointment: Silksong
• Blasting From the Pasting: Binding of Isaac Repentance, Nuclear Throne
• I Played it a Lot in January and Need to Go Back: Caves of Qud

God Damn I Listened to a lot of Elden Ring OST this year

I can only assume that Spotify is extremely confused by my listening habits. Top themes are Bayle, Radahn, Fortissax, Messmer, Maliketh.

My Partner Has Yet To Find A Romantasy that Features a Dwarf

Now, I am getting this second hand from her descriptions of the audiobooks she listens to, nut I still I think it is a fascinating trend. No dwarves have appeared in any context in any of the books she's read (let alone as a leading man), which is fucking wild to me since damn near all of them have elves of some manner and this is a highly-derivative genre. I want to see the red string board. Are they considered too cheesy? Did the authors just not have Tolkien or his imitators as a formative inspiration? Is a short hairy dude just a no-sell in heteronormative mass-market romance? The world may never know, but I wish I did.

A Long, Unpleasant SCP Aside

While my “get back in” phase of a couple years ago has since faded back out, I’ve still been keeping a few tabs on current events: they aren’t good.

To make a long, unpleasant aside as short as I can: in 2022, one of the wiki’s founding admins was banned after revelations of a long history of sexual harassment. Many of the victims were minors, and it became very clear that said admin’s penchant for gross-out sexual content in their stories was not simply being edgy and in bad taste. They had, on top of abusing their admin powers to cover up their behavior, leveraged their reputation as a popular 1st generation author (with a extremely popular “comedic pervert” author avatar character) to facilitate the abuse.

Well, it’s nearly 2026 and despite widespread public outcry to get that shit gone, site staff have been dragging their feet. One tale was deleted through official channels, and the prominent / infamously unfunny List of Things Dr. Bright is Not Allowed to Do at the Foundation was deleted by a moderator who wanted to go out with a bang. Everything else has been nearly four years of angry people, gnashed teeth, talking in circles, and hand-wringing about procedure. It took a moderator going rogue just to get a splash page explaining what had happened.

So yeah. Feels fucking bad. The site's always been dysfunctional to some degree, this isn't the first creep or the first botched response to a crisis, but fuck, man. The bar is on the fucking ground. 

Year-End Correction of Longstanding Oversight

Finally got around to binge-watching Esoterica. Dr. Sledge is a beacon of sanity in an age of madness and not an episode goes by without things to swipe for vague yet certainly nefarious RPG uses.

There are too many fucking games

I do not care about your Kickstarter, your Zinequests, your Mothership months. There are too many fucking games. Stop making new games. Put up a free ashcan rules hack like a civilized human being if you absolutely must. Too many fucking games. I already own too many fucking games, I do not need more fucking games, I'm already busy not playing any fucking games!

I need to play more games

I ran exactly two games this year (one Mothership, one Delta Green) and god I’ve missed it. I desperately want to play more, but I also am burned out enough that I basically need to be forced into doing it by some kind of external circumstance. Playing in person is the easiest way to do this, but actually doing that is easier said than done. I would really like to just be a player for a while, but my in-person DM friends are all just as ADHD and busy and frazzled as I am if not more, and none of the other friends have shown any draw to ttrpgs unless I’m the one running them. Could go out and look in the local group recruitment server, but that’s another couple dice rolls to see if it’s in a convenient location / is of a game I want to play.

Just very tired.

Blogged more than 2024

Not by much, but it’s a trend in the right direction.

Onward

2026 will mark 9 years of this blog. Hard to imagine it. Depression and stress fuck with your memory something fierce (and that’s on top of ADHD crippling that faculty from go), so it feels like I’ve done so little despite that being objectively untrue. There’s this perpetual feeling of “if I could just fucking rest and do nothing for a couple weeks something will snap into place and I’ll be back”, but things never pan out that way. I straight up forgot to spend the second half of my vacation days this year, and even on vacation one still has to cook and clean and do laundry and interact with other human beings. 

Ah well. The Wheel turns, the Turtle moves, and we're all a year older. Keep yourselves safe out there.

2024 in Review

There’s no way around it: this was a particularly shit year, even when grading on a curve and factoring out the background radiation that turned this year into a shit year for all of us. It’s been a year of brain fog and stress and just being god-damn tired. I will do my best to not let it overwhelm this post, but it’s going to be rough all the same.

Previous Years: 2021, 2022, 2023 

Cat Woes

We lost Mor’du back in April, having barely had him for a year. His gum issues meant that he had to be put on steroids, which led to increased appetite, which led to a pretty sudden weight gain and a blood clot that cut off all circulation to his back half. Any surgery to fix it would be extremely high cost for bad odds at survival. This was on top of Peaches getting daily meds for FIP from January through fucking September.

We had tried for another big orange boy named Chester, drove across half the state to get him because of the good vibes. He was extremely affectionate, very snuggle-oriented, and murderously jealous of the other cats. Would actively try to sneak through the cat gate to straight-up try and kill them. So we had to drive halfway across the state to take him back three weeks later when all attempts at socialization had failed.

We adopted Peaches and Avocado a couple months ago, but that was mostly just formalizing what was already in place. They’re good cats, but they have their own weird little niche and a  vacancy remains in the clouder. Since they’re now traumatized from Chester, they want nothing to do with other cats, so the odds of getting a new one in the near future are low. We just can’t seem to catch a break.

I miss our boys.

Even More Family Deaths

Both of my partner’s grandparents died in the same six month span. They were in their late 80s / early 90s so it wasn’t a surprise, but the first one was less than a week before Mor’du died. It just fucking pours sometimes.

In a moment of an extremely small world, the priest at the second funeral was someone I knew from the home parish, way back when.

I think I have OCD

Learning early this year that at least one of my siblings has it put me on watch, and from cursory self-reflection I tick enough boxes that I think I should get a more qualified opinion. This is a neutral-positive development, honestly; identification allows me to go “oh, okay, this is the obsessive side coming through, your brain is pulling funny bullshit” and that makes dealing with those episodes of arbitrary agitation easier.

Last Dangerous Visions came out October 1 and I totally forgot

Who even knows how many of these stories are actually good, if it’s keeping the trend stable most will be mediocre or terrible but honestly who cares at this point. The impossible has happened, even in a truncated form.

Monkey Man

I think Monkey Man is one of those works that pulls off its genre trappings with such skill and elegance that it totally outclasses the works that started the genre in the first place. I don’t know if my opinion would have been any different if I had seen John Wick first, but seeing John Wick after Monkey Man really made Wick look limp and lifeless in comparison. Dev Patel can fucking cook. If you are down for some hyperviolence and grot and haven’t seen Monkey Man, go see Monkey Man.

Deadpool & Wolverine

It is a terrible, incomprehensible, trash garbage movie drowning in its own unceasing masturbatory self-referential smugness and I had a fucking blast. I ain’t made of stone. The theater bar had specialty cocktails. The Deadpool was tequila cranberry with something I can’t remember, the Wolverine was pineapple (think?) with amaretto and I really liked that one.

Caves of Qud 1.0

I have returned after several years and have barely scratched the surface, but man alive is it good to be back. Live and drink, friends.

Conlang Stuff

I have a lot of shit scribbled down in notebooks and little to show for it. Hopefully this upcoming year I’ll have something substantial to share. I’ve learned a shit ton about linguistics, though, that’s fun.

 

UFO50

Has eaten a significant portion of my life since I purchased it. Updates to follow, eventually. Favorite games: Grimstone, Vainger, Overbold, Pilot Quest. Least Favorite: Onion Delivery.

**

So yeah. Not the only stuff for this year, but honestly I am running out of both time in the year and available RAM in the ol' brainpan. I will not tempt fate with any predictions of the year to come. I will do what I can the best I can.

Ireland was a good time, though.

 

2023 in Review (Plus Hiatus Update)

Another year draws to a close, and thus arrives my traditional year-end post. As usual, there is no real order to these beyond whim, and they are plagued by recency bias.

Prior years: 2021, 2022

SLEEEEEEEP!

Hiatus Update

Apologies for the sudden disappearance, to those of you I am not normally in contact with. The adderal shortage + just being burnt out on rpg stuff was a potent combination and taking a few months off has been an excellent move all-around. It is likely to continue for a while, but do not fear: I have been keeping myself busy and will hopefully have something to show for it at the end. Further blogposts shall arrive when they arrive. 

It is, I must admit, extremely refreshing to not be focused on the indie rpg sphere.

Welcome Mor'du

Bubs is a hard act to follow, but Mor'du has some truly magnificent scrungly old man vibes. He's a big ol' lad and dumb as a sack of hammers. Lookit those chunky cheeks.

Godzilla Minus One

God-damn this is a good movie. Excellent effects, acting, pacing, soundtrack, sound design. It's got themes and a big monster wrecking things. I adore how, despite being fully CGI, Godzilla still walks like someone in a suit. Dedication to vibe, right there.

The Barbie Movie

Was also very good.

Steam Deck

Best luxury purchase I have made in ages.

Street Fighter 6

I mostly played World Tour, and had a good time. It was nice having a fighting game where I was able to have fun and also be bad at it. Modern controls are a blessing.

Employment is Good, Actually

What was the new job the last time I did this post has now just become the job, and it's going swell. Much less stress than the last one, much better environment, much better management. It might be unglamorous grunt work but it's better than all the other unglamorous grunt work I've had in my life.

Playing Games in Person

My hiatus from rpg blogging has been accompanied by a drastic increase in playing and running games.

Game 1) I've been lucky enough to find an irl group and have been running them through Delta Green for the last couple months (on break until new year, writeups and at least 1 scenario to follow.) and it has been an absolute blast. They've been enjoying it, I've been enjoying it, I'm going to cap off this season with Unicorn Meat and I am extremely excited.

Game 2) I've been able to play a few games with friend of the blog and all around cool person Layla / Pandatheist. She's been running the Beowulf 5e rules hack and it's been pretty fun so far. Definitely using the mechanics of 5e to the strengths of the genre.

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist

I am not usually a big VN guy but this one has me hooked, and I've been binging it since I bought it. Very well written, has a great setup that's just a couple tweaks away from MoSh fuel (You're part of an esperanto-speaking collectivist sorta-cult founded by a sci-fi author that crowdfunded a spaceship and fled the collapse of Earth for a planet covered in alien fungus that wants to kill you.) Some character moments hit pretty hard, including the crown jewel for any game with any roleplaying: I made choices specifically because it felt right for my character, rather than because it felt right for me the player. That is not an easy thing to accomplish. Game good.

Fear and Hunger

(I realize now, after writing this, that I granted the Fear and Hunger games a Salty. Most of summer was a blur, if we're being honest. The points bear repeating.)

Both of them get the slot, though I have only played the latter and not gotten far. SuperEyepatchWolf's video on the first game is an excellent summary of something that is very difficult to describe.

The Fear and Hunger games feel like they shouldn't exist. They sound like a creepypasta when you start describing them, or otherwise a game from an era long before the internet media machine dissected everything into SEO blurbs. It has a mystery to it. The unknown beckons. I don't know of any better examples of games that reward player knowledge in such actionable ways without mechanizing them. You learn something that can help you. You die horribly. There's no roguelite carry-forward mechanic in the game, but you know enough to help you the next time around. While items are randomized, the world is not. Encounters that ruined you on previous attempts can be avoided or even trivialized. Characters have meaningful differences in how they interact with the world, opening and closing entire avenues for you. it is a survival horror puzzlebox, and it just keeps throwing up new configurations. I've been keeping a notebook, and will at least be sharing the log of deaths in the future.

They are not games for everyone, not by a long shot. The content warnings alone are practically a short novel. They're exceedingly difficult and if "I am going to write off this run as a failure, let's see what I can learn" isn't a fun gameplay loop, I certainly don't recommend it. But if you are in the same mind-goblin space as I am, I highly, highly recommend it. And if you don't know, watch SuperEyepatchWolf and Wormgirl's videos, and if it sounds cool at all, go for the second game. It's what I did, and it has worked out swimmingly. Termina is a wee bit less frustrating and toned down the sexual assault from the first game.

Ranged Touch Binge-Listening

I've spent much of the back-half of this year bingeing their critical analysis podcasts and having a great time.

1) Homestuck Made This World
I now know what happens at the end and, my bile curiosity sated, I am at peace.

2) Just King Things
Stephen King's entire corpus in publication order. I have only ever read a single King book (The Gunslinger), was unimpressed, and don't plan on diving in save for tracking down a few of the ones that have caught my attention (Since writing this I have started on Carrie, and it is not going well).

But it has certainly been enlightening, - I share with King both the "throw shit out there and develop it as I go" method of writing as well as the urge to recycle and revisit elements in ways not bound by linear continuity, and very little else. Which makes it a fascinating listen; The Method highlights those moments of alignment and then immediately shows how there is a vast and unbridgeable gulf between. This is no doubt brought on by the fact that I cut my writing teeth on the SCP wiki, which is nothing if not an elaborate riff on some King classics, and also something that goes off in many wild directions that King has never and won't ever take.

3) Shelved By Genre S1 - Book of the New Sun (plus Urth)
A very thorough read-through that revealed many things I missed both first and second time around, many of which were flaws I managed to overlook or completely missed. Gene himself has fallen a few steps in my personal esteem, but flawed art always gives you something to talk about, and Gene's only got two modes: absolute best and absolute worst.

Getting Back into the SCP Wiki

The great thing about leaving for years and then diving back in is that there's loads of great new stuff to pick through. The cream of the crop (always rises to the top!):

• 6523 "ISV Joyeuse" - An interstellar colony ship powered by Hawking radiation given off by a black hole that is being fed a constant stream of perpetually-replicating cake.
• 7918 "RONALD REAGAN DIES OF ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME-RELATED COMPLICATIONS" - A remix of 1981, which manages to turn "creepy vhs tape of Ronald Reagan" into a emotionally brutal exploration of exactly what the title says. 
• 2316 "Field Trip" - You do not recognize the bodies in the water. 
• The Garfield Timeline - This is part of the "Tactical Theology" hub. That is all you need to know.

And there we have it. I presume I will get back to tearing through blogposts soon enough, but for now, my vacation is going along quite nicely.

2022 in Review

 

Bubs

LOOKIT. IT'S BUBS.

He is a good boy. He started as just a foster, and we failed utterly. Very snugglesome. Gets very offended when anyone pays attentions to things that are not Bubs. Mistakes taking a shower for drowning sometimes. 

What a good Bubs.

Nana

My grandmother died over Memorial Day weekend. She was 84, and her health had been in decline for a while. Was a fall in the kitchen that did it; bleeding in the brain. I got to visit her in the hospital before she went, but she wasn't conscious when we were there. We put on some Sinatra for her - her favorite - and I hope she was able to hear it. She loved giraffes and The Godfather and had a little cabinet full of Santas in the dining room.

Citizen Sleeper

I think I got to every ending in Citizen Sleeper (sans the post-launch stories they added), though I think my favorite remains the first. The Garden might be the 'best' ending, but I am a sap at heart, and the Len & Mina ending is just the right amount of heartbreak. Stabilizer be damned. Wouldn't be right to let them go all alone.

Chainsaw Man

BEST DEVIL POWER, NOBEL-PRIZE WINNER AND PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN.

Unicorn Meat

Sold some copies, people said nice things about it, I do feel proud of it. Livestream plans for it fell through, though. Educational, experience overall, though. Main lesson being A) layout can be fun! B) I could never do this full time. Can't say when another book will happen. Thanks to all who bought a copy (tell your friends!)

Tunic

Never got around to finishing it - stumped right at the end. Did copy a translation guide - doing that by hand is tough. But all that aside, it is a fantastic game. I love the manual and the runes, I love the vibes, I love the fact that I, for the most part, didn't get stuck.

Rogue Legacy 2

One of those sequels that eclipses the original in its totality. Never finished it, though. Got to the final boss and realized that I didn't want to keep grinding out incremental improvements at the end. Maybe I shall House Rule my way through the end.

Vampire Survivors

A game designed to trigger the addiction loop in your brain, except not in the way video games usually do. Good game.

Elden Ring

My opinion has previously been established, and so I re-iterate: game good, except for the few places where it is not.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

That was this year, right? I don't go to the movies much anymore, but EEAAO was a good reason to break that habit. Legitimately hurt myself laughing with the 2001 gag. Months later at a convention I saw a couple going as the chefs from the Raccacoony bit and was quite disappointed when they mentioned that we were the only people who recognized them for it.

Signalis

My opinion has previously been established, and so I re-iterate: game very good.

Pentiment

This has been a very good year for games, and Pentiment stands in great company. This is a special game. Clearly made by folks who understand what they're working with and have a great love of the craft. People have compared it to Disco Elysium and they are correct - it is shared substance, differing in the accidents of form. Chocolate and marshmallows.

I recommend it without reservation, of course. I can't say a whole lot about it, so as to avoid spoilers, but I will rant about the way it uses fonts.

The contents of characters' text bubbles are portrayed as if they are written manuscripts, complete with pen scratches, corrected misspellings, and gaps filled in last with red, blue, or green ink. Characters have different fonts according to their social class (with accessibility options that simplify the fonts while maintaining the visual differences, important to note), and they'll occasionally change what font their using when they find themselves in changed circumstances - we get code switching in a purely text medium using fonts! And if characters are angry or upset, there are ink splatters in the word bubble.

But then there's Klaus the printer - he and his family not only have their own font (complete with s-t ligatures that no one else has), but their text gets laid out in type face before they talk and is accompanied by a wooden ka-thunk instead of pen scratches.

The thing that sold me on the game, though, is Sebhat. He's a side character you meet early on, a visiting priest from Ethiopia, and where you and everyone else is drawn in the style of early modern Germanic illustrations (barring the elderly, who harken back to older  styles), Sebhat is drawn in the style of icons from his own church.

You don't do that unless you care a whole lot.

It is an excellently written game, containing all those things I value in art; it is perceptive, humane, heartbreaking, and a carrier of little joys. The characters are wonderfully sketched - vibrant and lifelike in all ills and good graces, and you come to love them all as the game goes on. The game eschews the cliches and tired tropes we would expect of the time period for something much more real. It's certainly one of the few games out there that understands the functioning of religion and belief, especially in that era. I made choices I regretted, I was uncomfortable with how things played out, I was _invested_.

Agh, there are things that need to be said that I cannot say in detail here. I laughed, I cried, I cursed the heavens for their blind obscenity. There's a direct reference to _Name of the Rose_ at one point, one you'd only recognize if you've read the book. It's the kind of game where the opening scene, the literal first conversation you have, is a dream sequence featuring Socrates, Beatrice, and fuckin' St. Grobian.

Steam achievements say less than half of players have made it out of Act 1. This is a shame. There is so much more.

The New Sun Re-Read

An excellent time all around. Still amazed at being able to write those monstrously huge posts, and quite pleased with the outcome.

Dwarf Fortress

Can't believe it's finally out. Still figuring out the ropes, but I shall have good stories soon enough.

Reducing Twitter Usage To Bare Minimum

Best life choice I've made in years. Now if I can just get this fuckin' collage zine together...

ADHD Medication

HOO BUDDY do those friendos do some work. We've been acquainted decades after we should have been, but now is better than never.

***

This was a rough year, and most of it was not a good time - especially through the summer. But I end it in better places than I began - a new & much better job (so, so much better - less money, but I actually like being there), proper medication, a very good cat, a published adventure under my belt and very nearly 500 posts on the blog.

Who knows what new hells and wonders the next year will bring.

Things I Enjoyed in 12021

Our palindrome year draws to a close at the time appointed by whatever mushroom-addled lunatics the Romans had calculating their calendar. Fuckin' entrail-sniffing madmen, I swear. Regardless, as the memes of internet production-consumption dictate, here are things I enjoyed in this blink-and-you'll-miss-it-year.

They are in no order, neither chronologically nor of importance. Several of them will have already been mentioned elsewhere. Many of them will be weighted towards the end of the year because what is time and what is memory.

Bones of Contention

This year saw the kickoff of a collaborative rpg review site, featuring assorted luminaries (and me also) doing the whole reviewing deal. While I have written comparatively little for it thus far, that is of minimal importance in comparison to the project as a whole. It's good stuff. Good reviews, written by folks I am glad to know. I'm glad to be a part of it, and I look forward to a second good year of it.

The Plangent Mage session we did was loads of fun. I played as a golden lion tamarin-man who was one half of a comedy duo with Zedeck's halfling. 

Jujutsu Kaisen

A sterling example of a creator going "I love this thing, except for all the bullshit, so I will make my own better version" The thing in question is Naruto (oh god we are in the era now where people who were into Naruto as teens and tweens are now making their own stuff informed by it) to a degree nearly parodic: there are characters and scenarios and archetypes that are practically 1:1 correlations. Except good this time - Nigh-miraculously for the subgenre it inhabits, no one's annoying. No one. I like all of these characters. The fights are lean mean and excellently animated, the monsters are weird and grotty, the cast has good chemistry and the side characters get their cool moments.

There's a genuine warmth to the friendship of the main trio: Itadori's meathead brute strength is matched by just being an all-around decent bloke, Megumi's edginess isn't all that sharp and the others razz him for it constantly, Nobara's rough around the edges (or as Mon correctly describes, a "motherfucker extreme") but still clearly cares for the others. Also there's no romance subplot. None. Not even a crush to be seen. A+.

And, and this cannot be stated with enough emphasis, this is a shonen battle series that does a remarkably good job with its female cast. Nobara has a scene that boils down to "take your internalized misogyny and shove it up your ass, I'm not going to live my life according to what you think I should be", which is not a scene I was expecting from a shonen battle series. There are actual motivations! Strengths and flaws of character!

Super Mario Odyssey

Late to the party on this one. The wahoo-woohoo pizza-pasta man does a run and jump and it feels fuckin' phenomenal.

Monster Hunter Rise

A sequel that, as far as I am concerned, invalidates its predecessor. Where in World I played super-cautiously because hunts were so long and I didn't want to waste my time getting stomped, the movement and traversal mechanics added to Rise make the gameplay loop so, so much faster. Which is good, because then you can actually play the game and learn from failures instead of just getting frustrated by the waste of effort. This is where it really clicked for me. Better online, too.

Chainsaw Man

I've talked about it before. Comic good. Can't wait for the anime. It's gonna be era-defining, I feel it in my bones. If you know you know, if you don't know I encourage you to learn.

Caves of Qud

The most recent major update added more convenient ways to play without permadeath, and now that I am actually able to play the game without dying instantly to baboons (god the acid-spitting slugs later on must be impossible in roguelike mode), I can safely say that it is OSR as hell: creative problem solving with the tools you have on hand and their many interactions with the world around you is the name of the game.

There's an entire post that needs written about Qud, I assure you it will happen.

My Lord of the Rings Reread

Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

Ender Lilies

At first glance this game seems like a grab bag cobbled together from other games' scraps. Ability-gated exploration, check. Dark fantasy setting, check. Gaining new abilities from defeated enemies, check. Sad lore journals, check. And yet somewhere in the alchemy of art and sound and the moment-to-moment experience of play, it turns into something I can't quite shake. For the genre, it's above quite a few I have played in quality (Bloodstained Ritual of the Night being a noteworthy disappointment), and the fact that I at least wanted to (but never did) try for a 100% (which I basically never do) is certainly a point in its favor. The last couple areas and the final boss do show clear signs of being rushed, but if you are looking for a game with sad Souls vibes and Metroidish gameplay, it's a good pick. 

Guilty Gear Strive

Anime Bullshit: The Game. The real good stuff, the primo designer shlock-rock. And a damn good game besides: I'm not a fighting game person but the art and good word of mouth got me in and something has clicked into place. I'm not good at it, mind you, but I'm having fun. I can go into the multiplayer lobbies and have a good time when I lose, I can see myself improving. The matchmaking system they have is excellent at keeping you around players of your own skill level. 

 

Midst

There are many narrative podcasts out there and Midst takes the crown as my favorite. Trading in the trite and tired "character talking into recording device" for a dynamic and snappy three-member Greek chorus, Midst moves at a breakneck pace through its weird sci-fantasy world. Information overload gives way to understanding, and within a few episodes you're keeping speed with it all.

Music good, voice work excellent, characters good, setting A+. Chef's kiss.

Gettysburg

Fate decided to work in my favor this year, and so I was able to spend a couple days in Gettysburg with my partner back in May. The weather was wonderful, the park uncrowded, and the place we were staying at was affordable. Did a whole lot of walking (Think we managed 12 miles in one day) went to a cat-themed diorama museum with a very friendly dog, and for a tourist town the food was reasonably priced. Waaaaaaay too many ticks, though. They need more possums.

Also Pickett's Charge gets undersold for how big of a tactical blunder it was. I am astounded that there wasn't a general mutiny when he gave that order. Like you hear the scenario and go "that's stupid, he's rushing troops up a hill with no cover towards a fortified position", but then you actually see the battlefield and it hits you that it was so much dumber than that description entails. Anyone ever claims that Lee was a good general they are out of their fucking minds unless they mean he was good at getting loads of his own men killed and then losing.

Paradise Killer

Subtitle: JoJo's Bizarre Vaporwave Murder Mystery Invesitagtion Simulation With a God Damn Double Jump And A Fuckin' Airdash.

Play it. Barring that, listen to the soundtrack.

** 

And there we go. It's not all, of course, it's never all. There have been cats fostered, I finally started with antidepressants. Unicorn Meat nears its completion. The plague years continue and while it feels like there's a whole lot of going in circles and time slipping through fingers like water...it's okay. We're all hangin' in there.

2017: The Year In Review Adventure Setting

Favorite TV of 2017

The rogue city-state of Hellsalem's Lot sits like a madhouse on the borderland between worlds. It is a city of chaos and crime, of uncontrolled magic and regularly scheduled existential threats. Terrorist cells breed like fruit flies, cults pop up like weeds, rogue sorcerers lurk in every unattended alleyway, gang wars are so regular they're made into serialized television, and the eclectic members of Libra have to, as their name suggests, keep the balance of it all.

And deal with the vampires.

• It's very easy to die and very difficult to stay dead in Hellsalem's Lot. Don't question it, it stops working if you question it.
• The Blood Breed don't fall prey to typical vampire weaknesses: you're going to need a true name and some potent blood magic to seal those bastards away.
• It's easy to tell if Femt is behind the current disaster; The King of Depravity loves hacking into video billboards to make his announcements. What a ham.

Favorite game of 2017

In the harbor there is an island: a prison that once housed the city's criminals, now overrun with beasts and monsters. The prison's layout is ever-changing, kept a-flux by the weakened dimensional boundaries of its parent city. Creatures within are often possessed of dead cell mutagens, which may in some cases become self-aware and capable of puppeting about corpses as their own bodies.

• A mad inventor is known to live on the Island, trading powerful magical weapons for dead cells harvested from the bodies of fallen monsters.
• The great eldritch Watcher still keeps its post in the Insufferable Crypt, guarding the depths of the island from any intruders or would-be escape artists.
• There's an assassin up in the Clock Tower - who was she sent here to kill, and why is she still here?

Other favorite game of 2017

Beneath Hellsalem's Lot there is another city: the ancient grounds of Hallownest, home to the old insect-folk. But the city's time has passed, and the lonely tunnels are now filled with the remnants of that lost civilization. Spelunkers and treasure-seekers are still found every so often in the caves, uncovering the mysteries of the long-dead and long-forgotten.

• The caves are filled with undead husks, possessed of a terrible infection. The vessel within the Temple of the Black Egg is breaking apart, but none can get inside without releasing the Dreamers' seals.
• The moth-shaman in the Resting Grounds knows how to cut ones way into the dreams of the dead.
• The fungi are not to be overlooked. Simple-minded they might be now, but with the leadership of Mr. Mushroom they will inherit the age to come.

Favorite game-book of 2017

Further below Hallownest, in the furthest dark abyss, there are the Veins of the Earth. Here there are no friendly faces, there is no bench to sit awhile and listen. There is only darkness and death and unimaginable hunger. There is only cold, blood-slick stone.

• In the terrible black abyss did the Pale King and his five great Trilobite Knights discover the Radiance ages ago, and build the city of Hallownest by her light. When they turned from her, she delivered a terrible infection upon their dreams, and Hallownest was no more.
• Fossil vampires, older and more cruel by millions of years than the Blood Breed, still lurk in the stony dark. They are feral and mindless, and can smell blood spilled even miles above.
• The dErO conspiracy seeps outward, like lead in an aquifer. Rumors of it have even reached the Thinking Machines of the surface world. Tell us what you have seen in the Thinking Machines. There are no Thinking Machines. Tell us what you have not seen. We know what you have and have not seen.

Other other favorite game of 2017

Far beyond the walls of mist that wreathe Hellsalem's Lot there is the Downside: a purgatorial landscape of great beauty and great danger. Bands of outcasts make a rough life here, partaking in the holy Rites that might see them returned to civilization

• The Nightwings have been broken apart. In their absence, the Liberation Rite atop Mount Alodiel cannot be held, and no one may be freed from this hellish land.
• The bog hags of Flagging Hands have gathered at the Pit of Milithe, to call forth Yslach Astral-born. The stars are not yet right, but soon they shall be so, and the earth ripe for its devourer.
• "I hear that bastard Volfred Sandalwood is trying to fix the Rites, just to stick it to the old Archjustice. And get this - he knows how to build a machine that can make books! Can you believe that?"

Other other other favorite game of 2017

Out past even the Downside there are ruins of an older world, green with life and brown with dust. Here the YoRHa androids do battle with the alien machine lifeforms over a world that has lost both its human and alien masters.

• Broadcasts from the secret human moon enclave are a regular occurrence, but lately they have been a bit irregular: they've always lacked specific details, that came with the territory, but now they keep mentioning something about dErO machines, and YoRHa hasn't got a clue what the old humans are on about.
• A pacifist machine enclave has emerged in the forest out near the old amusement park, and to everyone's surprise they've decided to focus their single-minded obsession with imitating the humans of old through the study of existentialist philosophy. YoRHa hasn't got a clue what they're going on about.
• And now a message from everyone's favorite immortal gay teenager junk salesman, who is also a magical skeleton and has definitely seen some shit: "Every day's a sale, ever sale's a win!" 

 ------------------------------------------------

Man, it's been a big year. A pretty rough start and a lot of shakeups throughout, but you know, it turned out pretty okay. The blog's going strong (Seven months now? Holy guacamole.) and I feel like I'm in a better place than I was this time last year, even if only for having a place to yell about games online.

Happy new year, folks!