The Best Stuff I Saw, Read, and Played This Year

 Books

1) A Child Alone With Strangers by Philip Fracassi

    This book starts with an attempted murder-suicide when a father throws himself and his own son in front of a bus, and just does not let up. It is an incredibly well-written thrill ride from beginning to end, and nobody has read it (except me). This needs to change asap.

2) The Blighted Stars by Megan E O'Keefe

    I found out about this one from Digg, where it was billed as The Last of Us plus The Expanse, and it was an instant purchase. I blazed through the first book, but the second one is kind of on hold because of life/work stuff that I won't go into. There's space opera, there's romance, and there's...fungus? This book is supposed to be a romance, but it takes a backseat to a fascinating plot and great characters.

3) Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

    Admittedly, I read this in the beginning of the year, so I forget a lot of what happens with this one, but I remember it being excellent.

4) American Gun by Cameron McWhirter & Zusha Elinson

    This book is a very detailed and fascinating history of the AR-15 from its invention in the 50s to its messy deployment in Vietnam, well into its role as a weapon of mass murder in the present day. This book is riveting

5) Dreambound by Dan Frey

    Do you hate Harry Potter and think YA fantasy is stupid and annoying? If so, this is the perfect book for you. Frey plays his cards close to his chest as you try to figure out if the main character is a total asshole or not, but the book became exactly what I was hoping for in the last third or quarter of it and I was very satisfied.

6) A Guest in This House by Emily Carroll

    "Emily Carroll has a new book out??? Oh shiiiiiit!" was my reaction when I learned that this book existed. I could love this book for the art alone, but the story is creepy in its own right.

Movies

1) New Religion (Japanese, 2023); When Evil Lurks (Argentinian, 2023) -- TIE

   Don't ask me to choose between these two films. Any movie that makes me yell "Whaaaat the--!!!???" at my TV is a winner, and both of these films achieved that.

    New Religion is a deeply disturbing movie about a sex worker who takes on a sinister new client after the bizarre suicide of her young daughter, and it reminded me very much of Possessor (2021). It's a slow, creepy movie that sneaks up on you and takes you to some unexpected places. I absolutely loved it.

    When Evil Lurks is not your typical Bonk-You-Over-The-Head-With-Jesus possession movie. It imagines demonic possession as a contagious disease, and there's a perfectly executed setup early in the movie that demonstrates its central concept that had me screaming at the TV. I expected something to happen, and I was very happy with what I got.

2) The Unbinding (2023)

    Yet another possession movie, except this one is an actual documentary about a cursed object. Two hikers do something really, really dumb, and require the assistance of two paranormal investigators to help fix what they did. "Don't Touch That, You Don't Know Where It's Been" is a very important life lesson.

3) Becky (2022), Wrath of Becky (2023)

    A group of escaped convicts mess with the wrong middle schooler. At a certain point, you know that the hunters have become the hunted, and one of my favorite "oh how the turns have tabled" moments ever happens in this movie. Becky don't take no shit, and her insatiable appetite for the total annihilation of her enemies makes this a lot of fun to watch. NOTE: I enjoyed Becky more than Wrath of Becky because by that point, we know that Becky is an exterminating angel and the tension of the story is gone. It's worth watching anyway, but just keep in mind that one movie is slightly better imho than the other.

4) Children of Paradise (French; 1945)

    I love French movies in general, and this 3-hour+ movie gave me the same feeling as Seven Samurai: This film is simply a joy to watch. The characters are great, the drama is great, and the film feels like a 19th century novel. It is that good.

5) Sleep (German, 2021)

    I bought this blind on Arrow Video, and the consensus among my friends I showed it to was that I had struck gold. A teenage girl investigates a mysterious hotel that appears in her comatose mother's dreams. This film is a magical realist thriller involving dark pasts that people would rather forget, interspersed with fairy tale elements. Very, very highly recommended.

Games

1) GTFO

    This is the best Aliens experience you can have, and I mean that it is infinitely better than the actual Aliens games. GTFO is extremely punishing and extremely satisfying. I have, I think, almost 250 hours in this game and I am very sad that it has just received its final update.

2) Chained Echoes / Sea of Stars

    If your favorite SNES RPG is Final Fantasy VI, play Chained Echoes first.

    If your favorite SNES RPG is Chrono Trigger, play Sea of Stars first.

    Both of these are excellent (and short!), and which one you like better will be entirely based on which classic RPG you enjoy more.

3) The Tartarus Key

    This game is utterly perfect. It's more of a thriller game than a horror game, as there are no scares and no combat. Your goal is to save as many people as possible by solving Saw-like puzzles, and you only get one chance. The story is good, the puzzles are very hard, and it looks like a long-lost PSX game.

4) Blasphemous II

    Blasphemous was my favorite Dark Souls-style game that was not made by From Software, and Blasphemous II promised to be more of that. I am very happy to say that it delivered.

5) World of Horror / Against the Storm

    Do you like Junji Ito? Do you wish there was a Junji Ito game? Then World of Horror is for you. WOH looks like a 2-bit old Mac-era RPG adventure game with janky combat and weird shit going on. You pick your starting character, your background, and which Eldritch God you wish to face, and you are tasked with solving 4 or 5 (depending on your difficulty) eerie mysteries, and along the way you fight random monsters and face random choices in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style. Your neighbor asks for your opinion on his artwork. Do you take a closer look? *You have attracted the attention of Something Truly Evil* 

    I bought Against the Storm back in January, and it is only in the past few months that I really began to understand how to play it (after taking a long break from it). It's a roguelike fantasy citybuilding game where you have to establish a series of small settlements by building up your economy, and fulfilling orders from the Queen, all while contending with a severe storm that saps your resources and lowers villagers' morale. What I love about the game is that it provides clear objectives and allows the game to end in victory, because I usually have no idea what I'm doing in citybuilding games and I get bored very easily. AtS solves both of those problems, and I love it.

Music

2023 was a great year for new music. Here are some of the best:

1) HEALTH - Rat Wars

    Coming in clutch with a Dec 7th release, HEALTH dropped an industrial metal album that is as perfect for me as a man-shaped hole in Amigara Fault. The opening track is just a slow, heavy melody of quiet intensity of the kind where, as you listen to it, you know that something is going to happen. Bonus: The Youtube video for DEMIGODS is just a collection of footage of Command & Conquer FMVs. 

2) Paramore - This is Why 

    This one hit me early and hard after something bad happened in my life, and through this year, as I've listened to it, I think I enjoy the second half of the album more than the first. "Crave" is by far my favorite track on the album, with "Liar" close behind. 

3) Kesha - Gag Order

    "MiSaNtHrOpE, what the hell are you doing listening to Kesha?????" This album exploded into my life. I bought it on Bandcamp not thirty seconds into the opening track. This album is raw, it matched what was going on in my life at the time of its release perfectly, and I could not help but fall in love with it. 

4) Hayley Williams - Petals For Armor  / Flowers For Vases

    I've had these albums for a while, and all this time I've thought they were kinda boring or not for me. Oh man was I wrong. After repeated listens, I finally understand "Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris", and "Pure Love" is the perfect romance song for me.

5) Sleep Token - Take Me Back to Eden

    As I said above, I like my metal on the slower side, with steadily building intensity. Sleep Token delivers exactly what I want with the title track, and "The Apparition". Sleep Token have earned themselves a permanent spot on my massive playlist.

6) Marsh - Endless

    When you are just looking to chill out, put this on. I would like to direct you here to two tracks: "Blue" and "Sleep"

BONUS: Argy & Goom Gum - Pantheon 

Grooming Hate

 Something has been really bothering me, but I haven't been inspired to put it to paper (or in a text document) until now.

In one corner, we have LGBTQ+ accepting parents and their children.

In the other corner, we have conservative, church-going parents and their children.

And yet only one of these groups is labeled, by the other, "groomers."

One of these groups has been lobbying, over the past several years, to remove certain books from school libraries and classrooms, passed or otherwise advanced legislation criminalizing the other group, going so far as to separate loving parents from their children in the name of family values, and finally, perpetrating violent terrorism against the other group (see: Club Q in Colorado just two days ago, the Pulse Nightclub in Florida in 2016).

What bothers me most about what is happening is that the wrong group is being labeled "groomers." In what universe is the Church (Catholic or evangelical) not an institution of power and indoctrination? In other words, the institution of Christianity itself is an artifice built to disseminate and preserve specific traditions and values belonging to a specific culture; its very purpose is incontrovertibly to "groom" its members and their children in order to preserve its own existence.

Conversely, LGBTQ+ parents do not belong to any similar institution; in fact, I would argue that no such institution exists that can pass on or in any way indoctrinate children into any kind of specific belief system; nearly everyone I have encountered who is LGBTQ+ has embarked on a journey--intellectual, interpersonal, sexual, medical--of self-discovery after figuring out that they do not belong in whatever situation in which they find themselves. The only role of their parents, in this situation, was either to choose to support or choose to disavow them (dealing incalculable psychological damage in favor of something so insignificant as their personal religious or moral convictions in the face of their own children, who only seek their love and approval in who they chose to have relationships with) as they metamorphized into their more authentic selves.

I can think of no greater crime than that of teaching one's children to hate another group of people, but, for many, this has become the role of the Church even as they project that toxic, false word at their very targets. 

Making matters much worse, the beliefs of the Church proliferate amongst weak-minded people, and eventually manifest themselves through violence; and while the violence itself may lack any kind of specific source or association, the reality of stochastic terrorism remains. The fog of plausible deniability and myth of "lone wolf" terrorism obscures Dostoevsky's greatest and most important lesson: Beliefs beget action. It doesn't quite matter who inspired the person who attacked Pulse or Club Q; it doesn't quite matter who compels certain parents to take books away from other people's children; what matters is that the volume of these beliefs is rising, and with it the threshold for these beliefs to manifest in violence.

There is one group I specifically want to address, because I believe that they are the most vulnerable, and the ones whom the Right specifically targeted in order to wedge themselves an opening with which to attack other groups of people. Trans people are the least understood and the most maligned of all groups in the GLBTQ+ spectrum, and they deserve far more attention and support. They are being attacked and murdered at such alarming rate that there is a Trans Day of Remembrance for all of those who have been attacked and killed in hate crimes.

The Right exploited the public's uncertainty about trans people (and, to be frank, the uncertainty of other LGB people) in order to create an opening through which they could attack other letters in the acronym. Attacks on trans people through both legislation and physical and verbal violence have led invariably to attacks on lesbians, gays, queer people, and, also, Jews, who remain the Right's eternal bogeyman. 

The point that I am trying to make, and tragically, it takes me saying it for others to understand it, is that hatred against one group invariably invites hatred toward other--or even all--groups. Once it becomes acceptable to malign a socially vulnerable minority, it is only a matter of time before someone feels emboldened enough to malign yet another socially vulnerable minority. That old Holocaust era poem is as cliched as can be, but it is abundantly clear that we have yet to absorb its lesson.

Unintended Consequences

 There is one thing I believe in in politics, and it's something not a lot of people really pay attention to, but always ends up being very important. I believed, for example, that Russia's invasion of Ukraine would galvanize NATO (which it did), and, I believe, with the impending reversal of Roe v Wade, that there will be unintended consequences of outlawing abortion.

I am extremely pro-abortion, for reasons that go above and beyond that the government must not litigate what happens inside a person's body, and that a woman does not exist merely at the pleasure of the state. Those arguments are good, but there are also severe and widespread consequences for society when abortion is outlawed.

Most people will look to Gilead in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as an example of what is bearing down upon us in the United States right now, and, while that is very accurate, there is yet an example from fairly recent history that can be drawn upon.

In 1966, the Soviet-era dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu (pronounced, according to Wikipedia, "chow-Shesk-oo") wanted to increase the birth rate in his country, so he banned both abortion and birth control (something which Republicans in states they control are considering). Yeah, it worked for a little while....until it didn't. By December, 1989 (when he was violently overthrown), there were tens of thousands, by official count, of women who had died, and 170,000 malnourished children who were found in abandoned orphanages. What had ensued was a massive humanitarian disaster in which women became terrified of sex amidst a horror of abandonment and death from both childbirth and unsafe abortions.

Right now, as we await the SCOTUS decision (and hope it is also different from Alito's screed), Republican-controlled states are legislating abortion restrictions as fast and hard as possible, almost competing with one another to see who can be the most draconian. 

So what might we expect as women are now compelled by law against their will to give birth?

The Washington Post ran an article yesterday about an antiabortion activist who hoped that, with Roe gone, state governments might increase funding for maternity support, childcare, and education. Unfortunately, that's not how this is going to work, as this activist seems to be realizing. Do you remember when, during the pandemic, hospitals were overflowing with COVID patients and nurses were short staffed and the quality of care tanked? This is going to be like that, only with babies. To make matters worse, the states looking to ban abortion, like Mississippi and Alabama, are not among the highest-ranked states for childcare or education, maternity leave policies, or any other kind of social support that these new babies and their mothers might require when mom is denied an abortion (and very possibly prosecuted for trying to get one!). Making matters much worse for the mother, even before she has to worry about financial devastation, is the fact that, in the United States, it is safer to get an abortion than it is to give birth than it is to have an abortion. If you overwhelm hospitals with people who need care, be they women forced by the state to give birth or COVID patients, quality of care is going to decrease as the demand for care increases. Antiabortion states already have significantly poorer healthcare outcomes, and their infrastructure has not recovered from the pandemic.

What is going to happen to all these newborns who overcrowd schools and hospitals? Those lucky enough to end up in orphanages will face neglect and abuse as states cut funding for those programs. Texas, in fact, has child sexual abusers working in its foster care system. All the children who don't end up in orphanages will become street urchins. Oh, and, by the way, what's happening with all the COVID orphans? Has anyone checked on them lately?

What happens to mom? Women will be systematically pushed out of the workforce as they are forced to raise children. Childcare will be impossible to find. Pushing women out of the workforce might be the true goal of these policies, as the Right is motivated to restore male supremacy. On the other hand, the pandemic had already pushed many women out of the workforce simply because childcare was no longer available during that time. Another possible goal might be to destroy sexual liberation for women, which is indeed much closer to a theocratic program and one of the major tenets of Margaret Atwood's novel. It also fits in with the laws and declarations proposed by states such as Louisiana and Missouri, which seek to guarantee full personhood at the "moment of fertilization", giving the state the motive to annihilate the rights of a citizen in favor of her ova. [Aside] As some have rightly pointed out, it is strangely still not possible to list an embryo as a dependent on her taxes. Curious.

Sixty percent of Americans believe that Roe v Wade should remain, and, as we are learning since Alito's disaster of an opinion (a Puritan lawyer who condemned women to death for witchcraft in the 17th century is going to be your authority on women's issues? Are you for real? When was the last time your family invited you over for Thanksgiving dinner? It must be more than a decade ago...), the only other fair and equitable solution possible is 100% legalization. The antiabortion states will not be able to prevent women from crossing state lines (though they are trying), and it would be unconscionable to repeat Ceausescu's calamity. Of course, the antiabortion believers insist their right, but how many dead women and neglected children would it take to convince them otherwise? How high does the mountain of corpses need to rise before they relent (and repent)? If our experience with COVID is any indication, the answer will probably be: A lot.

Breaking the Law

Last week, the January 6th Commission held its first hearings, in which the capitol police officers gave their testimony regarding what they saw and experienced during the assault. Strangely, the Blue Lives Matter crowd was nowhere to be seen. Crickets.

What happened to Blue Lives Matter?

Blue Lives Matter was a pro-police initiative erected in direct opposition to Black Lives Matter. It was blatantly racist and opportunistic; it attempted to deflect attention away from extrajudicial murders committed by police, as well as the flagrant abuses against peaceful protesters, over the course of the summer 2020 protests. And it completely disintegrated on January 6, 2021.

January 6th placed police in direct opposition to their own supporters as they stormed the Capitol Building. In some of the early footage, the terrorists can be heard pleading, “Let us through. We don’t have a problem with you.” But the police had a sworn duty to protect the capitol.

It wasn’t long before violence broke out. Things got so bad that five officers—including Officer Brian Sicknick from my state of NJ—were killed by the marauders. Later, one Capitol Police officer reported seeing their colleague beaten with Blue Lives Matter flags.

The problem was, from the beginning, that conservative support for police was contingent upon being allowed to break the law. In Philadelphia, PA, during the summer of 2020, vigilantes were sanctioned by the police to attack protesters. This same story played out in Kenosha, WI, where Kyle Rittenhouse was hanging out with police before he went and killed two protesters.

Prior to January 6th, armed—I don’t want to call them protesters—Trump supporters gained entry into the Michigan State Capitol to protest the coronavirus lockdown. The police, amazingly, did not make any attempt to remove them from the building. The Michigan state legislature would shut down more than once amid violent threats from Trump supporters. Later, the FBI would foil a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

None of these prior events had ever caused the police to look a gift horse in the mouth, until January 6th, when desperate necessity severed their relationship with conservatives. The moment when police weren’t going to just let in a bunch of “tourists” armed with Molotov cocktails, bear spray, and zip ties, was the moment when conservatives could no longer support the police.

I would like to keep this mostly beyond the scope of this essay, but it is worth noting that the GOP is desperately trying to erase January 6th in the public consciousness, doing, among its members, what the Chinese did with Tiananmen Square. How can you support the police if the police know you beat them with Blue Lives Matter flags?

The Assault on the Capitol Building

Republican voters have been coddled like children for far too long; allowed to exist in a surreal unreality in which they won the Civil War, that Obama wasn't born in the United States, and that an election, freer, fairer, and more decisive than anyone expected during the pandemic, was stolen from them.

This happened because the Republican party has spent decades deliberately feeding blatant lies to the people for whose benefit they are supposed to work. Once again, much like the Bunkum speeches made by White Democrats that incited the Civil War, we are relearning the dire consequences of abusing a huge section of the electorate with an overwhelming firehose of baseless lies. 

The Republican party bears 100% of the responsibility for the horror that transpired today. There were many, many signs, after Trump took that elevator ride in June 2015, that telegraphed—in terms so bold and stark that they might as well have been neon—the horrific desecration of the US Capitol Building. The litany of crimes and abuses of the office of the President committed by Donald Trump would fill completely a paper copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or as many sheets of paper as the US Criminal Code, which no single individual has ever read to completion.

Between December, 2019 and February 2020, following the Russia Investigation, House Democrats voted to impeach Donald Trump, citing his rampant abuse of the office and the threat he might pose in the future. The Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, quickly dismissed the charges brought by the House. They were given an exit ramp, and they did not take it. I cannot be more clear: The Republican party owns this.

I do not think it is fair to say, in this instance, that the only terrorists, or agitators, or goons, or thugs—any word you might want to use, except for protester—were the people who made it inside the building. Much like every other instance where Donald Trump’s true form has emerged these past five years—the moments when he makes fun of disabled people, or when he calls for peaceful Democratic protesters and journalists to be assaulted—the people who followed his command to assemble in Washington DC today were there for a single, violent purpose: To disrupt, through the use of force, the Congressional certification of the Electoral College votes.

I want to draw a stark and necessary distinction between the protests over the summer and the violent assault on our nation’s capital today. The protests that erupted following George Floyd’s senseless and cold-blooded murder by police—and countless other names that give legitimate and just cause to Black grievance—were enjoined by a plurality of citizens of every age, gender, ethnicity, etc, to give voice to the brutal and malicious treatment endured by Black people especially by the police, but at all levels and domains of American society. These protests were massive, and—significantly—incredibly, heroically, peaceful, even as they faced unrelenting, counterproductive police onslaught. Hours and hours of footage shows peaceful protesters being teargassed, pepper sprayed, disappeared, pincered, beaten, and run over by police. The police, in multiple locations throughout the United States, including Philadelphia and Kenosha, expressed candid support for far-right marauders. Given these facts, it is a wonder how, without the long and proud history of Black nonviolent civil disobedience, that these protests could remain as peaceful as they were.

This is what legitimate grievance looks like. In the words of Kimberly Jones, “Far as I’m concerned, they could burn this bitch to the ground, and it still wouldn’t be enough. And they are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.” They want access to the same resources and opportunities that white people enjoy, and their protests serve as a stark reminder of how the promise of our Declaration of Independence falls far short of reality.

The proud Black tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience carries with it a deep reverence for what America should be, and a reverence for the institutions as representations of what that might look like. With people like the late, infinitely honorable Atlanta Representative John Lewis, or his colleague, equally honorable, Representative Elijah Cummings, the goal of any protest on the capitol, from Martin Luther King’s march to the steps, to Black Lives Matter, the objective is not the destruction of the institution, it is not an invasion. It is a statement; it is a reminder that they, too, belong in those halls, that they, too, must be included in the People’s House.  

The assault on the Capitol Building is not that. The Congressional procedure as directed by the Constitution of the United States that cements the peaceful transition of power from one President to the next, a rare and horrifically fragile phenomenon, is the most precious of all our possessions. Without the pageantry and solemnity of this ritual, America would be staring into the abyss. This ritual separates the United States from its enemies, and it is the very backbone upon which the rest of the country is built. It is the most important and most necessary feature of our system of government, and to undermine it is certain death.

The grievance that led Donald Trump’s supporters to assault the Capitol Building is built on nothing but lies invented and propagated by none other than the President himself. It is an ouroboros. Sixty—by Sen. Schumer’s count—election lawsuits have been defeated in the courts. Every single election official in every single state, regardless of party affiliation, has asserted that the election systems were incredibly secure given the circumstances, and that there has been no significant fraud that would affect the outcome of any election. I would here argue, as an aside, that the decentralized structure of our election procedures makes any attempt to actually steal an election in more than one state nigh impossible, and it is something we should be very grateful for. This is a big reason why Trump’s attempt to steal the election has failed.

The egregious imagery of the marauders who attacked the Capitol Building today brings to light demons that have not been exorcised from our society, and give voice to their true, evil intent. The flags used to desecrate the halls of the People’s House are intended to inflame and provoke feelings of ressentiment felt during the Civil War, and are so offensive because they are the flags of traitors, of people who long ago decided to fight a doomed war against our government just because they felt entitled to own human beings as property. In the clearest of terms, the people carrying the flag of our enemy into the heart of our government are a provocation. You betrayed this country and we defeated you. The Confederate flag absolutely does not belong in the Capitol Building, and this is why Senator Cory Booker was so incensed during his speech on the floor. Imagine, if you will, if the British in 1774, or the Nazis, or the Soviet Union, or al Queda, were able to plant their flags in the heart of our government. It is an affront that every American who believes in what this country should represent must recognize as a threat.

No single American citizen should ever defend what happened today, and no single American should be willing to overlook the responsibility of the Republican party for its collaboration with the forces that made it possible. It is an embarrassment and an affront to everything we are supposed to represent to ourselves and to the world, and it should have never happened. 

The manipulated mob deployed by the President and abetted by his party are a continued threat against our country, and constitute a lasting, poisonous legacy that will haunt us for years to come. Doubt built upon lies and impervious to contrary evidence paved the way for fascists in Germany, and these marauders are no different. DC police continue to find weapons, including a cooler filled with Molotov cocktails, around the Capitol Building, which points to the sad and terrifying fact that a Reichstag Fire was in the cards today. 

The future may feel bright with Biden’s victory and Ossoff and Warnock’s victories in Georgia, but thanks to the myriad crises unleashed by the Instigator in Chief, there are also more dark clouds on the horizon.

The Best Stuff I Read, Played, Saw, and Listened to in 2020

Read

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell ** 

I forget most of this book, actually. I was looking for something weird with a dash of magical realism, and this almost delivered, though not quite. It’s still a good book, though.

Amiable With Big Teeth by Claude McKay *** 

This book is about the struggle to prevent the Communists from hijacking Black activists’ campaign to help Ethiopia against Italy in the 1920s. This book was interesting because I read it during the Democratic primary, and it gave context to Bernie Sanders’ continued failure to connect with minority groups.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra *** 

This book clocks in at over 920 pages, but it’s a great read. It’s a police procedural and gangster story rolled up into one book. It’s fantastic.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel *** 

I was in a rut during the pandemic, and, ironically, what got me out of it was reading about a fictional pandemic. St. John Mandel glosses over the actual pandemic part to get to the aftermath, where America has been reduced to scattered hamlets, and focuses on a traveling circus troupe that encounters a dangerous cult.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper *** 

This was a surprise gift from a friend, and it was unlike any other mystery I’ve read. The book is about a mysterious death in the Australian outback, and the few families who are trying to figure out what happened. The denouement is phenomenal.

Homeland by Fernando Aramburu *** 

This is a gut punch. It might be the very best book I read this year. The book is about a small town in the Basque region of Spain, and how terrorism destroys the lives of two close families. I cannot overstate how fantastic this book is.

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker ** 

A great debut novel about a once-fertile, remote agricultural town now in the throes of a charismatic Christian cult, and one young woman’s discovery and desperate escape. The Handmaid’s Tale on a very small, but no less terrifying, scale

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke ***

This book reminds me of all of the old adventure games I love to play, from MYST to The Room (not Wiseau), or Quern: Undying Thoughts. If you are familiar with those, you might start to get a hint of what’s happening here, but if not, the less you know about this book going in, the better. The twist, and ending, are both excellent.

Duma Key by Stephen King *** 

I’ve been kinda disappointed with King lately, having grown tired of what I call “Dracula rewrites”, but Duma Key is a very original, fascinating King story with an unusually satisfying ending. It takes a long while to get to the horror part, but you can tell going in that there’s a heavy debt Freemantle (our main character) will have to pay. It ranks as one of my favorite King novels.

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam *** 

This is a book about not knowing. Some apocalypse happens, but there is no information whatsoever about what it is, or what anyone is doing about it. In an instant, society ceases to exist.

We Have Been Harmoninzed by Kai Strittmatter ***

After reading China Under Mao by Andrew Walder and Deng Xiaoping by Ezra Vogel last year, Harmonized is about China under Xi Jinping. Strittmatter describes how Xi is reviving the Mao cult, and, through rapid investment in digital surveillance technology and artificial intelligence, building the most complete panopticon the world has ever seen. Further, Strittmatter describes how the CCP has managed to erase even recent history in the public consciousness, and through reeducation, injected its children with a jingoism completely divorced from historical reality.

A Libertarian Walks into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling **

This is the true story of how libertarians destroyed the small town of Grafton, NH and got invaded by hyperaggressive bears. This book is on this list because the schadenfreude value is very high. I already hate libertarians, and I was laughing at their comeuppance in this book.

Played

Kentucky Route Zero **** 

I’ve said quite enough about this one already. This game gets an extra star.

Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1, and Kiwami 2 

*** for Y0, ** for K1 & K2 

These games got me through the pandemic. Yakuza 0 is a masterpiece.

Hades *** 

Supergiant’s best game to date, and one of the best roguelikes ever made. Their faithfulness to Greek mythology, while also reinterpreting it to modern audiences, has been praised elsewhere. The writing, and the art direction, are stellar, and the gameplay compels you to immediately restart after every death. Greek mythology is almost a perfect tableau for a roguelike, as the gods are both cyclical and infinite. Supergiant absolutely nailed it.

Paper Mario 64, Thousand Year Door, and the Origami King

PM64 ****, TTYD **, TOK ***

This is the first time I have ever played the original Paper Mario, and I fell in love with it. It was delightful to play, and I was laughing my ass off throughout. TTYD was a bit disappointing because the writing wasn’t nearly as strong, but then Origami King returned to form. While some of the boss battle designs were frustrating and underwhelming (it’s not until one of the last bosses where you get what can be considered a fair fight), the game does an excellent job of causing you to forget your complaints with almost more humor than the original. Every five minutes, I’m shouting for my sister to come see what ridiculous thing the game is doing, from FAX TRAVEL(!!!) to a giant fan rising up from the sea to blow away fog. Paper Mario is always a good time. They also took the “paper” of Paper Mario and just ran with it. I love it, even though it was a bit frustrating.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons *** 

My sister has 705 hours in Animal Crossing. The game came out right as our governor issued the Stay at Home order, and I had gotten the game for my sister as a belated birthday present. She is still playing it. I played from May til the end of the summer, because watching her play it made me want to play it. I’m the kind of person who needs to be able to finish games, but I cannot deny that Animal Crossing is wonderfully constructed, and a perfect game for the existential dread of the pandemic. 

In Other Waters *** 

This fascinating, deceptively simple exploration game is rich in story, and it reminded me of a criminally underrated adventure game I played years ago called The Experiment 112. It’s hard to find games like this, so I get excited whenever I find one. It’s a great game to just chill out to.

Wolfenstein: The New Order/The Old Blood *** 

I still think Wolf II was better, but in terms of quality, they are roughly the same. Play both, if you can. 

The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters ** 

I really liked this one. I often don’t like being forced to hide from enemies with no way to fight back, but the main villain was only occasionally frustrating. I enjoyed it.

Resident Evil 3 ** 

The game is very short, which is a big knock against the $60 asking price, but I appreciated what they were going for. The game is trying to be a straight and simple horror film, with minimal exploration. Capcom just wants to get you from one setpiece to the next. The main issue I had with the game, aside from its length, is that Big Boy (my name for ol’ Nemmy) is never quite as scary inside of a boss fight as he is out of it.

Cyberpunk 2077 *** 

To avoid spoilers, I will issue my opinion on the game at a later date. Some people who will be reading this are still in Night City.

The Last of Us Part 2 **** 

I borrowed this from my neighbor, and I borrowed my sister’s PS4 to play it. I loved every minute of this game. It’s exhausting, terrifying, exhilarating, and devastating—all at the same time. Being forced to play as the “villain” forces you to reevaluate your sense of both characters, and it’s just excellent. It’s Naughty Dog’s best game.

Ori & the Will of the Wisps *** 

I’m a big fan of exploration sidescrollers (Metroidvanias), and the second Ori game was among the best. One highlight of the game is the terrifying giant spider boss, which was a great challenge and a lot of fun to fight.

Saw

Three Colors Trilogy, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski *** 

I love French cinema, and these films are beautiful. They are, like some of my friends claim with Alien & Aliens, one long film. I watched all of them in a span of a week.

The Fly, dir. David Cronenberg *** 

I’m already a fan of Cronemberg, but I had never seen The Fly until this year. The creature’s final form is a special effects marvel, and it’s absolutely worth watching Jeff Goldblum deteriorate as the movie goes on. You come to Cronenberg for one reason, and he never disappoints. 

Possessor, dir. Brandon Cronenberg ***

And neither did his son. This movie is just awesome. Criticism that he doesn’t go far enough to explore the premise of the film is correct, but as a first film, oh my god is it great. I definitely want to see more.

Coherence, dir. James Ward Byrkit **** 

I forgot I saw Coherence this year. Oh my god this movie is fantastic. The premise is basically a longer Twilight Zone episode, and the less you know going into it, the better. It’s got an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s worth every minute of your time. I promise.

Contagion, dir. Stephen Soderberg *** 

Very appropriate for what’s going on right now.

Borat 2, dir. Sacha Baron Cohen *** 

There are a lot of hilarious and awkward moments in this brilliant and necessary sequel, but I swear to god that I was literally dying at the very end with the Running of the Americans. You are free to have your favorite part of this movie, but that one is mine. It is almost an overload of catharsis.

The Reflecting Skin, dir. Philip Ridley *** 

This movie is all kinds of messed up. I can’t even begin to explain it, but it’s disturbing as anything and well worth watching. I was looking for something like David Lynch, and boy did I find it.

Listened to

- The Lorelai soundtrack by micAmic is on repeat, forever.

- I started listening to Chvrches. Night Sky is an excellent track

- Hayley Williams’ solo album came out in May. I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t resonate with me as much as After Laughter did

- I expanded my vaporwave collection with Mori by Aokigahara Online. I have been told that my chill music game is very strong. This by Hong Kong Express (2015) is another vaporwave highlight, specifically the track, “6 AM feat. V I R T U E”

The Octopath Traveler Soundtrack will always be amazing.

Both Ori soundtracks are queued up on a regular basis.

Kentucky Route Zero and How I Think of the Coronavirus

The finale of Kentucky Route Zero was released this past January, and even though it's been nearly 10 months since I played it, I can't stop thinking about it.

At the end of the 9-year-long (the game was released in five acts, spanning sometimes 4+ years between them) journey, when the Mucky Mammoth takes the characters across the Echo River, the party finally arrives at Dogwood Drive, which is a small clearing where no roads lead in or out. It is also ground zero of the Elkhorn Mine disaster that preceded the events of the game. The area is still flooded, and there are piles of dead horses (horses were allowed to roam free in the town and the people living there considered them residents) everywhere.

The last major event of the game, as the party unloads the contents of Conway's truck into the house, is a funeral. The player, taking the role of a housecat, listens in on conversations between the party that just arrived and the people who already live there, and is finally called over to witness the funeral for the horses that have died, but, it is obvious to everyone, both the characters and the player, that the funeral isn't really just for the horses who drowned, but also for everyone who was lost or displaced in the wake of the Elkhorn Mine disaster, or fell into debt to either the Hard Times Distillery (which is what happens to Conway in Act III, and the bar patrons in The Entertainment) or the Consolidated Power Company (like Dr Truman of Act II).

I am not really giving enough information about what KR0 is, I know, but, as we teeter on the edge of another coronavirus spike, it's an experience literally everyone should have.

The reason why this beautiful, poetic, and ultimately bleak game has me captivated, long after I have finished it, is that through it, I am thinking about how we are going to account for this tragedy, the one we are facing in real life right now.

I can't help but think that this game, a magical realist adventure game (more a stage play than a game) about ruthless and terrifying capitalist exploitation by faceless corporations against ordinary people, is directly connected to how we are dealing with coronavirus--or not--as, as of September, eight million Americans have plunged into poverty because the government failed to pass a second stimulus bill to keep people in their homes, and over 220,000 Americans are dead as we head into the winter.

The game serves, ultimately, as a reminder that America was built on tragedy and devastation. Much of what happens in the game is built upon real historical events and circumstances, from the Whiskey Rebellion, to the use of scrip, and the unmitigated greed of corporations outside the reach of government. It's a story about how people try--and often fail--to find life after what seems like divine catastrophe, and it speaks directly to this moment as we face multiple threats--economic, political, and biological--to our lives.

The funeral at the end of the game makes me wonder if and how we will account for all of the lives, not just killed by the virus, but who, like the denizens of the Zero, were destroyed and displaced directly because society preferred to make huge, unnecessary, and wasteful sacrifices of human beings.