December media log
-Oh December... What a month. Xmas happens in this one, the solstice, new year's eve, even xmas eve eve!
books/manga
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Finished Everything for Everyone! Wow, wow, wow, what an incredible book. They really stuck the landing with the last interview. I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time and cannot recommend this book enough! maybe .. hmm, here's a direct download link to the epub actually! :P man maybe i should just upload a whole digital library... and a final top top thanks to aloe for the rec.
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I've been slowing reading through Come as You Are and Angela Chen's Ace as "therapy homework". Generally enjoying both of them, especially now that I'm out of Come as You Are's opening genital section that explicitly names that it will basically be a book for cis women. Not fun! But it's a good pair to read together, there's a lot of interesting crosspollination.
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Olivia got me Flour is Flavor for xmas, very cool! Makes me want to build a mill and glean wheat varieties...
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I started Shimeji Simulation. I'm through the first volume and am absolutely loving it. Savoring even, taking it very slow and looking very closely. The scanlation I found has a lot of really tiny text in the margins and my ereader is old, so it's a laggy experience.
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Still working on the Homestuck Epilogues. Bit of a slog if I'm being honest.
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Breifly picked up Meander, Spiral, Explode and finished the chapter I was in the middle of. Makes me want to write!
blogs n' websites
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Enjoyed Cecile's year in review, hoping to actually get to some of these game recommendations!
The above also linked out to a this fine Videotome engine retrospective which i read all of mainly on the force of recommendation and having that weeklong obsession with TRAUMAKT~4.SEXE. Nice read tho, especially for the bit on the Pythagorean Comma!
A good reminder from Natalie on this final day of the year.
And of course, pouring out for cohost. 😞 I'll never forget you.
movies & anime & youtube videos
Ok, so December is the month that Xmas happens in, right? So yes, we've started in on our big block of Xmas movies. First was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, very fun story on this one but probably for another time. It was play research!
While You Were Sleeping, Cosmopolitan, My Night with Maud, Arther's Perfect Christmas, Happiest Season, The Muppets Christmas Carol,
Also sparked by the xmas geist was a Harry Potter rewatch. We're doing it in a silly jumbled order, so far we've done 1>6>5>7.2>3>7.1, and we're watching 6 as I write this. Finishing out with Chamber of Secrets! Very funny and silly to watch them like this but it's really showing how each film is kind of great in it's own way. We also watched the uh, 20th anniversary special they made? Kind of cute and funny, lots of great little nuggets. There's a moment where Emma Watson is talking about how she had a crush on Tom Felton, but then says "There was never romance between us, but I love him."
We went to see Queer in the theater, the new Luca Gaudagnino and whew I did not think it was very good! I went in like "I swear to god this better not be another film about bisexuals if you're going to call it "Queer"..." and to be fair, at least the main character didn't seem to be a bisexual, but it had that same one-sided pining. The start felt good and promising, but it felt like it completely biffed it. Disappointing!
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Finished Lucky Star with Nel!!!!! Wild, incredible, moving, my heart felt so open... 🌟 We even went back to watch the first episodes and it was just like... these shows meant a lot to each of us and it felt really special to be able to share them with each other.
There's two new totally wild Dark Souls 1 speedruns; 20:11 with no commentary (kind of reverant) which I watched when it dropped, and 19:55 with some funky music and chatter from the speedrunner that dropped less than a week later. Whichever vibe you prefer, they are both stunning displays of skill; I actually literally gasped several times. couldn't look away!
There's also this "upside down world" minecraft speedrun that I was just... transfixed by. I watched it over a few days and couldn't stop being disoriented by it, which was fun and cool and weird.
Really enjoyed this videogame music mix from Liz Ryerson. Nice transition into the music section :^)
music!
Christmasasaurus Unleashed 2!!! So many incredible tracks in this one, I was really blown away even despite having such high expectations.
Not much else other than xmas music playlists, the stuff i bought on bandcamp at the start of the month, and DJing while we hung out with commie.
games
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Phi and I played through A Circle of Charity. Really sweet, what a treat, very special experience. Has me thinking hard about peoplepleasing and the ways I care for people...
I've been dinking with Mother 1 again and have really gotten back into Omori too. I got through the prologue and was having so much fun, then that dreamcore song (I think it's sugar star planetarium?) started playing in the forest and I was like oh fuck oh shit, then Omori woke up and I remembered how it's kind of a bummer of a game. Really left me feeling messed up the rest of the night... Then I came back to it and the whole real world section has me completely pulled in.
Damn, that's it! Wild that the year's over already. Even just the glimpses of reflection I've done so far have really floored me. It's been kind of a crazy year! Last new year's feels so far away now, so much has changed... We'll see what becomes of this blog in the new year. At the very least I need to actually link to it on my main about page, but I'd also like to send out an email newsletter for that ol' group of people whose emails I still have in a list somewhere.
Anyway, happy new year's eve! Until next we speak, please consider these fine wikipedia links I remember pouring over after getting home from last year's new year's eve party because I was too stoned and caffinated to fall asleep: Roman calendar & Lunisolar calendar. Have a think on it, but don't think too hard about it :^)