A new tool

The year ended with a new tool in my video-game arsenal: a Steam Deck! (Basically, imagine a Switch, but it’s heavier and you can play a lot of your Steam library on it.) Still, almost none of what I’m going to talk about happened on the Steam Deck. The large share of this was on my desktop computer, with a little streamed/played on phone or tablet, and one notable game played on an Xbox.

 

Non-Steam highlights

1. The Sims 4 (but especially Life and Death), EA app: My complicated relationship with this game continues, but in all honesty, 2024 was a good year for The Sims 4. I liked the temporary events they built into the game, and the new Life and Death pack is one of my all-time favorites in the game, from any year! It changed death from a solid ending and into a transitional process, with a bunch of after-death gameplay and the potential for reincarnation. It’s a must-have for people who like to play with their Sims throughout a life, and even moreso if you play legacy saves with multiple generations. (Cemetery lots were also my number-one wishlist item, so of course I was happy!) I haven’t played with Lovestruck too much yet, but while I don’t like it as much as Life and Death, a lot of the date interactions are really fleshed out and fun. Still way too many kits I’m not buying, though.
2. PopCap Games (versions of Peggle and Zuma’s Revenge), Xbox and EA app: This one is entirely Jacob Gellar’s fault; he has a Nebula-exclusive video talking about how good Peggle is, which left me with the realization that I had never played it. So I did. (My dirty secret is that I often turn off sound/music on games, which does mess with the effect Jacob Gellar mentioned, so further experimentation might be in my future.) I also replayed some of Zuma’s Revenge while I was there; the aesthetics are a bit wince inducing, but the mechanics are rock solid.
3. The beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2, Epic Games: I bought this on deep sale from the Epic Games store because the Roxas opening is one of my all-time favorite game moments…and then the games went up on Steam, and I was mad that I had spent money on a platform I like significantly less and lost my momentum. The second this reaches a reasonable price on Steam, we’re so going back to Twilight Town.
4. Threes+, Apple Arcade: Remember 2048? Very similar. If my hands were free for a second in 2024, they were playing Threes. It’s more like a physical stim than a game, but I played so much, I have to count it.
5. Dress to Impress, Roblox: There was a good month in late summer/early fall where I did nothing but assemble outfits for bad scores on Roblox. I had a great time, though, and I think it helped me build on-theme outfits in The Sims, too. Did you know there was a Brat (like, Charli XCX Brat) promo period on Dress to Impress, a game ostensibly for children? I did because I’m a full-grown adult who plays on Roblox.
6. Speed Draw!, Roblox: Basically Dress to Impress, but with drawings instead. I liked the practice I got doing speed doodles in color, but I only played it for about a week before I got bored.
7. Epic Party, Roblox: I participated in several group plays on a private server with family. I wouldn’t call myself the biggest fan of this game, but playing on a digital gameboard with minigame breaks certainly does eat up a few hours, if that’s ever a problem.
8. Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Xbox: I’ve played this franchise ever since Origins first dropped, and despite serious misgivings about the art styles and Veilguard’s relationship to the franchise’s greater canon, I found myself deeply sucked in, to the point where I’m on my second playthrough on Steam Deck. The antagonist at the end of Inquisition took center stage for Veilguard, and delving into his psyche and making friends with your companions was oddly compelling, aided by really good combat if you’re playing as a rogue (although I will note, I was playing at the absolute easiest level so I could get through faster; the challenge dragons were the only real challenge for me). As the tags on this spoilery essay say, “datv is a good game but a bad dragon age game”.

 

Games I didn’t play (or play much) but that I heard about a lot

1. Starscape, Roblox: I’ve maybe played five seconds of Starscape, a space exploration sandbox kind of game, years ago, but I heard a lot about side quests and factions and so on in 2024. Would any of that translate to direct personal skill? Not remotely. But I would feel remiss not mentioning it on a list because its presence in my life is undeniable.
2. Factorio, Steam: Factorio released a giant DLC called Space Age later in 2024. The main game takes place on a single planet and ends when you launch a rocket off that planet. Space Age picks up after that point. I’ve played maybe an hour of Factorio and found it not to my tastes—I prefer a farming game to this kind of base building or resource management—but I will say, seeing a giant ship flying through space in a game previously unequipped to handle it was a delightful experience.
3. Doors (and similar games), Roblox: Doors is a survival horror escape kind of game, apparently inspired in part by Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion (an indie game I have played a bit, if not for a long time). Very popular with the young horror-loving crowd in my household. I enjoy the fanart that serves as my lockscreens the most.
4. Among Us, various: Not just played by controversial figures currently in the media! (Which is why those stories were so funny.) I heard many a tale of group Among Us outings in 2024, played by nine years olds and people over sixty and by all ages in between. The diversity in map options, and different cosmetic options, keep this game fresh many years past its popularity peak. I hope it continues getting refreshes in 2025.
5. Baldur’s Gate 3, Steam: I spent late 2023-early 2024 trying to get hooked into this game and failing (which is really funny considering I’m on my second Veilguard playthrough, which is nowhere near as good). But others in my household had a great time with it and its many modding options. My favorite mod I saw over a family member’s shoulder allows you to fully customize your companions if you want! I enjoyed seeing Wyll with long locs.
6. Dwarf Fortress, Steam: I have never played Dwarf Fortress, but I find its depth surprising every time I come across it, and it’s come a long way since its humble ASCII beginnings. The score is really good, too; Craftsdwarfship is my favorite.
7. The Half Life franchise, Steam: Gordon Freeman lives! My household is more of a Portal household for sure, but there’s something about that crowbar that’s still irresistable, especially in Half Life 2.
8. Astro Bot, PS5: Game of the Year 2024 was not unheard of in my household! It sounded more difficult than Astro’s Playroom, and I’m never a platformer person, but it’s hard to deny those little robots are adorable, and the controller integration seems really fun.
9. Boyfriend Dungeon, Steam: I let a family member play this on my Steam account a couple months before I figured out the family sharing system, and lost the chance to get a bunch of the achievements myself. Whoops. Still, charming mix of dating sim and dungeon crawler.

 

Steam highlights

1. Dorfromantik (35% of total playtime, 423 sessions, 21-day streak): Speaking of games that are almost like stims, we come to long-time favorite Dorfromantik! It’s a tile-placement puzzle that’s easy to learn and difficult to master. I’m over 1000 hours in Steam total, and I still have four achievements left. I did get a couple achievements in 2024, which took a lot of time and effort, and I’m very pleased with my results. I’m also pleased that it’s a game that I still enjoy playing without the drive for achievements. Some of my gametime numbers are due to the fact that I play it when I’m likely to be interrupted, so I’ll walk away from the computer and leave it running accidentally. Considering I’m in an era of life where I get interrupted constantly, a game this easy to pick up and put down is a necessity.
2. Balatro (Started in April, 23% of total playtime, 171 sessions, 17-day streak…and also on Apple Arcade, with stats I’m ignoring for my own sanity): Easily my game of the year as far as 2024 releases go. Balatro is a poker-based deck-building roguelike, which is a gamer way of saying “I play a lot of two pairs and flushes and start over again when I inevitably die”. As with Dorfromantic, it’s easy to pick up and extremely hard to 100%. Unlike Dorfromantic, if I’m not careful, I can start a Balatro game, blink, and miss a week of my life completely with dozens of runs in my wake. When the time change and seasonal depression hit hard, I set a Balatro embargo for my basic wellness. I’ve started playing it again and have managed to keep a balance, thankfully, but that 100 million chips achievement isn’t getting any more achievable. I did manage to get the gold stake achievement in between starting and finishing this post, though!
3. Stardew Valley (10% of total playtime, 33 sessions, 8-day streak): Another all-timer! Stardew Valley is the indie farming sim of my heart, and another one where the last few achievements are super hard to get. I wasn’t pushing too hard for completion in 2024, though; I was exploring the new, free update that dropped and expanded the game even further, as well as doing my usual “I love finishing the community center in as close to the first year as possible” runs. I’ve also played on Apple Arcade and Switch in the past, but 2024 was solidly a desktop Steam year because it took the update so long to expand to other platforms.
4. Coral Island (9% of total playtime, 34 sessions, 9-day streak): I’m pretty sure I also played Coral Island through Xbox in 2023, but it’s not in my recap for last year. Oh well! I got it on Steam in 2024, and it was a delight to revisit. Coral Island is another farming/life/dating sim like Stardew Valley, but with its own unique identity. (Mermaids are a huge part of the game, for one!) I maybe like the characters in Coral Island better? Certainly, the art style that renders them is beautiful. I feel like there’s plenty of ground to cover in its dev cycle and plenty of game I haven’t played, so don’t be surprised to see Coral Island reappear in 2025.
5. Regency Solitaire II (3% of total playtime, 10 sessions played, 4-day streak, also paired with Regency Solitaire): The Regency Solitare games card-based play with an overarching narrative for structure. They’re short, sweet, and easy to 100%. I love a game where I have to think of strategy and gasp over people going to Scotland to elope. Eat your heart out, Bridgerton.
6. Immortal Life: A farming/life sim built around Chinese fantasy! I had a delightful time at the beginning of 2024 pretending I was an alternate version of Wei Wuxian in a different cultivation setting. (If this makes no sense to you, try searching MDZS or The Untamed.) Sadly, I hit a major game-breaking bug on my first playthrough, and I was frustrated enough that I put the game down for a while. Now that there have been a couple updates, and it’s Steam Deck playable, it might be time to give Immortal Life another try.
7. Lethal Company: I only played Lethal Company, a online co-op horror game with satirical/comedy elements, in January of 2024, but it left a huge impression. One of the monsters you encounter in a tougher part of the game kills party members and mimics them, including in voice chat, and it led to one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had in a game. It was also hilarious? It straddles the line between horror and comedy with deceptive ease. What a game.
8. Portal: Revolution (and Portal 1-2): Happy one year since Portal: Revolution’s release! (I was literally checking Steam to figure out how to describe Lethal Company when I saw that Portal: Revolution had a one-year anniversary update.) The original duo of Portal games are a household staple, and while I think Portal 2 especially holds up well to this day, Valve’s always encouraged fan games, and that’s been an important way to keep the legacy alive. I’ve played other fan games—Aperture Tag, Portal Stories: Mel, and Portal Reloaded, for instance—but Portal: Revolution is one of the better iterations of the puzzle-solving gameplay. I just wish fan games would get better voice actors.
9. Cult of the Lamb: Another not-new game with a decent update! Cult of the Lamb’s base-building action roguelike added a two-player option in 2024 that has decent couch co-op, a wildly undervalued option in modern gaming. Granted, couch co-op is better on a console than on PC (even with controllers), but even with a slight in-person clumsiness factor added, Cult of the Lamb is largely a better game with two people. This is true on a mechanical level—I find some of the gameplay clunky—but also because the humor’s irreverent, and it’s fun to laugh with someone else who’s right there.
10. Fields of Mistria (early access): I saw my friends were playing Fields of Mistria, a farming/dating sim with RPG elements, and gave it a try. I like what I’ve seen so far, but it entered early access in late summer 2024 and still has a pretty long way to go in development. I’m mostly putting this one aside until either it’s a little more fleshed out, or until I desperately need a game to play that won’t cost additional money. Still, promising!
11. Buckshot Roulette: My only real contender against Balatro in terms of 2024 game of the year. This was less true when it was a single-player game, where you were giving a digital gun and a certain amount of live and blank rounds, and it was all mental math to survive against an NPC. I certainly liked the combination of its mechanical simplicity and deliberately grungy vibe in single player, but adding multiplayer to the mix really kicked off what this game can do. Have you ever played a game with a child that involves shooting them and finding yourself hesitating? I certainly did! Adding a human element to your competitors gave the game an added dash of uncertainty that really took things to the next level. I imagine I’ll play more of this in 2025.
12. Lil Gator Game: It’s funny that I spent a lot of 2024 playing games with kiddos because, beyond the Roblox mentions, very little of my list would reflect that. Lil Gator Game is probably the only real kiddie game I played, and it was chill and adorable in exactly the ways you’d want in a game of this kind: easy puzzle solving, playful mechanics, general “I’m on break and want to play with my friends” vibes. The devs behind the game just announced a DLC as well, which I’ll almost certainly play when it comes out.
13. Disco Elysium: After years of on-and-off play, I finally got to one of Disco Elysium’s many endings. I can definitely tell why it’s one of the all-timers! Dense philosophy in an RPG format with a wicked sense of humor and zero interest in looking away from the harsh cruelties of life. Ultimately, the best review I’ve seen is one on Tumblr: “in another timeline, Disco Elysium was a completely untranslated Estonian Fallout 2 total overhaul mod that blew the minds of likes 12 communists on an forum that hasn’t updated visually since 2008”. If that sounds good to you and you’ve never played Disco Elysium, now is always a good time.
14. Hades II (early access): A game that doesn’t have an ending should not be this good and this playable. (My first playthrough had placeholder art, and I could barely tell!) I got it early so I could enjoy the vibes and see firsthand how development for the sequel to one of my all-time favorite games would look, and I never thought I would get as sucked in as I did. Supergiant’s done it again, folks. I’m a bit behind on updates, and I was mostly going to wait to start over until 1.0 launched, but…come on, of course I’m going to go through more of it now that I have the Steam Deck. Death to Kronos!
15. Little Kitty, Big City: Another indie game I enjoyed that also had a major game-breaking bug. Luckily, Little Kitty, Big City is contained enough (and cute enough) that restarting was painful but not a complete dealbreaker. As adorable as I found the cats, what really stuck with me was how effectively they captured the vibe of Tokyo as I remember it. Apparently, little kids and cats have a lot in common! I still have three achievements to unlock, so I will probably pop into this game again briefly in 2025.
16. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood: This was a Halloween-season play for obvious reasons, but The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a really unique game in a way I find difficult to describe. Saying that it’s very story rich, character rich, and deep with worldbuilding doesn’t get it, you know? I could talk about other games that tick those boxes, but I can’t think of anything with a similar mood. (The closest comparison that comes to mind is Steven Universe, but even that is designed for a completely different age group.) One of the big mechanics is designing your own tarot cards, and you get into a groove once you figure out how that works, but it’s nothing like any tarot cards I own (and I have a collection of a dozen or so). I don’t often see singular games, but The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood might be one of them.
17. Paint it Back: I took this old nonagram game I’ve had around for a while and got 100% of the achievements in 2024. I love achievement hunting so much; not only is it a game within a game, getting trophies/badges/achievements helps provide structure and conclusion in spaces where those things might not otherwise exist. For Paint it Back, it would make more sense to probably have an achievement for 100% puzzle completion, but I’m glad there wasn’t one. I didn’t want to finish the 2016 election nonagrams.
18. Sudoku Universe: Another old puzzle game, but sudoku! I’m two achievements away from 100%. If Sudoku Universe had a slightly better interface, I’d probably have them already; sudoku is something I’ve been doing regularly since college, and I’m pretty good at it. Still, unless I forget, I should leave 2025 finished on this one.
19. Webfishing: This game is exactly what it sounds like: you fish online! Fishing minigames are my mortal foe in farming/life sims like Stardew Valley, but Webfishing is really online companionship paired with something to do with your hands when you’re waiting for a reply. I’ve only played in groups with my family, but it’s a nice way to inhabit digital space together.
20. Spirit City: Lofi Sessions: If you like the lofi girl on YouTube but wish there was more customization, Spirit City might be what you’re looking for. Unlocking the little creatures is delightful, as is making your own character, and I found the built-in productivity options really useful. Maybe it’s more of a glorified screensaver than a game, but like Wallpaper Engine, I got it through Steam, so what does it matter?

 

Steam stats (from Jan 1 through Dec 14)

• 47 games (+7 from 2023, Steam median was 4)
• 323 achievements unlocked (-446 from 2023, Steam median was 13)
• 192-day streak (+133 from 2023, Steam median was 6)
• 33% of games played were 2024 releases, 54% were released in the last 1-7 years, 37% were released 8+ years ago
• My busiest months were May (14% of gameplay), March and July (12% each), and August (11%)

 

Bonus!

If you like this post:

1. Consider subscribing to my Patreon for a bonus post on productivity tips and tricks in 2024
2. If paid content is beyond you right now, you can still join for free and read my upcoming off-the-cuff series, starting with my initial Oscar nominee reactions!
3. Catch up on my 2024-in-review series on Egregious and read my TV recap.

 

Stay tuned for more in the near future, including two movie posts, a look back at books, and more!

2024 recap posts

Another year in the books! I moved these posts over to Egregious last year so they would be more broadly accessible, and I liked it, so here we are again.

I don’t have much to say about this series of posts yet—I’ve only written the TV recap as of its posting—but feel free to check my main Oscars post from last year to see all the links to 2023’s recaps (with a bonus Oscars-recap post if you feel like wondering how it went down). I went with TV first because I had to pull the TV shows I watched from memory, versus most other kinds of media, where I had some kind of externally-constructed recap to help me out. (Plus, in 2023, I was diligent about logging and rating every episode of TV I watched in Notion. I was less diligent in 2024. Oops.)

TV in 2024

I can’t talk about last year in US movies/TV without mentioning the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes from 2023. The echoes can still be felt in so many ways. Practically, movies have a bit more cushion where that’s concerned; bigger blockbusters can be pushed back, and there will always be indies to fill the gaps. (Plug “2024 movies postponed” in a search bar and see how many articles you find.) TV shows following the old network format, with seasons and airings every year, have less flexibility. TV following the streamer format in a good year can disappear into the ether, and while I was hoping more would be able to stand out in a quieter year, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

On a more conceptual level, the strikes happened in large part because the big money in Hollywood is bad at their jobs, and that problem hasn’t gone away. It existed before streamers—I could always name more unsatisfying, canceled TV shows than successes—but the disposal model from tech companies has made it so much worse. US TV is low on my list of media priorities these days because of it. A bad Netflix movie eats two hours of my life. A bad Netflix show, or a good one that gets destroyed or canceled because of bad decisions, can be twenty hours or more.

Despite everything, I have a list of fifteen shows I watched this year. (The actual number was a little higher, but there were a couple shows I basically don’t remember at all.) A lot of the TV shows are old. It’s for the same reason people marathoned the USA show Suits a couple years ago; why bother with anything new when likable, consistent TV already exists? But I did try to keep up with some shows, and there were a couple of new surprises as well.

Old favorites

Friends (full), The Office US (a couple episodes), and various background sitcoms

I do my best with TV when I watch with other people, whether in-person or online. Sara is the person I watch TV with the most these days, and she’s always watching sitcoms. A lot of TV I was around this year wasn’t even anything I was actively watching; I was in Sara’s office while it played, or in a nearby room while others watched. Shows of this nature include Community, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, and probably more that I’m forgetting.

Friends was the one I watched actively the most. (Sara wrote a horror novel based largely off of it. It’s sick and twisted and I love it!) I don’t like a lot of the writing on Friends, but it stays consistent basically until the last season (at which point it falls off a cliff), and the ensemble is so good, they elevate what’s there. Plus, Chandler and Monica are one of my favorite fictional romantic couples of all time, basically? I get pumped to rewatch the show so I can watch them fall in love all over again.

(Everyone who thinks Friends is too white is absolutely right, though. No excuse for that.)

2024 was also the first year I watched any part of the US version of The Office. The type of comedy is too cringe for my tastes, but Sara showed me a couple full episodes at the end of the year, and I enjoyed them a lot. I’ll never seek it out on my own, but I won’t leave the room if it’s on, either.

Mad Men (full)

I actually watched the bulk of Mad Men as it aired, but not for Don Draper; Mad Men was always about Peggy and Joan and Betty and Sally and most of the actresses who ended up onscreen. (I talked about how much I liked Dawn once on Twitter, and Teyonah Parris liked my tweet!) It had been a couple years since I rewatched, and I had access to AMC for Interview with the Vampire, so I gave it another pass. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it because of what I learned about the behind-the-scenes environment, but again, the female characters were really compelling. It’s also always really interesting to see something years down the road; I was closer to Peggy’s age then, and I’m closer to Joan’s age now.

A partial rewatch of the early Simpsons

At several points in the year, I needed a show I could watch without worrying too much if kiddos walked in. The Simpsons was one of those choices. Not only did I rewatch a few Treehouse of Horrors around Halloween, I bounced around this list of best-ranked episodes. It seems silly to ask, “Hey, did you know The Simpsons was really good once?” when I was a child of the 90s raised on The Simpsons. Still, I always seemed to catch the same handful of episodes in reruns during that period, and I got to see some new-to-me ones this year that really knocked my socks off. For example: “Bart on the Road”, when Bart takes off on a road trip with Milhouse, Martin, and Nelson, featuring a cute sideplot with Homer and Lisa.

I’ll definitely continue with the list in 2025. Older TV like this is really good for random, short watches, and maybe I’ll see more episodes I haven’t before.

Gilmore Girls s1-6

I have a real love-annoyed relationship with Gilmore Girls. I initially watched the show in reruns with my mom and older sister, and chatting with family and having opinions over characters is exactly the way to watch this show. The early seasons are so solid, too; one through three has good teen moments and passable adult relationships (I think the Lorelai/Max thing dragged on way too long), Stars Hollow is a large presence in a way that feels natural, and the mood is just right. I like seasons four and five less, but having Paris go to Yale and the initial Luke/Lorelai relationship mostly keeps things going.

I honestly meant to quit this watch after season three, but I wasn’t ready to let go. I honestly didn’t mean to watch the show at all in 2024! I just read Kelly Bishop’s memoir—and I highly rec the audiobook, which she read herself—and I got a real urge to watch Emily Gilmore being her messy, complicated self. The way Kelly Bishop and Lauren Graham play off each other in particular! Can I retroactively throw Emmys at people?

The show after season five declines pretty hard for me. I really don’t like the Rory-steals-a-yacht storyline, but getting a resolution to it usually keeps me watching past the point where I’m having fun. (And I admit, the part where Emily and Richard find out that Rory has had serious boyfriends and not remained a virgin is so funny to me.) The switch to season seven, though? It was easy to bail out, despite finding the Rory/Logan relationship pretty worthwhile in that stretch.

I briefly considered writing an essay about the class fantasy behind Gilmore Girls, but I just watched a Princess Weekes video that covered a lot of what I thought. And her opinions about Rory’s romances (Dean getting thrown under the bus for being more blue collar, Logan being the guy who meets her where she is) are very correct, although I disagree about Max. Really, looking back, I wish Lorelai had met anyone better.

New to me

Doc Martin (full)

I had never seen this British classic, featuring a doctor with a blood phobia living in a remote, coastal town, but the group I watched it with ate it up. For good reason! Doc Martin is a show that is largely kind to its characters, has some delightfully silly moments, and has a long-running romantic relationship at its heart. Despite my complaints about TV in 2024, watching Doc Martin and yelling about the episode’s mystery or the latest relationships was easily one of the high points of the year, with any media. I could watch it all again and be just as delighted a second time.

The Boys and Gen V (both in their entirety)

I have a lot of familiarity with a different Eric Kripke show: Supernatural. (The show way outlasted his tenure as head writer, but he certainly left a legacy behind.) That familiarity plus knowing the crass levels of The Boys left me a little cold on the concept of watching this show in its entirety. But Sara really likes it, so we did a full watch of The Boys and Gen V in 2024. And…I liked it too? No one’s more surprised than me. I know a lot of people thought the latest season wasn’t as good, and I get why, but watching it all in one gulp made it a little better.

I don’t know that anything in the last couple years with a wider reach portrays the relationship between people and large corporations/large systems as well as The Boys has. More importantly, I don’t know that anything with a wider reach is as honest about how violent large systems are against regular people, both within and without. (Excessive levels of gore gets the point across very well.)

Quick shoutout to Jack Quaid for being a part of two of my favorite TV experiences this year. Nepo babies can have rights!

We Are Lady Parts s1-2

I really enjoyed Nida Manzoor’s film Polite Society in 2023, so it seemed like a no-brainer to pick up her TV show in 2024 as one of my kids-can-walk-in activities. Turns out, “Muslim women in a punk band” is even more to my tastes than “Muslim women in an action movie”! I played the show’s songs a lot throughout the latter half of 2024; I think Bashir With a Good Beard was in my top-played songs of the year? (Check in again whenever I write the music recap post.) More directly relevant to the show, season two got more visually experimental, and I loved that it did. I hope there’s more episodes of this eventually, but the end of season two wrapped up nicely if there aren’t.

Returning favorites

Star Trek: Lower Decks s5

I hate that Lower Decks ended, but having a firm end on it means I can say that it’s not only one of my favorite Star Treks of all time, it’s one of my favorite shows of all time. Lower Decks managed playful poking at the sillier elements of Trek with sincere love for its roots, and, in the penultimate episode, balls-to-the-wall fanservice that was also a critique of the bigoted side of Rick Berman’s tenure in the franchise. This was a Trek that loved its starships, loved its shenanigans, and loved its characters and viewers most of all.

I’ll probably still watch Strange New Worlds, and maybe I’ll catch up on Discovery if I get bored, but I’m really mourning the lack of a new Star Trek that understood Star Trek. Paramount didn’t know what they had! (Or maybe they were too broke to keep it. Either way.)

Interview with the Vampire s2

This isn’t the hottest take of this post, but it is probably a hot take in the fandom: I liked season one of Interview with the Vampire better? Having said that, though, season two was basically better than almost every other show in 2024, and despite having to take some time to get used to the switch in location, it really achieved greatness once it settled in. I loved the end of the season in particular. Very few shows are good at payoff, but Interview with the Vampire definitely is.

I love all the cast—special shout out to Delainey Hayles for doing the tough job of taking over an already-established Claudia and making the role her own—but Jacob Anderson did something I thought was impossible; he made me love the character of Louis, despite all his foibles! (I tried rereading the book in 2024 and had to bail out because I can’t stand book Louis.) As much as I’m a forever-Lestat person, I’m actually a bit wistful that we’ll be switching to a Lestat focus in the near future. Wild.

Heartstopper s3

I was curious how the Netflix adaptation of Heartstopper would cover this part of the story before it happened. (I read the comic long before a real-life adaptation was on anyone’s radar.) Practically, I thought they did a decent job! I didn’t like it as much as the last couple seasons, but when everyone’s aging and Netflix is tight-fisted, it’s hard to keep things consistent. The balance in the ensemble’s stories felt a bit off, but not in a way that turned me off from the show as a whole. This is also just a tough segment of the story to cover, with one of the lead characters going through a serious mental-health crisis.

Still, if we don’t get any more of this show (I never trust Netflix), I think it ended in a good place, with the core group starting to age into adulthood and heading off into uni, and the relationships evolving to match the maturing characters. I’ll be interested to see how the comic ends, too!

Pleasant surprises and disappointments

Disappointment: What We Do in the Shadows s6

I thought the quality of What We Do In The Shadows had fallen off decently in season five, but there were still arcs and important character moments happening. (Guillermo’s arc ended in a particularly satisfying way.) Season six basically gave up on telling a story entirely, which would be fine if the comedy was funny. And it largely wasn’t. I was left wishing they had used a season five episode to wrap everything up, and the finale was so full of nothing that I felt mostly dead inside watching it (which, surprisingly enough, is not how you want a comedy to end). Oh well, it’s over now.

Pleasant surprise: X-Men ’97 s1

I loved the original X-Men animated series from the ’90s when I was a kid. It really formed my tastes in so many ways; subtextual leftist queer melodrama, but everyone flies around and uses powers to fight? Yes please! I didn’t have any hopes for the reboot show, so I was shocked when Sara was like, “No, you really need to watch this.” And I did. And she was right. It took everything from the ’90s show, made it less subtextual, and grew it for an aged audience. What a delight!

Special shout-out to episode 1×05 for being one of the most devastating (in an earned way) fortyish minutes of television I’ve ever watched. Just thinking about it gives my skin goosebumps and brings tears to my eyes, and it’s just an echo of what I felt actively watching it.

Disappointment: Bridgerton s3

Honestly, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Bridgerton show. The reason I picked up season three was because I usually find it a baseline level of watchable, and I really liked the chemistry of the season 2 main couple. I waited until all of the episodes dropped (I’m not playing this half-season game, Netflix) and went through them quickly. And I did manage to watch the entire season—not a bar every show cleared this year—but I found it pretty boring. The books are solid regency romances, but the show is trying to be both sexy and melodramatic and don’t really pull either of them off. It’s a shame because I really do like Nicola Coughlan, but the Lady Whistledown stuff in particular was a complete bust for me. Still, the queer threesome made me laugh with its weird timing, so it wasn’t a complete waste.

Disappointment: Umbrella Academy s4

Another show that I feel like I never fully clicked with—and, sorry to Gerard Way, but I’ve never fully clicked with the comic either—but wow, I kind of want to apologize to earlier Umbrella Academy because at least it wasn’t this.

I could complain about the structure and decisions made in the season as a whole, but the finale had one of the most abhorrent end messages of any show I’ve ever seen. When the premise of your show is “traumatized siblings in a dysfunctional family try to make their way”, going out of your way to say that it’s better that they didn’t exist in a way that didn’t even make sense in the universe? Terrible. I’ll be avoiding anything this showrunner makes in the foreseeable future.

Surprise and disappointment: Part of The Acolyte s1 and part of Andor s1

Let’s close out with my hottest take, possibly ever: I liked what I saw of The Acolyte a lot, and I found Andor boring and overrated.

Both of these surprised me, but it meshes with my personal tastes. The Acolyte was a critique of the Jedi; the only part of Star Wars that I am bulletproof interested in is the Jedi Order, their mishaps, and how Force users can exist in that system and outside of it. The Acolyte had a lot of actors I like, and good fight scenes (with women; I am so cheap for female-led action). I only watched the last few episodes, so if there was anything dragging at the beginning, I didn’t have to worry about it! Manny Jacinto was hot, there was a bunch of Force witches…what more could I ask for? (The only thing I didn’t really enjoy was the shoehorned “look at this legacy character” in the end, and that was a blip.)

It’s so funny to say that my favorite modern Star Wars entries are The Last Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Acolyte. Oh, and the Jedi video games (Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor). See what I mean about liking Jedi?

Andor, on the other hand, was a no-powers prequel to Rogue One. It’s not an automatic bounce off my tastes; I liked Rogue One quite a bit. But while Andor looked good, the story was boring at best, and annoying at worst. Some of the ideas Andor had were interesting, but I didn’t like the execution, and I finally bailed out at episode six. I’m absolutely not watching the next season.

Bonus!

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to my Patreon and reading a bonus 2024 recap post talking about productivity tips and tricks. Either way, thanks for reading, and there’s plenty more 2024 recap posts to come!

I don’t track my video games super closely, but I’m playing them a ton, so here’s some quick notes cobbled from memory and my Steam Year in Review!

Non-Steam highlights

1. Fortnite Battle Royale (and one random Creative level I spammed for XP): I gave up on the game right before they did a reboot, but it’s impossible to talk about me gaming in 2023 and not bring it up. I loved playing with a squad and the battle pass system, if not the microtransactions baked into the whole thing.

2. FTL and Into the Breach: I got these through free Epic Games claims years ago and clicked with them in 2023. (I then bought them in Steam so I could do the achievements there, and so I could throw Subset Games a couple bucks.) FTL is a great game, but a bit outside of my comfort/skill level? Into the Breach is way more playable.

3. Starfield: I played this through Xbox…or I tried, anyway. I gave it about twenty hours of fighting glitches and general problems before giving up. Maybe I’ll try it again in five years, after the modding community’s had some real time with it.

4. Vampire Survivors: I’ve never not had a big year with Vampire Survivors since it came out, but I got it on Switch for the first time in 2023 and got to play co-op with family members! In regards to the Steam version, I also got the Among Us DLC at the end of the year and was somewhat underwhelmed…for Vampire Survivors, which meant I still liked it better than most existing games.

5. Storyteller: Did you know that Netflix has app games on mobile? I’m not sure I recommend it because a lot of the games are available through other means, but I got to play Storyteller for the first time through there, and it’s a great play with a touchscreen. And it’s quick! If you have a quiet weekend and don’t know what to do with it, Storyteller’s a great choice for simple puzzles in a fairy-tale style.

6. The Sims 4: I wish I could quit this expensive, buggy mess. Alas, I love it. Growing Together was a great release, I liked the new lot type in For Rent, and I’ve used build items in Horse Ranch basically since day one. Maybe one day, I’ll finish a 100 baby challenge, but 2023 was not that year.

Steam highlights

1. Cookie Clicker: I went on an achievement-hunting tear in the later part of 2023, and I’m sure I’ll be picking up a couple throughout 2024 as well. 505 achievements earned in 2023 while only playing Oct-Dec!

2. Super Life RPG: I got completely blindsided by this one. It ate my life Feb-Apr until I forced myself to stop playing.

3. Star Wars Jedi Survivor: Made Starfield look downright functional, but I loved the story and love the characters, so I don’t regret playing it. I do regret paying day-one prices for it. I might go back later and see if it plays any better; it would be fun to hunt achievements.

4. Oxenfree II: Lost Signals: The ambiance of this series is unmatched. I think I liked the first game better, and I wish I’d known going in that there were multiple possible endings, but it was overall a worthwhile sequel to a very good game.

5. Payday 2: A deeply silly game of cops and robbers where you play as the robbers. The over-the-top slapsticky quality, combined with a generously low easy mode, is the real winner here. Definitely not free of stereotypes and bigotry, but it’s nowhere near the level of, say, a Grand Theft Auto. (I also tried Payday 3 through Xbox, which was serious and harder. No thanks.)

6. Don’t Scream: I watched a Let’s Play of this and bought it nearly instantly; the realistic found-footage look is fantastic. This is still definitely an early-access game, though—I didn’t get a lot of the scares that the Let’s Play had—and it seems like the development is going to get bigger going forward. I’ll definitely be revisiting it in Halloween season this year.

7. Graveyard Keeper: A cozy-style game with a darker aesthetic. Think Stardew Valley with graves. I found the learning curve very steep, but I will definitely be jumping in again when I get the cozy-game itch (and if I’m not playing Stardew Valley or this year’s early winners, Coral Island and Immortal Life).

8. Baldur’s Gate 3: I feel like the toe I dipped in here in December was a prologue for gaming in 2024. I played some twenty hours, much of it co-op, and felt like I barely scratched the surface of a behemoth. My deepest wish for 2024 is to get a quiet week and just dive in. Maybe late winter!

Steam stats (from Jan 1 through Dec 14)

-40 games played, 769 achievements earned
-New releases got 15% playtime, games over 8 years old got 19% playtime, games 1-7 years old got 66% playtime
-November was my busiest month, with 32% of my gameplay for the year
-I played 12% of the time with a controller

Like with film, all my book tracking goes in one place (follow me on Storygraph!). Unlike with film, I don’t do a lot of reading specific to the release year, so this is a general look back at the books released in any year I read during 2023. But I think my stats got messed up somewhere; despite doing the large majority of my reading digitally, print seems to have won the pie chart, and apparently I read 6000 pages in June? Either way, there are some general trends to coax out.

General stats

1. First book finished in 2023 was a reread of Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour. Last book finished was a first read of Lee Lai’s wonderful graphic novel Stone Fruit.

2. My biggest genre of the year was LGBTQIA+, aided largely by access through Libby to Queer Liberation Library, although my local library has some decent offerings in that direction as well. My second biggest genre was graphic novels. I’m sure the overlap between the two genres was not small.

If I wanted to give a quick genre overview, I would go with queer, graphic novel, SFFH, memoir, pop culture. Most of my reads in 2023 are two or more of these put together. I think YA and middle grade also show up a lot in my reads, but that’s less personal preference and more because queer lit and graphic novels (and both put together) tend to have a lot of overlap within those age ranges.

3. My most-read author of the year was Alice Oseman, with nine books. I believe that’s five Heartstopper volumes and four stand-alone novels (Loveless, Radio Silence, I Was Born For This, and Nick and Charlie).

4. There’s a pie chart to reflect the moods of the stories I read, which is fun to see, but three moods take up about half the chart: emotional, reflective, and lighthearted. 2023 was a transitional year, after a couple years doing the large share of my reading through audiobooks. Going with a lighter mood and reading a lot of graphic novels makes sense in this context.

This also extends to pace, which is largely medium (49%) and fast (42%), and page number, where books fewer than 300 pages (64%) won the day.

5. I largely read fiction in 2023 at 76%.

Honorable mentions

-I Think Our Son is Gay 1-4: A manga series from the point of view of a mother watching her eldest son on a journey of self-discovery in his high-school years. It’s such a kind series, both for the son and his mother, and highlights one of elements of being an adult that I find joy in: watching younger people’s specific journey through life.

-It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror: Great anthology of essays tying lived queer experience to horror movies. For better or worse, horror is often better at reflecting marginalized experience than other genres, and even when I hadn’t seen the movie in question, I resonated with a lot of the essays here. (Definitely look up content warnings if this sounds good, though.)

-Hi Honey, I’m Homo!: Matt Baume’s excellent look at US queer rights through mainstream Hollywood sitcoms. If you’re a member of my Patreon, you can see a list of Baume’s video essays you can watch without the book here, but I recommend his YouTube channel as a whole.

-Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag: This comic’s look at pregnancy, queerness, and gender feels like a window into queerness of the past in so many ways, and a massively useful one.

-Taste: My Life Through Food: This was a good year for me and celebrity memoir, to the point where this would have probably made the top ten in another year. Stanley Tucci painted a lovely picture of the stages of his life through food (or the lack thereof; he had mouth cancer that limited his ability to eat at the end of the narrative). Definitely one to listen to in audiobook form.

-Pageboy: Another celebrity memoir (from Elliot Page) that would have made it to the top ten in a different year. If you’ve ever wondered what gender dysphoria is like, read this.

-Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream: I’ve been a longtime fan of My Chemical Romance, and I’ve made friends with a lot of people by piecing together stories of the band through video and magazine interviews. This book filled in a lot of holes for them (and other bands of interest) while ignoring other spots in favor of dry business analysis. Didn’t super enjoy those last bits, but still, very useful to me personally.

-The Magic Fish: Trung Le Nguyen’s graphic novel blended fairy-tale elements and reality beautifully. I’m putting the book on my to-buy list because I loved the art so much!

-Normal People: I read this so I could watch the miniseries that went along with it…and I never got to the miniseries because I kept thinking about how much I liked the book. Note to self: look up more contemporary Irish lit.

Top ten

10. Stone Fruit by Lee Lai: As mentioned above, this was my last book of the year, and it was wonderful. Beautiful ink-wash look; resonant story about when to stay connected to family despite messiness and when to disconnect. I love the metaphoric imagery of letting loose when you’re with your young relatives.

9. Loveless by Alice Oseman: Good coming-of-age story featuring a character discovering her aromantic and asexual identities, and how your friends can be the primary focus in your life. The UK university setting made the story feel more alive to me.

8. The Woman in Me by Britney Spears: Kudos to a celebrity and their ghostwriter for writing a harrowing memoir with gothic elements (part one). The language in this was simple, and the narrative moved briskly, which is exactly what something this dark needed. I’ve followed Britney’s life and career somewhat, and I was still surprised by some of what happened in this.

7. Spare by Prince Harry: Kudos to a celebrity and their ghostwriter for writing a harrowing memoir with gothic elements (part two). I rec the ghostwriter’s perspective on cowriting the memoir and the aftermath, too. Claustrophobic read; I can only imagine how much more claustrophobic the reality was (and still is).

6. Babel by R.F. Kuang: It seems to be a bit of a trend right now to set fantasy in real-life Western universities (I have Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent on my to-read list, after failing to read it while I had it checked out in January). Babel’s historical fantasy is set in Oxford and uses translation magic as metaphor for the abuses of white imperialism. Big tear-it-all-down mood.

5. Burn it Down by Maureen Ryan: Read this toward the beginning of the WGA strike in the summer, and it was a perfect time to do it. While Burn It down covers a lot of the toxicity in Hollywood from multiple direction, it had a heavy focus on TV writers’ rooms. Even though both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have ended, we’re gonna feel their impacts on media for the next couple years, so I rec this book for a perspective on why things need a shake-up.

4. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner: Intense memoir about culture, food, and the death of a parent. I cried buckets over it, as I will cry at the movie adaptation that is in development if it gets made. This is also a celebrity memoir, as Michelle Zauner is part of Japanese Breakfast, but it’s very different in tone from the other two on the list.

3. Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat: I read both books in the series (so far) this year, and I’m still not sure if I liked the first one, which felt more like a setup for its ending than a story on its own. I have no such reservations about Dark Heir, which I read in a four-hour burst. Its use of reincarnation and magic in existing systems as metaphor for generational trauma is fantastic.

2. Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman by Alan Rickman: As someone who has a hard time journaling consistently, saying “this book got me to journal for months in 2023” sums up my experience reading it. A good look at an actor I admire obviously trying to work through life and better himself, without shrinking away from his flaws. My only regret is that this was published posthumously because it means he couldn’t read the audiobook. I did listen to the audiobook, though, and the narrator does a good job with a dry British tone, even if it isn’t the specific Alan Rickman flavor.

1. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: The summary is relatively straightforward – epistolary time-travel novella with agents on two opposing sides falling in love. But the experience of reading (or listening, as I did, which I do rec) is rich and complex while still being extremely familiar. Thanks, Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood!

If you’re on any of my social media, I hope you’ve noticed that I’m linking away from that social media more often than I used to. Those links should be bringing you here, to Egregious.

I stepped away from self-publishing novels a few years ago now. I’ve put out a couple books since, and I’m still writing a ton, but I leaped off the treadmill of production that a lot of content creators continue jogging on.

Though I’ve talked about that decision a lot elsewhere (and don’t feel like rehashing it at the moment), it never really answers the question of what I’m actually going to do next, because I don’t know what I’m going to do next.

Quitting self-publishing isn’t like quitting another job or selling a business. I still have all the assets, like contacts and a reputation, if you want to consider those things as assets. I’ve got a literary agent to collaborate with sales to tradpub, though I’ve had two books bounce off the process. There is some quantity of people who associate my name with self-publishing broadly and urban fantasy specifically (and if you came to me through Tarot Witches, you know me as a smut peddler par excellence).

I’m lucky that some people still care about what I’m up to.

And I am up to…something, I guess.

A lot of that is artwork, like digital illustrations, mixed media, or fiber work. This year, I have been doing a whole bunch of movie reviewing and watching. I’ve always been a huge movie fan of course. I just didn’t really have the skills I needed to satisfactorily remark on movies until recently. (The pandemic tossed me down a depression hole where I spent months doing nothing but Watching Things and my analysis skills sure got developed.)

I’m still not prepared to be Working around any of these things, exactly. I can do the labor of writing articles for myself. The effort of packaging, maybe a bit. (The site is fun.) But marketing remains vastly distant from my interests, and I have a bad relationship with it after self-publishing, and I don’t think there’s any kind of self-employment that isn’t going to demand marketing myself.

Maybe I’ll be ready to Work again someday. I hope I won’t completely lose the eyes and ears of the online network I share: the fellow creatives, authors, and readers who are Real People to me, even if they are Very Small and Mostly On My Phone. If I need to Work again, I’ll need help.

So by having a unified website like this, I can hopefully gather some of this community around in case I do a thing someday.

And if I don’t do a thing, maybe there’s a chance that just enjoying myself will turn my career in an unexpected direction. I talk a lot about hope and fantasies when I’m analyzing romcoms, and part of that is because I love living inside my head with my own fantasies. If I keep my heart open to potentialities, if I keep committing my time to stuff I’m passionate about, I think maybe opportunities will make themselves happen. Possibly I don’t have to be all crazy and intense about Forcing Myself To Work and things will just…work out.

Delusional? Oh, maybe. But I’m not going to borrow stress from the future. Right now I can spend my time pursuing stuff that makes me happy, and it’s all going to appear here, on Egregious.

Hence I hope you will follow me. Use an RSS feed reader to keep up! Sign up in the sidebar so you can leave comments and get emails. Let’s stay in touch in case I Do Something or You Do Something. Let’s be a community, a little bit.