three twos, one zero

As I write this, approximately 24 hours remain of the year 2022 in the Pacific timezone. While I don't think it has been, on the aggregate, a great year, it has at least not felt like a nonstop chain of disasters; for me, at least, I am leaving the year feeling better off than when it started, which is something I don't think has been true since . . . 2015? It's been a while.

I do worry that perhaps I'm becoming desensitized to the constant onslaught of bad news, and part of it is that I have in the past several months somewhat stopped following the news as closely as I often do. I don't think this is particularly virtuous, but I do value my mental health and worrying about the ongoing collapse of what people so often call "the American experiment" is not particularly conducive to keeping one's anxiety low. But I am finally understanding that the "experiment" part of that moniker is meant to suggest that it is a fragile thing, and it certainly is, isn't it?

Intermittently over the past week or so, when my thoughts are left to wander, I've found myself experiencing this odd sensation of dread. It isn't really localized, even when I try to pin it down, it's just there, this sensation that something is terribly wrong. While I don't think that means anything, it's instructive, I think, that my reaction to moods such as this is to think of it as a fleeting thing, like a dream, and like a dream it will fade from my mind and thoughts when I can find a distraction. While the aloof, detached thing has its fair share of drawbacks, there is something nice about being able to experience a negative emotion, say "this, too, is ephemeral," and then just . . . let it pass. Moods are like the weather: real, but temporary. They are not you.

We had a week of snow leading up to Christmas, ending with an ice storm like I had never seen here in Seattle and on the mountains in general. The buses here shut down, which I had never seen before; the streets and sidewalks were covered in a glaze of ice that made even walking nearly impossible. And the pass was closed and I was unable to make it home for the holiday. And I am told the weather elsewhere was also bad, and that a vast number of people had flights cancelled (apparently in no small part due to Southwest airlines' bad planning, but also due to weather). Another reminder from Nature that we exist at her sufferance, I suppose.

And that is the nature of winter. It's cold, and it's exhausting, and it's humbling. Winter does not care about your plans. The snow will fall, the ice will come, and sometimes there's nothing you can do but hole up and wait for it to pass. But the longest night of the year is behind us now, the days are getting longer, and already the spring feels like it's in reach.

I hope 2023 will be a good year. I don't know if it will be. It feels like we have been in a winter that has lasted for seven years now. But right now I feel like a thaw is possible, like there really may be a spring in the future, like maybe this does not need to last forever. And New Year's is a time for hopes, for holding onto each other and whispering promises of a brighter tomorrow. So let's end on a hopeful note: happy 2023, friends. Spring will be here sooner than you think.

2022 media list

Another year, another list of things that I interacted with in some way. This list is definitely missing some things, as I sort of fell off documenting what I was doing, and I mostly try to avoid listing things I didn't finish (and there's a good number of those). Bold indicates something that stood out, and I realize I bold too many things. My taste is just too good, I guess.

BOARDED GAMES

• UNFATHOMABLE: A spiritual successor to the much-acclaimed Battlestar Galactica board game, a hidden role game in which you are all cooperating to get your ship to reach its destination... but one of you is a traitor! This time it's Cthulhu-themed. Definitely one of the better hidden role/secret traitor games out there.
• IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD: This was pitched to me as "Seven Wonders but better" and that is pretty accurate. Drafting game where you build a sci-fi dystopia, it makes for fun tableaux and is a lot less arcane than Seven Wonders in its scoring.
• ON TOUR: Roll-and-write about mapping out your band's tour; the dice seldom give you what you want. The roll-and-write genre is great at providing bullshit, and this one is a fun one.
• INIS: Mythic-age Ireland: the game! Explore and control the titular island, unique drafting system for determining what actions you can perform in a round, lovely artwork. I'm here for it.
• DEEP SEA ADVENTURE: A simple little push-your-luck game about diving for treasure and dying because you ran out of air. Low-stakes push-your-luck game, which is always nice to have on the shelf.
• WINGSPAN: A tableau-building game where you collect birds. Lovely components, fun little game, this one is one of the board games that even non-board game people have probably heard of but it's really good despite that.
• ARKHAM HORROR CARD GAME: A cooperative deck-based character action game ft. Cthulhu monsters and story campaigns, I quite enjoyed this one and there are definitely opportunities for those who enjoy that sort of thing to delve in and build decks with wild combos and all that jazz.
• CONCORDIA (VENUS EXPANSION): This game ended up taking too long so we didn't finish it but it's kind of neat, you're a Roman merchant trying to do a bunch of trading.
• SPIRIT ISLAND: Pandemic, but the disease is colonialism. You are an island spirit trying to repel European invaders and this game absolutely slaps. Co-op and theming at its finest.
• VEILED FATE: Plays 2-8 players, which is a great player count, but at higher player counts it can be very... chaotic, and not necessarily in a good way. I still quite like this and think it has some interesting ideas, and at 6+ players it's a hidden role game without traitors and lying to your friends, so it's worth checking out.
• RAILDOAD INC: Another roll-and-write, this time you're building a transit network and it will be terrible. Good times guaranteed.
• BETWEEN TWO CITIES: An old favorite; you and your neighbor are trying to build a city, and so are you and your other neighbor. You win by being the best of everyone at the table at helping your friends. A great gateway game with a scoring system that is sufficiently easy to understand that it can feel very deterministic, which is why we also have...
• BETWEEN TWO CASTLES: Play is very similar but there are so many variables that go into scoring that you no longer feel pressure to make The Optimal Play.
• MASCARADE: Bluffing/hidden role game where you might not actually know your role right now, either! This game is a lot of fun and plays up to thirteen, though at higher player counts you may have a hard time making sure everyone is paying enough attention to make it fun for everyone.
• SORCEROUS CITIES: Build a magic city in real time! Starts out being pretty easy, but things get more hectic as things wear on and you find yourself just slamming down tiles and hoping for the best.
• FORMULA D: A racing game with something like a push-your-luck mechanic, this game is very silly but also pretty fun.
• CAPTAIN SONAR: Two teams each crew a submarine and try to blow up the enemy's sub; fun and unique but I've been bolding too many of these and I feel like I want to play it another time to really "get" how it goes.
• COSMIC ENCOUNTERS: A simple negotiation game where multiple people can win together, this one is pretty fun and there are a whole lot of powers each player could potentially have which means there's going to be lots of variety.
• BLOODBORNE: A tactical miniatures game inspired by the Soulsborne game, Bloodborne! It was pretty fun and apparently has a campaign mode and you know I love those.
• HADARA: Another civilization-based drafting game, this one had some interesting ideas, was possible to do well at on one's first play, and made me want to play it again. Can't complain about that!

VIDEOED GAMES

• POKEMON ALPHA SAPPHIRE: Gen 6 is my favorite gen and this game features the DexNav, the best feature in Pokemon history. A beautiful world to explore, and very close to XY in my overall favorites.
• POKEMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS: This is such a fascinating departure from the series. I found combat kind of a slog, but this game felt great, and was a welcome departure from the established formula. Far from perfect but this game is worth checking out for sure.
• SPLATOON 3: It is no secret that I love the funny squid game series, and this is one of them. It feels great, lots of QOL changes, I'm still playing it way too much.
• MONSTER HUNTER RISE: SUNBREAK: Monster Hunter Rise's expansion is very good, as it turns out! They're still putting out title updates with new monsters and new things to farm and I haven't delved as deeply as I usually would but if you liked base Rise even a little bit you should pick this up.
• POKEMON SCARLET: They put out two Pokemon games this year and that is too many. I really enjoyed Scarlet, but it falls short of being an amazing entry largely because it's very obvious in many areas that development was rushed; it's hard not to wonder what this game would have been like if it had been given more time.

NON-GAMED VIDEOS

• THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH: Joel Coen did a Macbeth! It's black-and-white and minimalist and it's pretty good and it also made some choices I found utterly baffling. Good times if you like our pal Willy Shakes.
• LINE GOES UP: Dan Olson of Folding Ideas releases an in-depth analysis and takedown of cryptocurrency and NFTs and why, exactly, they are as bad as they are.
• THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA: This was a lovely animation of a Japanese folktale (the tale of the bamboo cutter). Definitely worth your time.
• NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND: A classic post-apocalyptic animation with some absolutely beautiful images and some deeply unsettling ones.
• KIPO AND THE AGE OF WONDERBEASTS: Still good on the rewatch! I was originally sold on it as a hopeful post-apocalypse story and it does not disappoint.
• HE-MAN: MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATIONS: Internet man-babies were VERY mad at this one but it is very fun, very clearly made from a place of love for the source material (to wit, the 80s action figures), and features Mark Hamill having an absolute blast as Skeletor. Did not expect to enjoy this this much.
• THE HIDDEN FORTRESS: Worth seeing just to understand what people mean when they say George Lucas ripped it off in Star Wars, but also this is a very good movie and you should consider watching it.
• POKEMON XY: It's the Pokemon anime; this one is mostly notable for making Ash be a character who is unequivocally skilled rather than winning solely by luck and determination. It has some good character arcs and moments. Worth watching if you think watching the Pokemon anime is a good use of your time.
• REDLINE: An absolutely buckwild racing anime with a lovely art style and just . . . I love this movie, you should watch it. It is hard to describe.
• DON'T LOOK UP: It's like if the pandemic was a movie (but I think it started filming before the pandemic was a thing and then maybe morphed in the telling?). This was clearly made from a place of deep liberal anger at the state of the world post-2016, and while that is cathartic it also sometimes feels like it doesn't have much more to say but "this sucks, huh?"
• JOHNNY MNEMONIC: Classic early cyberpunk bad movie featuring Keanu Reeves hollering angrily about how he wants room service. It's a bad movie but in a fun way.
• BLADE RUNNER: Classic early cyberpunk good movie, featuring some very good moments and possessing many different editions due to . . . reasons. I like this, but it sure does feature Harrison Ford being a little bit sexual assaulty.
• OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH: The gay pirates show! It's good. Tone can be a little weird sometimes, but that's a common comedy problem.
• STILL THE WATER: A beautiful slice-of-life film by Naomi Kawase about life in rural Japan; does feature some graphic scenes of goats being butchered, but this was a lovely film.
• TOKYO GODFATHERS: Probably the least Satoshi Kon of the Satoshi Kon films, I was a little nervous of watching this because one of the characters is a trans woman and I was worried it would be . . . less than sensitive. And while some characters are pretty shitty about it, this is a story about found family and treats the characters with kindness. And it's a Christmas movie, so you can watch it now I guess?
• THE BEFORE TRILOGY: Richard Linklater's trilogy, each movie taking place on a single day and set nine years after the previous one, about two characters who met by chance on a train and then hit it off. Very interesting character studies, and it keeps things ambiguous in a way which really works.
• THE OWL HOUSE: I love this show and it is a goddamn crime that it has joined the ranks of cartoons being cancelled for being too gay. Eagerly awaiting the conclusion.
• PAPRIKA: The movie everyone says Inception ripped off and Satoshi Kon's final film, this movie is a wild delve into the world of dreams, featuring his trademark ability to use editing and animation to really make things feel dreamlike and uncertain.
• THE RINGS OF POWER: Tolkien nerds are so, so mad at this series because it isn't Adhering To The Source Material but I'm super enjoying it. It's trying to comment on the source material in an interesting way while also just being very play-it-straight high fantasy with all the archetypes and tropes. 

THINGS WHAT ARE MAINLY TEXT

• PETER GAY'S THE ENLIGHTENMENT: A two-volume academic history of the Enlightenment; I got a little tired of pop history and wanted to really delve. It's an academic text but it's well written (and even occasionally funny) but also, like... you're reading this to learn, not for entertainment. It's good at that.
• THE BARU CORMORANT SERIES BY SETH DICKINSON: Too lazy to look up if this has a series name. This is good, stories about empire and the dismantling thereof featuring some characters who are just delightfully awful people. Did have a few moments where I had to pause and look directly at the camera, but that's forgiveable.
• TERRA IGNOTA: I love this series and did a full re-read pretty soon after the last book came out; it's still good, it turns out! Compelling worldbuilding and philosophizing and while the ending isn't what I'd call satisfying I don't think it's meant to be; it's unsatisfying in a way which invites discussion. 
• THE UNBROKEN: Another fantasy story about empire (it's a theme!!) but this one didn't really do it for me. It wasn't bad but it also didn't feel like it was saying much that was interesting.
• A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE: Still another story about empire, but this one is a space opera! Some fascinating worldbuilding and fascinating storytelling; I'm working on the sequel right now.
• THE HAPPY BUREAUCRACY: This is a series of novels by a coworker of mine and they are surprisingly pretty fun. Very inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, except set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the IRS survived the apocalypse and is still trying to collect taxes. Well-paced and fun.

a quiet moment

I've heard a lot of people talk about meeting old friends after many years and talking like nothing has changed, like no time has passed at all. That didn't happen. She arrived after ten years, and of course she wanted something--everyone wants something, that's how people work--and we talked for hours, not in spite of the years, but because of them. That time happened.

There's a strange intimacy in talking to someone you loved once and then haven't seen in ten years. You can tell them the truth; you no longer have to fear hurting or being hurt, knowing or being known, because it's already happened. It's powerful. So I made her tea that she didn't touch and she asked about one of my new scars and I told her that all of the old ones still hurt.

When we'd finished talking--dancing around what we wanted with the full knowledge that's what we were doing (and I hate how 'dancing around' implies a level of pretense; the beauty of dance is watching two people in perfect control making something beautiful together)--I took her back to my little flat, navigating the frozen streets, and I made her another cup of tea so she could not touch that one, too.

And then, when we were truly alone, we could finally start pretending that she wouldn't be gone in the morning, that she was just as safe and warm as she always had been, and that after carrying so many burdens for so long I still had anything left to offer her. In the morning the sun would rise and the ice would melt and after she left, we would both have another memory to carry with us.

a conversation

The place is empty when I arrive--there's a bitter wind out there and the streets are icy and why would anyone be out in this? But she's waiting at a table, drinking a mug of something hot, and she gives me the ghost of a smile when she sees me, kicks out the chair opposite her and raises her mug in greeting. "Can I get you anything?"

"Whatever you're having," I tell her.

She gives me a look that I can't read--a quirk of her lips, a sparkle in her eye. "Sure." She looks comfortable, I realize. Less gaunt than when I'd known her, softer lines and edges, and she stands and moves with a confidence that wasn't there before, busies herself making something that I'm not convinced is the same thing she's drinking. She sets the mug in front of me and sits down again. Her face is different, too. Tired, but content. She is watching me with an expression I'm not sure I ever could have read, but ten years ago I would have been certain I could. I must look just as strange to her, now. So much more time on the road, so much less time studying in libraries, trying to understand the world through old histories.

She curls her fingers around her mug, holds it up to her face, and looks down into it. Watching the patterns in the steam, perhaps. There's a nick on her index finger, I notice, small and bright like a cut that's just healing. "Your hand," I say, an unfinished thought, before anything else makes sense. I'm thinking of the scars of hers I used to know, wondering how they have changed in the years.

She shrugs. "Not every scar needs a story." Then something like a smile. "Not that that will stop me remembering."

I tilt my head.

"I carry it all with me. I can't not." She runs her thumb along the fresh cut, wincing slightly at the pressure. "Every scar. Everyone I've loved, everyone who's loved me. Everyone I've hurt, or who hurt me." Her eyes flicker up to meet mine, and I feel myself blush as I look away. "Even you," she says. I don't dare to ask which one I am. "It's easier to turn the happy memories into stories. Do you ever notice that? Does that happen to you? You tell the stories so many times it's the stories you remember. The cadence of telling it, the ways people react, the inflections. And you keep telling it because it's the closest thing you have to a memory."

I can't read her face but she is searching mine, now. I say nothing.

"But the ones that hurt, the ones you can't bring yourself to tell, those stay sharp. I wonder, sometimes, if I could turn those into stories, too. If all the times I hurt you could become nothing more than words and moments to pause for effect. Instead of feeling it fresh every time I think of you."

Ten years ago I think I would have risen to that bait. Instead I say, "You know I came here for a story. Maybe that will help?"

"Perhaps." She sets her mug down and lets her hand brush against mine. "Happier memories will help, too. Before I have time to turn them into stories."

And for a moment I allow myself to wonder how many of her memories of me have become stories. I let myself meet her eye and give her a smile. "I would be happy to help," I tell her.

an interlude for december

The times when I've had the thought 'oh, I need to write my December prelude' did not coincide with the times when I felt like I had the time to sit down and write it, and the days seem to pass so quickly these days. Sometimes I wonder if that really is just a product of getting older. I remember, as a kid, how the time between December 1st and Christmas felt impossibly long, how having one or two weeks off for winter break felt like an age, how the duration of a summer break felt like eternity. Now? Summer feels like yesterday, Christmas seems imminent, and I'm already wondering what the plan is for New Year's.

Winter has arrived. We had a weeklong stretch where it seemed like every day was threatening snow, and where I am, at least, it mostly failed to deliver, except for one evening. I had gone out to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen since prior to the pandemic, and all the while we were hanging out I kept glancing out the window and wondering why the sky seemed so light so late at night. As it turns out, the city was coated in a thin blanket of wet snow. Everything was still and quiet and beautiful, and I knew with a certainty that it would all be gone by the morning.

Fall is the season of the ephemeral, but winter holds its fleeting moments as well; fresh-fallen snow does not remain fresh for long. And I've been thinking of those ephemeral moments a lot recently as I've been spending more time than is probably reasonable playing Splatoon 3. Unlike most online multiplayer games, the Splatoon series does not feature any form of in-game chat, so if you choose to join a team with random players, you have very limited means of communicating with them, and no way to rejoin them if you are separated. Every now and then you are paired with a team that you really enjoy, whether because you play well together or simply because you have just shared some memorable moments with them. And then they are gone.

It's sad, of course, but there's something beautiful there as well. You are joining a team with people you will likely never meet outside of this context, and working together with them, and then going your separate ways. Some you will remember, some you will forget, but a community is built of so much more than the people you will see again.

The year is winding down. I will try to post my media list at some point, and I will of course do my usual year in review and New Year's meditation, and then . . . well, we'll see. I have something resembling a plan, but I've always been hesitant to voice plans out loud.