A collection of notes on whatever gave me experience points in 2024.
Dad's death and everything that came with it had me lose track of what was I watching, reading, and consuming. I think Obsidian will help me a bunch going forward, plus I'm going to be sure I have a little notebook on hand all the time.
Bright headlights are an optical migraine trigger for me, so I'm especially interested in the subject. Roger's interviews, research, and writing style combine into a great story. Also: I love it when random, deep subject matter articles show up on seemingly unrelated sites (in this case a sports site.)
Various animators discussing what they learned from Miyazaki's films, broken down by specific scenes and in order of time. A really kind, really insightful piece.
Stross' insightful opinion intersects with my thinking about people with Empire (from Star Wars) stickers on their cars. It's amazing how people can so willingly miss the point of a story because something seems "cool."
Ello remains the only public social network that I have ever gotten a gig from. Baio's documentation of Ello's birth and death gets filed into my mind place board (hi Alan Wake 2 reference) for "How can we take back the creative side of the internet?"
Having become a fan of LeGuin's writing later in life, I'm finding it continuing to shape my thinking of fiction. I'm taking my time with this collection of essays. Her wit and wisdom on writing science fiction and fantasy should be as important reading for creators as things like The Elements of Style and Save the Cat.
Winner of the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. This is a really surreal take on grief set in a zombie apocalypse. Sometimes it was tough to know what was goin on, but it didn't really matter - if that makes sense.
A collection of short stories following a Cherokee family through centuries creates this wonderfully interwoven collection of horror stories. I'm sure the Kindle version didn't do justice to the illustration work, but this was such a good storytelling package. I hope they do more in the YA/Adult world in the future.
Book Three of the Indian Lake Trilogy. How awesome is it to read the rest of the series all in a year? I'm going to miss spending time with Jade Daniels and Proofrock. The epilogue and afterword of the book are going to stick with me for a while.
This has been such a good year for books I love. I've been reading Sloan's newsletter as he's been working on the book which added layers to reading it, I'm sure. Reading this as Dad was dying added even more.
There is so much that is great about this book and it's interesting how much of it's being applied - incorrectly - to today's digital landscape. But, even in a book from 1992, racist quips and statutory rape should never be used to make a character seem cool and edgy. Ew.
Book Two of the Indian Lake Trilogy. It's Aliens to My Heart is a Chainsaw's Alien. Or I guess it's A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors to Nightmare on Elm Street. Either way, it's was so exciting I stayed up all night one night to finish it.
Everyone focuses on The Handmaid's Tale, but Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy is where my heart lies. The short story collection has some stories that feel like MaddAddam, with that same through line of hope no matter how dark they might get.
The whole book played out in my head like a show or movie, fully formed. It was like a warm hug and I can only compare it to playing Zelda, but not the story in Zelda. More like just riding the winds in Zelda.
Horror short stories! There's a green ribbon bookmark woven in! Ellis' pacing is just fantastic and I don't understand how he makes work in Insta stories and in print! Goddamn I love short stories.
Marc has been bugging me to read this forever. The innovation grows from issue to issue and I think this and Mary Tyler Moorehawk are going to be quite responsible for me getting back in to drawing comics.
The third part of the first chapter of Bone Orchard Mythos stories. I think horror based on tension is a tough thing to pull off in comics. The line art, the colors, the story, and the lettering of this all worked together so well. I hope they come back to the Mythos soon. I've got a B-Movie horror short I'm working on and I want to take some cues from this and re-work some of it.
This book is wild. It's a comic but also essays from a journalist named Dave Baker looking for the creator of the comic named Dave Baker. It give same feeling I had when I read WicDiv where Baker is giving this his all and letting the weirdness fall where it may.
I don't even know how to describe what this is... an artist-driven anthology? Walsh gathered great writers around him to tell the story of a cursed coin, shifting story type and artistic styles to fit his overall vision. It's ambitious as hell and really works.
Anthology about music told over the decades, with each story referencing another. I'm really surprised this type of story telling isn't done more often in comics. My bias about short stories is showing, for sure, but this type of book is so great and I'd love to see more like it.
The Omnibus gave me a chance to check out this whole thing at once after hearing about it for years. The sheer amount of work that went into this is both impressive and daunting. Come for the energetic monster shooting, stay for the essays and education on systematic racism. Collections of works should be more then just the issues of the comic and some variant cover collections, and they did really well here.
All I've wanted for years is someone to create a comic in the spirit of Hellblazer but the story is steeped in the ridiculousness of America. This team did it and I loved it so much.
Rural horror in one finite story really brought to life (PUN ON THE PLOT!) by one of my favorite artists. I want more of this from comics: Tell a story, get in , get out, and do it well.
A perfect summary of the mental state of creating anything on the web right now. A bonus is being able to go to Cat and Girl's 15 year archive and watch the evolution of a great storyteller.
The sheer scale of the story they took on is astonishing. They called their baroque phase, and it is true. It feels like the type of story they wanted to tell if they could never tell another story again. The team just laid it all out there.
I'm pretty vocal about my dislike of the whole world of games Dark Souls created. For me, I need games to have a balance between challenge and fun. Everything is hard enough already! And then Tunic, with its genius manual and beautiful world entered my life. I don't think this will make be go back to Bloodbourne though.
This is a lot of game. I got it in March and I'm still in the first act. I think I've found a rhythm that gets me around decision paralysis, so it's finally fun. This is also the horniest RPG I've ever played, and I'm including Dragon Age: Inquisition in that.
I hate souls-like games. I just bounce off them and lose any drive to continue because they're too hard for me. And then here comes Remnant 2 with true multiplayer paired with a wild setup and I'm in. I still don't think I'll head back to Bloodbourne though.
Bishop recommended Obsidian after he looked into numerous organization-improvement apps. Paring it with the Johnny.Decimal system feels really natural to me. I'm taking my time with it, but this could be a game changer for me, mentally and project management-ly.
Saul and the team at Tangle summarize coverage of events in the news and provide their own insights. It's been really helpful in giving the focus to pay attention to the news without drowning in social media feeds. Yay newsletters!
I really dig reading about other folks' organizational systems. The philosophy of "In real life, if you stored your stuff in piles of badly-labelled boxes you'd never find anything again. ... If you put those boxes in boxes, in boxes, you'd never know which box to open to find the next box. It would be chaos. But this is how you save your computer files." is really good.
You'd think that this movie would speak to a very, very specific audience but somehow it transcended that and was the best movie of trilogy and the funnest superhero movie in a long, long time.
It has been a very long time since I've seen this and its kicked off a watch through of all the Ghibli films in order of release. This movie is still relevant today and WAY darker then I remembered. I need to read the manga.
10/10 no notes. Very sad and very hopeful. It felt a lot like Scavengers Reign, even though it was different in every way. The robot design is especially great.
55 minutes of comedy and performance, really carefully crafted and directed. This era of comedy specials bring more craft to the stage around their jokes is something I'm really enjoying.
I fucking cackled at this movie. For me, tt surpassed Wet Hot American Summer as the pinnacle of teen movie satire. You're welcome to put that line at the bottom of a the movie poster.
This was more then a retelling of the original Evangelion series. This was re-do and it was fantastic. More coherant while still striking, and it used changes in animation tech to it's advantage. It is wild that it came out over 15 years. Also, this counts as four movies.
A documentary that took 40 years to make. I want to finally read Vonnegut this year (we'll see if it happens). A fact I love: Slaughterhouse Five came out when he was 47 and went through what seems like endless drafts. That resonates with me the same way Barnett Newman's process of Stations of the Cross does.
This slid right into the Supernatural and X-Files shaped holes in my heart. It's got theological debate, monster-of-the-week takes on the mythologies of religion, and really great kid acting. The episode to episode storytelling paired with great cuts leading to makes it really easy to binge while also driving
The animation work on the singing performances was so well done. I'm trying to find behind the scenes articles on how it was done, but I'm not having much luck. It looked like some rotoscoping paired with Bones' usual flair.
Having had a heavy year, watching a show about grief, regrets, and the human condition might seem like a bad idea. It isn't when its written by Brett Goldstein! Just what the hell.
This show is ridiculous. It could be terrible, but it's built around the chemistry between the cast and some excellent direction and editing. Also, having each season be six episodes is a great move. It keeps it from dragging out too long.
Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor is the Doctor Who is Here to Fuck. Sarah enjoyed it, and it's her first time watching Doctor Who, so the Disney+ Era is off to a great start.
The BBC is slowly uploading every series on to YouTube. I love shows about craftspeople doing great work for people. It's also reminding me to see if I can easily stream This Old House yet.
Craig (Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends) McCracken's three series Netflix show probably flew under a lot of radars and that's a shame. The three season arc is great and the animation is beautiful. It made me realize how much his shows influenced my storytelling and art. I wonder if I can find Foster's streaming anywhere.
A completely self-contained season, with a laser focus on the story it wanted to tell. Juno Temple and Jon Hamm were excellent. Emmys and awards are going to just get thrown at them.
