year in review meme

[enemyofperfect]

Because the excellent stunt_muppet imported this meme over from tumblr and tagged me for it! Following her example, I'm switching out some of the categories for ones that are more applicable to my life, but I'll try to keep to the spirit of the meme as best I can.

Top five concerts & live theater shows you saw this year:

I am honestly such a relentless homebody, I couldn't even list one for that. So instead let's try...

Top five games I've played this year:

1. Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short, a work of classic interactive fiction complete with go north-style commands and plot-critical wordplay, and which gave me feelings.


2. First Kiss at a Spooky Soiree by NomnomNami, a tiny adorable visual novel I played in no time at all, but still remember fondly. ♥


3. Fallen London by Failbetter Games, which amovingtarget got me into and which hasn't let me go yet. I still feel really bad about accidentally getting a rat who worked for me killed. :(


4. Bogeyman by Elizabeth Smyth, a text (but not parser) based game, which is chock full of content warnings and does not possess a happy ending as far as I can tell, but which I'm still glad I played.


5. Dungeons & Dragons! Can you believe! I still feel like I have next to no idea what I'm doing, but I guess I've been DMing a tiny campaign for one (1) player for almost... nine months now? And it's scary and amazing and great! Why are my favorite characters always goblins!

Top five TV shows & films you saw in 2018:

1. The Good Place, a ceaseless delight.


2. How to Get Away With Murder, deliciously dramatic and exquisitely political.


3. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has grown so much over the years.


4. Killjoys, a fluffy SF romp that tries hard to stay on the right side of history.


5. Sneaky Pete, which I did not want to like, because Amazon is an aspiring monopoly run by an evil billionaire, but it's just so much fun!

Top five albums songs to listen to on repeat of 2018:

1. "Do I Wanna Know" - Arctic Monkeys


2. "Valerie" - Naya Rivera (which is to say the Glee cover!)


3. "Thunderclouds" - LSD


4. "Arrow" - The Irrepressibles


5. "Foreign Object" - The Mountain Goats

With an honorable mention to "When I Was a Ship" by Hats Off Gentlemen It's Adequate, which is an Ancillary Justice fanwork, and amazing.

Top five podcast episodes of 2018:

My auditory attention span is something like two seconds, so unfortunately podcasts and I aren't really a thing. But I can do...

Top five books of 2018:

1. Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. If you're wondering if you might like this, and you don't feel like reading its prequel novelette The Litany of Earth, maybe this quote will help you decide: "And Shub-Nigaroth, mother of fear, looked on the first life and said: it will fail, but for now it is good." I found it beautiful.


2. Emergence by CJ Cherryh. This is the 19th book in the Foreigner series, in which Bren Cameron acts as translator and diplomat for the atevi species, who do not have words for friendship or love. I keep thinking that maybe, eventually, new installments will stop holding my interest. So far, this has not happened.


3. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. This book is so charming! Vivid and complex and lively, and I have to love a YA novel that contains a little crash course on critical reading and keeping other people's prejudices from making a home in your head. I need to read the sequel at some point!


4. Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee. Third of the Machineries of Empire trilogy, and rather different from the first two books, as indeed the first two books were different from each other. It didn't give me everything I wanted, but maybe that was part of the point. A satisfying conclusion. Content notes: all the suicidal ideation, plus general moral complicity, sexual assault, torture, etc.


5. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. I love Murderbot so much, and this might be my favorite Murderbot story to date. Or it might not: the others are really good, too. But Artificial Condition has a long-range research vessel! And a nonbinary human character! And so much delicious identity stuff for Murderbot! So if I have to pick a favorite, maybe it's this one.

Five good/positive things that happened to you in 2018:

1. I wrote and submitted an original short story to an anthology! And got my first ever rejection, unsurprisingly, but I'm really proud of myself for giving it a shot.


2. A friendship that's very important to me, but has sometimes been very difficult for both me and for said friend, has seen astonishing improvement in terms of communication and just generally being good for each other, and I'm so so so happy about that. There are still going to be things we need to work on and figure out, of course -- because that's how relationships are -- but I feel like now we have a foundation we can build on.


3. For possibly the first time ever, I deliberately asked someone to help me stay accountable with respect to a task I was having trouble motivating myself to do, and what's more, I've actually found that helpful. Which is huge for me! My trust issues never let me do that before!


4. I know I mentioned this under games, but D&D has honestly been pretty amazing for me -- partly because it's just fun, but also because the combination of challenge and satisfaction that DMing provides seems like something I've really needed. To do something that's difficult, not to the point of inducing panic, but to the point of letting me feel proud when I succeed: apparently that's a balance I don't hit all that often, and it's been really rewarding to find it here.


5. My grandmother, who is an exceptionally nice and surprisingly private person, and who I've gradually realized over the last decade or so has a lot more in common with me than I ever imagined when I was a kid, has called me her friend as well as her grandchild, and I'm so happy that we've been able to build that relationship. It means a lot.

Instead of tagging anyone else to do this meme, I'm going to say to raise your hand in the comments if you'd like help brainstorming categories you can use to do this meme too. I'd love to read about your year!

Comments

[amovingtarget]

Talking about me in memes. I'm gonna tell your mother.

But at least I am #1 DnD player, even if I'm not a goblin.

[enemyofperfect]

I double direwolf dare you to tell her. I bet she'd be delighted. :D

You are my favorite player of all time! And I probably provide enough goblinness for an entire campaign, let's be honest.

Hey, you know what you should totally post to your journal, in addition to this meme and a fannish intro and all your thoughts about all the things always? You should post about your fanfic. Let people know what you make!

[amovingtarget]

Listen you >_> stop giving me so many things to do you monster >_>

[enemyofperfect]

Very well, friend; you have been unsubscribed from the telling you what to post newsletter. But if you ever want any suggestions, you know who to call!

[amovingtarget]

>_>
<_<

[enemyofperfect]

(It's me. The person you can call is me.)