2023 Year in Review

Books

Book that made me nod my head again and again and also left me deeply unsettled: Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger

Best book about scary caves: The Luminous Dead

Best use of ghosts and haunting as an extended metaphor for intergenerational trauma in a book: The September House

Richest, most immersive book experience: R.F. Kuang’s Babel

Best graphic novel: Kate Beaton’s Ducks

Best smutty webcomic: IlustriAriane’s Love You to Death

Music

Embarrassing pop music-related epiphany: realizing that “…Baby One More Time” and “Oops! …I Did It Again” were in fact two different songs

Good music from my youth that I played on heavy rotation: Lucinda Williams, Fleetwood Mac

Terrible music from my youth that I played on heavy rotation: Ratt

Music I listen to while vacuuming: Cannons

Movies

Most naive & misguided movie grad student: Main character in Kisaragi Station, who (spoiler) gets stuck forever in an alternate universe while trying to do research for a dissertation that will be “different from anything anyone else has ever written”

Good movie to watch when you’re grieving the loss of a parent and need to bawl your fucking eyes out: Aftersun

Good movie to watch when you just want to be dazzled by moviemaking: Aftersun, Infernal Affairs

Movie that obviously paid off a bunch of reviewers because it was The Room-level bad and got mixed reviews instead of uniformly negative ones: Leave the World Behind

Scariest movies (keeping in mind that what scares people is very personal and your mileage may vary): The Night House, Resurrection, Skinamarink, Infinity Pool, Huesera, Talk to Me

Best movie writing: Women Talking

Movies I really wanted to love but didn’t: Bottoms, Barbie, The Boy and the Heron

Most laugh-out-loud hilarious line in a bad movie: Noomi Rapace screaming “I used to be FUNNY!!!” in Angel of Mine

Video/Apps/Tech/Video Games

Tech thing I only figured out how to do in 2023: rotate Google Maps on my phone

Best academic video essays (keeping in mind that I’m very new to the medium and haven’t watched a ton yet): Cormac Donnelly, Once Upon a Screen: Can I Remember It Differently?; Colleen Laird, Eye-Camera-Ninagawa; Lucy Fife Donaldson: “Isn’t That Going to Be Awfully Dull and Drab?” George Hoyningen-Huene’s Use of Neutrals

Most comforting, turn-it-on-during-breakfast YouTube channel: Plan D

Favorite new-to-me video game: Stardew Valley

Favorite game to watch my partner play: Red Dead Redemption II

Best longform YouTube video essay: Jenny Nicholson on the bizarre rise and fall of the Evermore theme park. Close second: Hbomberguy’s plagiarism video

Most entertaining Instagram accounts: Shabaz Says, Drennon Davis

App I still find very confusing and mostly avoid, probably because I’m a control freak who does not like the idea of an app choosing content FOR me, even though I realize Instagram and YouTube operate in very similar ways: TikTok

TV

Best TV series that was deeply feminist, a genuinely good crime drama, AND hilariously funny: Deadloch

TV series that I loved until the final episode, which…huh?: Beef

TV series that really did live up to the hype: Succession

TV series that got way better in season 2: The Wheel of Time

Podcasts

Best podcasts: Louder Than a Riot, Double Love, How Did This Get Made?

Most terrifying and enraging podcast: The Retrievals

Cults

Latest creepy cult that I couldn’t stop consuming content about: Twin Flames

Latest creepy YouTube channel turned self-help cult that I couldn’t stop consuming content about: the 8 Passengers saga

Best documentary about an MLM, at least for someone who has a bordering-on-unhealthy obsession with MLMs and why people keep getting sucked into them: LulaRich

Work & Health

Favorite anti-capitalist affirmation, slightly modified: “I do not need to monetize my hobbies. Spending time doing something because I love it is enough. I do not need to be professional-level good at something for it to be a worthwhile use of my time.”

Word that I weirdly used a LOT in voice acting jobs: photovoltaic

Unsettling trend that I noticed in a lot of the corporate video narration work I did this year: companies are moving away from a public position of “we’re on track to make our production processes greener, support human rights, and make the world better” and toward “the world is fucked, but our company’s products can help make it less fucked for YOU”

Adventures

Best unusual hangout activity: a trip to Tokyo’s Extinct Media Museum

Best unusual tourist activity in Brussels: a visit to the Dieweg Cemetery

Things that scared me that I did anyway: calling the IRS helpline, riding the tram in Brussels