2022 in review

(cw: pet death, grief)

well. the “how my life is going” section of my year in review changed rather drastically in the last week and a half or so of the year. we lost my mate’s beloved kitty, ziara, who’s been his companion since childhood and had become a vital part of our family in a very short time after he moved in with us. it’s honestly still pretty raw for us all. she was very special, and we loved her very much.

until that happened, it had been a pretty “normal” year. the biggest real personal step i took is i actually started attending kink events with my fiancx. i’m still super socially anxious about it because, y’know, i’m me, but it’s an exciting development nevertheless. oh and i started keeping a diary again. it’s been more intermittent than i’d like with me oftentimes going days or even weeks without updating it, but it’s nevertheless a step in the right direction to be more mindful and make sure i’m happy with how i’m approaching things.

we also got a new kitty a few months before we lost ziara. his name is grayson and he’s an alarmingly chill ray of sunshine (except for the times when he’s thoroughly unchill, but even then he’s still a ray of sunshine). we were actually a little hesitant about the idea of getting another kitty while zi was still with us given her declining health, but grayson is a very special boy and i’m so glad he’s part of our family.

anyway i should get on to my ridiculous media lists, because this year’s are gonna be super long. sorry not sorry.

movie first watches

as you can probably tell from the fact that the vast majority of my top first watches were actually from this year, 2022 was an incredible year for movies. with that in mind, here’s my top 10 first watches.

1. kiki’s delivery service (1989)

okay, i know i said this was a great year for movies, and it was. but unfortunately for every other movie i saw this year, this 33-year-old stone cold classic was actually the first one i saw this year? saying that it set an impossible standard for the rest of the year is a bit of an understatement, considering that i recently did a long-ass movie tournament to officially crown it my favorite movie of all time.

for me, this is the ultimate realization of what a ghibli movie can be (and considering how incredible they all are, that’s saying something), and it also happens to have some obvious factors that make it appeal to me specifically (it’s witchy, there’s an adorable kitty, there’s an incredibly sensitive portrayal of what living with depression is like, etc etc). just a truly incredible movie.

2. glass onion: a knives out mystery (2022)

if rian johnson & daniel craig could just make another one of these things every few years until the heat death of the universe that would be pretty great. because i’m never going to get tired of them. i ran back to a movie theater again as soon as possible to see this again, which is just kind of a thing i don’t usually really do anymore?

3. the batman (2022)

this is the first batman movie that has really felt like a detective movie, gotham has never been seedier, but i think the real killer app here is that this one just blatantly has the best filmmaking any batman movie has ever had.

4. prey (2022)

hot take alert but this is the only truly good predator movie. and it’s not just good, it’s incredible. this one caught me completely by surprise.

5. everything everywhere all at once (2022)

one of my favorite performers turns in a career-best performance in an emotionally arresting, visually stunning, timely, and staggeringly smart titan of a movie.

this movie asks questions that i never really expected a movie to ask, and it doesn’t just ask them, it does its level best to answer them, or at least explore them in an honest, vulnerable way. this is a fearless movie.

i kind of feel like an idiot for not having this as my top movie that came out in 2022… and keep in mind it’s actually in the number 4 spot? we were unbelievably spoiled this year, y’all. movies are back.

6. nope (2022)

jordan peele is an institution unto himself. i know he came in to filmmaking with a ton of experience working on parodies for key & peele, and people super underrate how useful that can be for crossing over into serious filmmaking, but it’s still incredible to me that he hit the ground running as a staggeringly-good filmmaker and just hasn’t let up once.

7. avatar: the way of water (2022)

i’m not super sure where this one is gonna end up on this list when all is said & done, it feels like it needs at least a rewatch or two before i really have a full grasp of it, but this feels right for now. regardless of where i end up landing on it, it is refreshing to see this kind of blockbuster movie in an era where most tentpole movies are all commercials for the next one or for disney plus or whatever the fuck.

8. turning red (2022)

yeah so this is my favorite pixar movie ever and it isn’t particularly close. i’m still salty that disney forced pixar to take all the explicit queerness out of it, but even what was left made me feel more seen than anything they’ve ever produced.

9. sonic the hedgehog 2 (2022)

yeah okay i can’t argue that this is an artistic masterpiece like a lot of the others on this list, nor is it a movie without pretty obvious warts (just like 90% of the human stuff, basically). but look, i have some pretty exacting standards for how i want these characters and their relationships portrayed, and this movie shocked me by meeting & exceeding those expectations with flying colors.

i’m not going to try to force myself to be objective about the movie’s many & rather obvious flaws, because that’s just frankly not how i authentically experience movies anymore. i got exactly what i wanted to get out of this movie, and i consider that a minor miracle.

10. luca (2021)

there is so fucking much thematic gayness in this, just fucking make them gay, gods.

apparently they weren’t even originally going to be though, the thing that disney censored was their friend being a lesbian, but like are you shitting me how do you write these characters this way and not intend them to be gay? they are so gay, fucking hell.

nevertheless this is a beautiful movie. i hate disney as a company but there are clearly just so many smart & talented people working under their umbrella. the post-lasseter pixar era is looking pretty promising so far.

tv/webseries first watches

just as it says on the tin, here are my top 5 tv & webseries first watches this year. i counted anything where i watched a full season that i hadn’t seen before.

1. star trek: strange new worlds, season 1 (2022)

this has been that Thing they were Gonna Make Eventually and it was gonna be So Good, but given the amount of production time between season 2 of discovery and it actually starting to air it kind of stopped being something real? and it had all that time for expectations to build up in my subconscious, so that by the time it was actually Happening and trailers were starting to come out i kind of like… got super nervous about how much i was actually looking forward to it?

the more trailers i saw and the more i read about what the people involved wanted the show to be, the more excited & nervous i got, and then the pilot dropped and it just blasted me right in the part of my brain where star trek lives, and holy shit if it keeps being this good it might end up going down as the best star trek series ever?

like, it’s only been one season, i’m trying my best to manage expectations but clearly i am kind of failing at that, so uh yeah, that’s more or less where i’m at with it.

2. dimension 20: fantasy high (2018-19) & sophomore year (2019-20)

this became the default Thing We Watched for months, and i’m sure we’ll pivot back to it at some point because it’s just so damn good. i kind of don’t mind that inertia has us currently binging star trek because picard season 3 drops in february, and no matter how much i can’t stand the creative direction of that series i want my mate to have as much context as possible when we get to it.

anyway, though. dimension 20 is unreasonably good. i’m so excited there are so many seasons of it we haven’t touched yet, and i just still think it’s so wild that you can get something this good out of “a bunch of funny people sit around and play d&d.” it’s so unreasonably awesome.

3. sonic prime, season 1 (2022)

this show is having its cake and eating it in the most wild ways. like, it’s doing that whole sliders thing where sonic is jumping around to different parts of the multiverse where all of his friends are completely different, but in spite of that it’s thematically being so much about how much those friends mean to him? and how much he wants them back? and i just fucking love that every time he ends up in a new dimension, literally his first priority is “i’ve got to find tails.”

this show gets it on a level that i didn’t think something that was so very interested in being Cool could actually get it? like, i just kind of go into most sonic projects not expecting them to care about the same things i care about, so when they do it’s just this amazingly wonderful surprise and yeah sonic prime is very much that.

4. star trek: discovery, season 4 (2021-22)

i am so unbelievably glad that this show eventually became This. i really don’t like what this show was in season 1, but it’s come such a long way and it’s basically unrecognizable now. let’s fly.

5. wednesday, season 1 (2022)

oh, you have a series about my favorite goth girl with an incredible cast, incredible visuals & music, and a mystery plot for me? you shouldn’t have!

video game first plays

admittedly i spent more time on pokémon go than anything else, and it’s basically a completely different game than when i played it a bunch when it first launched so you could almost count it as a first play? but yeah, here are my top 5 favorite actual first plays of the year.

1. pokémon scarlet (2022)

yes i know it has some rather glaring bugs, but i don’t care about fps (frames per second), i care about fps (fun per second, admittedly that would work better if they weren’t the same letter).

seriously, though, an open world setting is such an obvious choice for the tone of the pokemon franchise. it’s kind of incredible that this is the first time it’s been done in a mainline game. and damn it, i just love the characters in this. they’re just so vibrant and real. and the new pokemon are amazing, are you kidding me with that fire/ghost alligator starter? incredible stuff in this game.

also like, i’m a huge fucking dork so the idea of being a student at a pokemon boarding school? fucking perfect. that is exactly the childhood i would want.

i hope the next game has more or less the same format but fewer bugs. but i fucking loved this.

oh, but bring back mega evolutions or dynamax, or just… something less gimmicky. terastallizing is so dumb. i actually hate it.

2. pokémon shield (2019)

i actually started playing this back when it first came out, but my life was very turbulent at the time and i got way too busy for it for a while & never got back to it because adhd yo. so as i was getting excited for violet & scarlet to come out, it made perfect sense to pick it back up.

i mean, this is kind of a better game than violet & scarlet, if we’re being totally fair. me preferring scarlet largely comes down to the fact that it’s open world, and that some elements seem designed to appeal to me specifically (the academy setting, the greater focus on character writing & relationships).

seriously, though, pokemon shield rules. i know that’s gonna be true of basically any mainline pokemon game, but it really does kick serious ass.

3. teenage mutant ninja turtles: shredder’s revenge (2022)

the difficulty curve on this is actually a bit higher than it looks at first glance. because it’s not that you’re trying to make a game that’s comparable to the tmnt arcade games early 90s kids like me grew up with. you’re trying to make a game that feels like those games felt to us at the time, today. so please understand that that’s an entirely different, much more challenging target to hit, and please also understand that this game knocked it out of the fucking park. (i’m pretty sure i just mixed my metaphors pretty badly but whatever.)

this game makes me feel about ninja turtles the way i felt about them as a little kid with a pocket full of quarters at chuck e. cheese. it makes me feel about them the way i felt when i was doing a ninja turtles coloring book or playing with my action figures or sleeping under my ninja turtles bedspread. it’s as cool as i thought the cartoons were at the time.

i love being a turtle!

4. get in the car, loser! (2021)

yes hello hi, i would like to play the game about the four lesbianish queers (one of whom is trans, another of whom is a blue-haired they/them himbo who STOLE MY HEART) beating up nazis while not flirting with each other but not not flirting with each other with extremely well-written explorations of imposter syndrome, depression, harassment, ethics & politics, and all that shit. that sounds great, yes, thank you. oh, it’s by the same person who did ladykiller in a bind, a game that featured the best depiction of dom/sub relationship psychology i’ve ever seen in any medium? that sounds lovely i’ll take three, thanks.

5. kaichu (2022)

this is a kaiju dating sim. this is a game where the entire goal is to get two kaiju to smooch. this is a kaiju dating sim. i am not about to sit here and pretend i have to justify why i love it.

novel first reads

my top ten favorite first reads of this year! more or less! idk it’s harder for me to rank books than other kinds of media sometimes, i feel like. i did my best.

1. wolfsong by t.j. klune (2015)

i already wrote a very long review of this so i’m not gonna rehash it here, but yeah this is a gay werewolf book with a very unique/artistic writing style and i’m pretty sure the main character is literally otherkin. (they don’t use the word “otherkin” but his experiences line up so well it’s kind of scary.) obviously i’m a fan.

2. wolf-speaker by tamora pierce (1994)

omfg i need to get back to this series i love tamora pierce’s writing style so much. i keep alternating between kicking myself that i didn’t read these as a kid & celebrating the fact that i get to read them all now. but, yeah, i need to get back to this series. and her stuff in general.

3. any way the wind blows by rainbow rowell (2021)

this is far & away the best book of the simon snow series. it’s just such a godsdamned satisfying ending.

i mean, okay, i do find it a little off-putting that i’m meant to believe that penny is heterosexual, but we can’t win ‘em all. but also we get to see her rules lawyer a fucking demon??? and be a stone cold badass in the process? so i can’t really complain about how that went.

the writing of simon & baz’s intimacy with each other was fucking sublime. it was so heartful & honest, i just ached for them.

i’m a little disappointed that this was such a definitive ending because i could’ve kept following these characters for like a dozen more books, but honestly it was such a perfect ending it’s kind of hard to argue with it.

4. birth of the firebringer by meredith ann pierce (1985)

yeah i can’t imagine what i found appealing about the unicorn book with narration from what feels like an awfully authentic animal headspace whose culture is SUPER pagan and where the main perils are 1) vore, 2) mind control, 3) literally a tornado. just truly drawing a blank here.

5. wayward son by rainbow rowell (2019)

i’m so glad the harry potter books never did an american roadtrip because holy shit it would have been insufferable. this, on the other hand, is brilliant.

everyone at ren fairs is apparently actually a witch or supernatural creature? vampires run las vegas? techbros are trying to contract vampirism for incredibly dumb reasons? yes, yes, yes. perfect.

6. star trek: discovery: dead endless by dave galanter (2019)

we gays are so powerful, you guys. i mean, the fucking butterfly effect of the awful season 1 of discovery unironically employing the bury your gays trope resulting in us ending up with this profic au where culber’s ghost finds his way onto a discovery commanded by a michael burnham who never mutineed and has family dinners with fleet captain georgiou & surrogate sibling saru, and he just immediately starts making out with au stamets who starts working on bending the laws of physics to the will of his multiverse gay love story.

sometimes profic is just fanfic with resources & a stamp of legitimacy, and when it is it’s glorious.

7. star trek: discovery: fear itself by james swallow (2018)

the discovery novels are shockingly good. like, this one is so action packed while also being such a great character study of saru. it honestly surpasses what the show was doing contemporaneously. i’d really like to see more comics or novels set on the shenzhou.

8. murder on the orient express by agatha christie (1934)

this was almost certainly hindered by the fact that i had seen so many adaptations of it by the time i read it that i felt like i had already read it, but i nevertheless enjoyed it quite a bit and am eager to read more mystery novels (and christie novels specifically.)

9. lunatic fringe by allison moon (2011)

patient worldbuilding, imperfect but well-meaning characters having mostly (mostly) good-faith conflicts over strategy, and L E S B I A N   W E R E W O L V E S. yeah, that’ll work.

10. blood and chocolate by annette curtis klause (1997)

this book’s picture is in the dictionary under “problematic fave,” but this really is delightful if you can get past all the ways in which it’s awful. and i can, clearly.

comics & manga first reads

1. orcs! by christine larsen (2021)

this is frighteningly perfect. orcs as protagonists, cute (but not too cute for orcs) art, and just supremely powerful good boy energy. (yeah a lot of the protagonists aren’t boys, but i feel like all orcs have good boy energy regardless of gender.) also it’s kinda gay!

this filled a hole i didn’t even know could be filled (which despite being ace is oftentimes what i’m looking for with orcs, hey-o), with the only problem being that whenever i go out looking for more orc fiction i’m looking for this specific vibe and nothing else has it. woof.

(in all seriousness i wouldn’t want every orc story to have this vibe because that would make it less special, but still i want more of this than this and its immediate sequel, y’know?)

2. the witch boy by molly ostertag (2017)

given the title & author i am less than 0% surprised how strongly i vibed with this. this gave me so many gender feels.

3. batman/teenage mutant ninja turtles (2015-16)

writer: james tyrnion iv / artist: freddie williams ii

a love letter to fans of both franchises. this is one of the all-time great crossovers between two totally separate franchises. it might be the best ever.

4. the adventure zone, vol. 4: the crystal kingdom (2021)

writers: clint mcelroy & griffin mcelroy & justin mcelroy & travis mcelroy

artist: carey pietsch

it took me a minute to get into adventure zone because i was so thoroughly spoiled by the frankly superior dimension 20, but it really does grow on you. and i think the crystal kingdom story is the first one where the comic adaptation actually noticeably improved upon the podcast. the ending especially was just so arresting seeing it in comic form, and it really had an impact on me that i don’t remember it having when i was listening to the pod.

5. superman: birthright (2003-04)

writer: mark waid / artists: leinil francis yu & gerry alanguilan

not only is this the best verison of superman’s origin story i’ve ever seen, it’s one of the best superman comics i’ve ever read.

6. batman, vol. 2: the city of owls (2012)

writers: scott snyder & james tynion iv / artists: greg capulo & rafael albuquerque & more

what made this so special is not just that it was the epic confrontation between batman and the court (and possibly his long-lost brother). it also had two side stories, one that showed that the new 52 version of mr. freeze is kind of a unique twist on the character, but i'm actually way more interested in the last issue of the volume. this issue featured a pair of super gay siblings named harper and cullen row. harper will eventually become the hero bluebird, but for now we just see her civilian life and how she first comes into contact with batman. and honestly, just seeing these two low-income queer siblings existing and being extremely relatable was such a joy.

7. avatar: tsu’tey’s path (2019)

writer: sherri l. smith / artists: dan parsons & jay durresma

basically a drastically better version of the first movie with less human stuff. it couldn’t totally remove the shitty white savior stuff from the narrative obviously since it is following the same events, but it did at least push them off to the side as much as it could.

8. batman: hush (2002)

writer: jeph loeb / artist: jim lee

i’ve been a batman/catwoman shipper since before i knew that shipping was a thing, so obviously i loved this. ivy being blatantly femdommy, and bisexual at that, was also extremely, extremely, extremely my jam. yes please. more of that, please.

9. pleasure & corruption, vol. 1 by you someya (2019)

*pounding fist on table in rhythm to words* more. boy. subs. more. boy. subs. more. boy. subs.

i do wish so many authors didn’t seem so convinced that subby boys always have to “deserve it” by being pervs or whatever in stories like this, it makes them way harder to relate to. but yeah. seeing a boy get tied up and bullied a bunch is extremely wish fulfillment imo. also, loveloveloved the heavy emphasis on bondage, obviously.

10. 5 seconds before a witch falls in love by zeniko sumiya (2021)

a super cute enemies-to-lovers yuri about a witch & witch hunter. hell yeah.

theme park first rides

1. guardians of the galaxy: cosmic rewind

this didn’t pop my “first rollercoaster in probably a decade” cherry, but it was pretty easily the best new thing i’ve ridden all year. i would ride this thing several times in a row if i could. first of all it’s a launchcoaster, which turns out to be a much better experience for me given that i for some reason have gotten super wimpy about rollercoaster drops in my 30s.

idk. i was always a pretty big wuss about them as a kid but i found it easily to overcome it usually? i think i was probably traumatized by american eagle at six flags great america being my first big kid coaster. that thing is no joke.

anyway, this has everything i love about rollercoasters that makes them exhilarating but none of the things that trigger my phobias? and on top of that, it has loud rock & roll music (our track was blondie’s “one way or another”) and some kickass visuals. this honestly kind of blew me away.

2. star wars: rise of the resistance

look, i’ve cooled off on star wars in the past few years considerably to the point that it isn’t even really something i’d say i like anymore? but it was a huge deal to me for a very long time so i’m super familiar with the universe and everything (plus like, this is a theme park attraction at the busiest theme park in the world, they’re not exactly gonna expect you to know the deep lore). but yeah, i’m the kind of dumbass that saw a few cast members walking around star wars land in stormtrooper costumes and begged my partner to snap a few pictures of me looking like i was surrendering to them, because that is probably the subbiest thing you can get away with at a theme park? lmao.

anyway, without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t ridden, with that last thing in mind this ride was extremely up my alley. it’s hard to even really compare it to another ride? because fully like 50% of it is just walking around these big, huge awesome sets and feeling like you’re actually in the world, and all of that happens before you even get to the ride vehicle. and the parts on the ride vehicle kick ass, too, but yeah there’s… Stuff that happens before that that really, really appeals to me.

3. mickey & minnie’s runaway railway

i’m a rollercoaster wimp, so obviously i fucking love dark rides. which means that disney & universal parks are by far the parks that have the most actual stuff for me to enjoy? anyway, yeah, my expectations for this ride were not nearly high enough. this does such a great job of actually making you feel like you’re in a cartoon. i was genuinely blown away.

4. rock’n roller coaster starring aerosmith

like obviously i give zero shits about the theming on this one, but it’s the first rollercoaster i’d rode in years so that’s obviously gonna stick with me. i really wish launch coasters were more common because this kicked ass, and it’s so nice to be able to experience all the things i love about rollercoasters without having to experience the anxiety of those stupid drops.

5. volcano bay

rather than listing all the attractions separately, i’ll just say that we had a great time at volcano bay. i do think the whole park is rife with textbook-worthy examples of cultural appropriation, but in terms of “this was a fun waterpark,” it definitely nailed it.