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.

teenage mutant ninja turtles megareview, part 1 (1984-1998)

teenage mutant ninja turtles, book i (comic 1984-85)

written & illustrated by kevin eastman & peter laird

well, here it is. the comic that started it all. this graphic novel collects colorized versions of the first three issues of kevin eastman and peter laird’s original comics that conquered the world with a merchandising empire that no one saw coming, least of all them.

these comics did include some of the differences i’d always been told to expect from the turtles i’ve known and loved since the cartoons, movies, and video games of my early childhood, but not as many as i expected! true, it is a bit more violent, with the turtles being willing to kill some of their adversaries, but by the second issue leonardo is already telling his more hotheaded brother raphael that the turtles kill only as a last resort.

oh, that’s the other thing. i was primed to expect the turtles themselves to be nearly interchangeable, but they actually have much more fully-formed personalities than that even in these earliest days of the comics! leo was always the honorable leader and raph was always the hotheaded angy boy, all the way back in issue 1! and donnie has been the tech guy since at least issue 2, when he tries to hack baxter stockman’s computers to solve the mouser problem.

robocop vs. terminator megareview, part 2

welcome back! if you missed part 1, as a reminder we’re here because i had to watch terminator 2 for my childhood movies list so i figured that was a good excuse to watch all of those including the two most recent ones which i hadn’t seen yet. and i remembered there being a robocop vs. terminator video game, turns out it was based on a comic book, kinda sad we never got a movie about that! but yeah, figured we might as well do all the robocop movies too given that tenuous, barely-there connection.

look, it works for alien and predator, leave me alone.

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robocop: alpha commando (tv series 1998)

i watched the three-part pilot and then just sorta skimmed for episodes that sounded fun, and they mostly were. this was a lot more harmless fun and less overt copaganda than the other cartoon. it has basically nothing to do with the movies and other shows. so all you really have to contend with is the usual awful writing and loud dumbness of your average kids cartoon that doesn’t even slightly respect its audience. oh, and some rather cartoonish racism against a nonexistent country in the pilot.

(but the pilot also had an femdommy lady who captured robocop and said stuff like “once your defenses are broken down your delicious powers will be reprogrammed to serve me” and “stop fighting your reprogramming” and “how dare you touch my robocop” and planted a post-hypnotic suggestion in him, so who can say if it’s bad or good.)

robocop vs. terminator megareview, part 1

we had to watch terminator 2 for my childhood movies list so i figured that was a good excuse to watch all of these including the two most recent ones which i haven’t seen yet. and i remembered there being a robocop vs. terminator video game, turns out it was based on a comic book, kinda sad we never got a movie about that! but yeah, figured we might as well do all the robocop movies too given that tenuous, barely-there connection.

sonic the hedgehog 2 (2022)

i’m actually kind of terrified by how much these movies parallel the genesis games? 

like, the first one feels all kinds of lonely. in the game, it’s because it’s just sonic all alone against the world. in the movie, it’s because sonic is the only mobian in a world full of humans and the other most prominent character (besides eggman) is literally a cop, and no matter how much i appreciate him taking care of sonic when he really needed it, i can’t get over the whole cop thing. but both the game and movie are greater than the sum of their parts because sonic’s incredible… sonicness just shines through.

but then in the next couple games (and second movie) the world opens up and suddenly he has all these mobian friends and soulmates. there’s a subtle but important shift in the tone of the games that’s especially noticeable in sonic 3 & knuckles, and it really feels like the second movie mirrors this shift in tone.

the human characters are in this drastically less, the objectively correct amount. it’s like, with the arrival of tails and knuckles and new conflicts, there are less empty spaces to fill up with the human characters. and the parts the human characters are in are actually pretty amazing instead of me being like “okay, that’s fine, get them off the screen now please.” like, for the first movie i would genuinely prefer a supercut of all the times sonic or eggman is on screen over the full movie.

i have impossibly high standards for how sonic, knuckles, and especially tails are characteristized, and for the dynamic between them. this movie met and exceeded my wildest hopes for how well any movie could meet those standards.

KNUCKLES IS THE BEST BOY, OMG.

the harder you complain about the dancefight scene, THE HARDER I STAN IT TO CANCEL YOU OUT.

jim carey’s eggman is still a bit different than how i view eggman, but he’s a lot closer in this one than he was in the first one, and i actually like this version better because he grosses me out less and hits in a more “fun villain” kind of place. the aesthetic of his robots and other tech is also much, much more him than it was in the first movie.

the settings were also much, much more mobian even though most of the movie still took place on earth!! the place the master emerald is hidden is a dead ringer for labyrinth zone from sonic 1, which is kind of a weird choice, but still leads to a lot of game-accurate peril. the one real disappointment on that score is that when the master emerald starts shooting that huge beam of light into the sky i kinda more than half-expected a floating island to rise from beneath the waves, but oh well.

in short, this is exactly what i wanted. i wanted to watch this again immediately after seeing it. i’m so unbelievably happy that it exists and we’re getting more of them.

oh and as previously alluded to: everyone calling this “cringey”? you’re boring please get a life thanks babes. s-rank

please play* get in the car, loser! immediately

the asterisk in the title is because i am a fake gamer enbyboy, so i didn’t actually play it. i watched one of my partners play it on discord.

the thing that appeals to me about most video games isn’t gameplay & optimizing all your stats and whatever, it’s story. i will always, always, always opt for whatever the easiest mode is, etc, so as to experience the story as painlessly as possible. by and large, that’s what draws me to video games, with the exception of some where the gameplay is so familiar it’s almost soothing (sonic, pokemon, dr. mario).

but i digress! get in the car, loser! is the latest game by indie game developer christine love. i’m a massive fan of her visual novel ladykiller in a bind, which is hella gay and one of the two primary romance plots is probably the most thorough and accurate meditation on the psychology of dom/sub relationships that i’ve ever seen in fiction. also it’s super hot and super emotionally satisfying, so uh yeah. it’s kind of one of my favorite games of all time.

get in the car, loser! is a much different game. for one thing the gameplay is clearly more complicated than “click on the dialogue option you want,” and there are no branching story paths. but it’s also telling a completely different kind of story. sadly, this one doesn’t feature extended explicit depictions of intense, loving bdsm scenes. but it does feature a ragtag group of queer girls (and one enby) on a quest to literally save the world, so that works too i guess.

the de facto protagonist of the game is sam, a black trans girl who is a formidable magic user and the party’s healer. she’s dragged into the adventure by grace, the gorgeous cis girl she’s crushing on who bullied her constantly. as one of the party’s two dps members grace wields the sword of fate and enough bravado to more than make up for sam’s meekness. then there’s angela, in the words of the game “an actual literal angel” who is the party’s other dps.

which, uh, just leaves the party’s tank. valentin. the blue-haired musclebound enby himbo who i totally don’t have a massive, embarrassing crush on ha ha haaaaa…. shut up. you’ll have a crush on them too when you play this game, trust me.

what it does have in common with ladykiller is that its writing is phenomenal. the protagonists are lovable, their group dynamic is so positive they like… bully each other? supportively? like, one character says something negative about themself, and another character immediately says “i will literally fight you!” everyone is so full of fighting spirit and so heroic in their own ways. this is the queer superhero adventure i’ve been waiting for.

despite its defiantly positive tone, it also isn’t afraid to go to some pretty dark places. the villains you’re fighting are just… well, they’re just nazis, guys. the metaphor is not subtle.

and they come at you with snot-nosed bullshit like “freedom of speech lol” and “why are you afraid of civilized debate” and just… they’re just the fucking worst? and there’s plenty of dialogue from them that is genuinely reprehensible, but this is like… a masterclass in how to depict these manbabies?

there’s no mistaking that they are just total garbage, they’re not glorified in any way–they’re shown to be the massive fucking weenies they are in real life–but the story doesn’t shy away from the fact that they can do very real harm.

the last act of the game includes an extremely thorough and explicit discussion of how to combat these fascist scumbags, and the conclusion everyone comes to is essentially “do whatever is effective in stopping them from hurting people while not falling into the trap of glorifying or enjoying violence.” it SUCKS that we have to fight these wastes of space, but not fighting them would suck a hell of a lot more, so there you go.

nor is all the serious stuff devoted to external conflict. you know what else sucks? depression. and there’s an entire act devoted to the trans girl main character having a depressive spiral and just extremely explicitly confronting all her insecurities and her insecurities about her insecurities because yeah we fucking have those.

but as important as all the serious stuff is, the real draw for me is still the incredibly wholesome party dynamic where everyone is flirting with each other and aggressively complimenting each other and just… being so authentically queer and amazing. it really felt like exactly the kinds of queer friend groups that actually form in real life, and you just… fucking NEVER get to see those in fiction.

i kind of selfishly hope christine love gets back into visual novels at some point (especially if they’re anything like ladykiller, heck!), but the fact that she considers herself a writer first and a game developer second is very apparent here, and honestly as long as she doesn’t skimp on the amazing writing i’ll look forward to whatever she does next.

(i mean, beyond the already-announced expansions for this game, which yes of course i’m looking forward to those.) s-rank

the resident evil movies

resident evil (2002)

yo it me your favorite paul w.s. anderson apologist here to remind you that the resident evil movies are good actually??? like, this one is basically just a perfectly passable zombie movie with one or two resident evily elements and really bad cgi and the sequels are basically just perfectly passable action hero vehicles for milla jovovich (think an arnold schwarzenegger movie but with a hot lady instead of him) with one or two resident evily elements and bad cgi and yeah i’ll take it!

also it’s paul w.s. anderson so everything is brightly lit and the camera is always moving like michael bay but for some reason less offensively like there’s a different universe where anderson had bay’s slot as the super actually successful director with this kind of style that studios actually trust with money AND I WANT THAT UNIVERSE, GUYS. i want that universe.

oh also i’m very gay for michelle rodriguez in this one and she says a few very horny/dommy things and i’m into it.

anyway, yeah. these are fun. i like them. b-rank

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resident evil: apocalypse

it’s tempting to say the reason this is the worst one is because paul w.s. anderson didn’t direct it (at least, it is for me), but extinction is the only other one not directed by anderson and it’s one of my favorites of the series. also, like, apocalypse isn’t the worst of the series by much! it kind of stuck in my mind as The Bad One for years, but really it’s on about the same level as the rest of its siblings, just a bit behind them.

also, this is the start of milla jovovich: action hero being the central thrust of these movies, so, that’s awesome!

resident evil is badly overdue for one of those It’s Good Actually popular critical renaissances like fast & furious got, but i don’t think it’s ever gonna happen, and that’s just really sad!