Look-Back 2022

2022-12-18

I thought I'd start this blog with a fun/silly post appropriate to the time of year. I intend for most other posts on here to be more serious, on topics such as technology, anarchism, and civics.

These are my 2022 recommendations. Not everything here came out this year, but all of it was new to me this year. If there are legal and ethical (by my own standard that I'll probably expand on here one day) ways to obtain them, I'll link to it. If not, obtain it however feels best to you.

Movies

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) by Daniels - Comedy/Drama/Martial Arts/Sci-Fi. This was breathtaking. I saw it in theaters, and the experience was genuinely overwhelming. There were times when I was laughing and crying at the same time. It beautifully captures the topics of depression, familial love, an immigrant experience, and the horrifying/beautiful/incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

NOPE (2022) by Jordan Peele/Monkeypaw Productions - Sci-fi horror with a bit of Western influence. When this first came out, I heard mixed/negative reviews of it. I didn't watch it until after it had left theaters, not expecting much. But instead I got something really insightful, focused on how a love of spectacle and inability to take treat things seriously/respectfully is a damning quality of our current society.

Music

WASTEISOLATION (2018) by Black Dresses - An industrial noise pop album full of deeply personal lyrics about trauma, abuse, isolation, transmisogyny, and rage. Everything in this album is so good and so powerful.

lately I feel EVERYTHING (2021) by Willow - A pop-punk revival album that shows off a lot of love for the genre, a lot of new ideas, and Willow's very impressive stylistic range.

Games

Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition (2019) by Baroque Decay - A critique of corporate culture, lovesong to pixel art and vaporwave aesthetics, and witchy horror puzzle game. This might have a recency bias since I just finished it, but the whole game just felt so lovingly crafted and original all the way through. A truly unique and interesting voice.

Hypnospace Outlaw (2019) by Tendershoot - Late 1990s internet alternate history/sci-fi simulation/puzzle game. Honestly this almost didn't make the list. The aesthetic is both very amusing and very tiring after a few hours, and I almost got bored of it. However, the ending takes a really good twist and honestly feels almost (very fittingly) dream-like. Plenty of secrets and deep lore to look into too.

Dwarf Fortress (Ongoing) by Tarn Adams - Fantasy colony sim/simulation/roguelike game. This is a little bit of cheating. I've been playing Dwarf Fortress since 2012. But It just got a release on itch and steam with graphics (as opposed to the original full-ASCII UI) and a ton of usability updates that makes it accessible to more people. It's not exaggerating to call this the deepest simulation game that exists. Every system in the game is simulated to an insanely deep degree.

Books

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks (2004) - Nonfiction book analyzing the ways that masculinity hurts and limits men, and what people of all genders need to do to help overcome sexism. As someone raised as a man, this book was page after page of things I felt but never had words for. It's difficult to explain how impactful this book was for me.

Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit by Adrienne L. Massanari (2015) - A nonfiction, anthropological look at reddit in the first half of the 2010s. For me this book served too, self-indulgent purposes. The first was an interesting interrogation of a time/place I had nostalgia for, both bringing back good memories and reminded me of some bad parts I've forgotten. The second is a great analysis of how communities interact, especially in terms of play and culture building. This pick is probably not for everyone, but I really appreciated it.

PS: Have thoughts about this post? Email me at nix@nullarch.com or message me on mastodon at @nix@social.stlouis.com.