published on 15 Jan, 2025. approximately a 14 minute read.
happy new year! i've been relatively quiet because things have been pretty rough lately; if you live on the same planet i do, i'm sure you've noticed. i wanted to take some time to reflect on 2024, and specifically the media that brought me some joy throughout the year. this won't actually be talking about *new* media that came out in 2024, but rather the things that i personally discovered, experienced for the first time, or revisited.
this was the first year in a long time that i listened to primarily new bands.
the only act on this list that's been in my rotation for years, but my top listen overall for 2024. gothic-ish death doom, some of the best to ever do it. top tracks: Pale Tortured Blue, Stellar Tombs, Sleepwalkers
black metal, but the artsy kind. i've known about them for a long time, but this was my first year digging into them, at the urging of my friend. their atmospheric synth stuff is very cool. consistently good but no particular tracks that stick out to me.
you'll notice a trend pretty quickly. post black metal, but the punky kind. a bit of a screamo vibe, which is itself new to me. queer woman duo, both of who play guitar and drums and do vocals, which i love. another vlos rec. top tracks: You Take Nothing, Desolation's Flower, Winter's Light Pt. 2
hey it's black metal (well, blackgaze) but artsy. french! vlos rec again. like WitTR, no particular songs have stuck out to me yet, but everything is good. i've mostly listened to both bands during work and haven't really noticed track titles for that reason.
jazz, i guess? math rock? math jazz? japanese trio that i stumbled onto because of a visual artist i follow. good stuff. top track: 疾走する閃光
ha! you thought i was done with black metal for this year? the rec that vlos made that spurred most of our music exchange this year. not particularly artsy, but solid black metal with exactly the right level of production for me. top track: Altid Veltilfreds
funk trio. very groovy, fun to watch. i sat through the pitchfork performance on youtube multiple times this year, typically while working. nice change of pace from all the black metal i was listening to. top track: August 10
hey, it's black metal again! this one was *not* recommended by anyone, i've been meaning to check them out for a while. really solid black metal with indigenous american folk influences. i've always been a folk metal nerd so the flavor is welcome here. no particular favorite song.
i've been meaning to dig into these guys since i saw them live about a decade ago. when my friend recommended alcest i finally grabbed their stuff, since i was in a blackgaze mood. it's good.
i discovered them in january, apparently, so they get to go here. found on cohost after i had already been following lex feathers for a while. definitely not black metal, but i don't know what. progressive alt rock? an audiovisual treat nonetheless. top tracks: Watcher, Earth is Unmade, Spitting and Thrashing, Need, Dead in the Water (yeah, five. deal with it)
i added a youtube embed function to my static site generator just to share this video here, because i found it incredibly inspirational. watching it changed me in a very real way and i probably wouldn't have gotten into a lot of the bands i listened to this year without that new perspective. seeing a visibly queer crowd of people hanging out outside, and then everyone putting a mask on inside, really started me off in an emotional way. the absolutely inscrutable genre kept me interested, and the instrument swapping throughout the show was a delight. olivia's vocals are so good that you're completely fucking caught off guard when lex steps up to the mic for the third song, but i started crying before the end of the first verse. wow, two great vocalists! then will sings the sixth song and fucking KILLS it. i was really amazed. i made my partner sit down and watch the whole thing with me the next day. i'm crediting this concert with making me pick bass and guitar back up this year. i wrote multiple embarrassingly earnest comments to lex about how much i loved it. just watch it.
i did a lot of comfort rewatches this year, but everything i've listed below was new to me. we set up a 135" projector screen in the living room so we went a little ham with things we'd been meaning to revisit, like the matrix series, but i also saw several movies for the first time that are now in my top 10. of the ones that were new to me this year, here's what i found worth talking about, presented in approximately the order i watched them:
holy shit. i don't know how to describe this movie with any accuracy but without spoiling it. it's a very low key black comedy drama that involves neurodivergent high school girls and a plot to kill an abusive stepfather. definitely a bit dark but i loved it.
it's grease but it was recorded live for tv. fun scene transitions with live stage transfers and fourth wall breaking. vanessa hudgens. carly rae jepsen. nothing else needs be said.
what if charlie's angels was about lesbians? low budget, badly acted, a ton of fun. we watched this off the back of charlie's angels and full throttle (2000-2003) and then watched charlie's angels (2019). this is the one i'd watch again. gay villain jordana brewster gave me life.
i had never sat through this whole thing, but i really liked blair witch (2016) in spite of how objectively mediocre it was, so i wanted to check it out. it's all in the acting in this one. if three people slowly questioning reality and getting angry with each other on the verge of raw stress tears is your idea of a good time, this did a great job with it.
one of my favorite films, for sure. pure art. an intimate slow burn exploration of a doomed 18th century lesbian affair. at least partially responsible for me recently taking up studying french again.
a critically acclaimed sci-fi film that nobody watched. i'm not usually one to blame audiences for not 'getting' something, but the reviews i read on this online were absolutely brutal. i thought this was a tight, gripping, witty, moving exploration of class disparity. detailed but concise worldbuilding told through beautiful cinematography. incredibly realistic, human feeling characters. definitely one of my favorite films ever.
if there are two romeo + juliet fans, my partner and i are them. baz luhrman's directorial debut and a love story about dance. really charming, funny at times, and brimming with culture without ever getting anywhere near as overwhelming as moulin rouge.
the first piece of media in this post to actually be released in 2024. an adaptation of the same-named john green book which exceeds the source material, smartly cast and smartly acted. maybe juvenile to the more discerning viewer, but i was deeply affected by its realistic and creative depiction of living with ocd.
fucking great. beautiful. would love a huge series of arthurian legend in this style. i was slightly mad at parts of how the story was told but after sitting with it for a little while i loved it all. it caught me off guard in exactly the way it wanted to, to tell the story it was telling.
didn't like this as much as i expected to. severely a victim of being dramatically overhyped by all the autistic trans people i follow online. it would've hit me a lot harder three years earlier, but that's not the movie's fault. it was pretty disturbing (intentionally) and i did not find the message of hope in the ending that other people seemed to have. i still thought it was a smart concept with great performances.
i'd never seen it. classic for a reason. it's hilarious and a lot of fun. marisa tomei is everything.
watching this on the back of a bunch of romcoms really framed it through the lens of a lesbian power dynamic relationship, and so it's one of my favorite romance movies. funny and satisfying.
better than it had any right to be. if you can even tolerate goofy age-change romcoms it's a lot of fun. sort of the diametric opposite of 13 going on 30. zac efron exceeds expectations in a role that was clearly designed for him.
one of those movies where they cast sandra bullock as a plain looking every-girl as if she isn't a movie star. vaguely holiday themed. a woman accidentally gets pulled into the family of a man in a coma because they think she's his fiancée. absolutely absurd the whole way through but really charming.
a christmas film with a heartwarming message, and a george michael jukebox musical, but not quite the romcom it appears at first glance. it was never going to win any awards but i really enjoyed it.
queen latifah carries this entire film with raw charisma. it's funny and it's cute. doesn't need to be a holiday watch at all, put it on whenever you want to see a rich guy get clowned on.
watched this for the first time on new year's eve. felt like an exceptionally good, long episode of seinfeld, which i do mean positively. i definitely understand why it's a classic, though like any romcom of the era it demands some perspective for how it's aged.
we watched a few new-to-us miniseries this year, but not a ton of tv overall, unless you count a few hundred hours of ttrpg shows.
i'm a fan of the movie, and i'm definitely a fan of this series. tells the story in a much more coherent way due to the time spent and depth given to the characters. i've never read it, so the deeper understanding of the story elevates the movie. it's pride and prejudice! no notes.
so i put these on here because i did watch them this year, and i did enjoy the... process of engaging with the series. again, i haven't read the books, but conversations i've had with book readers combined with watching these series make me feel like i have. unlike p&p, i don't feel that the better understanding of the story enriches the villeneuve dune films. you'll note the absence of dune 2 on my film list. i did watch it this year! the first half was great!
anyway, the first series using UV contacts for the fremen eye effect was cool. children of dune switching to cg for that is a major bummer. overall worth the watch but honestly almost every single problem with herbert's books is on full display here, dressed up in the best technology late-90s tv movies had to offer. hard to recommend to anyone who isn't already bought in.
another john green adaptation, this was also great. i think the storytelling here is a little more mature than in turtles, so i'd recommend this even to the aforementioned discerning viewer. it's a coming of age story in the purest sense, but it tackles some heavy themes. expert blend of comedy and drama. made me want to be a teenager at a private school in the woods.
season 2 dropped this year, so we rewatched season 1 straight into it. excellent. ignore that it's attached to league of legends. come for the lesbians and the best animation you've ever seen, stay for the moving stories.
feel-good trash tv was an absolute necessity to get through some things this year.
such a delight. it's bake off but for sewing. we watched every season we could get our hands on and i want so much more. joe lycett is a standout host for this type of show. highly recommended to anyone.
i played a lot of mafia/werewolf in my teens and early 20s, so seeing a bunch of real housewives come together and play a days-long game of it interspersed with stupid reality challenges was a pretty easy sell for me. alan cumming is such a treat. i hate the episodes with challenges in the cabin. goes hard on cliffhangers, so i might need to wait for the whole show to be out to watch the next season.
been watching for years, but there was another season this year. and it was good. it's bake off! alison is finally a great match for noel after a few less than electric presenter pairs. always lovely to see everyone helping each other out. concerning health issues in the first few episodes right off the back of a major summer covid wave were the only sour points, but it leveled out quickly.
i didn't do much gaming this year, honestly. it can be hard to find the right combination of time and energy these days. but there were a few that i can definitely reflect on.
we played firewatch over the holiday break in about two sittings, but i think it was at the very beginning of 2024? i really liked it. a lot of people seem disappointed by the ending, and i am not one of them. very immersive storytelling experience with excellent voice acting. i think the game delivers exactly the emotions it was trying to.
finally got around to trying this early in the year during AGDQ runs. it's a really good time! no surprise it's as popular as it is. i haven't revisited it much after that initial blitz but that's not a reflection on the game as much as on me. it's the first game that made me feel like my steam deck was a valuable purchase, which is a sentiment that grew throughout the year.
i didn't play as much ffxiv this year as i'd have liked to. with how little time i find myself spending playing games it's getting harder and harder to justify the subscription, so i only played for maybe three months out of the year. i'm still in the middle of shadowbringers, and my dash to blitz through msq content has removed a lot of the social element for me. unfortunately there are other games i can be spending that time on that don't cost $12 a month.
we hit a couple of classic playstation kart racers and had a blast with them. did as much of the content as we could stand to and really enjoyed it. i'm curious about the later console remasters of the crash racers.
in between bouts of kart racing i did a few hours of R4. my original demo disc that came with my playstation when i was a kid had a demo for ridge racer revolution, so the series is particularly close to my heart. i never had this one as a child and bounced off it when i tried to play it since, but this year it clicked for me. excellent music, great vibes, fun arcade gameplay. i don't think there's anything quite like it, but i'd love to be corrected.
i've wanted to show my partner the grand theft auto games for a long time, because it was an important series to me when i was young. we played through about half of gta iii, vice city, and san andreas each. the ps2 versions' controls and lack of modern qol features like checkpoints wore on me in each case so once i'd passed my progress as a teenager i mainly moved on to the next game. i know the updated trilogy exists but i played these before it was considered decent, and i've already bought each of these games at least twice, so i wasn't going to buy them again. maybe some day.
gta iv, though, we finished. and then we finished episodes from liberty city. we had a really nice time playing and discussing them! they're full of slurs in the way only a crime game from 2008 can be, but with enough salt they go down fine. compelling stories, decent but not spectacular pacing, and just enough modern convenience to keep me from rage quitting. the aim assist is terrible and the stories pretty much all have unsatisfying endings, but we otherwise had a great time in liberty city. ran on the steam deck at 60fps with the community patch.
i played this on game pass years ago, but i picked it up on steam late in the year before it was going to be delisted forever. i had played on xbox so i had to start over on the steam deck, but that was fine. it's every bit as good as horizon 5, honestly, and sometimes racing is all that my adhd can handle. the car collecting kind of falls away for me as i modify a handful of cars for different classes/race types, or sometimes one car many different ways, but there's still plenty to love.
i did a lot of drumming on clone hero, and got back into playing plastic guitar this year. i play ddr charts on stepmania pretty frequently. i downloaded guitar hero world tour definitive edition and played songs from a bunch of guitar hero games i'd never owned. i did a lot of vocals in rock band 4. i've been playing ddr and guitar hero for almost two decades now so these will probably get a shout out every year, but they'll always earn it.
critical role is our mainstay; we've watched it from the beginning and it occupies around four hours a week of passive watching or listening for us. the downfall segment of three episodes run by brennan lee mulligan was exceptionally good, and i love the addition of robbie daymond as a cast member. hard to recommend due to the scope, however.
we finished up vampire the masquerade: l.a. by night, and thought it was really good. it definitely has a few slow episodes and a couple of weak guests, but overall it shines. xander jeanneret's performance as x is incredible, and alexander ward is always a standout. i would commit any crime for nelli or for eva.
we also watched the sequel series, new york by night. i don't think the core cast is quite as strong as l.a. was, but it was still mostly a fun watch. alexander ward's character in this is maybe still the main reason to show up, and jason carl is probably the most talented all-round game master/storyteller i've watched.
i discovered a lot of new favorites this year! i would say that my tastes moving forward evolved more in 2024 than in any other single year since high school. reflecting on all of these has been fun, but i think for 2025 i might try to write down impressions at the time. it's a little tricky to remember the specifics of something i haven't watched in a year! thanks for reading 💜