Culture Consumption: May 2026

Books

Sim Kern’s The Free People’s Village presents an alternative present, one in which Al Gore won the U.S. presidency in the 1990s and began his War on Climate Change. However, it’s only the rich who can afford to invest in carbon neutral technologies, further exacerbating social and economic inequalities as the middle class and poor are more heavily impacted by the carbon taxes imposed.

Maddie is a 24-year-old teacher who spends her free time at the Lab, a house and hang out, where she plays as a rhythm guitarist for the queer punk band, Bunny Bloodlust. Secretly in love with the band’s lead, Red, Maddie is willing to do anything to hold on to her friendships and these moments of freedom. So, when the Lab becomes threatened by the construction of a new electromagnetic hyperway, she joins the movement to save the Eighth Ward. As the protest and occupation grows to gain nationwide attention, participants face moments of joy, triumph, and despair.

What truly moved me about this book is the humanity underscoring every relationship, political argument, set back, and renewed rallying cry. There is so much frustration, compassion, organization, chaos, anger, desperation, and hope here — and it comes together in such a beautiful and powerful way.

Platform Decay by Martha Wells is the latest edition of the Murderbot diaries, which continues to be my favorite scifi comfort read. In this new novella, Murderbot is sent on a rescue mission, leaving it ensnared in a complicated escape plan and having to communicate with new humans (including a child). Murderbot continues to be its awkward, sarcastic self, the adventure is exciting and fun, and we get to see more of this universe, which I love. I read this one as soon as I had it in my hands and finished it in an afternoon.

The title, Significant Zero: Heroes, Villains, and the Fight for Art and Soul in Video Games, implies a general exploration of various game development stories across the industry. However, this memoir from Walt Williams presents a more personal journey about the author finding his way into the games industry, stumbling through his first role in games, and grinding himself down to accomplish the creative work he was so passionate about — working on notable games, such as BioShock 2 (2010), Spec Ops: The Line (2012), and Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017), among others.

Honestly, he sounded somewhat insufferable in the early years of his career at 2K, with his insecurities and self doubt driving his approach to conflict. But Williams reflects on his youth with the wisdom of having grown past it, acknowledging his mistakes and how he could have handled things better at the time. He also does a great job of evoking the human drive behind the stress and tension of accomplishing the miracle of bringing a game to market.

It’s these moments of personal reflection, the passion for creative work (even when I didn’t full agree with his perspective), and the memoir’s clean and compelling prose that makes this book so readable. It even kept me up late reading on a couple of occasions.

Books Finished This Month:

1. The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett

2. Significant Zero: Heroes, Villains, and the Fight for Art and Soul in Video Games by Walt Williams

3. The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern

4. Platform Decay by Martha Wells

Total Books for the Year: 16

Still in Progress:

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.

Movies

Obsession, as many people have already pointed out, is a phenomenal horror movie. When Bear (Michael Johnston) fails to work up the courage to ask his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) out on a date, he idly cracks open a One Wish Willow and wishes for Nikki to love him. Thinking the Willow was just a toy, that it couldn’t possibly have been what changed her, that she must actually like him after all, he allows a “relationship” to grow.

Every scene in this move is thick with tension and deep discomfort. Nikki is clearly not herself — and as times goes on her behavior grows more and more erratic and unhinged. Navarrette’s performance here is show-stopping, every expression and physical movement either slight off or entirely wrong, even when she’s shrouded in shadow, just a silhouette of herself. And though more subtle, Johnston’s performance is equally powerful, playing off Navarrette’s intensity with a sense of shock and awe.

The movie just keeps relentlessly building and building its horror before reaching a satisfyingly brutal end. When I walked out of the theater, I was practically vibrating with the pent up tension still lingering in my body. An amazing experience.

Writer and director Curry Barker has mentioned being interested in creating an anthology series that could explore other possible wishes granted by the One Wish Willow — and I’m so here for that. I think it’s a brilliant idea, because there are so many interesting ways a wish can go wrong.

In Send Help, Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is an executive at Preston Strategic Solutions, where she is known for her excellent work (but sloppy appearance and overeager personality). She’s expecting a promotion after her years of hard work, but when Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien), the son of the previous CEO, takes over the company, he denies her the opportunity and proves to be quite a dick. However, everything changes when their plane crashes and they end up stranded on a desert island. The power dynamic shifts, because only Linda has the skills to find water, hunt, and survive.

The movie has a couple of jump scare moments that slip into full, gruesome horror, this movie thrives on the tense chemistry between its two leads. The play for power between then, the attempts at manipulation, and occasional flares of near friendship are fascinating to watch. Neither one is all that great of a person, but I’m perfectly satisfied with how it all turned out (and who gets the upper hand) in the end.

The Monkey is a strange, dark fairy tale wrapped a perfectly pitched dark comedic tone. Twin brothers are gifted a windup monkey with a drum, but instead of just playing a jaunty tune, it unleashes death on its final drumbeat — and that death comes to a random person in a brutally violent way. Years later, after being estranged from his brother, Hal (Theo James) is forced to return to his hometown, only to discover the monkey is still around and being actively used.

Every character in The Monkey has a somewhat cartoony vibe, as if they’re caricatures rather than real people. As a result, the narrative doesn’t feel emotionally deep. But that's okay, because it was fun.

New-to-Me Movies Watched Last Month:

1. The Monkey (2025)

2. Send Help (2026)

3. Mortal Kombat II (2026)

4. Dumplin’ (2018)

5. Eenie Meanie (2025)

6. Bring Her Back (2025)

7. Obsession (2026)

Television

Widow’s Bay is folk horror comedy about an island town with a hidden darkness at its root. Mayer Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), who is a transplant, wants to change the community for the better by bringing tourism to the town. But he is frustrated by the stories of and beliefs in curses and hauntings, which prevent the locals from being on board. The biggest resistance comes from Wyck (Stephen Root), a staunch believer in the evil that lives on the island. He declares that bringing more people in will only lead to abundant deaths.

The first three episodes focus on this struggle, with Loftis pushing against the folk stories and Wick demanding that he stop this, because people are going to die. In each of these early episodes, Loftis attempts to push forward his tourism plan by attempting to prove the stories are all just a myth — only to experience a supernatural threat that he somehow survives and which gets written off by some reasonable explanation.

I struggled a bit with these early episodes, because they seemed a bit repetitive and I found Loftis irritating as a character. But what kept me watching is the way he slowly grows to accept the dangerous reality of Widow’s Bay. And the show really starts to take off in episode four, which focuses on Loftis’ colleague Patricia (Kate O'Flynn), who throws a party that goes horribly, horrifyingly wrong.

I love seeing how these three characters Loftis, Wyck, and Patricia begin to work together to address the evil of the town. The horrors here are many and they come from a deep an inexplicable mystery — that we’re still learning about, since there are two episode left. Each episode has gotten progressively better than the last. I’m looking forward to seeing what else we learn, and how these three will address the challenge.

Games

Dispatch (AdHoc Studio) feels like an interactive superhero sitcom. The player takes on the role of Robert Robertson, aka Mecha Man, who faces off against an enemy too clever for him, resulting in his mecha-suit being destroyed. Following his injuries, he’s approached to join the Superhero Dispatch Network as a dispatcher for a dysfunctional team comprised of former villains. The choices you make throughout the game — how you deal with conflict and who you support or romance — has an affect on how the story plays out.

In addition to the choice-based narrative, the game features some incredibly satisfying mini-games, like he dispatch system, in which you assign heroes to specific calls is a fun challenge, along with the hacking puzzles. In the end, I really loved my team of misfits, who often made me smile or laugh at their bickering and antics. It’s was a great time and one that I’d return to again sometime (maybe to explore some different narrative pathways).

I finished 1000xRESIST (Sunset Visitor) and, wow, what a story. I love the way the game integrates its layers of narrative, emphasizing each story beat through how the player interacts with scenes. Even though it’s essentially a walking simulator (in which the player simply moves through various spaces, interacting with people or objects) and animations are limited (with many NPCs standing perfectly still), it effectively presents its emotion through lighting, scene design, and voice acting. The effect is a powerful scifi narrative about the nature of humanity, faith, political power, and compassion.

The Axeman’s House, developed by my friend Cote Smith, is a 30 minute horror adventure that can be played in browser. The story follows Cass, who has escaped to a small town to avoid her abusive husband. In the midst of her escape, she begins to explore a local house, where a man is said to have killed his family. The game is a captivating little experience that delves into domestic abuse and the power of hauntings.

Paper Trail is a survival horror game about a girl with a broken arm attempting to escape a hospital infested with adorably wonky monsters that came alive from the drawings she tried to draw with her non-dominant left hand. To progress through the game, the player douses the monsters with water and has to solve puzzles to open locked doors.

Paper Trail is currently being developed by I Munch Crayons, a team of students who won a game jam over summer 2025 at a Girls Make Games. The team is now working with Girls Make Games, who is pairing them with professional mentors to help them further develop the game into a completed project. I’m looking forward to seeing how the game progresses (especially as I’ll be providing mentorship regarding the narrative).

In May, I attended the Capital Creative Showcase, an event for the local game dev community in Sacramento to share the games they published and have in development. I got to play a number of cool games, which I wrote about in more detail here. These games included:

• Fugue Shot (developed by Rare Dialect) is an arcade roguelike

• HerSalon (developed by Hexwave) is a narrative management game about owning and operating a hair salon

• Prickles (developed by Filthy Houseplant) is a narrative drawing game about an anxious artist connecting with her neighbors and building her creative skills

• Puzzle Spy International (developed by Travel-Friendly Cake) is a spy-themed game involving word puzzles

• Wherever You Get Your Podcasts (developed by Matthew Linder) is a podcasting simulator with cozy horror vibes

• Wizard Cleaning Simulator (developed by 3 Frog Studio LLC) is a cleaning simulator set in a wizard's castle

• HexDeck (developed by Lily) is a delightful tower defense game combined with a roguelike deckbuilder

• Gift of the Primordials (developed by Chaparral Collective and Unspeakable Pixels) is a puzzle game, in which the player provides ecological restoration to an alien world

• A Home is Safe (developed by Beto Damian) is a point-and-click survival horror game in which your security system turns out to be the most dangerous thing in your home

That's it for me! What are you reading? Watching? Loving right now?

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I also write poetry! Find my books here.