Culture Consumption: November 2024

My month included a lot of travel to visit family, which means I’m generally participating in activities and hanging out over passively watching TV shows or playing games (except for those on my phone). On the flip side, I tend to read more during these trips, because I enjoy spending the evening relaxing after all the socializing.

Books

I finally got around to reading Brandon O'Brien’s phenomenal collection of poetry, Can You Sign My Tentacle? in which the incomprehensible gods from the Cthulhu mythos come down to Earth to get autographs from famous rappers. Other poems explore the intersection of fiction horrors with the horrors of every day life (racism, sexism, and violence). Each of these poems drips with rhythm, visual flair, and depth. A couple of short samples are below.

Sarah Pinsker’s Haunt Sweet Home was not quite what I expected in the best of ways. Without any clear goals for her future, twenty-something Mara agrees to take a job as a PA on a reality TV show about couples renovating haunted houses. As part of the night crew, she works to manufacture scares using fog machines, recorded screams, and other techniques. However, as her work continues, she is faced with her own strange occurrences that force her to confront herself and find what she wants out of life. Although it gave immense amounts of anxiety while reading it, I nevertheless loved this story, which ultimately favors compassion.

I purchased The Future Second by Second by Meridel Newton based on the description of the novella being a cozy apocalypse story — and I think that’s a perfectly apt description. After the unraveling of American civilization, the community of Osto has become a sanctuary, in which the community works together to ensure the survival of every person. When a large group of raiders swarm into town to claim its resources for their own, the community leader Vasha proposes an unusual solution that has the potential to save lives.

After watching season one of Shadow & Bone (based on Leigh Bardugo’s books), I immediately fell in love with the group of chaotic misfits attempting to conduct a heist and kidnapping in the midst of bigger events unfurling. So, I knew I wanted to read Six of Crows, the book in which they appear. And I can safely say that I prefer the portrayals of these characters in the book so much better than the show. This is largely because the characters get to take center stage in the book, allowing for more exploration of their backstories, relationships, and motivations.

Kaz is the ruthless leader of the Crows, an infamous gang in Ketterdamn, a city known for its many vices. When presented with an impossible heist that could make him incredibly wealthy, he gathers together a team of misfits — Inej, a silent spy and assassin known as “the Wraith”; Jesper, a witty gambler known for his skill with guns; Nina, a heartrender who can use her powers to attack her enemies; Mattias, a former drüskelle from Fjerda; and Wylan, a runaway merchant’s son who knows explosives. Like a proper heist story, we are able to watch planning and execution of the heist, which is fraught with problems from the start. It’s wonderful to see these characters face problems and use their expertise to work through them.

Since the book is part of duology, it ends on a cliffhanger — and I’m definitely going to have to read the next book to see what happens to everyone.

Books Finished This Month:

1. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

2. Can You Sign My Tentacle? by Brandon O'Brien

3. The Future Second by Second by Meridel Newton

4. Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

Total Books for the Year: 34

Still in Progress at the End of the Month:

Even Greater Mistakes: Stories by Charlie Jane Anders, Procedural Storytelling in Game Design edited by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams, The Source of Self Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches and Meditations by Toni Morrison, Wandering Games by Melissa Kagen Fullerton, and The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel.

Short Stories & Poetry

A selection of works I recently read in journals and online publications, with a few lines from the text shared here.

Poem: "What Resembles the Grave but Isn’t" by Anne Boyer (A Poem a Day) — 

Poem: "How We Are Surviving This—Again" by Ali Trotta —

"The Sort" by Thomas Ha (Clarksworld) — 

I read Issue 116 of Rogue Agent, and the poetry within was phenomenal (as it usually is). Here are some of the poems I particularly loved.

• "Cuero y Plata" by Amanda Rosas — "Flesh tanned in the organic prowess of desert and sun. / Skin that knows the nature of transformation, that / possesses the energy of the endured."

• "Body Light" by Sibani Sen — "Why do I long to sing the body too? Yet can only trace the visible bounds // perimeters mark light and dark where blood flows and no perimeter should be / here are the borderlands of the given and the made"

• Three Visual Poems by J.I. Kleinberg

• "Ergo Sum" by Lea Marshall — "I used to set pennies on the train tracks past my grandmother’s / house even after someone told me this could derail the train."

Movies

Twisters is the follow up to the 1996 blockbuster Twister, a long-time family favorite. This new iteration follows a similar premise of two competing groups of researchers drive into the path of a tornado to gather data — or in this case, to develop a technology to tame the tornado, stopping its path of destruction and saving lives. Like the first movie, Twisters presents a quirky group of misfit researchers, interesting yet questionable science, a charming romance, and lots and lots of tornados — all swirling up into a fun time. I enjoyed it so much that I watched it twice this month. Good times.

New-to-Me Movies Watched Last Month:

1. Twisters (2024)

2. Winter in Vail (2020)

Games

I recently replayed Norco (Geography of Robots), which I included in last year’s list of games I loved, for a video game club discussion — and I found myself enjoying it even more the second time around. The writing is rich and nuanced, with storytelling the utilizes its point-and-click format to explore a sense of isolation in a world impacted by climate change and corporate exploitation. This is a world with advanced technologies, like cybernetic robots and automated supermarkets, but these technologies are not readily available to the working class who are forced to live in communities that face regular flooding and continual entropy — a feeling that is perfectly reflected in the pixel art with its classical compositional style.

The story begins when Kay, who has long been estranged from her family, returns home following her mother’s death from cancer. She discovers that her brother has been missing for a couple of weeks and begins to search for him — only to uncover information about strange lights on Lake Pontchartrain, a cult full of Garretts, a viral network intelligence capable of infecting both wires and biological creatures of the bayou, corporate corruption, and genetic predetermination.

One of my favorite gameplay elements is the mind map, which serves as a kind of codex on Kay’s journey. The player can access this map and learn about the various people, places, and objects that are important to the overall mystery. As the player unravels more about her family and the goings on, the mind map updates with new information, forming new connections between the various elements.

The strongest storytelling and gameplay elements occur in the first two thirds of the game, as Kay and then her mother delve deeper into the mysteries of Norco. However, the final ending doesn’t quite come together for me. Nevertheless, this is a phenomenal game — one that I highly recommend playing.

The Past Within (Rusty Lake) is a cooperative puzzle adventure game for two players — which I had a blast playing with my twelve-year-old niece. The story involves a father providing his daughter with a way to bring him back from the dead decades later, and the challenge takes place across time. One player works in the past, while the other works in the present to solve the puzzles using clues from both timelines. These puzzles slowly unravel the mystery of the device for resurrection.

Each player is intended to only see what is on their own screens (and with most players likely playing virtually that’s easy enough). However, my niece and I were in the same room, so we freely cheated whenever we liked by showing each other our screens when our words failed. Regardless, we spent a delightful couple of hours working through the puzzles together — and we giggled and teased each other along the way. So, I would say that who you play with is definitely an element in how much a player is going to enjoy this game.

LocalThunk’s Balatro is a rogue-lite, poker-based game that completely ate my life as soon as I downloaded it onto my phone. In the game, the player attempts to progress through a series of binds by playing poker hands to accumulate chips. As the player progresses, they are able to purchase Jokers, Tarot cards, Planet cards, and Spectral cards, all of which provide various buffs to help them progress through the increasingly difficult binds.

I don’t have much to say about this one beyond the fact that I find the gameplay wildly fun and addictive — and I totally understand why it has been nominated for Game of the Year.

I’ve continued my playthrough of Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games), with most of my playtime taking place on flights. I’ve continued to grow the structures of my boat, adding additional farming and crafting elements that need to be managed. I still feel like I’m in the early stages of the game, and I’m feeling in a bit of stasis (despite the recent progression). I’m interested to see how the story and gameplay moves along as I continue playing.

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