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- Culture Consumption: September 2024
Culture Consumption: September 2024
My month in books, movies, television, and games.
Andrea Blythe
October 04, 2024
Books
Rose Quartz is a gorgeous poetry collection by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe, a Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit tribes. The poems in this magical collection explore the sense of sacredness in the everydayness world, from man made cities to nature, from relationships and sexual intimacy to the narrator’s own identity. Blended in with witchy imagery is folklore and pop culture, revealing a full spectrum of poetic resonance.
Rain soaked and weary, over mountains, over roads. I am looking for something other than the glow of headlights, beyond the river, beyond the mall. Something bigger than the blue night. A fight against the cold. I crest the hill into free fall. Trees shape-shift into buildings. The river has always been a highway, cans of beer like fish, silver in my bag. I can last out here. The men in cars have changed into wolves.
I grind belladonna
opium poppies
and datura
the skin of a toad and
seven rosebuds into
a red paste
taste my lover on my
tongue and open
the sky
Books Finished This Month:
The 2024 Rhysling Anthology, edited by Biran U. Garrison and David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Rose Quartz by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
Total Books for the Year: 28
Still in Progress at the End of the Month:
The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones, 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
Hi, everyone! Today at 4-6 pm PDT (7 pm EDT), I'm going to celebrating the publication of my new poetry book, Necessary Poisons, with a virtual reading. If you'd like to come along and listen to me read some poems and talk a bit about my process, then you can sign up here.
Short Stories & Poetry
A selection of works I recently read in journals and online publications, with a few lines from the text shared here.
Science Fiction: “The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strain’d” by Archita Mittra (Lightspeed):
It is the year 3048 and you still hate your job.
In the past eight hours since landing on this wasteland planet, you fended off two rogue mechas, hacked the building’s access code, and decapitated a droid—all to recover a rusty motherboard from the wreckage. The hazmat suit itches but the air is too poisonous to take it off. You glance at the circuit—an antiquated iridium-powered device that went obsolete at least two centuries ago—and feel a familiar sense of puzzlement. You have no clue what Olympus Corporation Ltd. needs that device for; but then again, you never question the missions they send you on
Poetry: "This Could Happen" by Susan Rich (Plume):
If you kept walking you would eventually step out of yourself.
You would leave the bones of your body,
the bloodlines to all that you loved.
You would be free of breasts and legs, liberated
from the eyes of body admirers—
SciFi Horror (one of the most disturbing I’ve read in a while): "Five Views of the Planet Tartarus" by Wendy Wagner (Lightspeed):
Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thick that it thunders like a hailstorm, deafening the passengers. As the orbiting debris bounces and scrapes against the hull, the prisoners squeeze their eyes closed and beg the pilot to be more careful.
Poetry: "How to Create a Monster" by Theodora Goss:
First you must learn how to sew.
He had never learned, you see —
no, not he, the mad-for-science boy,
for whom I was just another
pretty toy, his Elizabeth,
his Liz, Betty, Sissy, his pet
cousin, almost sister.
My dear Victor Frankenstein,
you need to be able to sew
Movies
Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) return in their iconic roles in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a fun return to one of my favorite films. I loved seeing three of the main actors return to their roles — Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, and most especially Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz. Although the plot had a bit more going on than it needed, the vibes were all great, with the set design, costuming, and performances capturing the feel of the original. Good times.
Erin (Sharni Vinson) is a badass in You’re Next.
The twist ending of You’re Next was spoiled for me a long time ago, but that didn’t stop me from having a good time with this horror film about a family attacked during an anniversary dinner in a remote home. Fortunately, Erin (Sharni Vinson) is secretly really good at survival and fights back hard, doing her best to help the rest of the family survive. Even knowing the ending, the movie was still fun, and I particularly enjoyed watching Erin work through the challenges in front of her.
New-to-Me Movies Watched Last Month:
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022)
You’re Next (2011)
Television
Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer) and Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode) have a deep connection in A Discovery of Witches.
I finished up A Discovery of Witches. The four season-long show is about the love that forms between Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer), a witch, and Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode), a vampire, as they come together to find an ancient book that’s said to have incredible power — and could be the answer as to why the three races of supernatural creatures are waning. In the last season, we see the couple take on the Congregation, and we also see Diana come into her true power. I really love the found family elements of this show, and how different kinds of people are able to come together to fight against injustice. The final episode wrapped up a whole lot of plot threads rather quickly, but nevertheless I really enjoyed it overall. In fact, I’m curious about reading the book series to learn more about this world, but also to see how different it is from the show.
Games
Before Your Eyes | screenshot by me
Before Your Eyes (GoodbyeWorld Games) is a beautiful game about exploring the memories of one’s life and the way we can’t really ever hold on to the past. When the player opens the game, they are greeted by a wolf carrying them on a boat through the waters of the afterlife. The wolf explains that he is taking the player to the gatekeeper, and that he needs to understand their life in order to allow them to pass through.
So the player is greeted with a string of memories from the past — of growing up with a natural skill for piano and then experiencing change and excitement and love and disappointment along the way. One of the interesting things about this game is its unique mechanic, in which the player blinks to interact with objects and to progress the story forward. In many cases, this act of blinking (an act that we cannot always control) can jump the story forward before the scene is completed — even cutting off a line of dialog mid-sentence — which reflects the way memories are often fragmented and life moves forward beyond our control.
Before Your Eyes | screenshot by me
Unfortunately for me, I downloaded the game onto my phone (from Netflix) and was unable to get the blink system to function for me. As a result, I used the touchscreen controls, which meant that I had much more control over the experience and could hold onto a scene to the very end. And things meant I didn’t have the intended experience of the game.
As much as I wish I had the opportunity to play it the intended way first, this game was still incredibly moving. And by the end, I found myself weeping in response to the way the game ultimately expresses loss and heartbreak, revealing that the value of life is in living it.
Little Nightmares II | source: press kit
Jumping into a completely different vibe, let’s talk about Little Nightmares II (Tarsier Studios). The sequel presents us with a new character, a little boy wearing a bag over his head, named Mono, who must traverse through a nightmarish world full of giant, terrifying monsters — such as a vicious hunter in the swamps or an abusive teacher in a school full of violent, puppet children — that make the character (and player) feel very small indeed. Early on in the game, the player meets meet a little girl who joins up with Mono to survive this strange and threatening world.
Little Nightmares II is a game I want to love with my whole heart. The vibes are all things I love — puzzle platforming with creative puzzles combined with a stunningly beautiful horror aesthetic and an evocative narrative exploring the nature of one’s fears. However, the movement within the game often stymied me, causing me so much frustration at certain points that I almost quit the game. Transition movements (such as from running to a jump) are not always smooth, and one of the most difficult things for me was that the depth perception was not always clear. So, I’d be running away from a monster only to slam face first into a chair, bringing the character to a complete stop with no easy way to recover and start running again — leading to inevitable death.
Whenever I face these kinds of gameplay challenges, I always wonder: how much is this my own lack of skill and how much is the game itself. I’ve heard from a few people to reassured me that this game does have some funky mechanics here and there. Despite that I love everything else about this game.
Cyberpunk 2077 | source: press kit
I jumped in to Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red), starting with the character creator, which I had a great time messing around with to get my punk lady self looking just right. So far, I have progressed past the opening sequence of the game and am deep into the main story. I’m
The world is vibrant and gritty and gorgeously rendered. The characters are complicated and interesting, and the gameplay — involving a combination of talking to characters, hacking computer and robotic systems, and stealth or running face first into combat situations — is quite fun. There are ton of interesting side quests in addition to the main story, and I’m looking forward into diving deeper into this game (as soon as I have the time, because life is super busy right now).
I also played a few tiny browser games this month (since I have more than 170 of them in my “want to play” queue). Below are the ones I particularly liked — all three made with Bitsy.
 "the rest of your life" at the start |  "the rest of your life" showing decay |
"the rest of your life" by Carly Smallbird is a little game about waiting at the train station that never seems to come. It reflects the feeling of waiting for your life to start and has a lovely mechanic in which the world starts to crack and decay around you as you continue to play.
 "fall" by tallywinkle |  "needle & thread" by tallywinkle |
"fall" by tallywinkle is a lovely little interactive poem exploring the pleasures of autumn.
Another wonderful tine game from tallywinkle is "needle & thread," in which the player moves the avatar around the screen to stitch together an image, while the narrator share’s a story of how they came to love embroidery.
That's it for me! What are you reading? Watching? Loving right now?
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