Look, I'll be honest, I got very little for you here.
Typically around this time of year I'm either still out wandering some wild place in South Africa or I have just got back home from said wandering and either one of those means I've got like, three or four books that I've just finished and a bunch of albums and probably some kind of photographic shenanigans.
These are not happening right now.
I am currently in an apartment in Prague with some visiting family I've been touring around so it is. Different. In light of this fact we're going to do our:
Last First Monday of the Year 2024-01-01
which is going to be a wrap-up of notable entries from 2023. It's true, I got some notes!
Listening (Music):
There is a clear winner for Most Important Album for me this year and that has to be Titus Andronicus putting out The WIll to Live. I picked up Titus Andronicus a few years ago on a rec from a guy on IRC and after putting The Monitor on loop for days I was so down with it. Unfortunately while the rest of their repertoire is honestly really solid punk, The Monitor is truly next level shit. The Will to Live finally closes that gap. It's so good.
There's a lot of good pull songs from this one but I do adore Baby Crazy which is just a breathless rundown of the core philosophy of the album. Part of what links The Monitor and The Will to Live is a very heavy handed metaphorical through line, The Monitor through American Civil War references and The Will to Live through the convoluted nuclear family analogue.
Truly no one is doing it like Titus Andronicus.
Listening (Podcasts):
Noted originator of the new weeklypost tradition @girlfriendsofthegalaxy was always talking about Friends at the Table and so I was like "Hey her taste is pretty good that's probably better than the median TTRPG podcast" and hey. It was. SO much more than I was expecting.
I started with Partizan which was at the time the current season, and hoo boy. F@TT does many things that handily sidestep a lot of my issues with RPG podcasts. By running tight little game systems with strong narrative focus and leaning more into the storytelling side than actual play (while still allowing rolls and player decisions to completely upend the plot) they get into the action quickly, have strong character driven scenes, and manage to hold my attention.
I will be open and say that the politics of Austin Walker's storytelling are very mixed. A lot of people act like these games are incisive political commentary but they only really hit that occasionally, which I think is good. Leaning into the weirdness of these settings is important, and trying to make them cleave too close to modern problems at all times would weaken them, compared to what they actually do well.
What If Han Solo Was Beyoncé. Remember: You Have Beaten Your Worst Days. Destroy Something Instead Of Understanding It.
Within four episodes of the start of Partizan, one half of the game has seen the death of a minor god and started a false flag operation with consequences that would persist to the end of the season. The game systems in play often outright prevent character death in all but the direst situations, but they replace that with dramatic character change. Clem becomes Obsessed, Valence becomes Righteous, Sovereign Immunity becomes Paranoid.
They are definitely playing "for the camera", if you aren't a fan of heavy allusions to other media as part of storytelling you will not like this, but they work it out well. There's a commitment to interesting storytelling that follows well into the next point, which is:
They are very good at getting into characters motivations. Clementine Kesh is despicable, she is terrible, and she's the central focal point of a huge run of Partizan. Hella Varal of the Hieron series is also a spectacularly character-driven entity, frequently a major driving force of the plot, doing things none of the players would really want to have happen. This also applies to Lem King, to an extent.
After catching up with Partizan I went back and I've been running through the backlog. I am almost caught up to Twilight Mirage, I might step out to listen to the current season since it follows directly from Partizan. I'll see.
Reading:
Without a doubt the big one this year was Terra Ignota. Absolutely lodged in my brain forever.
Terra Ignota is like the flipside of the Culture. The Culture assumes that its members are so far gone from their humanity that their utopian issues are almost incomparable to ours. The Hives are instead a utopian society built on a hard break from modernity that has left them very, very vulnerable to our modern problems. The approach Terra Ignota takes to gender, nationality, and family is set up to argue a very interesting case, not that those things cannot be changed, but that you can't just go cold turkey on them.
(The Gender is particularly forceful. Mycroft's haphazard attempts to reverse-engineer gender for his imagined Reader are so good, they perfectly replicate the internal experience of going to a very very queer environment with a brain that was still ultimately wired by the recent past.)
The actual plot of Terra Ignota is kind of secondary to the spectacle of all these Types Of Guys interacting and exposing their internal processes in a way that is so satisfying. The Hives are unusual in part because there's so few that probably appeal to the readers. I don't think pretty much any of Terra Ignota's expected audience have much interest in the Europeans, Masons, or the Mitsubishi, and while some of them might agree with the Brillists they are given so little screen time that it's hard to say. Really it ends up being the Humanist/Utopian debate at its core, with the Cousins there to balance it. As a result it's impressive that by the end I think most people I've talked to are less sure whether they agree more with the Humanists or the Utopians.
Watching:
Arcane, a one that I don't think I talk about too much, in part because it's so tidy. A perfectly wrapped gift of tragedy! Any story where at almost any point a few characters could just talk it out and resolve all their problems but they don't is *chef's kiss* to me. If you like Othello you will love Arcane is what I'm getting at here.
Arcane is such a gorgeous show, dripping with character, every single scene is so carefully considered. There's an extremely long (in time) close shot of Jayce throwing up over a bridge that I think of all the time.
Arcane is so clear and uncompromising in its presentation of its characters. I've said before that there's actually very little character development among any of the main cast, instead the show builds on bringing very strongly defined characters into conflict and exploring what they do next. This works wonderfully.
And the music! I have probably listened to the Arcane soundtrack a little too much. Basically the only time I went on spotify this year was to look at the Radio channels for songs from the soundtrack.
Playing:
Given that I spent so long playing Breath of the WIld this year you'd think it would be that and you'd be dead wrong. Not that great! It's fine! I like an immersive sim open world game but do you know what I actually do when I feel like I want to play a game just for the pure thrill of it. I go open TItanfall 2.
Titanfall 2 is the ideal first person shooter campaign. It is short and sweet and interesting and manages to keep you sufficiently overpowered without making you feel like it's easy. I played the campaign on Hard at the start of the year and it is the shooter I remember shooters I don't actually like as being.
The reason I play first person shooters is for the fast reaction twitch play. I do not care for long kill times, I do not care for gradually plinking enemies down, I do not want to think about a target for more than 5 seconds. Titanfall is absurdly fast if you play it right, you never stop, you optimize for shooting on the run, and you bounce around the field like a pinball. Delightful.
Titan Combat in the campaign is meh, it's so often just a slog against artificially toughened bosses, or figuring out how to deal with those little AI bots. It's fine. I like being a big robot. Titans are probably better in multiplayer. At some point I will install Northstar so I can try multiplayer lobbies.
Tools and Equipment:
The 3D printer! I have been in the orbit of 3D printing types for ages but now that I have one I can see why its an essential tool for so many electronics types. The ability to just Make The Thing You Need is so powerful. Printed items have their limitations but they all pale in relation to "I hit a button and the exact thing I need appears in 2-12 hours".
So many projects stall out because you need a bracket or an adapter or a flange or a box that you know all the specifications for but that will take two weeks to arrive or has to be ordered in batches of 200 or costs 10× as much as you're willing to pay.
My printer is cheap as shit, the Anycubic Neo cuts as many costs as possible without being actively bad, and it's still a great printer. It can do anything I need well enough that I can carry on with the rest of my life. It has the precision to do slip fit parts and even basic materials have the strength for fairly crucial components.
Like, sure, you can make a lot of these things quickly by hand if you have the parts available, but like, even if somehow all your problems can be solved by cutting a PVC pipe to the right size and shape, do you keep all possible dimensions of PVC pipe in a drawer somewhere? No, you run into a problem that needs 60mm pipe and you only have 50mm pipe and now you gotta go to the hardware store and buy 2m of pipe for a project that needs 0.2m of pipe. It is such a problem-solver to be able to fabricate arbitrary complex shapes from plastic stock.
Making:
The big one. The Penrose Quilt.
This took months for me and my mother to put together, and it came out exactly like we hoped. It's so good, it looks incredible, we put it together by hand with needles and thread and time, I sleep under it every night, it is the ideal item. Few things to build your handsewing confidence like backstitching probably over a hundred meters of seams.
This was a really ambitious project and yet we pulled it off. Absolutely ridiculous.
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Forest Run - Chapter 6
Thank you for reading and / or following along with the story so far! Shoutouts to @sarahjswift and @cheezbot. If you would like a shoutout, follow and comment! Now on to the story. (Sorry about the short chapter)
Nevaeh made her way through the army of bushes, just to find more trees. Finally she gave up and flew up high to see where the clearing was, the sun was setting, already. She flew around until she saw the fire going and the gigantic green tent was set up, Nevaeh didn’t know she wandered a mile away, but she did. She flew straight for the clearing, landing right in front of the fire—almost crashing in it.
Jay was crouching in front of the fire trying to get his hands warm again, “Hey Nevaeh—”
“Where were you all this time, huh?! Y’know how hard it was for me not to go searching for you, not to worry about you, not to… To trust that you will come back alive and untouched and all in one piece? Do you know how hard?!” Adele interrupted Jay, pushing him aside so Nevaeh could focus on her and only her.
She got up all in her face, but Nevaeh merely shrugged, “I got lost, it got so bad that I had to use my wings to get back here. And the craziest thing—you wouldn’t believe it—I walked a little over a mile in the wrong direction away from this clearing. You wouldn’t believe how annoyed I was. Oh my Gods! I thought I was going to die because of it!” Nevaeh exclaimed.
“Well…” Jay hesitated, “At least we are all united again, right?”
“Shut up Jay—” Adele started.
“Yes,” Nevaeh said, stopping her sister from saying anything else, “and from now on, we will only be together, alright?”
“Oh my Gods, this is so cringy—” Adele said, throwing all her sass into that.
“Right!” Jay said right over Adele. She turned around and kicked him, right in the stomach.
“Ooh, looks like my minion knows how to pick a fight and finish it,” Nevaeh commented. “I like it.”
“Well I don’t.” Jay said sourly.
“Too bad, so sad.” Adele teased.
“Alright, no messing around now, got it? We gotta get going, that is in the morning, for now, we sleep.” She commanded, “I’m waking everybody up at five thirty, sharp!” Nevaeh snapped. They all went into the gigantic green tent, they set up their sleeping bags and got in them. After a few minutes, Nevaeh could hear Adele breathing deeply, she turned over to Jay and saw that he was still awake.
She motioned for Jay to follow her outside where they wouldn’t—shouldn’t be able to—wake up Adele.
“What? What could you possibly need now?” Jay asked weary, rubbing his eyes as he stepped out of the tent.
“I need you to tell me what happened.” Nevaeh pressed, “Tell me what happened when you rushed into my room and told us that we needed to leave. Tell me, what happened before you came in.” She said, more of a command than question.
“Okay well…” Jay started, “I was hanging out with Jett when there was a person at the door. We let the person in and he introduced himself as someone named, Marlon Shanks. Do you—by any chance—know this person?”
“Marlon Shanks…” Nevaeh murmured, mostly talking to herself, “Marlon, Marlon, Marlon…” She trailed off.
“Well—”
“Yes!” Nevaeh shouted, interrupting Jay, “Yes I know someone named Marlon Shanks. He’s bad news, hopefully he’ll come nowhere near us again. Continue please.”
“Well, after he introduced himself, he took out two daggers and said, ‘Where’s the girl, Nevaeh I think her name was?’ and well, Jett kept saying that he did not know a girl named Nevaeh and he kept refusing to let him rummage through the Research Center. That’s when Marlon threw his daggers. They hit the wall on either side of Jett’s head and then he said, ‘That was just a warning shot, I could have gotten one in your neck and the other right on your forehead. So, what do you say, will you hand over the girl, or are you asking for death?’ Of course my dad wouldn’t let up so he told me to get you and fly far away from Doylestown. What I’m really worried about is if Dad is still alive, if he somehow managed to get rid of Marlon…” Jay trailed off, turning his head away from Nevaeh, as if she was a bright light he couldn’t look at without burning his eyes off.
“Well, uh, I hate to break it to you, it’s kind of hard to get rid of that guy,” Nevaeh said. “But there is a slight chance in one million that Jett actually killed him. The only way I know him is when he and my mom went to bed together. And, before you ask, no, he is not the one who sired me. Nah, that was my mother’s idiotic boyfriend who did that.”
“Let’s talk about something else, please.” Jay said hastily, “Or let’s just go to sleep entirely, after all, we’re going to have to wake up early.”
“Yes, we need to fly to Pittsburgh so we can get on a plane there. You will need all your energy, so sleep, alright.”
“Is there a way to force me to sleep, because that would be very useful right now.”
“Umm, yeah,” Nevaeh said, “I think so, let me try. Go to sleep.” She commanded. Surprisingly, he fainted and fell down on the ground and began to snore. Nevaeh pulled him inside the tent and laid him down on his bed. She tried the command to herself to see it would work, and it did. Nevaeh tried to see if she could wake herself up, and, once again, it worked, so she forced herself to sleep.
⸻
Adele was deep in a dream she fell into once she laid down, such an amazing dream, she didn’t know why it didn’t take very long to go into this glory. Adele was first put into this room that is so tall and wide that the shadows reached her before she could see the top. All she could see for a few seconds was the dull black color, then white streaks lit the blackness of the room. It stayed like that, lighting strikes across the dullness of the room. The white streaks faded away in just a span of a few seconds. Adele didn’t know what was happening, but to her it was merely entertaining. Once all the streaks faded, the mist rolled in, it took a few minutes to fully cover all territory in the gigantic featureless room. It was so uninteresting just standing there and watching it all come in from gods know where.
Adele sat down until it was all done. The mist formed pictures that kept moving—wait, no, it’s stop motion! They were memories of Nevaeh and Adele. Adele almost cried at seeing some of them. On the ceiling there was a percentage bar and it was almost at seventy-five percent when she was shaken awake.
“Hmm,” Adele mumbled, “what is it?” She rubbed her eyes.
“Oh, come on, you know that I don’t like waking up early either, alright?” A weary voice came from above, “Just… Hang on until we get on the airplane. You can sleep there.”
“Alright, alright.” She murmured, finally opening her eyes, having to take a while for them to adjust to the bright light of the morning. “What is today?”
“November eleventh, why?” Answered Nevaeh.
“Oh, I just wanna know, this is good knowledge to have in your head, y’know.” Adele said, refusing to say anything more, “Wednesday, right?”
Nevaeh merely nodded her head, “Come on, get up and start packing up, won’t you. Or will you be lazy for the rest of your life?”
Adele immediately got up and slapped her sister’s face. “You’re the one who is lazy.” She crossed her arms and turned her head to the left.
“Oh yeah?” Nevaeh crossed her arms, “Then how come I’m already done packing. Let me tell you something, I let you sleep in for ten more minutes, and at this moment,” She looked at her watch, “it’s five thirteen. So, are you going to get up, or will we leave you behind?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” She said in an exasperated voice.
Jay was already up and running like he wakes up this early every morning. “Come on, Adele. We already got plane tickets, and we need to get there early so that we might be able to get at least some breakfast.”
Adele rolled up her sleeping bag and put it in it’s bag. She grabbed her phone, watch, and backpack—which she packed last night. “All ready!” She announced.
Jay whipped his head around, “What!” He exclaimed, “Already? Damn girl, the gods must have helped you.”
“From your point of view, I must have done it already to have all my things packed. But really, I packed it all up last night. I know, I’m so smart.” Adele flicked her head over to them and put out her hand as if someone was about to kiss the top of it, “No need to flatter me.” She added, rapidly blinking her eyes.
“Oh please, Adele.” Nevaeh said, “I’ve been done, so it’s just you, Jay, who needs to finish packing up.” She changed her angle of looking from Adele to Jay.
“I know, I know.” Jay said, “I’ll get to it, but you guys do know that y’all have godlike powers, so this isn’t too fair.”
“So,” Adele shrugged her shoulders, “the problem is… nothing, alright, so shut up and keep doing your thing over there.”
“Oh please, you and Nevaeh can go bother some other thing, after all, we are in a forest at the moment,” Jay shooed with his hand, “go, shoo, nobody wants you here.”
“We want us here.” Nevaeh and Adele said in unison. They looked at each other and Adele could see the unspoken words in her eyes; What shall we do?
Adele replied simply, Easy, we go up in the skies, and watch him, see what he does because I am very curious on what shall be happening down here.
Okay, we go up, and merely watch him, see what he does.
Adele looked back toward Jay and said, “We shall go, you better finish,” she looked toward the other side of the clearing, “No fooling around, we will know if you go somewhere else.”
“What’s up with all the suspicion?” Jay asked, “You were about to leave me on that platform up in the sky. What’s going on now?”
Nevaeh tucked her lips into her teeth, Adele could see that she pressed them into her teeth, “Things are getting… A lot more… What's the word?” Nevaeh tried to explain, “A lot more… Cumbersome at the moment, though we can’t explain through words to you.”
“Plus,” Adele said, “you were in the sky, and you were so worn out from the flight up there. Just… Don’t talk to anybody, ‘kay?”
“Okay, now can y'all leave? You guys are driving me insane!”
Adele looked back toward Nevaeh again. Is he good? Are we good to leave for some fresh air yet, or do you sense something?
We’re ready for takeoff. Three. Two. One. As they shot off into the clouds, Adele could have sworn she heard Jay sigh in relief.
⸻
Jay started to finish packing up, or pretend to while Nevaeh and Adele were still in scent range. Though they were way past his own scent range, Jay knew that theirs were much bigger than his, and yet Nevaeh rules reign with her over powered scent range. Apparently, her’s is up to fifteen thousand yards long, or more. Thankfully she and Adele fly fast so he doesn’t have to be faking for too long.
Half an hour later, Jay decided that it was about time. He took out his map that he’s been hiding for ages, not wanting to let Nevaeh or Adele see the magical part of it.
“Where’s Father,” Jay whispered to the blank back side of the map. He waited a few minutes until the image he was waiting for emerged from the swirling sands that felt so leathery in Jay’s hands.
Jay recognized the picture of the forest and the valley next to it. Somehow his father had reached where he was, he was alive, he was coming for Jay! He was coming!
Jay quickly finished packing and decided to go toward him, meet him halfway there. He put on back and went out, leaving a note for the sisters as he left.
2087 words <3
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