Phew – its been a bit of a 2020 round three this year, and I’m finding myself having to dig deep into my Goodreads profile and Steam library to make sense of what I’ve been up to!
The Shows
So as a positive I guess(?) I haven’t been watching too many shows over the year, but there have been a few standouts at least for a comment or two:

Ozark finally wound up this year, which kinda emphasizes how long a years its been – seems like ages ago. The last season was from a purely entertainment perspective a bit of a let down, but from a discussion generation POV not too bad there were a few interesting literary type techniques and throwbacks (See discussion of the car accident)

While it was a close race my most anticipated AND enjoyed series was Sandman, if you’re somehow unfamilar Sandman is Neil Gaiman’s original claim to fame a series of graphic novel about the Lord of Dreams. Adapting for the screen must have been no easy task and its a very surreal and magical story, but Season 1 which covered the first two novels did an amazing job with a great cast and I’m really looking forward to future seaons.

So Lord of the Rings was a kind of highlight of the year for my watching, but I confess there was an element of rage-watching. There has been a fair amount of internet controversy over this series and I don’t really want to add to the hate and that, but it was a very strange watch overall.
I never did a post on it but might consider it in the new year – basically the series had some of the strangest writing I’ve ever experienced in a series, which I can best sum up as a lot of very unusual choices in dramatic direction and tropes. It was like the writers wanted the show to be sleek and exciting, timeless, twisty, and Game of Thrones complex but couldn’t really pull it off exactly so the end result was an oddly slow paced story with many cliffhangers, weird horror moments and some of the dumbest dialogue juxtaposed with some epic lines. I dunno I probably better do a whole post devoted to this – even though it was rage watching I did enjoy it immensely!!
The Games
2022 has been a bit of a nostalgia trip for me – I replayed most of the Quest For Glory series including trying the VGA remake of I and finally (After literal decades) number V

I also played through the Coles’ follow up Hero-U

This has been a passion project for them for some time – its set in the the same ‘world’ as Quest for Glory but is a very different style of game, much more of a pick-a-path choice sort of storyline almost entirely set within a university setting.
Now I may be getting my years mixed up (double checked I am not) I also played through the 2015 reboot of Kings Quest, while not without flaws (just like my posts) it was an interesting and enjoyable game to sink my teeth into during this bout of nostalgia.

Other games of note this year included:

Lamentum – a sort of cross between Resident Evil and Amnesia the Dark Descent, all in pixel art, if had both a creepy/cosmic horror vibe and gloomy premise that I love in a game – only flaw (probably my own) is I’m really bad at completionism type games and I simply Googled the multiple endings rather than achieved them

Provided a fun and simply story about a mysterious mage traveling across a ravenged land. It had a very mindful puzzle mechanic where you working through stacks of cards basically by going up or down one number until all the cards were gone. Simple but a good brain tonic

Finally by far my most enjoyed new game this year was Hob’s Barrow:

A relatively straightforward point and click adventure, this game captures the tone and presentation of Lovecraftian works just perfectly – the lead developer is even a Kiwi and said Kia Ora to me over Twitter 😀
Non-Fiction
I actually read a very weird mix of non-fiction this year, not much on writing craft – but a mix of books about cults, abusive relationships, dictatorships, and conflict!
Probably the highlight was The Human Swarm, one of my most nerdy special interest is non-fiction about long term human development. Its hard to summarize this chonk of a book but it really deep dives into analyzing society from a long term / bird’s eye

Fiction
I actually thought I hadn’t read as much as I had this year (which is a weird blind spot) I continue my journey through the Discworld novels – I also devoured and redevoured the Sandman graphic novels in anticipation of the series. It’s hard to believe it was just this year that I pushed myself through Atlas Shrugged (geeze).
By far the most exciting fiction related element from 2022 was a friend of mine published their YA sci-fi novel MindWalker

It’s really quite a phenomenal achievement and an amazing book to have out there!
Myself
I confess I feel 2022 hasn’t been the most amazing year personally, not being a negative its more that a large portion of the year has been taken up by covid anxiety or having covid or taking covid related pre-cautions, I managed to get the Flu and Covid this year and would not recommend either.
Writing feels like its taken a bit of a backseat – although I have been enjoying what I have gotten around to I haven’t achieved much in the way of word-counts. I have enjoyed releasing a weekly blog, it seems a good format for keeping something regular (even though I flaked for most of the last quarter!) without trying to come up with a full blog topic every post.
If you’re reading this Merry Christmas, its nice to have you around and I hope you stick around for whatever 2023 brings. All the best and take care