January 2026 in review
Look, 2025 was bad. I know you know that. But it was also bad for me in special, personal ways. I was sick a lot. One of my new Rx meds makes me more vulnerable to respiratory infections, and I'm definitely proof that's true.
So I'm just giving up on 2025 in review. I dunno. I read some stuff, but not much. I blogged most of the movies I watched for half the year. And from that point I kind of just started watching Youtube again.
Reading
At the time of writing I have finished four books this month. I will finish one more before January ends so I'll include it here too.
Stations of the Sun, Ronald Hutton (1996)
A historian going through the year, beginning at Christmas and coming back around, analyzing the history of folk seasonal customs. The implicit -- and often explicit -- idea is to interrogate whether these are "pagan holdovers" or not. Nearly always the evidence suggests they are not. Some exceptions appear, such as celebrations devoted to Bridget in Ireland and nearby portions of England, but even then, we can't be sure the things they did were continuous, only that the personage seems to be. It's a great book if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Vagabond, Tim Curry (2025)
Tim Curry wrote a memoir and it's kind of exactly what you'd expect. It's pretty well written, though the way he veers between paying attention to the writing and then "not" (more in a second) can be weird.
The "more in a second" is that he also recorded the audiobook, and when I learned that the writing made sense. It's got the rhythm of spoken word, and often, for me at least, that comes across as odd on the page. And really it should! Because writing for performance should be different than writing for... not-performance. And it's never bad, to be clear, it just took me a bit to get used to.
He somewhat famously says early on he's not going to get into his romantic entanglements, because it's none of our business, and he's right, he should say it. He mostly structures it around works he did, and really striking admissions like "I went to rehab" will come at the end of a bit of story about friends he spent time with before the book shifts to another play or movie. Again, if he doesn't want to say it, it's none of our business. I kind of like that about it, that it tells us this stuff, he's baring his soul a little, but he's mostly telling fun or at least entertaining stories about his time as an actor.
Bracebridge Hall, Washington Irving, (1822)
I've blogged about Irving a few times already. I really think he was getting in just before the novel form calcified into what I'd describe as "a short story but long." Novels ought to be weird, structurally speaking. That's what I think. And this book is, certainly.
So Irving invented a character named Geoffrey Crayon and published The Sketch Book in 1819-20. It's a series of textual "sketches" about his travels. They're in character, but based on Irving's real experiences. One of the stories, which I blogged about last Christmastide, was about Crayon's time at Bracebridge Hall, with a squire who wanted to "keep up the old ways" even though sometimes he didn't quite know what they were. Having read this right around the time I began finishing Hutton's book above was fun for that reason.
The novel Bracebridge Hall sees Crayon return because the squire's son and ward are getting married. He spends several months at the hall, and produces sketches about all the figures in and around it, including the strange old fashioned bachelor Master Simon; the leonine, powerful farmer Ready Money Jack; and the drifting Romany people (yes of course he uses the other word) pillaging people's chicken coops.
This is an extremely fun book. It's basically a slice of life novel long before we had a word for that, but it's intertwined with several gothic-style insertions.
Since Crayon is telling us about his time at the hall, and the squire loves storytelling, naturally several very interesting stories are told or read aloud, and Crayon records them in this book. So you'll be reading about dinner at the hall and then there's a 90 page gothic novella about an alchemist and the Spanish inquisition.
Tarot of the Magicians, Oswald Wirth (1927)
Wirth was an artist and freemason devoted to a kind of occultism popular at the time, downstream from Rosicrucianism. He was a "student" (reader) of Eliphas Levi's, and this book is basically him taking all of that and synthesizing ideas about the tarot. Quite a bit of it is interesting, but for me at least, the constant references to "alchemy" are sort of insufferable. I tend to believe if you're not leaning over a crucible or an oven you're not doing alchemy, you're doing sparkling therapy.
The book is probably most notable for the tarot spread he records in print for the first time -- he says he got it from a friend, but it doesn't appear anywhere else. It's usually called the "French Cross" nowadays, and you can see the bones of it, though repurposed, in the much more common "Celtic Cross." You can read about that without buying the book here.
Stop! Hibari-kun, Hisachi Eguchi (1981-2)
You've probably already heard about this. Peow2 got the rights and released a very nice edition of the first volume last year. The basic idea is that it's a gag romance manga, published in Shonen Jump, where the main romantic lead is actually a boy dressed as a girl.
In recent years Eguchi has admitted in interviews that he wishes he had been born as a woman, and that when he draws pretty girls he's not drawing who he wishes he could date, but who he wishes he could be. So the comic is being read in the context of transgender art. And certainly, while a lot is played for laughs (including some racist jokes in there), Hibari is very clear that this isn't sexual (everyone calls them a pervert repeatedly) but that they just want to be treated like a girl. So, I mean, yeah. That tracks.
The comic itself is... fine. It's a gag manga, right? It is what it is. It's poking fun at the genre, but since I just take the heroine seriously as a transgender girl the jokes actually aren't as funny. I don't mean they're offensive, I just mean that they were structurally meant to rely on me reading the character differently than I do.
The drawing is great, particularly of Hibari. It's very clear Eguchi was in his head about things when he was drawing the character. Everyone else looks fun in a typical 80s gag manga way, but Hibari jumps off the page in nearly every panel. So yeah, we've all been there, Eguchi-sensei.
Watching
I think I genuinely haven't watched any movies except some MST3K. I'm going back on youtube and watching some of the really old Joel stuff that's available. I'm currently sort of stuck in The Corpse Vanishes because the jokes aren't quite as funny as they eventually got to and the movie is so dull it's just difficult to watch. Bela Lugosi looks bored in it frankly.
See You Tomorrow at the Food Court, Atelia Pontdarc (2024)
I watched the first episode and... sure? I liked it, don't get me wrong, but I also now feel no urge to watch any more of it. I feel like I've seen everything it has to offer in one episode. Does anything else happen? It reads like a gag manga turned into an anime in a too-literal sense, so every episode is going to be four short pieces where they don't go anywhere or do anything. It feels like it's going to work a lot better as a comic.
Playing (a selection)
Bloodstained, Ritual of the Night
I spent a couple of weeks just slamming this game before I sort of hit that thing I do in every SotN-like where I just don't want to keep going. Like the art, the story is fine, and for the most part it feels good to play, apart from a weird delay in inputs sometimes.
Megabonk
This could be great but Christ, it's not.
Another Crab's Treasure
I was really enjoying this until I looked it up and discovered you just don't get other weapons. A lot of the fun I have in Souls-likes is trying new weapons, so while the game isn't bad or anything I just lost interest in booting it up.
It also managed to be more obtuse about where to go than the actual Dark Souls games, mainly because one npc tells you where to go and then if you talk to her again she has different dialogue on repeat and no one will ever tell you where you were meant to go. And it was by name, "this made up province or something," not, like, "go northwest."
Windblown
The Dead Cells people made 3D Dead Cells, but furries. You know if that makes you want to play it or not, honestly. It's fine. Some of the npcs are fun. But it's very focused on just getting in there and playing, but also it constantly gets in the way of you doing that. The base isn't a couple of rooms you walk through quickly, stopping if you need to buy an upgrade this time. They're a bunch of huge interconnected islands you have to wander around in until you find the one npc you have to talk to so you can do another run now.
It has some of the same problems of Dead Cells, like how unlocking some weapons is just bad because they're bad and now you're stuck with them for half a level and that was too long and you're fucked by the boss now because you're out of heals.
It also structures the space of the levels like the base above -- there's a lot of just spamming the dash button to go through picturesque but meaningless corridors -- the levels are largely linear -- putting lots of distance between rooms with enemies.
Elden Ring
Yeah I started it again. I said fuck it and began the end game with my Dex/Arcane character, and revisited a character I aspire to make Str/Faith, dunking Godrick into the trash can in two attempts.
DiceVaders playtest
This is cool. It's a dice roguelike, but instead of fucking with the dice you're trying to get little guys to pop off, sort of like Landlord-style games, and the dice just randomly decide which columns go off -- and you can spend resources to move the dice around.
Lort
I played like two runs and the steam reviews are mostly right -- it's very cool and fun but also the scaling is kind of fucked. Though I noticed right after I bought it they pushed an update to help a little, even though they also opened it with the typical rogue-like developer nonsense about how it's supposed to be hard and you're supposed to Get Good. Yes, ok, but I watched professional gamers play this and it should not take three people 30 minutes to kill a boss just because he has more HP than god and every single attack he throws out one-shots the tank.
Listening
Faye Webster
I got very excited about Faye Webster and checked her out after watching this video. The music is very cool. Her music in general is very cool.
I am sometimes annoyed by her lyrics. They're good, in comparison to a lot of lyrics nowadays. They're quite interesting, actually. I've just hit a point in my life where some pop lyric-writing just gives me what I have only been able to describe as "straight people vibes." There's a way of writing about romance, and a focus on romance and nothing else, that grates on me. It's why I had to totally stop listening to Lauffey. Webster isn't nearly that bad, but, you know, she's in that zone.
The song that video pulls the music from is about COVID lockdowns so that's nice to see, but it's also about missing her romantic partner so I mean ok sure.
Mei Ehara
I checked out Ehara because of this video and I am much more glad about that. LastFM tells me I was going ham on two of her albums, Ampersand and All About McGuffin, for most of the month. I really like the music. Despite having studied Japanese on and off for a long time, I am definitely not following the lyrics, so for all I know she's singing about the same stuff Webster is, I dunno. They've worked together. But I'm blissfully ignorant at this point, I suppose.
Curious Quail
I also picked up Twelve Months last Bandcamp Friday and while I don't think I've gotten as obsessed as I did with Ehara, I've put it on a bunch in particular moods. The music drifts through a few style choices while still feeling coherent, and the lyrics on some stuff, like "You Need Better Friends," whips fucking ass.