What did I watch/read/play? No particular order, as usual. Not a definite list, but whatever comes tom mind because it stuck there over the year. Go time.
TV Shows & Movies
Arcane was good. I re-watched season 1 with my son and then we watched season 2 together. As I've mentioned on this blog, it's a political show but a good one - and the visual style is impeccable (and, appearently, very expensive to make).
Squid Games as a cultural phenomenon has entered the phase where it can't go anywhere without besmirching its legacy. We even watched the reality TV show that Netflix made (in the same sets as the fictional programme?) as a family. My wife remarked that a format like that only works in a place with little to no social security because it heightens the tensions and drama when everyone is all-in. All in all it got me somewhat jaded.
K-Pop Demon Hunters sucked. There, I said it. It's just another Netflix action piece that posits a moral question in the first half and then just forgets about it because fuck it, violence is fun. And only romantic interests deserve an attempt at rescue. Whoever churns out these scripts must have sociopathic tendencies.
Books
It was a good year of reading for me, especially with regards to the output that my book-club had. I can only recommend everyone form a book club with some friends, it's a great thing to do. What really stood out:
Rogue Male may be a staple read for men in the Anglosphere, it's virtually unknown here in Germany. Fucking awesome book though. The hero being a posh Mac Guyver type fighting Nazis and yet being an incredibly decent human being throughout. Loved every page of it.
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow was a re-read I dreaded a little because I had previously read it in my early twenties and was afraid I'd dislike it now. That fear was unfounded - it's still one of my favourite books of all time. Main character is amazing and I have a thing for her type of woman I can't fully explain.
The Lord of the Rings is still awesome. Re-read it with my son. You still discover new details and things about it. Tolkien was a man whose heart was in the right place, if you pay attention to the real hero of the story (Samwise, of course).
Video Games
Boy did I have something big in the end of the year. Before that it was the usual mix of my comfort foods: Streets of Rogue, FTL, Into the Breach. Got back into Crossout for a bit, killing Russian bots and being killed by Russian players with premium paid-rigs.
Then I went and installed Blue Prince. It might be the best video game I've ever played. I now understand why our fathers played Myst and this might be a hyper-evolved version of that type of game. It's got the replayability of a roguelike with the emphasis on exactly the aspect of that genre I love: Exploration. It has old-world cozy-wealth environments of the kind I love and mechanical riddles that feel haptical and all sorts of clues that make you feel so clever when you figured them out (especially when there are multiple ways of solving something). And then there is the ever-deepening lore behind it. I'm now in hour 50 of playing it and the end isn't close. If there is one.
Board Games
Played mostly family games with my family. Classics. Goose Game. Ladders. Chess (won our family-internal tournament, to my own surprise).
Crafting
Did a lot of tabletop-crafting this year. Made a rat-ogre-cyborg for One Page Rules. Made mechs and monstrosities for MAC Attack. It's fun and I'm happy to be able to make entire fighting forces from scratch without spending more than a few Euros for FIMO and glue.
Podcasts and Music
I still listen to Role Playing Public Radio and Bad Books for Bad People. I also discovered Librivox as a source of free audiobooks. When it comes to music I heard a lot of Lost Souls and saw Nanowar of Steel live.
The Rest
No Idea what else to review here. The year kind of blasted past me. Here's to 2026, I guess.
