So long, 2024: a media retrospective.

Here we are, at the start of the new year. 2024 was a hell of year for me: It began with an Autism diagnosis and ended with… well, I’ll get to that later. I still have a long, long way to go, but I’m pleased with how far I’ve come in a relatively short time. If I think about where I was last January and compare that to now, well… I’m in the exact same place, actually—still in Japan. But mentally? Night and day.

That progress has been a direct result of the writing I’ve done on catloaf & coffee. It’s been really, really great, but the thing is… Well, looking at what I’ve written… Erm…

What a fuckin’ downer, am I right?

I never intend for my writing to lead down such dark paths! Indeed, the name of this blog, its logo, and its colors were all chosen with the intent for them to complement my writing, not stand in irony to it.

Well, writing is the way I am able to figure out what I am actually feeling, and unfortunately what I’ve found over the past year is that I hold a lot more pain, disappointment, and anger than I realized. This certainly isn’t what I was hoping to find, but it is the reality regardless.

Hey, there’s going to be plenty of time to continue digging up my emotions. And, oh boy!, will there be emotions—I’m really not looking forward to this year for totally no reason in particular, ha ha! For now, let’s take a breather. Today, allow me to indulge in my special interests.

Each year, I look back on the year through the media I consume. Admittedly, as a rather reclusive individual, media is sometimes the primary way in which I’m able to experience the world—this has perhaps never been more true than in 2024—so I find it interesting to look at the parallels between my personal life and the music I chose to listen to, games I chose to play, and the films I chose to watch. Below are my top three picks from each medium, along with some prose explaining their significance.

Music

Looking at my listening habits in 2024 reveals some rather comical metrics: I listened to my top artist, Taylor Swift, nearly four times as much as my second most listened to artist, Noah Kahan. Normally, I show much wider interests, but I’ve been on a bit of a hyper-fixation this year, let’s say.

In a way, it makes sense. 2024 is the year I processed (or started processing) an Autism diagnosis, which is… a lot. Music has always been a major part in how I regulate, and this year I found the comfort of familiar sounds to be extremely grounding.

So, while there is one artist that clearly stands above all others this year, let me first give a couple of honorable mentions.

Willow Avalon

Willow Avalon is one of the many artists I’ve found through TikTok. Part Dolly Parton, part Lana Del Rey; Avalon’s sound is a unique blend that I haven’t heard anywhere else. Making her debut proper in 2023, I was surprised I enjoyed her music at all. Despite hailing from Texas, I’ve never cared for country music, but there’s something about Avalon’s southern twang and heavenly warble that draws me in. Maybe it reminds me a little of home, or maybe it simply tickles my brain in just the right way—either way, Avalon’s music is one of the few examples of country music that I actually enjoy.

I’ll admit, it was her bright smile, adorable dimples, and flow-y dresses that initially drew me in. Avalon has made countless TikToks promoting her debut, as all up-and-coming artists do these days. Her page is filled with clips of her dancing and bopping around concert stages, strumming away on her guitar, while sweetly humming into a microphone.

With its country-pop leanings, “Gettin’ Rich, Goin’ Broke” was Avalon’s first song to catch my interest. But it was Avalon’s “Stranger” that cemented her music a place in my library, in which she offers the haunting lines:

What’s wrong with me?
I don’t wanna be
A stranger to the people I love
What’s wrong with me?
I don’t wanna believe
Everyone I love is gonna run

Her debut EP, Country Never Leaves, dropped late October and its titular track dug up a homesickness in me that I didn’t realize existed. Sure, the “girl can leave the country, but the country never leaves the girl” is a tired trope by now, but Avalon’s rendition breathes it new life with her retrospective lyrics and beautiful vocals.

Sometimes you love what you leave
Two suitcases full of memories

Noah Kahan

Noah Kahan is hardly an obscure pick, but sometimes things are popular for good reason. Kahan’s lyrics brim with emotion and his vocals provide the perfect delivery vessel. Deep yet smooth, gruff yet gentle; Kahan has serenaded me to sleep many nights over the past year.

I could go on and on about all the songs of Kahan’s that have impacted me, but I’ll settle for one. “You’re Gonna Go Far” (Stick Season) was a centerpiece of my music listening in 2024. Last year was scary for many reasons, and there were many moments where I questioned if I was making the right decisions. Sometimes I felt like I was making all the wrong choices; like I’d irrevocably fucked up everything beyond any hope of ever making things right again. In those times, I let Kahan’s voice reassure me.

The birds’ll still sing, your folks’ll still fight
The boards’ll still creak, the leaves will still die
We ain’t angry at you, love
We’ll be waiting for you, love

Taylor Swift

What can I possibly say about Taylor Swift that hasn’t already been said? Essays, entire dissertations, even university courses have been created in Swift’s tenure as the Queen of the Music Industry. There’s really no one more famous than her, at least in the West. If you haven’t heard of Taylor Swift—are you okay? Have you hit your head recently? Maybe you should get yourself checked out.

I first listened to Swift when I was in middle school, during the Speak Now era. I sang along with Swift’s love songs in my bedroom as I navigated having my first girlfriend, convinced I understood the complexities of love.

In high school, 1989 released and “Shake It Off” was the anthem of the day. I remember watching the music video in class one day: Swift crawled on all fours under a tunnel of disembodied twerking legs. At the time, Swift’s new pop sounds were decidedly uncool—and certainly unbecoming of a man—so it was around that time when I ceased listening to her music entirely.

It wasn’t until The Tortured Poet’s Department’s release in April that I started listening to Swift again. The internet had been all abuzz about its release, so I gave it a listen and was reminded of why I enjoyed Swift’s music in the first place. She has this incredible blend of sharp writing, a willingness to be vulnerable, a great sense of humor, beautiful vocals, talent that spans genres, and catchy beats that keep me and millions of other Swifties coming back for more.

Since listening to TTPD, I’ve worked my way through all of Swift’s music that I’ve missed over the years. It’s impressive how much music she’s made in just the past five years, but it’s even more impressive how well she has maintained a high bar of quality. Despite putting out at least one album every year since 2019, Swift has yet to put out a single bad song. I suppose this is the reason she’s at the top.

It’s no wonder Swift accounted for the vast majority of the music I listened to in 2024. She’s got it all: relatability, variety, spectacle—just damn good music. The total package.

When the goings were rough, Swift’s music was there. On folklore’s—my favorite album of hers—“this is me trying,” Swift muses:

I’ve been having a hard time adjusting
I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting
…
I just wanted you to know that this is me trying

When I felt lost, Swift’s music was there. On Midnights, she offers candid advice in “Dear Reader:”

Dear reader, bend when you can
Snap when you have to
Dear reader, you don’t have to answer
Just ‘cause they asked you

And yes, in the good times, Swift’s music was there. Alongside celebratory, euphoric trumpet blasts, Swift celebrates her individuality in “ME!” on Lover.

I promise that you’ll never find another like
Me-e-e, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
I’m the only one of me
Baby, that’s the fun of me

I’m sorry I left, but I’m back now. 2024 was the year I became a Swiftie again, and I’m glad to have Swift’s music to keep me company in the year ahead.

Games

Last year, I played 92 different games, which is a little less compared to previous years: I played 101 games in 2023 and 107 in 2022. I devoted more time to film last year, but more on that later.

There were many fantastic games I played last year. Abiotic Factor continues to absolutely crush its early access period, and it’s criminal it hasn’t found a larger audience. I finally came around to Dark Souls II and—hot take—it is now my favorite entry in the series. I started the year off strong with Marvel’s Midnight Suns, which was a real dark horse—I don’t particularly care for the Marvel property, but Midnight Suns was still a total blast. And I finished strong with Mouthwashing: a short, narrative horror experience that caught me off-guard with its excellent writing and haunting visuals.

There were some disappointments, too. I was really looking forward to Dragon’s Dogma 2, but it released in such a poor state that it killed all interest I had in it. Pacific Drive was another such situation. I boot the game every few patches or so to check in with it, but the game still runs extremely poorly ten months after its release. I also didn’t particularly care for Shadow of the Erdtree, but that’s much a much larger discussion.

2024 continued a trend in my gameplay: I spent more time with indies and past releases, than with new AAA titles. As late-stage capitalism sinks his tendrils ever further into the games industry, and AAA games continue to release in rushed, semi-broken states with prices soaring higher and higher (the value of the yen really hurts here), purchasing the latest big-budget releases is an increasingly pointless endeavor. Of course, I have nothing against indie titles—they are usually far more interesting games than their AAA counterparts, even when they release in acceptable states—but it is frustrating to see the industry throwing considerable swaths of its resources at projects that feel like they were made in yesteryear’s market with tacked-on monetization schemes, only to shut down talented studios when they inevitably fail to achieve success within the ridiculous demands made of them by out-of-touch executives. The industry has yet to learn lessons from years ago. It’s embarrassing.

I digress. Let’s shift focus to games worth celebrating. Of the games I played in 2024, three in particular stood above all the others…

Hypnospace Outlaw

Remember when the internet was cool and exciting, not scary and exhausting? Remember forums? Remember forum signatures? When the internet wasn’t run by some capitalist overlord’s algorithm, controlling everything we see? Those were the days…

Well, those days are long gone. The internet we got is nowhere near as interesting or exciting as it could’ve been, and these days we mostly lament the direction our online spaces are going. But what if one could go back in time and experience the internet as it was just before the turn of the century? Wouldn’t that be nice?

Enter Hypnospace Outlaw. At times less of a game and more of an alternate history time-capsule, players take on the role of a moderator in Hypnospace, an internet that users access while asleep. Gameplay is presented entirely through an interface reminiscent of Windows 95, paired with a simple browser (sans tabs, of course) to access Hypnospace’s user-generated pages, a la GeoCities.

Here, tiled backgrounds, wacky text effects, and looped 30-second music clips reign supreme. Pages are separated into different spaces within Hypnospace: Goodtime Valley, a community for adults and seniors with conservative leanings reminiscing about the “good old days;” Teentopia, a community for, as the name implies, teenagers; to name a couple. Players peruse through Hypnospace’s pages—back in the day, we called this “surfing the web”—in pursuit of policy violations, witnessing friendships form and petty squabbles unfold along the way.

There is a meta-narrative operating behind the scenes, but the game really shines in its recreation of old-internet culture: a time when content was posted out of simple passion, not clout. It was innocent. Endearing.

As one hops from page to page, they learn about the many characters on Hypnospace: a teacher sharing her students’ art, a hot-headed high schooler posting comics and logging his totally real love life, or a medium selling their services for (illegal) digital currency.

Late 90s cheese is also well represented here. A washed up rocker’s page plays their theme song, I Am the Chowder Man:

Stand up tall, let the Chowder be your all
High five the world, let the Chowder be heard
I like to eat right, I choose healthy snacks
The Chowder Man even writes his own raps

It’s just nice. Hypnospace offers an escape to a much simpler and happier time on the internet. Yes, it is a version of the internet presented through a heavily rose-colored lens, but isn’t that what games are for? Fantasy.

Hypnospace Outlaw offered me a cozy fantasy in which I could escape the real world and its online spaces. I’m excitedly awaiting its sequel, Dreamsettler, which will focus on the early 2000s internet.

STALKER: GAMMA

Special interests are these strange, unpredictable, and often fickle things. I’ve held some special interests—like in games and the games industry—for my entire life, but others have suddenly popped up and disappeared as quickly as they came. At the start of 2024, I had a fleeting special interest in close quarters combat (CQC) and firearms, which is very bizarre because I am generally very anti-gun and anti-military. We do not get to choose our special interests, unfortunately.

During this period, I watched a metric shit-ton of Forgotten Weapons videos and played a bunch of mil-sims. One of the games I played during that time was STALKER: GAMMA, which is not a mil-sim, but it is mil-sim adjacent. It showcases a strong attention to detail in its firearms modeling and punishing gunplay. It also isn’t technically a game: really, it’s a heavy modification and compilation of many mods for STALKER: Anomaly, which is a mod of GSC Game World’s STALKER trilogy.

It’s a… mod of a bunch of mods of a mod of three different games. Don’t worry about it.

STALKER: GAMMA throws the player into an alternate-history Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone. The Zone is extremely hostile to life: highly radioactive, difficult to navigate, filled with strange and otherworldly “anomalies” that can spell death before one even realizes their presence, home to countless (deadly) mutated horrors, and to top it all off, various factions of heavily armed “Stalkers”—humans who come to the Zone in pursuit of wealth, fame, and knowledge—battle each other for territory and resources. The player is one such Stalker, hoping to make a name for themself.

GAMMA’s gameplay is freeform: it lacks any hard objectives, instead handing the player a sandbox to form their own goals in. However, generally speaking, the game’s progression sees players growing more powerful and traveling further north, toward the Chornobyl Power Plant. Players start out with weak, barely functioning weapons and little, if any, ammunition to drive them. In the first several hours of gameplay, firefights are rife with weapon jams and mad dashes about battlefields in pursuit of ammo.

Gunplay is brutal: one or two bullets are all it takes to cause death. Frequent saving and reloading is common, especially in the opening stretch of the game. It’s certainly frustrating at times, but it ultimately leads to a tense risk-reward rarely seen in shooters. There is no take-cover-to-magically-heal here.

Much of a Stalker’s journey through the exclusion zone is spent not in combat, but in traversal. Here, GAMMA sings: its crisp sound design and threatening weather effects offer immersion on a level that very few games ever achieve. I spent hours just walking from locale to locale, but it never grew old because of how well GAMMA realizes its locations. One day, I’m taking refuge in a dilapidated Soviet-era train station; the next I’m crawling through pitch-black, claustrophobic sewer systems to circumnavigate road blockage on the surface. It’s tense, it’s scary, but the overwhelming sense of achievement at having just survived a long journey makes it all more than worth it.

GAMMA is hardly accessible. The process to even download the mod is a feat of survival in itself: one must download STALKER Anomaly, join a Discord server, follow a very long step-by-step installation guide, download the more than 500 mods for Anomaly at a painstakingly slow pace (thankfully this is handled automatically via an installer), and hope and pray that everything went well. Otherwise, one can expect to spend at least another hour or two troubleshooting. That said, I can’t complain. The entire package is completely free, and it is still in active development. Thankfully, the Discord is very friendly and helpful, should one need any assistance.

I spent well over 60 hours last year in the Zone. I went from a sad sack of shit that couldn’t shoot straight to save their life, to an elite sharpshooter that would make even the most adept Spetsnaz soldier shake in their boots. I trudged through radioactive swamps, braved the terrifying corridors of abandoned research labs, crept through the oppressive streets of Pripyat, and yes, finally made it to the site of the Chornobyl reactor. It was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had in games. The recently released STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a decent time, but it is unable to replicate the incredible highs of GAMMA—this is the sort of experience that can only be found in a fan-made project.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines

I wouldn’t blame anyone for being unfamiliar with this one. Partly due to engine issues—it used Valve’s then-still-in-development Source engine—partly due to scope creep, partly due to publisher pressure and budgetary constraints; upon its release two decades ago, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines was a buggy, broken mess. Its developer, Troika Games, shuttered shortly after its release, leaving Bloodlines a buggy, broken mess to this day—or, it would still be a mess if not for the efforts of passionate modders. The fan-made Unofficial Patch—which continues to be developed—works the game into a playable state. It isn’t perfect. Indeed, no amount of modding is likely to ever cover up all the jank inherent in the game’s code. However, if one can look past the awkward, middling combat, they will be rewarded with a richly detailed world, brought to life with some really stellar writing.

Based on the tabletop RPG Vampire: The Masquerade, Bloodlines is set in modern day southern California, where various factions of vampires vie for power. The titular Masquerade refers to vampiric society’s number one rule: do not reveal the existence of vampires to mortals. Vampires stalk about Los Angeles’ streets, operating in the shadows, pulling strings, and tying up any loose ends that arise in their plots.

The player’s character is a newly turned vampire, learning vampire society’s rules right alongside the player. Depending on what faction (type) of vampire and gender the player chooses, characters react differently to them. This is a true vampire RPG: Want to be a sensual vampire that uses sex appeal to get others to do their bidding? Maybe a hulking, animalistic vampire that uses brute strength to force their way through the world? Or perhaps a vampire that has completely lost their mind and talks to inanimate objects? Whatever type of vampire one desires to play as, Bloodlines does a great job of accommodating it.

Despite releasing in 2004, Bloodlines’ environments look stellar, thanks to great art direction. Each locale feels unique and is oozing in those early 2000s post-grunge, edgy, Hot-Topic stylings. Santa Monica’s lonely, late-night alleyways feel seedy. The downtown streets of Los Angeles feel threatening, with a towering gothic high-rise at its center. Hollywood Boulevard feels cramped, filled with all sorts of bizarre venues and characters to visit. It’s like playing an Evanescence music video, and it is glorious.

Players slowly delve deeper into So-Cal’s underworld, gradually uncovering a conspiracy prompting the coming of Gehenna, the vampires’ fabled apocalypse. Along the way, players meet a host of colorful characters: a gruff biker who cares little for vampire hierarchy; a nightclub owner with a split-personality; a prosthetist who’s more interested in hacking his patients apart than he is in actually putting them back together; a shady back-alley firearms dealer who barks about having whatever one is looking for, including dinosaur eggs…

Admittedly, Bloodlines starts to dip in quality toward the end, when Troika Games was rushing to finish the game before its release. It hardly matters. When Bloodlines is good, Bloodlines is good—and it’s good for the majority of its runtime. Perhaps the worst thing about the game is that there isn’t more of it. I’ve looked for similar games, but no other game hits the same marks that Bloodlines does. A sequel is currently in development, but given the pre-release footage that has been released so far, I don’t have high hopes for it. For the time being, Bloodlines is a very special game that offers something that can’t be found anywhere else.

Film

Last year, I set a record for the most films I’ve watched in a year: 128 films, compared to 2023’s 75. I’m not strictly sure what caused me to focus more on film, as opposed to games, in 2024. Perhaps in a time full of self-discovery and choices, I desired an escape to a life that moves forward without requiring my input. Or, maybe I simply enjoy film. Probably the latter.

I kicked off the year in spectacular pink hues with Barbie; took cover from gunfire with a John Wick marathon; mused about war with Oppenheimer and Dune: Part Two in one glorious weekend; discovered a brilliant classic in Paris, Texas; crept about dark, atmospheric corridors in an Alien marathon; gossiped with Elle Woods in Legally Blonde and Cher Horowitz in Clueless; spent the entirety of October cowering in fear as I binged nonstop horror flicks both good (Late Night with the Devil) and bad (Terrifier); traversed a war-torn United States in Alex Garland’s likely final directorial effort, Civil War; and beheld Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, Interstellar, return to IMAX for its tenth anniversary. There are so, so many spectacular films I saw last year (and some truly terrible ones, too) and I want to gush about all of them. But this piece is already long enough, so without further ado, here are my three standouts from the past year…

Little Women

I started the year with Barbie, but only got around to director Greta Gerwig’s other films later in September. Having now watched her entire oeuvre, I can confidently say that Gerwig is not overhyped in the slightest; she is an incredible talent. Barbie is certainly her most successful release (monetarily speaking) but her more subdued sophomore effort is my favorite.

Little Women is a beautiful film. It’s a film full of warmth, happiness, and hope. Much of our media centers around violence—either physical or mental—and while I certainly indulge in such entertainment alongside everyone else, it’s nice to be told a decidedly non-violent story now and then. There’s an innocence in this film. A purity.

Little Women’s sets are immaculately crafted; the spaces feel genuine and lived in. Dialogue flows at a natural pace and characters interrupt one another, as family often does. Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen’s chemistry with each other is impeccable. They laugh, joke, bicker, and cry together as they navigate the growing demands of womanhood. Their on-screen sisterhood is so authentic that I didn’t feel like I was watching a sequence of choreographed scenes, but candid footage instead.

For the film’s 135-minute runtime, I felt like one of the girls, laughing and crying right alongside Jo and Meg and Amy and Beth. Little Women is a delightful slice of life, and I’m so glad to have gotten to know the March family.

The Devil Wears Prada

On a Wednesday evening last May, I felt the uncharacteristic desire for a rom-com. I recalled countless posters of a red pitchforked heel in the mid-aughts, and decided it was time I got around to seeing what all the hype had been about. Two hours later, I learned the film was not a rom-com but I didn’t mind in the least.

The Devil Wears Prada is in one word: iconic. Meryl Streep’s cerulean sweater monologue: iconic. Anne Hathaway’s glow-up: iconic. Stanley Tucci’s tough-love pep talk: iconic. Emily Blunt’s portrayal of a character named Emily who is very blunt: iconic! God, I fucking love this movie.

It’s a classic mid-20’s coming-of-age story set in the middle of the fashion world and it is wildly fascinating. The world of Runway magazine is cutthroat and moves at a breakneck pace—I certainly wouldn’t want any part of it, but I will gladly watch someone else experience it. Watching Andy’s progression from fashion reject, struggling to keep up with her boss’ ridiculous demands; to fashion icon, surprising her boss even when faced with her most devilish of requests, is so satisfying. By the end of the film, Andy stands victorious over Runway. She conquered Mt. Miranda. She proved everyone wrong, and the keys to the fashion world are hers for the taking. However, in the struggle to meet the inhuman demands made of her, Andy finds herself and realizes that she actually wants no part of the world she sacrificed so much to earn the approval of. Just like that, she throws it all away.

It is so good.

I could go on, but sometimes less is more: This movie fucks. That’s all.

I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow is undoubtedly the best film I saw last year—nay, one of the best films I have ever seen. It left me reeling during its credits crawl, forcing me to confront things about myself that I had promised to forget years ago. It’s a very special film.

I have so many words about this singular movie that it rivals the word count of this entire post. Instead of stitching together Frankenstein’s Blog Post, I’ve decided to publish all of my words about I Saw the TV Glow as its own standalone post.

Until then.