What I Had Fun with in 2023
Including: Video essay of the year, Rayquaza, and a really good soup.
What I Had Fun with in 2023
Thanks to everyone who responded in the WIHFL thread the other week! Some highlights: Exhaust-stained tile mosaics, three eggplants, $2 touchdown beers, Bubble Shooter, 60 books (!!!), Saltburn.
My contribution is in no particular order, and you may notice repeats from some of my WIHFLs throughout the year. That just means they’re really good.
“The Historic Fandom Schemes of BitOfEarth.net”
Video essay of the year goes to Strange Æons’ retrospective on BitOfEarth.net, an “online Lord of the Rings fan group turned fake charity, infamous scam, and also cult.” Not an exaggeration.
It’s as long as a movie and just as gripping, thanks to Strange’s first-class storytelling and research. Seriously, run this on the second monitor if you’re inclined to, but I recommend popping some popcorn and throwing it on the TV. And when you’re like wah wah I wish there was more — look alive, twerp, there’s a sequel.
Honorable mention: Power Pak’s “MyHouse.WAD”
“Forks”
Season two of The Bear is definitely the best TV I’ve watched in a long time, and a great debate has snuck in at the end of the year: Are you a “Forks” person or a “Fishes” person?
If you haven’t watched the show, the question is basically, “Do you like the exultant episode or the really tense episode?” I like the exultant, personally. I thought about the deep dish scene for months after.
Matty Matheson’s cheeseburger soup
Far and away my favorite thing I cooked this year. I’m a sushi bowl person not a sushi roll person, so breaking anything down into a soup is ideal. For a meatless version I’ve seen brown lentils, chopped walnuts, and dried mushrooms all work well!
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(I would say that means Matty Matheson appears twice on this list, but I don’t think he’s actually in “Forks.” Could be wrong though.)
Bottoms
Bottoms is about two high schoolers (played by Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri) who start a fight club so they can bang cheerleaders. It rips, it pilfers a lot of DNA from teen comedies but manages to update them in such a way that they’re actually funny — I just texted my girlfriend while writing this, “does someone get stabbed with a sword in Bottoms??” I don’t remember, but that’s sort of the vibe.
(Also Ayo Edebiri definitely isn’t in “Forks,” but what a cast, huh?)
Honorable mentions: Barbenheimer, Godzilla Minus One, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (which is definitely very marketing-heavy, but captured the spirit of the game really well in a way that surprised me)
Your Only Move Is HUSTLE
So I haven’t seen this game in end-of-year discussions — I think it’s been in early access for a while — but the full version released in 2023 so I get to talk about it.
Your Only Move Is HUSTLE (also called Yomi Hustle) is a turn-based fighting game with all of the strategy, data, and spectacle of a traditional fighter, but slowed down so that mechanical skills like reflexes aren’t as relevant. Which is good for uncoordinated people like me!
Mostly, it makes my list because the game gives you a real-time replay of your fight and it never fails to look so damn cool.
The Password Game
There’s something really fun to me about when a webgame goes viral — it feels more accessible than, say, a video game. And it’s been a great year for webgames.
The Password Game is a rare game that’s probably easier to play than it is to explain. Click the link, fill in the textbox, and you’ll get the gist. My round ten password was “Password12991!julyXXXVdbex3broughttoyoubypepsi.” The livestreams of this game were some of the most entertaining of the year.
Honorable mentions: Everything else on neal.fun, which is much more of a digital toybox than a game site; PokeDoku, which is like Wordle except the answer is sometimes Rayquaza, and which I play with my girlfriend every night before bed; Flashpoint Archive.
Starting One Piece
One Piece has been publishing weekly since 1997. I’m on chapter 452 out of 1101. So I’m claiming it for 2023 because I may not even finish in 2024.
But man, it’s a blast. There’s a kind of investment you can only cultivate over thousands of pages. My favorite is showing people my son Tony Tony Chopper and then when they ask what his story is, you get to ambush them with the “he’s a reindeer doctor who ate the Zoan-type Human-Human fruit…”
Honorable mentions: Reading for pleasure, rather than to try and Get Smart or Be Better — I liked Vermis I and Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
Listening to albums
I don’t know what finally did it — some combination of coaching from my friends and the Hivemind best albums bracket — but I left my hunt-and-peck ways behind me and started listening to albums this year.
Someone said that listening to songs but not albums is like watching movie clips instead of whole movies. Which is fair, I watch movie clips all the time! But it’s nice when you find themes across an entire album.
Favorites that I didn’t list in this post: To Pimp A Butterfly, No Dogs Allowed, After Laughter, Plastic Beach, Montgomery Ricky, MM…FOOD.
The Boot
I had my first — and honestly, probably my last — beer boot this year, which is the equivalent of something like seven bottles. That’s tooooo much, if you were just trying to down it. But we were out on that patio, and got to just slow down for four hours and nurse comically large beers, right down to the warm flat toe.
Also I got a cerveza and it came with like seven limes floating in there, which was super funny.
Honorable mentions: Pitchers of beer/margaritas/mimosas for the same reason; plus, a friend and I achieved the same effect when we found a cafe with unlimited drip coffee.
Thanks for reading!
Lastly: Starting Supernormal this year has been just so good for me, selfishly. But what I didn’t expect was how much fun I would have kicking around in the comments with y’all. I don’t know that I ever pictured the blog as something that would reach millions and millions of people, but writing to the couple dozen of you feels like writing to the whole world. Thanks so much, for real.
Honorable mentions: #4: Watching your Liked TikToks, #7: Medical dramas, #10: A people’s history of caffeine
DR
After Laughter honorable mention <3
I didn't even know that "Forks" vs. "Fish" was an ongoing debate, but I think about both of these episodes at least once a week. Definitely a "Forks" guy myself, although I give credit to "Fish" for the amount of stress it gave me (and subsequent years of life it took from me).