2023 favourites

11 Dec, 2023

Apparently the last time I did a favourite's post..was in February, oops (-∧-；)!! I originally wanted to do these monthly but that's ..unlikely given my track record lol. I'd like to do it quarterly (in the future) so for now I'll just wrap this up into a 2023 favorites and try again..next year lol. ___〆(・∀・)

Video

I'm glad I took the time a few years ago to remember 700+ films and add them to my letterboxd account. Thankfully maintaining it has been easier - I got into the habit sometime last year to add the movie the day of or the day after to my watched list. The only issue is that..seeing my watchlist grow is giving me anxiety considering it just keeps piling on. (ಥ_ʖಥ) I watched a few classics this year namely 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Blair Witch Project and we got an advanced screening of the new Ghibli movie The Boy and the Heron but my favorite by a landslide was..

• Movie: Minding the gap. I don't remember how I found this documentary but it's definitely earned a perfect score for me. It's a coming of age documentary, following 3 friends and their traumas all while showcasing some sick skateboarding lol. And the person who's documenting all of this is one of them (Bing Liu). It was full of nostalgia since it followed them from highschool during the mid 2000s-early 2010s onward (which was around the time I was in highschool)! My description honestly doesn't do this movie justice - go watch it.
• TV Show: The Americans. I started this show back in..maybe 2018? 2019? I was never able to get past season 3 for whatever reason. I had an itching to pick it up this year and Andrew decided to watch it with me. We got hooked and finished 6 seasons in.. 2 months? Maybe even a month lol. I don't know why I dropped it the first time, the seasons just kept getting better. I can't get over how gorgeous Keri Russell is, russian Keri could assassinate me anytime. (〃￣ω￣〃) Also honorable mention to Street Woman Fighter 2 for all the drama I was eating up (and the amazing mega crew)

Music

I don't know how I added this section last year. This is impossible, I have like 5 new favorite songs a month but I'll just pick this one (post-edit: nvm I picked two suckerrss post-post-edit: nvm I picked 4 LMAO) even though my Spotify wrapped says otherwise (ノωヽ)

• Song: Heart Has Teeth - Deadmau5 & Skylar Grey I just love Skylar's sombre voice and this beat gives me Massive Attack jujus, especially the lil piano bit. I heard this song at VELD during Rezzmau5 set and I remember being anxious the entire night and this song just took me into a blissful trance. ┌(。Д。)┐

I'm cheating and sneaking in one more song.. ¯_( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

• Song#2: I feel you - Depeche Mode. God I fucking love Dave's voice. I don't know how I slept on Depeche Mode for so many years, they've solidified themselves as one of my favorite bands. I'm already imaging myself doing a pole routine to one of their songs LMAO (I can dream..)(๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ

And oneee more..

• Song#3: There's so many amazing New Jeans remixes in the wild, I found this one recently that slaps:

But MINDA's are by far my favorite, I love when a remix sounds completely different especially when the genre is something unexpected and it just works like this Cookie remix:

Ugh, so many albums this year, I need to do this quarterly instead lol. (ง ื▿ ื)ว I guess this is the year of many favourites and maybe I should just go wild and name them all instead of trying to force a handful or less. I listened to MFDoom some more this year and Andrew even bought me the MM..Food vinyl (we need to buy a vinyl player!!) And the Moon Remix RPG OST is absolutely incredible so atmospheric, it's criminal that it's not on Spotify. Anyways, I'll try to limit myself with this section too..(:3」∠)

• Album: EP2 - Yaeji. We saw Yaeji live this year and it was a blast! She is so charming. I love how her sound keeps changing but retains the "Yaeji"ness. I have the biggest crush on her. She talked about feeling anxious being on stage and got a lil emotional which made me love her even more because she's genuine.

• Album#2: Tommy Airline - Tommy february6. (I'm cheating and adding another one which is an oldie but goodie!) I discovered Tommy (Tomoko Kawase) when I was 12 or 13 years old hearing Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss opening song Lonely in Gorgeous. I was obsessed but I never really liked anything else from Tommy february6 and I much preferred her Brilliant Green band work (she has 3 musical personas..maybe more). I don't know what happened - maybe it's because I've been listening to Depeche Mode more that synths just make sense now. Anyways, this album is full of that 80s synth'y sound despite being released in 2004.

• Playlist : So this is a WIP section that I'll hopefully have in a better spot end of winter..but in a nutshell, I've been trying to organize my Spotify into playlists like I used to do yeaaaaaaars ago when streaming music wasn't a thing. I had different folders for genres..sub-genres..albums, idk I was an organization freak. Right now.. all I have is two playlists ("all jammies" and "electro jammies" which is self explanatory lol). So not a success so far but we're getting somewhere. I've been trying to dig up some of my old music and I have a blog post covering formative(?) music years but that blog post is becoming into a beast that will likely stay in draft limbo forever. I want to.. to the best of my ability find all the music I used to listen to but for now here's just..everything I've found so far unorganized. I'm still missing sooo much and a lot of it has been pretty hard to find esp my kinda embarrassing visualkei/jrock phase LMAO (｡◕ˇ∀ˇ◕）

Reading

I must admit - I started a handful of books this year but I have not finished any of them. This isn't to say that they're bad, I just haven't created a reading habit yet. I've been reading in bed before bedge time but I just..end up falling asleep which wasn't a problem I had before LMAO. ┐( ˘_˘ )┌

• Book#1: Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami. If you don't like Haruki Murakami's male gazey narratives then Mieko is the writer for you. She has a few hits but I picked up Breasts and Eggs since it was the only thing that was in stock at Indigo. I'm about a third or close to halfway through and it's been a captivating read despite ..me not finishing it (yet).
• Book#2 - What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies. I love Tim Urban and his blog. He's a great writer, witty and genuine and he covers some tough subjects and draws funny little stick figures. The tail end is my favorite blog post and is something I feel everyone should read. I don't like self-help books (even though the next item on this list will make you think otherwise) but "What's our problem?" is a "self-help" book everyone should read because our society needs help lmao. Also I thought one of the panels a scientist was smoking a bong but it was a flask. (・о・)

• Book#3 - How to Be Happy (or at least less sad) Lee Crutchley is a self-help..workbook. Two things I thought I would hate but their combination has been great thanks to Lee's writing. It's an easy going self-help book that doesn't promise to revolutionize your life like most do and that's probably why I've been enjoying it. It's not presumptuous or overly crude just for the sake of being more relatable. It's a bunch of practical and fun exercises and made me realize why people journal. Something about writing down the thoughts in your head seems to impact me differently than just..thinking it.

Video Games

There's been a solid amount of games this year that I've really enjoyed. The re-releases of Katamari have been so amazing (despite the fact that I bought a steam deck to emulate them LOL ╰(ɵ̥̥ ˑ̫ ɵ̥̥ ╰) There was also Super Mario RPG remake that was a ton of fun, more ffxiv raiding (we cleared the tier in 3 weeks!!), Bomb Rush Cyberfunk which has such a funky soundtrack (but I need to finish..it's hard!!), and then the chokehold Mahjong Soul had on me and Andrew :(´ཀ`」 ∠): lol which then turned into us playing more PokemonGO and using it as an excuse to be more outdoorsy. BUT there's two games that really stood out this year and they were.......:

• Video game #1: Moon Remix RPG. Ugh, there's so much I can talk about when it comes to this game. The story telling, the charming claymation x pixel artstyle, the fact that it's over two decades old and does not show its age, the "voice acting", the soundtrack, the community, and the small team who just loves video games (they have a discord and blog where they frequently talk about game dev, do AMAs, and they translate it to english too! (⋆ˆ ³ ˆ)♥) Everything about this game is lovely. I love how each character has so much personality despite the voice acting just being samples of different languages garbled up. I love how you can buy CDs and listen to it during your journey. The songs were commissioned by different indie artists! And I love the time mechanic, it reminds me a lot of Majora's Mask. I can write an entire blogpost about this game. I 100%'d the game (the fishing was so cursed), I made Andrew a "catch plate" and got him a custom made "catch" cap - I am obsessed with this game. I can't wait for Stray Children to come out, I'm sure it'll be amazing and introduce more people to Moon Remix RPG too.

• Video Game#2: CSGO (the new one lol). I actually didn't enjoy this game at all and its predecessors but playing with my friends has made it a fun time. Also kinda neat how quickly I'm improving, I sometimes even out frag P4L Andrew LMAOOOOOOO ꉂ(´∀｀)ʱªʱªʱª and ꉂ(´∀｀)ʱªʱªʱªʱªʱªʱªʱªʱª P4l Pocket LMAOOOOOOOO

Cyberspace

• Artist: @Loputyn_, I adore her work. I love how feminine and sensual it is (and the gore is neat too lmao (⁄ ⁄>⁄ ▽ ⁄<⁄ ⁄)!) Everything I love about women is portrayed so delicately in her work. Also honorable mention to ha4to for their cute 3d works that reminds me of N64 models

• Twitter account: @everydaylouis, who's a multitalented king (◔ᴥ◔) and @pingmyping cause I love pingu

• Youtuber: YourFavoriteSon I've gone deep into the video game retrospectives this year and I gotta say anyone who can make me watch an 8hr+ long video on the entire silent hill series is a winner in my book (I persevered through the spookies) lol). Another (yet again) honorable mention to cup of jasmien as the still sole survivor vlogger lol

• Instagram: lapetiteyusun, i've been on a very long insta break/use it infrequently so this feels like a cop out response but I'm booking a tattoo with her so she's my favourite LOL

• Twitch: zfg, Same thing as last year, only person I watch on twitch ( ͡°ω ͡°)

• Meme #1: ZFG anyway song (literally BREAKS my HEART everytime)

• Meme#2: def this and also this or this (there's so many, I'll prob keep throwing more in here as I recall distant memes.. ▓▒░(°◡°)░▒▓)

Beauty

• Retin-A: is AMAZING. I don't think any other skin care product has made as noticable of a difference as this has in my entire life (aside from sunscreen). My skin has never looked as good as it has since starting this. AND IT'S FREE - you just need to talk to a GP or derm. The downside is I sometimes molt lol ＼(º □ º l|l)/
• ILLIYOON - Ceramide Ato Concentrate Cream JUMBO: I need this so I don't molt. It has no fragrance, doesn't feel heavy and locks in moisture (and the tub is YUGE)
• NIVEA LipCare: Japan just seems to do most things better when it comes to drugstore things. This smells amazing and it actually moisturizes my lips ￣ε￣
• ALIEN Perfume by Mugler: Andrew bought me this after I was looking around for my "signature scent". I love floral scented perfumes especially jasmines and this one smells divine and lasts so long and the bottle looks like an Eva angel lol (°ロ°) !

Experiences

Okay there's been so many so I'll likely forget some but here we go..

• Japan trip: I need to do an entire blog post about this trip (I keep putting it off!!) Everything about this trip was wonderful. I love how we got all the touristy stuff out of the way the first time we visited Japan and this time we got to experience so many different parts of Japan. I feel so blessed that we were in Japan for over 4 weeks! Hiking the Nakasendo trail is such a dear experience to me that I will remember fondly for the rest of my life. It wasn't perfect but that's what made it so memorable. Seeing the Ghibli museum again was also amazing (and I cried this time like a little dweeb lmaooo..) And staying in a ryokan, experiencing more onsens! ugh it was such a needed vacation and I can't wait to go back (ノ= ⩊ = )ノ
• Pole: This is a fairly new experience but I am OBSESSED. One of my friends during my Halloween party mentioned she wanted to try pole and I drunkenly was like ME TOO and here we are! I love the pole community so far and it's so much fun! I'm still very ish shy but I'm sure that'll improve with time (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)
• Montreal trip: I got to finally see some of my coworkers in person and re-explore a city that I used to live in 2 decades ago (wow I'm so old (︶︹︺)). I love Montreal, I love the duplexes and triplexes(?) and the how there's pockets of streets with no cars. Toronto can learn a lot from Montreal
• Halloween: I LOVE HALLOWEEN, I LOVE MY HALLOWEEN PARTIES AND MY FRIENDS, IT'S ALWAYS REALLY FUN HERE'S A RELATE PICTURE

• Meduza @Rebel: Okay, I genuinely thought I could no longer have a good time at music festivals/raves because the last two times I did the RoLlies I felt very anxious and not very good jujus. But Meduza was unbelievable and I had such a great time with my husbando and friends (｢• ω •)｢♬♪♫
• Yaeji: Seeing Yaeji live and taking a picture with her lil cute self was 10/10 experience. I love live concerts, especially smaller/intimate ones! (♡°▽°♡)

• FFXIV/ZOOTR: Had a burst of FFXIV activity during the last raid tier where Andrew and I ended up finishing the tier week 3 (LAST TIME IT TOOK US LIKE 11 WEEKS OR SOMETHING HORRENDOUS) with pubs cause our static was combusting and then I reformed the static and helped the rest of them get their clear heh (っ´ω`)ﾉ(╥ω╥) And ZOOTR is always fun even when I make extremely cursed seeds
• Brunch & boardgames friends: I've been having regular Sunday brunchies with ex coworkers and now good friends and it's always a good time (and Chew Chews is SO GOOD)
• Embroidery: I picked up a "beginner" tote bag kit from nyang stitch and I'm so slow but it's been really fun and rewarding learning all the different type of stitches and making cute cats
• Figure skating: Although I haven't been able to sign up for classes this year (THEY FILL UP SO FAST IN SEPTEMBER (‡▼益▼)) I'm looking forward to keeping up this irregular habit lol
• Cottage trip/Chris Lake/Armin: TBD I will write this after it happens during Christmas week + beyond cause I decided to bloggies a lil early but I bet it'll be fun and I wanna document it (ノωヽ)
• Therapy: Okay so this is an interesting one. I started therapy again back in September/October. My first therapy wasn't a great fit for me so that kinda sucked and forcing myself to look for a new one/essentially start over also super sucked. BUT, my current therapist has been amazing. It's only been two sessions but I feel really really good about her. I've never felt this way with another therapist, even the one in Halifax who was arguably really great. We snuck in one more appointment this week, even though my schedule didn't work with hers, she willingly worked after hours to make sure I'd be in a good spot/have homework during the Christmas break. And what really touched me is, when I recounted my mom's suicide (something that is a really painful experience), she cried. I have never seen a therapist cry before and some would say it's unprofessional but it was so humanizing. I don't even know how to explain it. I just felt a really strong connection to her. Not in a inappropriate like she's my new bestie kind of way but rather that I knew that she knew my pain. And I feel like having that empathy will go so far. She apologized and told me she doesn't cry often and I shouldn't feel bad (I still kinda did lol) but that experience was cathartic and I have a really really good feeling about her and the work we can do together. (; ω ; )ヾ(´∀`* )

WHEW, that was A LOT. It took me several days to write up this blog post which I guess means I had a pretty damn good 2023. (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧ I'm looking forward to 2024 and I'll do my best to blog more often so it doesn't take me days to post one entry LOL.

♡ ♡ ♡ and hope y'alls 2024 is great!!!

#favourites