2024 is almost over. This year fucking sucked. I have made multiple drafts of this post, all of which are thousands of words long, and are all colorful variations of “fuck Kotaku.” I think I will instead condense my thoughts, and be a little more concise with a list format.

Things that sucked

• Losing both of my dogs. One to old age, the other to a sudden internal rupture. I miss both of them dearly.
• Ongoing genocide. Free Palentine, motherfucker.
• Another presidential election. I’m sorry that my Capital-P Pronouns caused all the voting machines to break and give Trump 100% of the vote, or whatever you dumbfuck neoliberals are on about today.
• The worst year for video games in its entire history. Just dogshit release after dogshit release. Plus some other terrible things in upcoming bullet points.
• Glorified tabloid writers (they refer to themselves as “video game journalists”), desperate to maintain relevancy, but lacking in any skills or personality, simply messaged their alt-right buddies on Discord and they all created Gamergate 2, which is the same as the first one, except worse and more blatantly a complete work of kayfabe. Anyways, it’s cool how a particularly terrible period of my life has been resurrected and reduced to a fake, pathetic slap fight between an elderly shock jock and a bunch of intellectual juggernauts who managed to get queerbaited by WWE. Thank you for bringing back memories I would have much rather forgotten about and moved on from! But hey, at least they all took a break from blaming trans people for everything that’s ever gone wrong in their lives and going into year three of acting as a rapist’s personal ball licker, right? Right?
• Related to the last item: can someone explain to me exactly why the senior editor of Kotaku thought it was a good idea to do an erotic photoshoot wearing Mark Kern’s merchandise, and deciding to post the photos during fucking PRIDE MONTH? Yeah, the same people who called my friend a cheap whore and implied she was a pedophile for doing a lingerie photoshoot because Nintendo of America wouldn’t pay her a living wage also think that it’s cool and epic and based and brave to make custom jerk off material for a hate monger. Imagine if some T-Girl pulled that shit. The entire masthead at Aftermath would be at her door, all armed with a wooden plank that has a nail driven through it.
• Literally every single piece of art and media released this year has had its essence stripped away and dragged into a manufactured “culture war” where the only thing that matters is one question: Is It Woke? Art and critical thinking are being murdered in real time, and trying my best to personally stem that tide doesn’t amount to much. An effect of this fake war is this strong value of “I can only enjoy something if I know it will make someone else miserable.” What a fucking existence that is. I guess I can add “empathy” to things being killed this year, too.
• Internet Archive nearly being compromised to a permanent end.
• Quitting my sex work job because I was tired of shitty clients. For those unaware or who forgot, one of my many sources of meager income is operating a phone sex line. All the horny men in your life call me up and tell me all about their incest fantasies involving their own children, and I die a little more inside and wonder if life is still worth living. Well anyways, when it’s late, I’m tired, and I haven’t had any calls all night, I will sometimes forget to set my status to “away” before going to bed. Some of these men will call me at all types of fucked up hours, messing up my sleep schedule worse than it already is. I got one of these calls Sunday morning. The customer on the line was very upset, yelling at me because I “sounded tired.” I was woken up from a dead sleep before sunrise, and the person who woke me up in the first place was mad that I wasn’t somehow completely alert. Laying in my bed in the dark, regretting every choice I’ve ever made in life that’s led to me being judged by the type of man who would call up a phone sex at five o’clock in the fucking morning, I realized that I don’t care anymore.
• Going off of that, it’s pretty fucking rich that we’re still dealing with this epidemic of “I was reminded that trans people exist, and this is why my life is a goddamn mess.” Celebrating Christmas with friends. Voting for Kamala Harris, but not being super enthusiastic about it. Being too funny. Being too pretty. Being too smart. Using common slang terms. Going out on a hot date. A date. Dinner with a friend. Dinner alone. Watching TV alone. Breathing. All crimes against humanity that all of us and our dangerous pronouns have committed. We should probably try doing more normal, acceptable behaviors, like calling strangers up at 5 AM and telling them we want to drink our daughter’s urine.
• A massive increase in people driving on the wrong side of the road, nearly colliding into me. This happens like almost once a week now. I imagine that has something to do with that whole “death of empathy” thing.
• Cory McAbee is experimenting with generative AI.
• Adam Cole

here is an image to break up all this text!

Things that were cool

• I released a new game! People seem to like it! Go play it!
• A new Castlevania came out. Haunted Castle Revisited is my personal LONELY FRONTIER DOT NET GAME OF THE YEAR.
• Marvel vs Capcom 2 got re-released, and does not have the issues that its other releases have, including the one that can be played on Fightcade. Fuck everyone who plays as Cable, though.
• Discovering that I like it when hot goths play with their feet. Shout out to the Brazilian girl in Gothic Lolita gear sucking her toes while My Dead Girlfriend’s “Wave Your Hand” played in the background. Wasn’t even out looking for porn that day, but that accidental discovery changed my whole fucking life. Hachi Machi.
• Finally watching the entirety of Neon Genesis Evangelion. For the record, I thought the Rebuilds were pretty good, but the original series and End of Evangelion are significantly better. Anime is pretty damn cool.
• Soul Reaver 1 and 2 got remastered. Took me a little while to get through them, because they’re kind of buggy, but they’re still good. Legacy of Kain is one of those series’ that I keep meaning to talk about more, because it’s one of my favorites. I find myself relating to Raziel an awful lot.
• “Hangman” Adam Page and Swerve Strickland continued to have one of the greatest feuds in the history of pro wrestling.
• “Timeless” Toni Storm and Mariah May also had one of the greatest feuds in the history of pro wrestling.
• The Beast Mortos
• Watching a bunch of musicals with my friends and finally understanding the appeal of this Gene Kelly guy. He does a great job of playing really sleazy characters.
• Reconnected with a couple of people. One of my resolutions for next year is to be more social, provided I don’t have another year long freakout over the continued backslide into animalistic fascism that society is willingly diving into.

Oh boy, kind of fucked up that “consuming old media” and “jacking it to deviant pornography” were major highlights of my year! Maybe 2025 will be better? It can’t be much worse!

HAPPY(?) NEW YEAR!