2024

log index 2023's log storygraph letterboxd

welcome to my 2024 media log!

this is where i'll be tracking everything i read, watch, play, and etc this year. use the links to the left to navigate through the various months, or to filter the entries by media type or star rating!

i'm trying out a new method of tracking ongoing media like tv shows & podcasts for this year's log — last year, i ran into the issue of not wanting to log every single episode but not quite finishing a series, so my list didn't really reflect how many of those i'd been enjoying. this year, i've added a sidebar to track ongoing media, and i'll be adding a list of episodes to those entries as the year goes on!

some entries will have reviews or notes attached — click the + button next to the star rating when you see it if you'd like to read what i thought of it!

note: this page requires javascript to work correctly!

by type:

total:

podcasts: books: films: tv shows: live performances: games: interactive fiction: short stories: articles: comics:

by genre:

horror: comedy: nonfiction: sci-fi: musical: literary: fantasy: romance: drama: memoir:

total goal:

/ 100 *

reading goal:

/ 30

beat the backlist reading challenge:

    / challenge source
  • fae or aliens - house of hollow
  • title contains a body of water - the deepwater bride & other stories (counting 'deepwater' as body of water, which might be a stretch lmao)
  • 4-word title — in the dream house
  • travel by ship
  • prominently features a desert
  • retelling of a classic - princess floralinda
  • small town vs. big city
  • queer AF
  • good vibes only
  • these woods hold secrets - small game
  • anything but a monarchy
  • published 100+ years ago
  • walk through history
  • door on the cover
  • 2023 debut novel
  • bird is the word
  • writing about writing
  • live in infamy
  • blurbed by a fave author
  • recommended via a newsletter or podcast
  • tickles your funny bone
  • first in an unfinished series
  • on your TBR 5+ years
  • coauthored or illustrated
  • share the love
  • author last name starts with v
  • it’s the end of the world as we know it
  • STEM stan
  • we have so much in common
  • between 300 and 400 pages
  • an unexpected inheritance
  • neon colored cover
  • hotel, mansion, or castle
  • author and character share an initial
  • character name is a color
  • let’s circle back to this
  • name that tune
  • popular throwback
  • sweet or spicy
  • 3+ points of view
  • coffeehouse reads
  • we all scream (for ice cream?)
  • that’s not my name
  • dance the night away
  • second chances
  • sibling showdown
  • I was framed!
  • anthology or omnibus edition — taaqtumi
  • released the 13th of any month
  • written by or about a (fictional) celebrity
  • creature feature - brainwyrms
  • space – the final frontier

monthly favorites:

january


in the dream house
carmen maria machado

february


ghost church
jamie loftus

march


balatro
localthunk

    january

  • 04-05 taaqtumi:  an anthology of arctic horror stories anthology horror
    + favorite stories:
    lounge - sean & rachel qitsualik-tinsley
    strays - repo kempt

    the arctic is one of the scariest places in the world, imo. i've never been all that far north — but i visited alaska for the first time last may, and even in a city there, the isolation of being surrounded by mountains in a place only accessible by boat or plane got to me, a bit. (i'm also not a fan of the cold, so make any horror story a little snowy and it immediately gets 10x scarier — there's a reason the thing is one of my favorite horror movies.) this book tackled arctic horror from a ton of different angles — sci-fi futures, zombie apocalypses, giant polar bears — and i think all of them did it really well! it was also really cool to see so many indigenous authors & see all the different interpretations of horror from an indigenous perspective. i definitely want to read more from a lot of the authors in this book.

  • 08 in the dream house - carmen maria machado book memoir, lgbt
  • 08 girltrash: all night long - dir. alexandra kondracke film musical, comedy, lgbt
    + watched with s. i asked a discord server i'm in for recs of their favorite bad-fun movies & got this in response, and 'campy musical lesbian battle of the bands' seemed incredibly up my & s's alleys, but my god this was not a good movie. i guess i did specifically ask for bad movies so i can't complain! it feels impossible that this is a movie from 2014 — the writer, angela robinson, also wrote one of my favorite movies of all time, d.e.b.s., in 2004, and this movie feels like it should've come a decade before that, not a decade after. still: a good movie to watch while drinking wine and eating latkes with my best friend, and not the worst movie we've watched together by far!
  • 09 swept away - dir. michael mayer theatre musical, drama
    + @ arena stage in dc; seen with e. & m. absolutely bonkers set design — the stage was set up to look like a ship, and the choreography made it really convincingly seem to sway with the waves despite it not actually moving — and then the ship lifts up to reveal the little lifeboat underneath that the 4 main cast members spend the latter half of the show on, and i fully lost my mind about how cool that was. (and the lifeboat spun, too!! love a lil turntable moment!!!) the music was all avett brothers songs, which isn't generally my taste, but i do think "1880s whaling ship" is the setting those songs were meant to be sung in. (and the singing was, of course, gorgeous — stark sands as big brother & john gallagher jr as mate absolutely killed it, and adrian blake enscoe as little brother was heartbreakingly endearing. just a little guy!!)

    also, at one point me and m. leaned over to e. at exactly the same moment and whispered, respectively, "FELLAS???" and "oh this show is GAY huh". as all good boat media should be.

  • 13 the wicker man (1973) - dir. robin hardy film horror
    + a friend of mine looooves the wicker man so i've been meaning to watch it for ages, and it did not disappoint! i wasn't expecting the amount of music involved (is this technically a musical??) but i loved it. if i were visiting an island i would simply be respectful and not yell about jesus to everyone rip to sergeant howie but i'm different
  • 13-20 house of hollow - krystal sutherland book fantasy, horror
    + i adore a good changeling story, and this one was really fun. i liked all the weird floral body horror & i think the reveal of what actually happened to the hollows was really well done. i wasn't as big a fan of the ending — evil women who care way too much about their siblings are one of my favorite character archetypes, so i was a bit disappointed that iris and vivi just left grey and agreed to go back to being helicopter-parented by cate. (like, sure, grey's actions weren't exactly good, but after everything the sisters had been through together, it felt sort of wild for them to just... separate like that.) i thought grey was way more interesting than iris in general; i don't know that the story would've worked as well with grey as a pov character, given that she knows all the secrets already, but i still wished for more insight into what she was thinking. still, i don't know if that's really a mark against the book as much as my own personal tastes in characters.
  • 21 psycho killer - escape tabletop games card game strategy, thriller
    + @ horror club board game night. played the base game + the drinking game variant.
  • 21 werewords - bezier games party game hidden role, deduction
    + @ horror club board game night. i joined the game late & didn't have a super good grasp on the rules, so i might've had more fun if i'd been there from the start? i love guessing things, but in a group of a dozen people i ended up feeling like i was hogging the guesses. would've been fun to have been the werewolf at some point!
  • 23 eurydice exhumed - sweetfish interactive fiction folklore, horror
  • 23 GONCHAROV 2074 - sweetfish interactive fiction sci-fi, heist
    + WHEN PHOTOGRAPHERS SUPPLANTED ILLUSTRATORS IN THE LAST CENTURY IT WAS NOT THE FAULT OF THE CAMERA NOR THE FAILING OF THE PENCIL; THE FAULT IS AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN THE BLOODIED HANDS OF CAPITAL

    • february

  • 01 my year in mensa - jamie loftus podcast nonfiction
  • 02 why don't we just kill the kid in the omelas hole - isabel j kim short story speculative fiction
    + The kid was the drop of blood in the bowl of milk whose slight bitterness would make the sweetness of the rest of Omelas richer. Without the kid in the hole, Omelas was just paradise. With the load-bearing, suffering child, Omelas meant something.

    And of course, it was true that the whole city literally ran on the load-bearing suffering child in a very real physical way that was not a metaphor. And everyone really liked having running power and no blackouts and good schools and low crime and community-oriented government and safe sidewalks and public transit that worked.

    Things got really toxic online. Then the third kid was killed.

    [...]

    The day after the lethal injection, the fifth kid was killed in the hole. And then the executioner walked out of Omelas, but no one paid attention to her leaving.

  • 01-03 ghost church - jamie loftus podcast nonfiction
    + fascinating podcast!! i love the genuinely kind attitude jamie loftus brings to the subject, and how she examines it through the lens of not judging what people believe and just reporting the history and the beliefs and the culture — i don't think i believe in psychics or seances or any of that, but i'm always far more interested in what stories people tell than i am in saying something is real or fake, and i appreciated that loftus seemed to come to this from a similar angle.

    also, all the history stuff was incredible — i've always really liked the story of the fox sisters, and now i want to read everything about them.

  • 10 jennifer's body - dir. karyn kusama film horror, comedy, lgbt
    + watched w the local horror club.

    truly one of the movies of all time. the guy behind me was judging all of the dudes who follow jennifer to their deaths for not noticing all the glaring red flags, but lets be real, if jennifer check asked me to come over to her house and it was spooky and abandoned and there were creepy candles everywhere and rats running around i would simply be too focused on how beautiful she is to care that i was about to die. rip to them but i'm different.

    but also jokes aside: this movie is so much about the inherent terror of being a teenage girl, and it feels so real in a way that i think is easy to overlook amidst the horror-comedy of it all. i mean, the inciting incident is jennifer being assaulted (slash demon-sacrificed, but like, the core of it is assault, right? she even asks the men if they're rapists while she's in their van, and they don't answer) and then not being able to explain what happened until weeks later, even to her best friend. and the whole town is too wrapped up in their own tragedy to notice. like, yeah, i'd start eating random dudes too in her situation! it all felt very true to life, while also being so incredibly over-the-top and campy in so many other ways.

  • 13-14 small game - blair braverman book literary, thriller, lgbt
  • 15 the thing - dir. john carpenter film horror
    + remains one of the movies of all time. a theater near me showed it as part of their revival series and so i got to see it on the big screen with a crowd, which was really fun — my first time watching it was winter 2022 while stuck in my apartment during a terrible cold snap and that was, i think, the ideal first viewing, but seeing it with a ton of other people was great in a totally different way. do you ever think about that little computer game blair somehow finds the time to program to tell him how long it'll take for the whole planet to become thinged. like surely it would have been quicker to calculate that by hand, but dude went the extra mile and gave it some flavor and i appreciate that.
  • 01/24-02/21 brainwyrms - alison rumfitt book horror
    + alison rumfitt is amazing at writing books that are exceptionally horrifying and dismal. tell me i'm worthless was one of my favorite books i read last year and was equally grim, but this one added a layer of grossness to it that was viscerally icky. one of those things where like, i can't decide what star rating i want to give this book, because it's horror so it definitely worked as intended by making me so bone-deep uncomfortable, but is 'worked as intended' more important in a rating than 'enjoyed the experience of reading', because i'm not entirely sure the latter is true? it was a very good book, but not, i think, the kind of book that was enjoyable to read, for the most part.

    i don't know — it's almost midnight, so probably too late for me to have just finished a parasite-horror book as someone who's scared to death of bugs (fingers crossed for no nightmares tonight), and probably too late to be questioning what the point of star ratings to review media is in the first place.

    the writing was fantastic, and the way all the narrative threads wove together was incredible to process as i read — even when i thought the book had run out of things to shock me with, the last page surprised me again. rumfitt uses unconventional writing choices (shifting from third to second person between chapters, social media interludes, a section written in script format, addressing the reader directly) really well. this book & tell me i'm worthless have both taken such huge swings at writing horror stories that aren't commonly told and playing with the narrative formats to really hammer those stories home, and i'm excited to see what rumfitt does going forward. it feels wild that this is only her second book.

    in summary: a really well-written & horrifying book that i probably won't ever reread, and wouldn't really recommend to anybody, because this (like tell me i'm worthless) doesn't feel like the sort of book you can recommend someone read without giving them a list of warnings that's about as long as the book itself.

  • 24 the 25th annual putnam county spelling bee (local theater) play comedy
    + my mom was in this at a local theater. fun show, i'd heard a few songs but never the whole thing. wish i had been warned the extent of the audience participation before i volunteered to spell a word in the first act but that's not the show's fault lmao.

    • march

  • 01 laughing stock (local theater) play comedy
    + a friend was in this at a nearby community theater! really fun show. extremely meta in a way that made me glad i grew up so surrounded by community theater so i felt deeply seen by all the in-jokes lmao.
  • 03 leprechaun - dir. mark jones film horror comedy
    + watched w the local horror club.

    fuck you lucky charms!!!

  • 02/26-03/04 the deepwater bride & other stories - tamsyn muir short story collection horror, fantasy
    + really cool to see how the ideas that would eventually become the locked tomb were ironed out through a lot of these stories. favorites: the house that made the sixteen loops of time; the deepwater bride.
  • 05 balatro - localthunk / playstack video game roguelike deckbuilder
  • 04-07 princess floralinda & the forty-flight tower - tamsyn muir novella fantasy
  • 10 holly star - dir. michael a nickles film romance / comedy
    + watched with s. & g.

    i truly have no idea how i even found this movie — it was on my letterboxd list of bad movies to watch with my best friend, but i have no clue when or why i added it. this movie wanted to be about 5 different movies at once, and then the last 10 minutes didn't match up with any of those previously established movies. there were enough moments where me & s. were both like "is this a horror movie??? is this going to become a horror movie????" that we had to pause and double check the genre on letterboxd. super creepy puppets (which i say not as a general puppet hater, i think puppets are neat in general, but these particular puppets are my enemies). a subplot involving a buried bag of cash, the mob, and a LOBSTER WAR??? which NEVER gets resolved because the real treasure is the christmas tree salesman she kissed along the way, or something. everyone in this movie is awful to each other constantly. the protagonist's best friend (who was, coincidentally, the best character in the whole thing) literally tries to kill her SEVERAL TIMES, including STAGING A MUGGING AND SHOOTING HER WITH A PAINTBALL GUN SO THE LOVE INTEREST THINKS SHE'S BEEN ACTUALLY SHOT???

    fucking bonkers, but in a confusing way rather than in a fun campy way.

    • april

  • 19 mamma mia! (25th anniversary tour) musical comedy / romance
    + incredible!!!! i've seen the movie but never seen the live show, and god, they absolutely killed it — the choreography was fantastic all the way through, and alisa malandez as sophie was to die for. any performance that can make me think a scene between a man and a woman is properly sexy deserves an award and jesus christ, lay all your love on me (pre-scuba divers coming out to cockblock) earned that award.

    (it did take me until after intermission to stop immediately thinking of brian david gilbert's vampire versions of songs, which is silly because, like, i know abba. i've liked abba music since way before that album came out. but i've been listening to my halloween playlist lately, which has all of those songs on it, so. took me a moment to remember that mamma mia is not about draculas. can you fucking imagine if it was though?)

  • 21 abigail (dir. matt bettinelli-olpin, tyler gillett) film horror
    + watched w horror club! ballerina covered in blood is always a good aesthetic & i would die for every monstrous little girl in media so i was sold the moment abigail started doing her thing. my wonderful daughter who's never done anything wrong ever.
  • 23 i'm not haunted you're haunted - lost-signals interactive fiction horror

    ongoing ↝

  • now reading: cranioklepty - colin dickey started: 01/05
  • ➜ bluff city
    friends at the table     podcast sci-fi, ttrpg
    february

    to be young near the shore 0 1 2 3 4

    america's playground 0 1 2

    march

    america's playground 3 4 5

    engines on the track 1 2 3
    (was bored by the game mechanics in this one so i skipped it)

    bluff city zoo two 1 2

    give way to open sky 1 2 3 4

  • ➜ you're wrong about
    sarah marshall     podcast nonfiction
    january

    01/01 winter book club: amityville horror pt. 3 with jamie loftus

    series: the o.j. simpson trial 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

    01/09 the battle of the sexes

    01/20 trafficking

    nancy grace 1 2 3 4

    01/25 the godfather

    february

    (* = patreon-exclusive episodes!)

    * 02/03 urban legends & "urban legend" (1998)

    * 02/03 how to become a police psychic

    * 02/03 dragging sia's "music"

    * 02/05 internet famous

    * 02/06 twitch drama, jk rowling, & the democratization of fame

    * 02/06 satanic-ass panic

    * 02/06 princess diana, the crown, & responsible storytelling

    * vicki morgan 1 2

    02/07 tiny tim

    * 02/10 book club: baby island

    * 02/13 the gay agenda

    * 02/14 anne hatha-hate

    * 02/15 spiritualism

    * 02/17 may december

    * 02/18 shakespeare in love

    * 02/21 book club: flowers in the attic

    march

    * book club: britney 1 2

    03/05 balto

    03/19 the oscars streaker

    april

    * book club: britney 3 4

    04/01 hoax spectacular

  • ➜ behind the bastards
    robert evans     podcast nonfiction
    january

    01/04 the company that poisoned 300k babies

    nesara 1 2

    helena blavatsky 1 2 3 4

    orange county 1 2

    roger stone 1 2

    duggar 1 2

    the finders 1 2 3 4

    last days of l ron hubbard 1 2

    reality tv 1 2

    mosley 1 2

    ai cults 1

    february

    ai cults 2

    we can't put this guy's name in the title 1 2

    robert e lee 1 2 3 4

    tb joshua 1 2

    march

    steve jobs 1 2 3 4

    focus on the family 1 2

    dennis the menace 1 2

    fake doctors 1 2

    april

    how conservatism won 1 2

    beria 1 2 3 4

  • ➜ live like the world is dying
    margaret killjoy     podcast nonfiction
    january

    01/01 s1e54: shane burley on conspiracy theories

    01/01 s1e71: emil on arctic hiking

    01/01 s1e66: eric on talking trash on traditional prepping

  • ➜ my brother, my brother, and me
    mcelroys     podcast comedy
    january

    01/02 e692: the naming of 2024

    01/10 e693: run, don't wonk

    01/29 e696: robo wants an oreo

    march

    03/13 e702: accountability for crazy puffs

    03/25 e703: good darn podcasts & e704: cheques mix

    april

    04/01 e705: crispy cuppy puppies

  • ➜ big game hunger
    jenna stoeber     podcast comedy
    january

    01/01 chansey boofy tangrowth

    01/10 plenty of fish

    01/31 level up to christmas romance, holly!

    march

    03/13 drowningman

    03/25 grapple apple pie
    03/25 dark soups

    april

    04/01 the musical: opening night rat heist

    04/16 birthday waifu surprise

  • ➜ cool people who did cool stuff
    margaret killjoy     podcast nonfiction
    january

    01/03 2024 q&a

    01/03 the diggers, the levelers, the ranters

    01/04 the vampires are on our side: antifascism in film

    february

    02/26 the earth liberation front pt 1

    march

    03/04 the earth liberation front pt 2

    03/11 & 03/13 oscar wilde

    03/18 & 03/20 the luddites

    april

    04/01 & 04/03 ada lovelace & lord byron

  • ➜ taskmaster tv show comedy
    january

    01/02 new year's treat 2023

    01/04 new year's treat 2024

    new zealand, s2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    01/16 champion of champions 3

    february

    s9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    april

    s17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  • ➜ guy montgomery's guy mont spelling bee tv show comedy
    january

    s1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

  • ➜ wow if true
    isabel j kim & amanda silberling     podcast nonfiction
    february

    02/08 communism or incompetence
    craving hole
    everybody is using panels
    free floss
    crab rave for kissinger

    02/09 rip omegle
    the horrors

    02/10 locked in a grocery store

    02/14 wow if two

  • ➜ shelved by genre
    ranged touch     podcast nonfiction / media analysis
    march

    series: le guin
    03/06 earthsea pt. 1 & pt. 2

    03/07 the tombs of atuan

    03/08 the farthest shore

    03/15 tehanu

    03/29 tales from earthsea pt. 1

    03/15 next stop christmas

    april

    series: le guin
    04/15 tales from earthsea pt. 2

  • ➜ game studies study buddies
    ranged touch     podcast nonfiction / media analysis
    march 03/08 well met
    + i heard them mention this episode on a shelved by genre ep and got super curious, as someone who grew up super involved in ren fairs, so i listened to it on the train to visit friends. it was really weird, honestly? i'm definitely very interested in the subject (and should probably just read well met myself) but it's super jarring to hear people so outside of the ren fair culture talk about it like it's some alien planet, when, like. my family has been dressing up to go to our area's fair every year since before i was born, my aunt and uncle met both working at the fair, one of my oldest friends works with a traveling jousting troupe at various fairs, etc. even the interview at the end with someone who did work at a fair (and at the fair i've gone to my whole life, at that) was weird, since that person was still coming at it from mostly outside of fair culture. again, should probably just read the book myself! but what a bizarre listening experience????
  • ➜ a more civilized age: a star wars podcast
    austin walker, ali acampora, rob zacny, natalie watson     podcast sci-fi / media analysis
    april 04/03 e01: episode 1

    04/04 e02: episode 2 & e03: the clone wars (2008)

    04/05 e04: ambush and the malevolence arc

    listened to too many without tracking dates so: 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

  • ➜ normal gossip
    podcast comedy
    april 04/18 blood celebrity