What I'm reading

I didn't use this account much last year because, as I alluded to in my last couple of posts, the first half of 2025 was pretty bad in most areas of my life. By the time things got notably better around June, I was making more of an effort to do things outside of my apartment and away from the internet in general, which led me to essentially dropping any writing/specific television plans I was tentatively making. Ended up watching most of Death in Paradise in the background when I was at home. I've been keeping up with my gacha games, which is about as consistent as I was with anything last year.

Probably the biggest change in terms of my media diet was that I started watching anime again. I resumed these review threads I had been making the past few years, this time on Bluesky rather than Twitter. The most notable thing is I got caught up on Jujutsu Kaisen after putting off the second season for ages, and I got to see the special compilation film in theaters last month.

Some additional recent highlights:

☆ Anime: I was starting to get the itch at the beginning of 2025, but I finally fell back into watching anime in earnest starting with a rewatch of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! in order to watch the follow-up movie. It was the second season of My Dress-Up Darling, possibly my favorite anime of 2025, that fully cemented my return, and the summer craze of The Summer Hikaru Died gave me a really nice communal feeling of watching an anime that I haven't felt in years.

I'm already watching current shows and diving into my backlog. Coincidentally, a bunch of my favorite longer running shows are ending this year, such as Fire Force and Dr. Stone. A usual anime convention is off my roster now so I'm keen to seek out more in order to keep myself busy and in the culture.

☆ Television: Despite all the drama and production issues behind the scenes, I actually really loved most of the most recent season of Doctor Who and The War Between the Land and the Sea. Considering we won't be getting anything new until the Christmas Special at the end of the year, I may end up writing out more of my thoughts on the RTD2 era and the episodes I loved and hated in it, as well as finally finish that long-postponed Wilderness years watch.

Like the rest of the world, I fell in love with Heated Rivalry. As a queer man who is the same age at the same time as both of the lead characters, and came out of the closet on a similar timeline, I resonated with a lot of it despite not being a hot sexy pro athlete. As I said above, I fell into a pattern of marathoning through Death in Paradise at a very rapid pace (with breaks between detective changes, much like how I watched Classic Doctor Who). I also went back and watched some "older" queer television shows like the UK Queer as Folk and Sordid Lives, and I really want to keep that up this year (especially the US Queer as Folk, which I've been curious about since I was a teenager but was too scared to watch.)

The one property that, especially the past few months, that has really fallen off for me is Drag Race. The production and discourse around All Stars 10 is a nightmare that continues to this day (in part because certain cast members can't shut the fuck up) and the seventh season of UK was easily the worst of the UK franchise and might be the most excruciatingly boring of all of them. I've also experienced more (but not enough) drag shows in real life and it's really lowered my opinion of some of the people who get on the show with a clear lack of skill and gas themselves up. The recent seasons of Spain and Canada have been excellent, but in all honesty the rumors of Nicole Paige Brooks being cast on Australia vs the World is what's keeping me hanging on at this point.

☆ Gaming: I'm still playing and enjoying Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Wuthering Waves. Genshin and WuWa are in a particularly strong spot right now in my opinion, whereas HSR is in a really weird one. Phainon and Mydei as characters have rewired my brain and I'm lowkey mad I haven't been able to write any fic for them, but that's due in part to the issues I've been having with the game aside from the Currency Wars game mode. The current diplomatic issues between China and Japan has also apparently led to the game scrapping assets for what would have been a Japan-themed region scheduled to drop in a month, so I'm very worried about what this quickly-edited next year of the game will be like. The story of the past year's content was way too bloated and I'm worried this could be a lethal blow to the game.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons also announced, out of nowhere, that there's going to be a new 3.0 update. However, I've been having technical issues with my Switch where controllers won't sync with it, not even the joycons unless they're physically attached, but the months-long issue I've had with my PC has taken precedence.

☆ Theatre: A "new" category for these kinds of posts, but I don't live that far from New York City, and I've come to realize that my only real obstacle to seeing Broadway shows is cost. Logistically, it's actually not that hard? So in the past few months I've seen Beetlejuice and Hamilton on Broadway, and Messy White Gays Off-Broadway. I'm hoping to see more shows in the coming year, such as Oh Mary!, but I also want to see if I can continue my trend in seeing shows with other people and not just settling for going solo (which I'm fine with doing, it's just more fun with other people).

I could go into more things (like concerts and trips) but I think that hits most things I'm interested in talking about on here. I always say I want to post more and then I don't, but I honestly would. It's nice to go back and see what I was up to and what my headspace was like, even if it's just a list of the media I'm consuming. I do want to do more in-depth reviews like I've done in the past, but time will tell.

Happy New Year everyone! Hopefully the rest of it is better than the first week has been.