I haven’t written a retrospective on a departing year in quite some time so since I haven’t done one on cohost, I figure this is a good place to do so! I’ve broken this down into individual sections.

I’m going to miss stuff but whatever. I put the fun stuff at the top and not so fun stuff at the bottom.

Travel

After basically not leaving the country or province in 2020 or 2021, I visited places this year!

Two trips to the Washington DC and Northern Virginia area and then a trip up to Boston. One thing I did that knocked off something on my bucket list was taking an Acela train from DC to Boston–this took about 7 hours.

COVID is still top of mind and I look forward to when I can ease up on some behaviours when being away from home, but I am not going to make any predictions for when this might happen.

Stuff I watched

I watched BBC’s Sherlock (I know it’s over a decade old now), Saki (an anime about mahjong), Akagi (another anime about mahjong), the Evangelion rebuild movies, the Ace Attorney anime series, and Danger 5.

My favourite movie this year was Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s probably the funniest and heart-warming movie I have seen in years. If you haven’t watched this movie yet, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Twitch

I stream on Twitch and made a goal for myself: get 1,000 followers.

As of my writing, I am around 935, but I am up from 650. It isn’t 1,000 as I hoped, but honestly I am glad to have seen my followers go up that high! I just like having people watch me and it means a lot to have new people come on over. It is not an income source for me and never will be, but it’s just nice to put on a show and play games or write code.

When I get to 1,000, I promise I will play the Harvey Birdman Wii game. I have the disc ready to play whenever it happens.

With the tech side of things, my streaming set up was also greatly improved. I got a new microphone and audio input set up so now my mixing is pretty good (thanks to @wuest for harassing me to finally do this), fixed my lighting so my green screen works better, and I finished the year by getting a Stream Deck which makes doing stuff so much easier.

Some games I felt like were a lot of fun to stream this past year:

Final Fantasy VII Remake
Dark Souls III (paused for now but will come back to it)
The Great Ace Attorney
Sealed Bite (which I did as a speedrun for Flame Fatales!)
NieR: Automata (still need to finish)
It’s A Me! (@Hempuli, this game was fucked up okay?)
This coming April, I am doing every stream as anime themed–I am calling this “Anime April”. I am slowly compiling a list of games using an anime licence so if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Games I played

I am ignoring Ace Attorney as I have given the game its own section.

Final Fantasy VII Remake was an absolute joy to play. I bought it for PC and played through it over the course of two weeks. One thing that stood out: I couldn’t tell what was a cut scene and what was actual gameplay. The engine is that good. I am super curious to where the story goes because it has definitely deviated from the original source material.

I cannot wait for the full release of Sealed Bite. It has been delayed a few times, but it has been a blast to learn how to speedrun. You can tell that this game was inspired by Celeste and has borrowed some mechanics from it.

The verdict is still out on my playing of Disco Elysium. I like it so far, but it’s not pulling me in as well as I hoped. I plan to continue my streaming of it in the new year.

I started to play Dark Souls III after hating DS1 a lot and being told to skip DS2 to play this game instead. My responses so far have been to laugh off my deaths so either the game is more entertaining for me or I have changed as a person and I am okay with not doing well.

Ace Attorney

My friends have had to endure a year of me talking about Ace Attorney. I have gotten a tattoo because of Ace Attorney–the yatagarasu symbol which is located on my hip. I have logged around two whole weeks of playtime in Ace Attorney games. I am almost done playing all of the Ace Attorney games.

Have I mentioned I have become an Ace Attorney fan girl?

I’ll be writing about this sometime later when I finish the Great Ace Attorney: Resolve. For now, all I can and will say is that I love this series despite some of the problems games outside of the original trilogy have.

I have plans or a retrospective on these games sometime in January or February.

Frame Fatales

I did two in-person Frame Fatales events this year as a lead and I have no regrets. However, I decided it wasn’t for me as it was a lot of work and was exposing some flaws in me that I felt needing addressing–this is covered in the next section. I’m still on to help out for future events, but there are more ready people to take on roles.

All said, in the past three events I have had a significant hand in, we raised nearly a half million dollars (US) and I am not going to ignore that.

Mental health and relationships

One of the things I decided to do after I ended a relationship late last year was to just not date. It wasn’t as if I had no interests in anyone or lacked opportunities, but I was so unsure to what I wanted and who I wanted to be in any sort of romance I engage in. I am demiromantic so my ability to fall in love is complicated and fraught with internal and external struggle–then add polyamory to the mix to make things harder.

I realised during this time that often I am not nice to myself. There have been times where I have failed to advocate for the things I want and need and that led to some serious shortcomings in past relationships, leading to heartache and problems.

This boiled over during the summer when in succession I had a friend pass away from a brain tumour, another relative pass away two months after one died as well, an encounter with someone I hadn’t planned for but knew was coming, and two weeks of travel for Flame Fatales 2022 and vacation with no ability to decompress from everything beforehand. All of this in a six week period turned me into a real mess.

During a ride I took from Washington DC to Boston via Amtrak’s Acela service after Flame was over, I decided to do things for myself. I wrote a portion of a visual novel story (I am still at this) and watched as the American east coast go right by. It was a rail trip I had on my list of things to do for a very, very long time and I feel like it was a turning point for me: it was time for me to do things for me and to let people into my life again.

A few weeks later, I had a minor operation and went off of my ADHD medication as I figured it would interfere with anaesthesia. Something that had been on my mind prior was how I’d cope without it during that time and instead of discovering how dysfunctional I was without it, I came to realise that I had become a shut-in. I wanted to see people and I wanted to socialise whereas before there was an aspect of me that was shuttered.

I’ve since changed my ADHD medication and I feel better with respect to my attention span and to how I interact with people. Is it the right medication long-term? Time will tell, but I think my previous medication had caused me to create problems for myself and others.

I’m dating again and I am not rushing into anything, but I do hope that 2023 means I will find that partner I can see myself living with. Christmas this year was spent with the family for the first time since 2016 and I think it was the best one I have had since I was a kid. I feel like my mental health and my relationships will be healthier in the new year.

Next year

And on that note, 2023 is going to be a good year for me. There are factors not in my control which mean that it won’t be a great year overall as I cannot anticipate what the world will be like this time next, but I think that what I am doing for myself will be good and that is the important thing.

I want to share what good I do for me with others as well. I hope that I can build on that mindset and that everyone can benefit as much as possible.