Year in Review: 2023

Apologies. I wrote this back in January but didn’t post it. I wanted to share some of my photos, but I didn’t get around to going through them. Maybe I’ll go back later and add some, but for now… let’s just do this.

Personal Deets

The COVID years continue.

My two big trips in 2022 were marred by COVID, and I suspect that’s why I had the urge to hunker down this year. Yet in terms of going out and doing stuff, this has probably been my most active year since before the pandemic. 2020 was going to be my year of “doing stuff”, and in 2023 I finally made good on that intention.

Also, a tree attacked me.

Travel

House sitting in Comox
My parents went travelling in the spring, and while they were away I journeyed to the island and worked out of their place for a week. It was strange being there without them around, but it was good to get out of town for a bit.

Hawai’i!
I went to Italy with a group of friends back in 2012, and this was the sequel. I started writing a post about it over Christmas; if I don’t get it up, then the short version is this: Big Island. Lot’s o’ beaches. So much driving. Three Switches.

Comox
Back to the Island for Christmas. Actually now that I think of it, I was there for the end of 2022, too.

Events

I went to so many shows last year, y’all.

The Critical Hit Show
Vancouver’s premiere live action improvised roleplaying show. It switched to every other month at the Rio last year. I worry it’s reaching its end.

Work events
We had many in-person events this year, including a poker night, a trip to the PNE, and Hallowe’en and Christmas parties. Woo!

Canada Day
I checked out the festivities in Burnaby with Gavin. Lots o’ music and lots o’ food trucks.

Men I Trust concert
At the Orpheum. Details.

The Cure concert
At Roger’s Arena. Details.

Vancouver Canadians
Watching live baseball is surprisingly fun.

The Celebration of Light
The fireworks were on again.

The Vancouver Pride Parade
I’m always out of town when it happens, but this year I got to check it out for the first in time ages. Nch’ú7mut¹! My photos. My tweets

Henry V
At last, my long-overdue return to seeing Bard on the Beach.

Car Free Vancouver
Specifically on Denman Street. It was really crowded, which was good to see.

Liz Miele and Maria Shehata
They put on a comedy show at The MOTN, which is a tiny venue in a vaguely industrial part of Vancouver. We sat on plastic chairs just a few feet away from the performers. It was really cool.

Taylor Tomlinson: The Have It All Tour
Another comedy show. This was a day later at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre — talk about whiplash.

Dara Ó Briain
At the Vancouver Playhouse, a happy medium. He mentioned that his last show in Vancouver was delayed so long that he had to revise the material, because he’d already moved onto the next show.

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 8 screening
At the Rio. It was hosted by Brooke Lynn Hytes of Canada’s Drag Race and featured Jimbo, one of the contestants (and eventual winner of the series). It was followed by an interview, then a quick drag show. I hadn’t seen anything like that in ages.

Wynton Marsalis concert
At the Orpheum. Jazz, performed by experts.

Man on Man, with Devours and Subtop
At the WISE Hall in East Van. The first show in ages I’ve been to where the performers hung out with the crowd in front of the stage. I got to chat a bit with Devours. Also, by far, the queerest thing I saw all year, including Drag Race and the Pride Parade.

Media

Hey. Movies and TV shows. Yeah.

TV

Eurovision viewing party
I started writing a post about this, but never finished it. Long story short: I first watched Eurovision back in Ireland. In 2022 I randomly discovered the live feed on YouTube, and spent the next several hours watching and making snarky comments on social media. So in 2023 I organized a proper viewing party. Sweden’s entry, “Tattoo” by Loreen, has grown on me, but I still think Finland was robbed.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
The anime. It’s the story of Scott Pilgrim, told for the third time, but with twenty years of hindsight.

Movies

I watched other movies, but these are the ones I got a group of people together and saw in the theatre.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
I really dug it. I ended up going a second time with a co-worker.

Barbie
Enjoyable!

Video games

Tunic
It looks like a modern version of the original top-down Legend of Zelda games, but the combat has dodging and stamina like Dark Souls². The dialog and text is in a made up language with occasional fragments of English, including the instruction manual, which you find a page at a time. You have to scrutinze the game to figure out what’s going on, including the manual — I didn’t realize I could run ‘til after I’d beaten the game.

I don’t totally understand the story, but it was an experience.

Also, the devs are Canadian!

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Take The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and cram as much into it as you possibly can. NPCs who can fight with you? Check. New lands in the heavens and the underground? Check. A crafting system that lets you make weapons and vehicles and robots? Check.

I have my complaints. I hated Zelda’s story; the dialogue was often too long; the menus for finding items were rough. But I loved it.

Sea of Stars
Another Canuckistani game! This time it’s an RPG, harkening back to Chrono Trigger. The devs put a tonne of love and polish into the game, and it’s generally good, but it’s less than the sum of its parts.

Minecraft
Yeah, yeah, it’s an ancient game. This year I played on a multiplayer server for a while. Minecraft is at its best when you can help other people, explore their builds, and show off your own.

Baldur’s Gate 3
I’ve been playing once a week with a friend. I had no idea what I was doing at first, and I still don’t, mostly; but I’m really getting into it.

Other

My sister visited!
She brought over the family, and I got to spend a few days as Uncle Nigel. I took them to the aquarium and a bit of Stanley Park. It was great having them around.

Roleplaying

Mountain Home
I … kinda ended the campaign. I sent a message to the group chat saying I’d been having trouble with it lately: I couldn’t figure out what our goal was, or how the game ends. So we talked before one of sessions. The conversation headed towards me saying, “OK, fine, I’m not really having fun anymore.” My group — because they’re awesome — decided that it would end at the conclusion of the next big adventure, and a month or two later we were done.

I wish I understood the system better. Everything to do with the settlement felt more like a board game to me, and I had a hard time connecting it to the more RP parts.

Ah well. We finished a campaign, eh!

Dire Consequences
We then switched to a PbtA³ sci-fi game called Impulse Drive. My character, January Ducouteau, stole a spaceship and ran away from his family of intergalactic assassins. Now he’s running random missions to keep afloat while utterly failing to keep a low profile.

Random 5e game
We also have a new 5e game. I’m playing Dan the Baker, who’s dealing with a brutal divorce and the loss of his bakery. So far he’s started off every session being completely drunk.

As for online roleplaying…

Savage Dominion
I joined a Savage Worlds-based high fantasy campaign. My character was Duggar, orc and Holy Protector of the Order of Dain-Montu. It started off with a quest to rescue a lost tribe of minotaurs, and ended with us fighting a necromancer in the northern Varg lands.

It was a lot of fun. Plus I got to meet the DM (plus wife and kid) and one of the players when they passed through town in the summer.

Tweet thread from the last session.

SInConline
I also participated in an online convention for the defunct Savage Interludes podcast. More specifically, I played a session of Brindlewood Bay, and ran The Wolverines Take the Highway to the Danger Zone again. More deets.

Dragon Fall
One of my fellow players from the Savage Dominion campaign is running a game based off Palladium’s Systems Failure setting. Except his version has dragons instead of aliens, which is always the right call in my book. I play Scrub, a teenager who still believes his parents will come back and find him (they were on a road trip to Disney World when everything fell apart). In the meantime, he’s helping at a camp in Wyoming, when suddenly invaders attack.

We only played two sessions before Christmas, and then everyone was either sick, or busy, or travelling, or combinations thereof. Hopefully we’ll get it going again in the new year.

Summation

Yeah, it goes.