Anna's Favorite Things 2023
On the media I loved most this year!
In the spirit of end-of-year list making, I’ve constructed my own collection of media from 2023! This was my first full year of being a faculty, where I developed three whole college courses (Polymer Processing & Sustainability, Plastics in Society, and Green Chemical Engineering) and started an ADVANCE Award-winning project on how students are using ChatGPT in the classroom. I gave several talks at various universities about the importance of trans inclusion in STEM. I got into DJing and painting, even releasing some mixes to YouTube. I started navigating disability and learned so much about what my body needs. Lastly, I started dating a really wonderful human, and this relationship has been so healing for me! As usual, it was a good year for me, but a terrible one for the world (see: any of my posts from this year).
I hope that you check out some of these books, films, games, videos, and albums from this past year! May your 2024 be peaceful and full of media literacy! (Oh yeah, and you can read last year’s Best List here.)
Enjoy! <3
Some Books I Read This Year
“Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex” by Angela Chen (2020)
If you read one book about asexuality, let it be this one. “Ace” covers a lot of ground, from the medicalization of asexuals to the intersections of aceness with race and gender. I’ve identified as demisexual for 5 years, and even I read things that made me say, out loud, “they’re just like me for real!”
Buy it here: https://www.angelachen.org/ace
“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell (2019)
I listened to this via audiobook while driving and doing chores. So basically, I think I need to re-read it.
Buy it here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600671/how-to-do-nothing-by-jenny-odell/
“Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color” (2018)
If you love poetry, this collection is as excellent as it is devastating.
Buy it here: https://nightboat.org/book/nepantla-an-anthology-dedicated-to-queer-poets-of-color/
“Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century” edited by Angela Chen (2020)
I read this just a couple of months into my own disability journey. I started using a cane in May, and this book taught me so much while assuring me of the disabled community’s collective power. I’m so grateful for this essay collection.
Buy it here: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/book/dv/
“The Mysteries” by Bill Watterson and John Kascht (2023)
The one book from this year that I actually did read was a short story from the author of Calvin & Hobbes. The polar opposite of Jim Davis, who plastered his orange cat’s face on anything he could, Bill Watterson is an intensely private person who never sold a stuffed Hobbes in his life. For the author of one of the best comics of all time to disappear from the face of the planet for 28 years, only to return with a short story about—well, you should read it to find out—should tell you how important this book is.
Buy it here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mysteries/Bill-Watterson/9781524884949
My Movie Of The Year: “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture”
The best movie of the year was not Barbie (2023); it was an independent documentary about the addition of the word “homosexuality” to the Christian Bible.
The film wastes no time getting to the point, opening on the fact that there have been many translations of the document over the hundreds of years of its existence, and that no one version should be treated as authoritative. In the next segment, the filmmakers break down how a Greek word that loosely meant “those who commit sexual abuse” was mistranslated as “homosexuals” by a group of translators in the 1930s and 40s, ultimately ending up in a popular 1946 translation of the Bible. We then follow the devastating timeline of how the translators realized they made a mistake, but by being too late in correcting it, allowed for several other translations to take this idea that “gay = sin” and run with it, adding the word into several other places in the text where it had never been before. The whole story unfurls like watching a documentary about a virus, from patient zero to a few dozen cases to a global pandemic, except instead of disease, it’s misinformation that spreads, resulting in homophobia enacted by Christian bigots.
And yet, the film never feels too academic, threading this information through the personal narratives of its documentarians, themselves Christians who are (or who deeply love) homosexuals, and who struggle to maintain their connection with God and the church community they call home. You feel the crushing reality that a complete mistake has torn gay people’s lives apart, including gay Christians who are stripped of their community and sense of self. Once the film ends, you realize that being a “good Christian”—loving thy neighbor, harboring strangers, giving your wealth away, etc.—is pretty much the complete opposite of what evangelicals call their followers to do when they bash gays, immigrants, and other marginalized peoples, and consolidate wealth through megachurches and conservative tax policies.
In a time where anti-LGBTQ+ violence is on the rise globally, with Christian bigots leading the fight, this may be the most important film of the 21st century so far. Please go watch it and tell 5 friends about it! You can watch it online between now and January 14th at: https://www.1946themovie.com/
My Game of the Year: Tchia
Tchia (dev. Awaceb) is a game inspired by the culture of New Caledonia. This Zelda-like adventure game is full of soul, emerging from a deep collaboration between the developers and the Indigenous people of Melanesia.
The main gameplay draw is that the titular character can “soul jump”, entering the bodies of wildlife (birds, crabs, etc.) and even inanimate objects (wood planks, lamps, etc.) to explore a rich world and defeat enemies made of enchanted fabric. The game’s story is one of resisting a greedy, imperial power that seeks to imprison those who fight the current regime. When meeting new characters, you often play a musical mini-game, and at any at time you can pull out a ukulele to cast magical spells a la Ocarina of Time. To map out new sections of the world, you reach special high-altitude locations and perform a Shout, your voice resonating across the land and revealing the locations of collectibles. The sheer diversity of the islands’ peoples is beautiful, and the game even features a queer relationship that I won’t spoil!
The biggest problem with open-world titles is that traversing open worlds isn’t always fun. Huge games like Elden Ring and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom—another contender for my favorite game of 2023—can get away with having mind-bendingly expansive worlds by offering you mounts or vehicles to ride on. Other games pack their maps with content to make hours of navigation worth it. But my favorite open-world games make the simple act of moving around the world an engaging experience; you’re never bored firing off arrows in The Pathless or surfing around on Plessie in Bowser’s Fury. Tchia’s soul jumping ability makes traversal simple and engaging; nothing is more satisfying than becoming a bird to zip up a mountain, or to get back down, jumping into a rock to prevent fall damage. When you’re sailing through the game’s vast ocean, you need to let go of the steering stick to raise the sails and increase you speed (and vice versa), adding an element of thought that I imagine stick shift drivers experience (although in the real world, I’ll take automatic, thanks). Also, just exploring the land by foot can yield collectibles which allow you to increase your stamina, make Offerings to in-game characters, change Tchia’s outfit, and more.
The game is blooming with charm, from the vivid storytelling that truly sounds like an ancient tale—because it literally is—to the fact that you have an in-game camera that you have to manually focus, and you can’t view the photos you take with it until you visit a photo lab to develop them. Genius! The game also comes with loads of accessibility options, from auto-playing the music mini-games to skipping entire gameplay segments if they’re too difficult.
Tchia is my personal Game of the Year and I’ll be recommending it to everyone I know! You can play it now on Windows, PS4, and PS5, plus it’s coming to Steam in March 2024.
I should also mention that this year I finally played Neon White (2022)—it slaps—and I spent a not-insubstantial amount of this year replaying Pokémon Crystal (2001). I’m nothing if not consistent!
My Top Albums of the Year
Last but not least, my favorite music of the year! I elaborate more about why I love these albums in my latest TikTok video, but suffice to say, it was a great year for music! My album of the year is JAGUAR II by Victoria Monét, a true no-skip album whose opening track features the line “to the left, to the right, ’long as it rotates / it’s a bisexual blunt, it can go both ways”. Immediate AOTY spot just for that.
To sample these excellent albums, check out this TIDAL playlist <3
- JAGUAR II, Victoria Monét
- Sundial, Noname
- the record, boygenius
- The Age of Pleasure, Janelle Monáe
- Heartbreak Highway, Cannons
- My Soft Machine, Arlo Parks
- Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, Caroline Polachek
- Lahai, Sampha
- The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Chappell Roan
- Inuktitut, Elisapie
- That! Feels! Good! Jessie Ware
- LFG, INJI
- Javelin, Sufjan Stevens
- CLUSTERFUNK, Ric Wilson
- Cracker Island, Gorillaz
- Princess Forever, Dreamer Isioma
- Red Moon in Venus, Kali Uchis
- My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, ANOHNI & The Johnsons
- The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, Mitski
- MICHAEL, Killer Mike
- BB/ANG3L, Tinashe
- The Loveliest Time, Carly Rae Jepsen
- Scaring The Hoes, JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown
- World of Hassle, Alan Palomo
- The Last Night of Sadness, Jenn Champion
Thank you for reading That Anna Marie Newsletter. This post is public so feel free to share it.
My Favorite Videos of 2023
(Everything by Lily Alexandre, but especially) Why Are People Trans? & 2010s Pop Feminism: A Painful Look Back
The only YouTuber I drop everything for when a new video comes out.
