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Anna's Favorite Things 2025

On all the media I loved most this year.

Another year of sweet, sweet content. For my last post of 2025, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite albums, games, and more from 2025. Since this is a newsletter about gender, technology, & culture, most of the works obviously pertain to that theme, though I hope you enjoy the music and gaming content as well.

Here are all my Best Lists from previous years:

Favorite Things 2024

Favorite Things 2023

Favorite Things 2022

My Top Albums of the Year

I end every other newsletter with a few music recommendations. After a year of diligently listening to new albums (and even buying a few CDs), here are my top 25 albums of 2025. The best of these is THE BPM by Sudan Archives, a Sudanese-inspired house/dance record dripping with queerness and pain. Check out a TIDAL playlist featuring tracks from all of these albums below.

AOTY 2025 Sampler: https://tidal.com/playlist/8458d057-1817-46d1-a14d-0c1994b7b5b3

THE BPM, Sudan Archives
Let God Sort ‘Em Out, Clipse
Don’t Tap The Glass, Tyler, The Creator
West End Girl, Lily Allen
Belong, Jay Som
BITE ME, Renée Rapp
Lotus, Little Simz
Billboard Heart, Deep Sea Diver
HYPERYOUTH, Joey Valence & Brae
Send A Prayer My Way, Julien Baker & TORRES
AM I THE DRAMA?, Cardi B
EUSEXUA, FKA twigs
When Are You Leaving?, NoSo
Forever is a Feeling, Lucy Dacus
Magic, Alive!, McKinley Dixon
Significance, Otherness, Burs
Through The Wall, Rochelle Jordan
GIRLS, Princess Nokia
MAYHEM, Lady Gaga
The Villain, Mal Blum
AMERIKA’S NEXT TOP PARTY, PARTYOF2
Welcome to My Blue Sky, MOMMA
Patience, Moonbeam, Great Grandpa
For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), Japanese Breakfast
Girl Violence, King Princess

My Game of the Year: Blue Prince

2025 kept me busy with tons of new game releases, including some for the new Switch 2. Donkey Kong Bananza was a non-stop carnival of destruction that activated all my dopamine receptors. Ghost of Yōtei was so gripping that I wrote a whole essay about one of its story beats. Kirby Air Riders is a game for the freaks, Sword of the Sea (the follow up to my favorite game of all time) was short but memorable, and the two new Deltarune chapters continue a delightful story that I can’t wait to see conclude. All of these made me want to give their developers a handshake, hug, or smooch on the cheek, depending on which they consent to, if any.

My actual game of the year made me want to kill the developers with hammers. Blue Prince is a puzzle game whose main mechanic will remind players of tabletop all-timer Betrayal at House on the Hill; as you walk through a mansion, you reveal rooms one by one and must navigate it with limited resources to reach the back end. However, the room tiles you draw are totally random, and the mansion resets at the end of every day.

Much has been made about the frustrating “difficulty” of this game. After enough time, you will reach a point where you know exactly what you have to do but you simply aren’t drawing the right room tiles to finish the game. This frustration is unavoidable. However, if you can accept this limitation and make peace with the fact that you will have to reset a lot to finally roll credits, there is a feast of interlocking puzzles awaiting you. Besides, maybe not every game should be like Donkey Kong Bananza, blasting your dopamine receptors with non-stop progression; if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Bluesky post from @lincolnhello.bsky.social. “a major issue with video games is that they produce a bunch of people who consider themselves brain geniuses for solving problems that were designed to be solvable. as a remedy, we should be making more games that are actively and irreconcilably hostile to the player. thank you”

My Favorite Videos of 2025

All of these videos can be viewed in this playlist on my YouTube page!

YouTube is a major part of my media diet, despite finally kicking YouTube Premium this year. “Video Essay” is now a slur in many spaces, and it is true that many “creators” online simply churn out reaction slop. Here, I’ve curated some works that are really work your time, with many clocking in under 20 minutes.

Snooze Quest is a short film made my today’s greatest living artist, vewn. Videos like Steph Sterling’s essay on algo-speak covers how content algorithms are changing society in negative ways, a common subject in this very newsletter. Verity Ritchie’s piece on sci-fi fashion is as close to the literal definition of “video essay” as you can get; an actual essay with academic sources that happens to use video to demonstrate its arguments to the viewer. A few of these are just plain fun, like one were a guy uses VFX to show how big Pokémon really are. The longest videos are actually compilations of long-running series, like ThaRixer’s series on the history of Jak 3 speedrunning or the Netflix-quality documentary series on cassette tapes from Digging The Greats’ Brandon Shaw.

Stay curious, folks!

My Book of the Year: Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

While I try to stay abreast of albums, essays, and games as they come out, I’m not so strict about the books I read. This one, for example, came out in 2023, but I read it this year. I also usually read non-fiction, so when I make a fiction recommendation, you should know that it’s excellent. Chain-Gang All-Stars is one of those books that make you uncomfortable with just how plausible it all is; if America stays on the path it’s on now, we can absolutely expect televised bloodsport. (We may not even be that far off.)

Buy it from your local bookstore!

My Movie of the Year: Sinners

I don’t watch a ton of movies, but this was hands-down the best theatrical experience I had in years. Watch Ryan Coogler explain the use of aspect ratios in the film, then go watch the film.