Sick Stuff: August 30, 2022

This is Sick Stuff, a newsletter about Sick stuff to watch, play, read, or listen to from your favorite sick girl.

Watching

Image Source: Rotten Tomatoes

The Resort is a new Peacock original series starring Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper. It starts out with an absurdist mystery vibe kind of similar to Search Party but with hints at potential supernatural circumstances, and less of the self absorbed millennial character trope. Is it a comedy? A drama? A mystery? It’s a bit of each, but none of them in the conventional sense. The deeper you get into the series, the more emotional it gets, and the more the characters develop. New episodes release weekly on Thursdays, with the finale airing this week. This show has me totally hooked, desperate for each episodes weekly release and each new revelation as we march towards the finale. If you haven’t checked it out, I definitely recommend.

Listening To

I don’t always talk about the cognitive aspects of my illness, or about how for the first year and a half of my illness I was so easily over stimulated that many things I previously enjoyed just became too much. On the one hand, I stopped being able to tolerate reading without unleashing headaches or exhausting myself, and switched full time to audiobooks, and almost paradoxically I also became SUPER sensitive to sounds and had to completely stop listening to music. As someone who spent their twenties going to indie shows, and listing off band references like there was no tomorrow this was pretty hard to get used to. Many things are still too much, but after over a year of neurofeedback and other various treatments, music is back in my life.

This playlist is an amalgamation of the two personal playlists I’ve been listening to in my more energetic moments this summer. A mix of mainstream and indie pop, and other newish upbeat indie tracks, I recommend this playlist for driving with all the windows down or living room dance parties (in my case seated ones, good thing I got expressive shoulder moves to fall back on :P).

Image Source: Screen grab of audiobook cover of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

I recently finished listening to Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, which was the August Literary League bookclub pick. Surreal and atmospheric, this is a quick but beautiful novel. A story about Miri and her wife Leah who has returned after 6 months lost in a submarine deep in the sea, it deals with grief, loss, and the unknown. This book is best experienced without knowing too much going in, and the audio version was especially immersive. Listening often felt like floating in a hauntingly alluring world, as Armfield crafts the narrative bit by bit. I could have stayed there longer, but at the same time, I wouldn’t change a thing about the way the story unfolds.

Playing

Image source: Progameguides.com

There’s been a lot of buzz about Cult of the Lamb since release, at least in the circles I run in, but for good reason. This game is incredibly addicting, and when I play I often get sucked in for hours at a time. For something that I would still consider a cozy game, this game has a darker edge and much more dungeon crawling like combat than the games I normally play. Admittedly I am playing on easy mode because I’m pretty awful at combat, and for me it’s a challenge but not frustratingly so. Cult of the Lamb has the management sim elements of games like Animal Crossing, except you’re a cult leader and any of your “villagers” can be sacrificed at anytime. You also will do the bulk of your resource gathering while on runs through dungeons of enemy deities, slowly building up to bigger and bigger bosses. If your experience is anything like mine, the combination of these mechanics will really draw you in. The illustrated art style is also gorgeous, and manages to be cute despite also being kind of dark and creepy. Cult of the Lamb is out on PC and Switch.

Image source: whitethorngames.com

The second game on my list this time, couldn’t feel more different despite also falling onto the cozy game spectrum. Apico is a VERY mellow beekeeping sim, with lots of crafting and inventory management, in a charming 2D pixel art style. There is a biological component to this game that I haven’t gotten deeply into yet (breeding bees for specific traits, etc). But if you like farming sims like Stardew Valley for their repetitiveness and the satisfaction of accomplishing small tasks more than the storyline, you will like this game. It’s perfect to play for an hour or two when you just wanna craft some items, check on your bees, and slowly work your way through the various achievements to unlock new details. FYI when Apico was first released on Switch there was a crafting glitch, that made the game progress too fast. Once the glitch was fixed I restarted my save and have been much happier with the pacing. Apico is out on PC and Nintendo Switch.

And that’s it for this installment, I hope you’ve got plenty to keep you busy until the next time I bring you more Sick Stuff.