Mid

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #183. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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What’s left when we’ve moved on.

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I struggled to put together my game of the year lists this year. If I read more books, I would have struggled to fill out a best of list there too. I gave a lot of 6 through 8 out of 10s in reviews in 2024, and in my personal media consumption I also found myself rating things low. That’s in contrast to a lot of the reviews I’ve read of things that came out this year that were extremely glowing. Just in the realm of games, 2024 brought success in the AAA and indie department, with titles including Metaphor, 1000xResist, Animal Well, UFO 50, and Dawntrail getting mostly if not universally positive reviews.

One person can’t play everything, of course, and maybe I just got a less stacked hand this year. But what I walked away from most of what I read, watched, and played this year, I found things from previous years – or things I’d already seen – made a much greater impression than newer stuff.

Thus, this list, which is not not a recommendation list. I finished all the things on it, after all. We hurl “mid” at all kinds of popular culture and, if we’re mean, into the comments of streamers or on people’s outfit reels. What do we mean when we say it? In other words, what leaves me feeling something is mid when I’m still interested enough to have seen the whole thing? This is my attempt to find out.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I am a documented Dragon Age sicko and true to my word, I have a video essay’s worth of thoughts about Veilguard after I finished it last month. A better word for this one is “median,” or, if you also don’t remember high school math, the middle number within a set of values. Veilguard has a lot of highs, for me those are the environmental design and the codex writing. But it also has some pretty bad lows, those being the introduction and the writing of several companions and main story quests. A lot of this game’s choices seem to be responses to feedback from the previous game, Inquisition, and some scenes have the posture of a defensive tweet, anticipating challenge before it arrives (which, given the right-wing anger about this game, was probably justified). I find myself sad about the conditions this game released into as much as I’m glad it exists at all, and I wonder how much of it will end up sliding into the background.

Worry

At the risk of linking out, you can read my review of Worry for my thoughts about it. This book epitomizes another aspect of “mid” things, which is their draw as a program to run in the back of your mind. I finished reading Worry almost automatically, and some of that is down to the author’s skill at writing conversationally and in the voice of a semi-annoying character, non-annoyingly. The rest I would say is the way the plot unfolds not just quickly but unburdened by itself. As I wrote, “the ending seems to communicate the futility of arranging life moments into a coherent story, but on the other hand, isn’t that what novels are for?”

This is a similar situation to a book I’m reading right now, Hestia Strikes a Match (which I bought at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, who are not mid at all.) A 2023 book about a second US civil war, Hestia feels both appropriate for reading at this particular time and inadequate to the moment it’s trying to picture. Some of this is the same issue as Worry, where each scene feels like a mini movie unconnected to the previous or next, but the way the conflict is sprinkled in also annoys me sometimes. Then again some of it was kinda prescient. Maybe it’s a mistake to read about a civil war right now?

I recently read this essay about Netflix streaming which describes the ideal viewer as one who forgets they’re even subscribed, and most of the fiction I read this year made me forget that I was reading it. I can’t say I hated the feeling – it made it possible for me to get through more books than I would have otherwise – but it does make me wonder if there’s something I’m giving up in exchange.

Speaking of Netflix…

Love is Blind 2024, Part 2 (US)

Yes, I watched the whole season. And yes, it’s not as bad as Season 5. But it’s been not three months since I watched this, and I can’t remember any major plot points beyond the guy with a secret family. Love is Blind is quite literally designed to be “brain off” TV, so I’m not under any illusions about what‘s here. But there have been other seasons – this year, even, with LIB UK! – that were more memorable, warmer and just had things going on. In contrast, this season is like a wet ooze drawing itself farther back out of my consciousness with each day that passes. I think everyone who has to date in Washington DC probably deserves financial compensation.

Athleta Leggings

Sometimes “mid” is just “kinda bad.” I got a pair of these on sale, and I appreciated the apparently premium quality – they were so soft, and the perfect length! Then they got multiple holes before I even washed them. They’re still comfortable, but I regard these as a net loss and I would have been better off with my $20 leggings from American Eagle.

Horticular

This is a cute gardening game that got both too complicated and too repetitive. Making animal ecosystems that overlapped successfully was the epitome of “this sounded fun at the time” but was too opaque for me to understand without googling. This is someone’s perfect podcast game, it just isn’t mine.

These things, mid as they are, were part of the tapestry of my year. As they say, “your life is your life,” or whatever.  And they were important to me beyond their quality as I’ve judged it: I played Dragon Age for a month straight after the election and Love is Blind was my unwinding routine when I started my job. I got something out of everything on this list, even if it doesn’t stick around in my memory.

To conclude, in the spirit of not being a total hater, here are 5 things I loved this year:

• Witch Hat Atelier (the manga)
• The red rice donut from Win Son bakery
• Jusant
• The Leuchtturm 1917 sketchbook
• Travelogue comic

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Emily Price is a freelance writer, digital editor, and PhD candidate in literature based in Brooklyn, New York. You can find her on Bluesky.