Hello. When I was a teenager I used to really hate this time of year; in the early years I’d only see Mum for a few hours because she wasn’t well enough to go through more than cooking and eating Christmas lunch, and then the people I ended up with after she died approached it with an almost alien sense of joy, with their own strange traditions that I didn’t want to take part in. I was proud to be a bit Scroogey.

These days, if I’m asked, I’ll ramble on about Christmas being a moment of light in darkness — how it’s a time for us to see family (however that looks for us), to get a little rest and share good food and company and count our blessings in a world gone mad. And goodness, what a mad year this has been; the background stink of things are getting worse has been harder to ignore, as the world lurches rightwards, gets covered in AI-generated slop, and turns a blind eye to horrors in the Middle East.

Every time I sit down to write this little annual good-content-year-in-review thing the weirder it feels to do; the miserable world outside is a stark contrast to the new friends, new activies, proper holiday, love, support and service of my own year. I wake up every day and get through it, intact, despite everything, because I live in a “safe” part of the world in comfort and with luxuries, even though things feel darker than ever. And yet at Christmas, we face the dark world around us and dare, just for a couple days, to surround ourselves with the light we have — and what a lovely thing that is.

I hope you and yours have found some light this Christmas, and you have a peaceful 2025.

I’ve had a rough year, man.

In between a couple of nice personal achievements and a lovely few days by the sea I have felt myself get buffeted by events over and over again. I have had to keep myself calm through the uncertainty of a health scare, help my fiancé process grief, stay optimistic through illness after illness, and keep on top of my life and as many of my responsibilities as I could as if nothing was ever going wrong. And sitting here, writing all of this eight months in to the year, it feels like time has flown by. Like I haven’t been able to sit down and feel any of it.

That sense of not being able to feel properly has been a bit of a common thread in my life. When my Mum died 15 years ago I trapped the raw pain of seeing her unconscious on our living room floor and refused to let myself feel anything. My Dad had to tell me that it was okay to have emotion, that acting like a Vulcan — we watched Star Trek: Voyager together as my Mum went through chemotherapy — would do more harm than good. But it felt like I would struggle, like I would suffocate, if I let the reality in.

Hello. What a January, eh? The longest month of the year was full of layoffs, miserable headlines and the beginning of Trump's seemingly inevitable return to the White House. I also got tonsilitis, again. Maybe twice. Uhh, at least we had The Traitors? (I know this is a linked list, but honestly, you should watch The Traitors. It's very fun, incredibly camp, and Claudia Winkleman acts like she's trying to win an Olivier.)

Anyway, I said we'd try something different, so here we are. Welcome to Good Links. Here's some cool things from the web.

It Happened To Me: I Was A Daily Video Game Blogger

Hello. You might have noticed that things look a little different around here; that’s because Good Screen is now hosted on Buttondown. To cut a long story short, Substack has a Nazi problem, and like many other newsletters I decided to leave the platform. I don’t need Substack’s obsession over growth and engagement, or its weird Twitter competitor, and I don’t want to be in the Nazi bar. Buttondown has been a straightforward place to call home, and the people behind it personally helped out with the move (thanks, Justin and team). You don’t need to do anything; such is the joy of email being so open.

Anyway, it’s 2024, I’ve spent almost the entire first month of this year being sick, and I am once again trying something different with this newsletter. Last year I gave you Good Content; like a lot of my attempts to write at least one thing a month, it didn’t really end up working out. So I’m going to try doing something different, again: taking inspiration from some of my favourite newsletters and blogs, I’m going to do a bit of everything.

I’m going to share pieces that I’ve read and found interesting, often with a little extra flavour by me, à la Daring Fireball’s Linked List. I’m going to talk about Good Content like I used to, but probably more in the vein of this early Good Screen piece on Cyberpunk 2077, or in really small bites like I did in my year end piece. I’m also going to try hard to have an interesting take on something every now and then — probably technology and media, but we do have an election around the corner here in the UK, so you never know.

I hope that interests you enough to stick around; unlike with Substack, I’m going to stick to Buttondown’s defaults and not let it track whether you read this. If you like it, I’d love it if you could share it, but there’s no pressure for you to do so — this is just a silly little email sent by a silly little me.

Hello. Long time no see, again. I didn’t feel super comfortable naming a piece “Things that got me through 2023” this year, or sticking to the structure of the last few years, abuzz with buttons telling you to subscribe for a year ahead. This is a silly little newsletter about the things I’m excited about in the here and now, and it’s been a lovely year personally; I got to go to a long-standing friend’s wedding on one of the hotter days of the year, I got to check seeing Beyoncé and Kylie Minogue off my bucket list, and I have made lovely new friends.

At the same time, it’s been a particularly hard year to get through. My physical and mental health have been really bad this year. I have felt like a horrible friend. The stench of decay in the state of things in the UK has been overpowering, and as I wrote the first draft of this the news on the radio was led by the conviction of Brianna Ghey’s murderers and the continuing genocide in Gaza.

Hope is in short supply, and as we edge towards the mid-2020s it does feel like this is the running theme for every year now; that any flicker of positive change feels further out of sight, as more people at home and abroad suffer while those in power idly watch on. As we celebrate a festival of light in the darkness, I hope — perhaps beyond hope — that things get a little bit better for everyone, and that you and yours have a peaceful year ahead.

Hello and happy Pride Month! June is obviously the best month to talk about the content I enjoyed from [checks notes] Easter. Oops. Listen, I’ve been sick for the last couple of weeks and before that I was busy actually consuming all of the content I am about to call Good, so this is horribly late but with any luck I’ll be able to get things back to normal from here on out. What is normal? I don’t know! We’ll figure it out!

Here’s some stuff I liked this spring/early Summer.

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Persona 4 Golden

You’d think I’d be a lot more excited about this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Sam Ryder’s incredible second place finish meant the UK took on Ukraine’s hosting duties, so the most wonderful time of the year was going to be a few trains away for the first time in 25 years. We had gone from being so bad I talked about Eurovision being on ITV to getting to play host in the city of the Beatles, two mediocre football teams, and The Vivienne. Truly, Gay Christmas was coming home.

…and then I actually tried to buy tickets for the damn thing. Stuck on a video call with a work bestie I’d planned to go to Liverpool with, we had so many Ticketmaster tabs ready to head to something I figured we’d be more likely to get — an evening preview of a semi-final — only to be completely locked out of the show. Of course, I could just go to Liverpool and experience the atmosphere — but then came the price-gouged hotels and Airbnbs, and the train strikes1, and it just didn’t end up being workable.

I will also confess I’ve not actually listened to all of this year’s songs with much interest. The UK hasn’t, in my view, met the high standard it set for itself last year, and it does feel like a bigger number of countries are phoning it in this time around — so there’s not been a huge amount compelling me to sit and work through 36 songs ahead of the chaos that is the semi-finals. With that caveat out of the way, let’s take a look at a few of my favourites from the 67th Eurovision Song Contest — and spoilers, but one of these is probably going to win the whole thing.

Hey! My brain is bad and I have been trying to write something cool and longform for actual weeks, but it’s not hitting the standard I want to hit. So I’m gonna just do some small bits about some stuff I really liked in one of the busiest months of my year. I hope you like it!

Oh! Also! I’m using Substack Notes a little, so if you have the Substack app on your device you’ll see my posts — although don’t expect much, I’m not super enthused about the whole thing.

Pentiment

Hello! February came and went really quickly, and I got sick at the end of the month, so it’s taken me a little time to get around to this. Here’s a few things I enjoyed this month; I hope you’re well, wherever you are.

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Hi-Fi Rush

It’s been a while since a game’s announcement made me grin like a goofy little kid, but Hi-Fi Rush did just that. A rhythm-action beat-em-up, you say? With a properly licensed soundtrack, an cartoon aesthetic, and a world where everything moves to the beat? Sign me the heck up.

Hello! I’ve been off Twitter for a bit over a month now, and while it’s been great for my mental health it’s sort of jammed the part of my brain that could habitually post. I’ve been meaning to do this as a sort of “oh hey, I don’t tweet about things anymore, here’s what I like in an email instead” kind of thing for a couple of weeks but it’s just not quite come until now, right at the end of the month, for reasons I will absolutely not unpack in your inbox.

Anyway. Good Content was a thing I tried in my sporadic Substacks last year, and this year I’m going to do what I can to make them a more regular thing. Think of this as a #content diary, if you will, that’ll help future Avery remember what they liked eleven months down the line. Let’s start, shall we?

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The Last of Us

2022 has been a weird year. So many people have suffered, so many tech bros have done stupid things, and everything feels like it’s falling apart.

With that in mind, this year’s edition of this end-of-year thing I do is a bit more personal than it’s been in the past. I hope it’s still something nice to read, and there’s also a few slices of Good Content at the end of it.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, have a great 2023.

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I’ve been going to Gay Church for the last few months. That’s not a funny way of describing something that isn’t a church, by the way — it’s a literal, inclusive Anglican church. The kind where God and queer people are respected and celebrated. Through a difficult, chaotic period of my life St Nicholas’ has been a real source of strength and love.

It’s also where I got to meet my friend Freddie, who made a cute little TikTok showing how we combine the symbols of our faith with the symbols of who we are at St Nick’s. There were some lovely comments, but there was one that stuck in my head:

What does this church actually do to support the LGBTQIA+ community? Flags are cute but flags alone don’t do much.

I think it’s right that we ask this kind of question. Too often in pride month, we see organisations of all shapes and sizes slap a pride flag on their premises, or on their logo, and call it a day. Don’t get me wrong; it would be easier for St Nick’s to break out the flags in pride month, throw out some generic affirmations, and think we’re done. Heaven knows we’d have fewer broken windows, fewer defaced signs.

Hello! Last weekend was a strange one for me, as someone who’s spent most of the last decade trying to argue against Britain’s two biggest Eurovision myths: that the rest of Europe hates us, and that it’s purely a political contest.

Let’s start with that first one, because my goodness, what a result for the United Kingdom. To go from being the first country under the post-2016 voting system to win zero points from both the national juries and the televote to winning the former outright and coming fifth in the latter is no mean feat. Britain’s joint-best result since 1998 is the result of a lot of hard work from TaP Music and Sam Ryder, of course, but it’s also the result of the BBC finally bothering to show up and take the show seriously. That was the real barrier to British success, not some pretended frustration with Brexit.

Everything came together; a fantastic, humble act, performing a good song with incredible vocal range and striking staging, placed towards the end of the second half of the contest (generally the best place to be in the running order). If this is the foundation of a new British attitude to Eurovision, then it can really only be a matter of time until the juries and public decide it’s time to give the UK the winner’s trophy for the first time since I was in nappies.

Hello. Gay Christmas is almost here! This year’s annual festival of songs and high camp takes place in Turin, after Måneskin made an entire continent horny and then became global stars. I don’t think such a barnstorming success is likely this year, but given the last two winners have managed to find success stateside anything could happen — and the standard is really high this year.

Let’s have a look, then, at some standout songs from this year’s contest, the final of which airs on May 14th. Let the Eurovision Song Contest article begin!

Italy - Mahmood and Blanco, Brividi

Hello. Back in 2013, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings declared that, fresh off the acclaimed first season of House of Cards, his company’s goal was “to become HBO faster than HBO can become us”. It was a bold bet; Hastings saw streaming as the future for the kind of buzzy, critically-acclaimed content that had made HBO a household name. The next Game of Thrones, so the thinking went, would be on Netflix, not a premium cable network.

Fast forward nearly a decade, and the first thing Netflix thinks I’ll love is its new original series Is It Cake?, a reality baking competition it’s keen to tell me is “based on a popular meme”. Also recommended: The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, yet another Netflix reality dating format which dares to call itself a groundbreaking social experiment. My fiancé’s recently been glued to Old Enough!, an imported Japanese show in which literal toddlers are tasked with going out to the shop and picking up some things on their own, a premise that gives me anxiety before I even watch a single minute.

It’s safe to say, then, that Netflix hasn’t so much become the next HBO so much as it’s become the next Sky, or the next basic cable: a hugely popular pay TV service that dazzles you with choice, only to leave you aimlessly thumbing through its library when you’ve finished something everyone else has said is good. So if Netflix is just what we watch by default now, what’s the real next HBO?

Right now, it’s probably Apple TV+. Apple’s decision to join the streaming wars in 2019 was pretty nakedly profit-driven; Tim Cook had been talking up new ways to make money from services as iPhone sales inevitably plateau. But when you have literally hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on whatever you want, it turns out you can make some pretty fantastic TV.

Hello. I was going to throw together a bit of a ramble about Netflix’s newest price hike here in the UK, and how I feel like its value proposition is falling apart as it throws content at the wall and sees what sticks, but it all kind of… fell apart.

The last month has been weird, honestly, and at times it’s been difficult to string together a cohesive thought. Some of the news I’ve had has been good, some of it bad, and all of it has gotten in the way of being able to push out something good. I might turn some of it into #content in the future, I may not. We’ll see.

So here’s the deal: this edition of Good Screen is all Good Content. Think of it as a diary of cool things I’ve been consuming over the last month, while my brain has resembled a pile of scrambled eggs. I hope if you’re also not having a great time right now this can lighten the load a bit for you — and until next time, take care.

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Hello. I’ll level with you — it’s felt really weird trying to put something together about a comedy show while the news and social media have been consumed by endless misery. In line with what I’ve said on Twitter I’m going to steer away from hot takes, but I am going to use Good Content to point you in the direction of reliable journalistic sources and well-established charities. And for goodness’ sake, take breaks from the doomscroll cycle if you need them.

Anyway, let’s talk about a Swedish twink in a skin-tight catsuit.

It’s always a delight to see the Leicester Comedy Festival grace my home city’s various venues, especially after Covid forced the event to go virtual last year, but for me the real gem of last month’s Leicester Comedy Festival was watching Linus Karp roll into town1. His one-man show, How To Live A Jellicle Life: Life Lessons From The 2019 Hit Movie Musical “Cats”, had caught my eye not just with its title but with its premise: a dissection of Tom Hooper’s 2019 CG fever dream, and the ways the film can teach us to be better- sorry, more jellicle in our everyday lives.

Hello! I hope 2022’s treating you well so far. For me, like most other years the start of 2022 has involved watching a cultural event pass me by, and much like Tiger King and Squid Game before it my experience of Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been through hovering around my fiancé’s screen on my lunch break.

It's not that I'm disinterested; Arceus is basically Breath of the Wild, right down to its musical cues and UI design, and I love that game to bits. I’m just honestly having trouble reconciling the notion that the makers of one of the most commercially successful video game franchises of all time have made a game that performs like it was made by five people on a budget of 50p and a packet of cigarettes. I don’t want to be uncharitable to the hard work of no doubt hundreds of developers, but watching Digital Foundry take apart the game's technical shortcomings reminded me of Dolly Parton’s delightful self-deprecating quote - it takes a lot of money to look this cheap.

In the meantime, I've been scratching my critter collecting itch with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, a remake of the first Pokémon game I ever played. I had my concerns over Game Freak’s outsourcing of this most precious of remasters to little-known support company ILCA, along with their decision to use ugly chibi models in the game’s overworld, but it all largely holds up; it's a ladle of delicious nostalgia, poured into a Switch-shaped soup bowl and ready for you to savour.

What an odd year 2021 has been. We started it with Covid cases skyrocketing and no obvious government plan to contain the spread, and we ended it with, um…

Oh no.

Anyway, in the vein of 2020’s edition, it’s time to talk about the things that got me through a year that has been personally pretty great, but politically and socially exhausting.

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Hey! Hope you’re doing well. It’s obviously been a while and suddenly I’ve thrown a lengthy email about the next version of Windows in your inbox. (Thank you for reading that, by the way.)

I’m sorry it’s taken four months to write something. The short of it is my mental health has been in the doldrums, and that makes it hard to focus my brain on writing one thing, let alone two things a month. Between modding 11,000 people on Daði Freyr’s Discord server and having ~life stuff~ go on in the background it’s often felt like a slog to make things. My hope is that as summer becomes autumn, we’ll be back on track, but I’m not going to set a guarantee for a number of posts.

You may have also noticed I’m back on Substack after a brief courtship with Letterdrop. This platform, like basically every platform on the web, has its fair share of arseholes (hi, Graham), but it’s also actually focussed on making tools writers use — and Letterdrop was very obviously just focussed on email marketing. The platform didn’t suit my needs and I did not have the energy to do anything other than come back. We’re stuck here for now.

Anyway, thank you for being around and subscribing. If you’ve found any of the stuff I’ve done this year even vaguely interesting, then this is all worth it. Until next time…