Correspondence From Limbo

Hello! 

We’re here again. The year has come and gone. I hope it’s been a good one for you. I’ve found this year to be more than a little bit strange. There’s been a lot of good, but there’s been some difficult times as well. While this sounds a little bit vague, it’s because I find myself facing an uncertain future as I look down the barrel of 2026.

But that is an issue for next year. Before 2025 ends, I want to look back at some of my favourite things from the year that was, with the annual Limbo Awards; the only awards show that is completely fictional on this website. Before we get to the winners, we do have some contenders who unfortunately did not make the list this year. So, here are the “Also-Rans”!

• Retry: Elden Ring season three – It takes guts to stretch the Let’s Play of a game out for three years and expect that viewers will still come back, but RKG has that confidence in their audience. And that confidence is not unfounded. This last season of Aunty Finchy’s adventures might have been frustrating in some parts, but was still an absolute delight to get through, with some fantastic moments. Give it a watch if you can.
• The Bear season four – While there are plenty of people who have given up with The Bear, I still find myself drawn to this brilliant show. While it doesn’t reach the heights of seasons one or two, I still can’t wait to see how the story concludes.
• Dandadan season two – It is hard to overstate how much I love this show. The music is amazing, the animation superb, and it has the best English dub of an anime I have heard in years. Unfortunately, this season continues to contain a lot of things I did not like about the first (why do we need to have so many scenes of teenagers being put in creepy situations??), but I’m still excited to see what comes next.
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector – My favourite game of this year was actually the first Citizen Sleeper, which I played in January. The game is incredible, and actually led to me tearing up as I rolled the credits and saw the final fate of my sleeper. One of the highlights of my year was meeting and having a chat with the game’s creator Gareth Damian Martin at an anti-facist games meet in London. I was primed to love Citizen Sleeper 2, but I was unable to play it for very long due to other commitments, and I never found my way back to it. Hopefully, I will be able to give it a more complete playthrough in the new year.
• Materialists – Past Lives is my favourite film of all time, so I was primed to adore Materialists. However, the film left me feeling a bit cold. It was still a good movie, and Pedro Pascal gave a brilliant performance, but the film felt more than a little confused as to what it wanted to be. Was it a rom-com? A treatise on the dangers of dating in New York? A commentary on the way we change ourselves in the quest to find love? The film tried to be all of these things and none of them at the same time. I will probably revisit the film one day, if only for the gorgeous cinematography and the appearance of Pascal.

And, with those out of the way, here are this year’s awards.

Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan – The “This is my hole! It was made for me!” Award for the piece of media that was made specifically for me

“Well, the first thing you learn is how strong you can be if you have to/“And the next thing you learn is how cold it can get at night”

One of my favourite bands is the Mountain Goats. There is something about the music from John Darnielle and his collaborators which really strikes a chord with me. I maintain that 2005’s The Sunset Tree is one of the best albums ever written, but there is a lot to love on the band’s other albums, whether it is the doomed tragi-comedy of the failed romance of the Alpha Couple on Tallehassee, the wrestling-inspired Beat the Champ or the 70s and 80s film themed Bleed Out. I’ve listened to the majority of the band’s output, putting together half a dozen playlists and mixtapes in the two years that I’ve been seriously listening to them. So, imagine my surprise when the Mountain Goats went all out and released a musical.

Okay, I’m telling a bit of a lie. Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan isn’t an actual stage musical, despite the Broadway cred afforded to this album by the presence of Lin-Manuel Miranda. No, this album is more of an imagined musical, what a stage show would look and sound like if Darnielle and company decided that they wanted to take a crack at winning a Tony award. As someone who loves jukebox musicals like Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge!, I have always imagined what a musical using the Mountain Goats’ music would sound like (some of my playlists are an exercise in this). Thanks to their latest release, I don’t have to wonder any longer.

Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan is an album that I feel myself drawn to, time and again. The tale of a doomed fishing expedition slowly collapsing as 16 men are whittled down to three, and then to two, is something haunting, beautiful and uplifting all at the same time. Basically, it is the Mountain Goats at their best.

Friends at The Table: Perpetua – The “Friends at the Table is criminally underrated” Award for… best season of “Friends at the Table”

“A clock strikes. A bell rings.”

I’ve been a Friends at the Table fan since I was 18 and first getting into TTRPGs. While Critical Role has taken the world by storm for some reason I can’t fathom, I find FaTT to be much more my speed. GM and host Austin Walker and the other players are masters at world-building and characterisation, and it is truly a delight to listen to them play. There are countless moments from the show that I find myself thinking about in a way that I never did when I was watching Critical Role: moments like “We could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us”, the Boat Party’s discovery of Nacre and the death of Captain Calhoun, the reveal that Hitchcock is actually a pair of brothers, and, my favourite moment, Art and Austin talking about their memories of Muhammad Ali as they discuss the final fate of Hadrian at the end of Spring in Hieron.

But, while I love FaTT with all my heart, I haven’t been listening to the last few seasons. Sangfielle didn’t really grab me despite my love of the system being played (shout out to my fellow Heart: The City Beneath sickos), and the Divine Cycle requires a lot of commitment to listen to, although COUNTER/Weight is still spectacular. However, the launch of FaTT’s latest season, Perpetua, was a great time for me to leap back into this wonderful podcast. Using the wonderful Fabula Ultima system (which I’m now actually running a campaign in!), this season takes the cast to a world inspired by classic JRPGs, filled with airships, conspiracies, fascist elves, prophecies, food trucks and turtle people, with the gang bringing their trademark humour and skill to crafting this setting.

There has never been a better time to get into Friends at The Table. So, come on in. Can’t you hear? The bells are ringing…

Monster Hunter Wilds – The “Aw shit, here we go again” Award for most hours played

“By my own order, I will slay Zoh Shia!”

I have been a fan of the Monster Hunter games since I was about 14 years old. I have fond memories of playing Monster Hunter 4U on my Nintendo 3DS, and I have followed the series with interest since then. I remember playing Monster Hunter World when I was at university, but I ended up bouncing off the game a bit, not having the time to do as much hunting as I wanted and finding that my tastes had, for the most part, changed. Despite that, I still have an overwhelming fondness for the Monster Hunter franchise.

Imagine my surprise when I ended up diving into Monster Hunter Wilds and falling in love with it. The old gameplay loop is still intact – hunt a big monster, make clothes out of its face, repeat – but with some new changes to make things flow a bit easier. Hunters have a new mount option, similar to Monster Hunter Rise, which allows them to move around the map quicker and even use some items while travelling. The restrictions on male and female outfits have also been lifted, which allows for a greater range of fashion choices, and while the plot isn’t Shakespeare, it is a fun distraction and some of the new areas are absolutely beautiful.

There is an elephant in the room, with the frustrating technical failures of the game. It is incredibly poorly optimised to run on PC, and it did not take me very long to run out of things to do once I completed the main quest and got to High Rank (although that is more to do with a lack of people to do co-op with than an actual failure of the developers). However, I ended up putting more than 48 hours into Monster Hunter Wilds, and I feel like I could very easily put that many hours into it again. Bring on the DLC!

Superman – The “Oh gosh, golly” Award for most charming main character

“Darn it, I can be such a jerk sometimes.”

There’s been a lot written already about James Gunn’s Superman film, enough that I don’t know what else there is to say. I’ve loved Gunn’s work since the original Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, although watching that film, full of campy jokes, 70s and 80s music and bizarre characters, makes it difficult to imagine him directing a film starring Superman. Superman is the sincere superhero; there is a reason why the most frequent panels I see posted online when people talk about the character are either of him professing his love for Earth while floating in space, or talking down a young person who is in the process of attempting suicide. Seeing that James Gunn, the man who once directed Tromeo and Juliet, was going to bring this character to life did inspire some trepidation.

But, god dammit, he pulled it off fantastically. I love almost everything about this film. The cast is phenomenal, the visuals look stunning, and the film itself was both heartfelt and exciting. Watching it in the cinema, it felt like a film that was both timely and timeless; one that preaches the need for strong journalism, the need for us to put good into the world and fight fascism and genocide, and how much tech bros fucking suck. While I would have loved to have had a bit more focus on David Corenswet’s Superman, he did get a bit lost towards the middle of the film, the fact that is the only real criticism I had shows how brilliant this film is.

I think the biggest praise I can give this film is that, after years of not really caring about DC comics, this movie finally made me a Superman fan.

Deltarune Chapter 3 & 4 – The “Late to the party” Award for game I should have played years ago

“It’s!! TV!! Time!!!”

Here’s a fun fact for you: I only finished Undertale this year. I know, I’m shocked too. One of the best games of the past 20 years, Undertale asks a lot of its players; a meditation on how far people will go to know everything about a videogame. But while Undertale stresses that your actions matter and have consequences, Deltarune, its follow-up and sequel(?) instead says that your choices don’t matter at all. We’re well into the weeds of predestination here, so I hope you like prophecies and the struggle to defy fate. Deltarune, “a game you can play after you complete Undertale, if you want to”, feels like an incredibly solid successor to Undertale. There is a real evolution in how encounters work, and the writing has really taken a step forward, especially with the amount of characters that you interact with. Part of my love of Deltarune is how much it is up my alley, especially with the small town setting – I’m a big fan of Night in the Woods and Persona 4, so the split between the Dark World and Hometown really appealed to me, especially as someone who grew up in a small, provincial place in Hampshire. Combine that with how funny this game is and how way it handles the more emotional beats, and this is a winning recipe for success.

I ended up playing the entirety of Deltarune while off work with food poisoning, completing the first three chapters of the game over a couple of days. While I undoubtedly missed a couple of secrets (I never got the weird route. Maybe next time…), I found the journey to be well and truly mine, unspoilt and unsullied by anything I had read or seen. I have a bad habit of reading spoilers for games, films and TV shows I like before seeing or playing them, so playing something completely blind was a very fun experience, and I’m overjoyed that I managed to dodge spoilers for this. I can’t wait to see where the story goes next.

Long Story Short – The “OMG, this is too real” Award for best depiction of a dysfunctional family

“I don’t want you to wonder for the rest of your life about what could have happened. Do you get what I’m trying to say?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah, I’m not entirely sure either.”

I’ve been a fan of Raphael Bob-Waksberg since I first watched Bojack Horseman at the age of 15. Since then, I’ve kept an eye on his work, watching Tuca & Bertie, which was created by Bojack Horseman artist Lisa Hanawalt in 2019, and now Long Story Short, which aired on Netflix this year. This show snuck up on me a little bit; I did not know it was coming out until a few days before the episodes released, but I’m so glad that I watched them. The show features a lot of actors that I like (Ben Feldman and Max Greenfield to name a few, as well as a guest role by the inimitable Ben Schwartz), and tells a hilarious and heart-breaking story across its first 10 episodes. The way that episodes jump between different time periods to show how the lives of the Schwooper change is incredibly impactful, and the cast give it their all when it comes to their performances. The writing is top notch; Bob-Waksberg has a real gift with his writing, jumping from some of the funniest word-play you’ve ever heard to some really dark and depressing places. While this show isn’t anywhere near as harrowing as Bojack Horseman got at times, there are still a lot of serious scenes which shows that this show is not just a non-stop gag fest.

I did find myself empathizing with Long Story Short. While the show is explicitly about the lives of a Jewish family, there is a lot that non-Jewish people such as myself can recognise in the way the characters act and the situations they find themselves in. We all have parents who are overbearing, and we all have moments when we are surprised by discovering someone else’s inner life and the way that others see them. Unfortunately, we will all lose loved ones and all feel lost and adrift at some point or another. By focusing on a very specific subject, Long Story Short is able to create a show that is universal in its appeal, one that will speak to more people than anyone would expect.

Hollow Knight: Silksong – The “Dark Souls” Award for game that makes me want to smash my head into a brick wall

“Shah!!”

It’s been a long road, but it is finally here, the long-awaited sequel to Hollow Knight. After years of thinking that it was just a myth, Team Cherry surprised everyone and actually released Silksong, a game that I both love and feel indifferent to in equal measure.

Silksong is a hard game. A very hard game. Hornet controls completely differently to The Knight; I played Hollow Knight prior to picking up Silksong in a bizarre form of “training”, only for the training to be ultimately useless. Hornet is faster, jumps further and is far more fragile than everyone’s favourite mute little bug. I found combat in Silksong to be much more difficult than in the preceding game, and often ended up running face first into roadblocks as I attempted to continue the game. As I write this, I’m stuck in Chapter 2 of the game, currently beating my head bloody as I try to brute force my way through some clockwork bug boys, something that I find frustrating as I die time and again.

But, while this all sounds very negative, there are some things that I absolutely adore about Silksong. For starters, I love the world building. I’m a big fan of Warhammer 40,000, and this has a similar twisted version of religion found in that setting, showing the dark side of devotion and faith. It is a compelling world, and the use of religious concepts and items feels really well done; it is definitely up my alley! The decision to let Hornet speak and give her a personality instead of removing her voice is an interesting one, one that I think works really well since she is a stranger in a strange land. While, the combat is difficult, there is something really satisfying about clearing a room of enemies and dashing through the environment – I just sometimes wish it was a bit easier. Despite that, I’m looking forward to diving back into the game one day. I just need to steel myself first.

Wake Up Dead Man – The “I do declare!” Award for best use of a Southern accent

“It makes me sick. These kids painting rocketships all over his sacred resting place.”

I honestly think that the Knives Out movies are some of the funniest modern films available to watch right now. In a world where the big screen, mid-budget studio comedy is more or less extinct, the Benoit Blanc films are a shining beacon, with dozens of gags, turns of phrase and physical comedy packed into a roughly two-hour package. Bless them for this.

Watching Wake Up Dead Man in the cinema was one of my favourite parts of 2025. Daniel Craig was back, obviously, as the world’s favourite gentleman detective, joined this time by an absolutely electrifying Josh O’Connor. The younger actor has really cemented himself as a movie star, with his Father Jud treading a delightful line between being charming and excited to help people, and also being just the saddest boy alive (I wanted to give him a big hug throughout the vast majority of this film). The rest of the cast was absolutely fantastic, from Josh Brolin transforming himself into the bitter and hateful Wicks, to Glenn Close’s standout performance as Martha. There are no weak links in this film at all, and I enjoyed watching all the characters interact and play off each other.

But O’Connor’s Father Jud is the emotional heart of the film. A good man struggling against a corrupt and wicked world around him, with allies he can barely trust and enemies who are rooting for his downfall, Jud is a saint in a world of sinners. The best scene of the film comes as he is on the phone to a construction company. Transfixed by the babbling receptionist, he is unable to get a word in edgewise until she asks if he would pray for her and her ill mother. The tone of the scene completely flips on its head in that moment, going from outrageously funny to quiet and contemplative. Jud’s willingness to help anyone and everyone, to not judge or mock, acts as a lesson to the audience. The Knives Out films have always managed to reflect and comment on the world around them, this has not changed, but Wake Up Dead Man comes at a time of increasing right wing hatefulness, a time where an actual priest said that we should not “commit the sin of empathy”. To have a priest appear in one of the biggest films of the year and preach togetherness and inclusivity does not just feel like a welcome correction, but like a guiding light in the darkness.

Keep Driving – The “Meeting Sir Terry Pratchett” Award for helping me fulfil a lifelong dream

“There were many moments in life where you stopped to take it all in, but none of them had the same impact… as the first time you saw a mountain range stretched so far… that the white tips became but hands clasped in a 100 million year long prayer.”

I’ve wanted to go on a roadtrip for as long as I can remember. It calls to me in ways that I find difficult to explain. Some of it is a childhood spent reading Bill Bryson, some of it is inspired by Noah Caldwell-Gervais’s amazing travelogues, and some of it must come from playing games like Keep Driving.

Set in the early 2000s, Keep Driving has a very simple set-up. It is summer, you’ve just bought your first car, and your friend has invited you to a festival on the other side of the United States. You have a full tank of gas, a case of beer in the trunk and about a month to get to your destination. Hit it.

But where Keep Driving then begins to get more complicated is in the various different sidequests that spring-up, which can alter your journey in different ways and can even unlock new endings. I spent my first playthrough criss-crossing across the States, even doubling back on myself, all to help a little girl get home. She ended up leaving me with her beloved teddy bear as a thank you gift, something that had little mechanical use but which I found difficult to ever sell on or throw away. I helped a runaway bride escape her wedding, picked up the worst person in the world who drank all my beer and smoked all my cigarettes, and helped a hiker reach the base of a mountain. It was the last quest which had the most impact on me; after I dropped the hiker off, I realised that I had to see the top of that mountain. So, I dragged my old, falling apart car up it, running low on fuel all the while. My game ended as I took in the sights, looking out over a stretch of ancient mountains, at the very top of the world. I never made it to that music festival, I’m pretty sure my friend is still waiting on his beer, but I made it up a mountain. How many people can say that?

Spent – The “All your exes were right” Award for thing that made you feel bad about yourself

“And hand in hand, on the bountiful land, they dance by the light of the moon. Except for Alison, who’s trying to get some footage. And Holly, who’s monitoring her views. And Badger, who’s touch avoidant.”

I’m scared I might be a bad person.

It’s something that I’ve been worried about for a long time. I’m afraid that I’m not as good as I think I am or, or as good as I want to be. I’m worried that I’m bitter and twisted, that while I might criticise the systems around us I’m too reliant on them to make any real change. I’m worried that I have become bitter and twisted, and that it is too late to change. What can I do to change? Should I use my platform to fight for good causes? Do I even have a platform? I have a blog which I occasionally update, but does anyone read it? Is it just the ultimate narcissistic exercise?

These are topics that get brought up in Alison Bechdel’s latest book Spent. A fictionalised account of her life in the latter stages of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the book sees (fictional) Alison questioning her career and her work as she attempts to write her new book. While longtime Bechdel fans will probably find more to love in this book (several of “Alison’s” friends are characters from her early work Dykes to Watch Out For), I still found this book to be deeply impactful. As a leftist who is worried about if they can and should be doing more to save the world and fight injustice, it felt reassuring to know that there are others who feel the same.

Spent has stayed with me, long after I put it down. I recommend that everyone goes and reads it; it is funny, heartbreaking and thought-provoking in equal measure. I am now determined to track down Bechdel’s other books, if only to familiarise myself in one of the queer voices of a generation.