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What a deeply evil year this was! The genocide in Palestine, war in Ukraine, the Trump regime in its entirety; the lives of the people I love and myself are becoming demonstrably more difficult, and with no clear end in sight it's become imperative to look back and remember what it's all for.

For me this is art, both the appreciation and creation of it. Times like these make me remember the words of someone special to me, that art is what makes life worth it and that without it we might as well pick a hole to die in. It took me quite some time to internalize this value I seemingly had to her, my work still seems so unimportant with everything that's going on, but I'm getting there; trying to do what I can.

This blogpost I'd like to spend looking back on some of the things I've watched, listened to, played, experienced in any way. A sort of cumulative Lexie Wrapped, but with less of the corpo-slop veneer and more of a genuine appreciation and appraisal of the things that wound up affecting me.

Movies

I wound up watching a staggering 137 movies in 2025, and like 52 of them I rated 5 stars on my Letterboxd. My way of watching and looking back on movies is very loose, movies are probably my first and foremost way to unwind and actually relax for a bit. Games tend to put me on edge too much and music is very much mood-based, movies are something I can always go for and this year I made gratuitous use of this fact. Even now, as of writing this, I've already seen at least 1 movie/day of 2026.

I feel it's apt to start with my lowest rated and most haunting movie, A Minecraft Movie (2025). Words cannot describe how much I enjoyed watching this trainwreck both in cinema and on a laptop in the form of an unfinished bootleg cut of itself with cricket gambling ads interspersed. Regardless of this pleasure this movie also created this cultural event where, for some reason, kids en masse decided to completely wreck the auditoriums of cinemas globally, including the cinema I work at! It reached a point where kids, instead of snacks and drinks, were smuggling eggs inside so they could pelt them at the screen whenever the titular 'chicken jockey' scene reared its head. We had to organize our shifts in such a way where some of us were present in the hall during this fucking scene so that the kids wouldn't throw their popcorn and shit everywhere. WHAT THE FUCK!!!

Quick breather, this year I found my absolute adoration for everything directed by David Cronenberg. In part for perverse reasons (especially in regards to Crash (1996)), but also thematically. His seeming obsession with the body and how it is and can be affected by everything. From the psyche to disease, technology, or obsession in and of itself. As a transgender I of course have opinions on The Body[TM] and the institutions around it, and so his movies managed to make me feel seen in a way I rarely feel. As good as I Saw The TV Glow (2024) is, it isn't about me or my experience, and Cronenberg made me feel excited to delve deeper into the offerings of film. A Dangerous Method (2011) still confounds me though, I really wonder why he didn't realize the Jung x Freud yai potential.

My first and so far only Blu-Ray purchase happened this year with The People's Joker (2022)! I absolutely did not want to pirate this, and there was no possibility of seeing it in a cinema here in my European swampland. Every time I watched it I made sure to do so with at least one other trans woman present and every time wound up being one of my favourite nights of the year. The way it irradiates the room with faggot energy, screams and hoots being thrown at the screen with jokes that simply keep coming and the references to queer life that are -actually- real and not a Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) sort of pornographic pastiche. I felt seen! Everything is fucked and stupid about being queer but damnit if it isn't the best fucking thing.

Music

I have COMPLETELY done away with Spotify, all the music I listen to now is either pirated / bought off of Bandcamp / ripped from CDs I own / digitized from my LP collection! I found that this made the act of listening to music a lot more intentional. I find myself being much more aware of the things I listen to and enjoy listening to, and actually wound up breeding a lot of curiosity about the people and processes behind the making of these various albums.

Some notable artists and bands I learned about this year include the Japanese noise rock girl band eX-Girl, At The Drive-In and its various offshoots (The Mars Volta, Sparta, De Facto), and strikingly unique projects like Stomach Book and Strawberry Hospital.

A trend observed is an excess of decibels. I love loud and this year I've loved it more than any prior year. This is reflected in my concert-going this year, with gigs like Femtanyl, Machine Girl, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, and to a lesser extent Underscores I was taking moments to blow my ears out and lose my body in the pit. It's always an incredible experience, and I hope to attend many more, preferably more in 2026. There were periods where I missed the swaying, sweaty mass of bodies.

This also turned out to be the year of asking friends for recommendations! Whether it was screamo from Max (I Hate Myself, Have Heart, I Hate Sex, Whenever, If Ever) or various fusion jazz/J-pop artists from Jana (山下達郎, T.M. Revolution, 高中 正義), besides being perfectly listenable, they reflected their recommender in a light I don't often get to see. Through recommendations you get to see a side of someone previously not all that visible, and it's kind of a vulnerable position to be in as well. What if people don't fuck with your vibe? That'd suck so much, so them making a serious effort to engage with the music you love is like having the little sims icon with two +'es pop up over your head.

Games

I played JACK SHIT. Much of my time was spent on my own projects and with how time-intensive games can be these fell on the wayside for a large part of 2025. I did develop two visual novels, Flesh and Pressure and Lathe-Cut Grooves, and with that came a lot of visual novel-playing. Specifically entries of the Toxic Yuri VN Jam which I also entered for with FnP! Some stand-outs for me were LONER_DOG, Sunshine Backwards, Pressure Cooker, and Caffeine-Induced Heart Attack for a variety of reasons. I wish I could've played them all honestly, especially considering everyone's palpable passion and enthusiasm for crafting stories about messy women!

I also finally played (almost) all of Half-Life! I've arrived at the conclusion that episodes 1/2 are overrated and tacked on, which is probably my most incendiary comment on the series.

Other games this year include Jusant, 1000xResist, Angeline Era (personal game of the year), Vile: Exhumed, Everhood 2, and Ena: Dream BBQ. Good, arguably incredible games with so much to offer and talk about it becomes daunting. Maybe and Angeline Era blogpost someday? Who knows! I might bumpslash into that one when I have a bit more time on my hands to gather the necessary footage.

I also had a brief but empassioned stint with retro games, primarily through the platform RetroAchievements. Turns out achievements can serve as an incredible carrot-on-a-stick for getting yourself motivated to play some old-ish stuff you've been meaning to try out for ages! These turned out to be Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil and Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu's Dororo. In hindsight they weren't like, mind-boggling or anything, but they were incredibly fun! Kind of made me wish I was one of those semi-niche videogame reviewers à la Grimbeard or Boulder Punch so that I could dedicate more of my time to playing these sorts of games. Alas, I already have too many things I (want to) do, and being a youtuber sounds like the exact opposite of what I need in my life.

2026

So what's in store for the coming year? My predictions are: less movies, more books, an equal lack of games, and a lot of stress from trying to find a job after I finish my master's degree this summer. I guess we'll see!