Each year, we resist the urge to follow the hype and watch all the movies and TV shows as they are released, so we have a ton of things to watch when our favourite time of the year finally comes.

It’s the second year that we prepare a schedule of what we’ll be watching at lunch, during the dinner and the evenings. Mostly, the plan gets adapted as we go, but you can see our December 2021 schedule by following this link.

Our home working computers are hidden inside of a wardrobe, the apartment is fully decorated (picture above), the laundry basket is empty and everything is planned to the last detail. But you know how it goes, after 3 days the plan was entirely changed…

We were supposed to watch the second season of The Boys, followed by Truth Seekers. Instead, we’re re-watching one of our favourite TV shows ever: Dark and it is as good as the first time we watched it.

TLDR: We’re on holidays, we don’t follow the plan we had made and we’re having a blast. The best moments are often unplanned.

By the way: it’s my birthday and Soforah is making her infamous vegetarian lasagna for this evening, we’ll just have to pop it in the oven, life is good!

It’s holiday time! Every year, Inge and I wait for October before taking any day off. It’s a long wait but, when it finally starts, we get a few weeks around Halloween and nearly a month for Christmas.

We’re not fans of travels… Home is where it happens for us. We load our PCs and consoles with games, we keep the good TV shows, we prepare a list of movies (entirely horror around Halloween), and we get comic books. In short, we become geek hermits for a few weeks.

So, expect a lot of posts in the coming weeks because I’ll finally be doing my stuff without having to deal with that nightmare they call real life.

During our second week off, Sardoken had the idea to write his own stories which, later on, I could illustrate. So, I decided to learn to draw again. It’s been 20 years since I last picked up a pencil… It will take some time to get back into it, but I won’t give up! I have spent a few afternoons copying simple drawings that I found on the internet, it’s was very relaxing. I’ll try to post my progress regularly.

It’s been a while that I wanted to knit my own scarf. I never knitted before and had no clue on how to do it. Thanks to a video on Youtube, I finally got started. It’s fun, but I made quite some mistakes, I guess that it will add some personality… I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m quite impatient to see the result.

Sardoken

A few weeks before the holidays I started Rise of the Tomb Raider, I had so much fun that I kept on playing until the middle of our first week. I haven’t collected everything yet, but I can see myself coming back regularly to complete each map.

I was already a fan of Life is Strange, so I thought that I would give a try to Before the Storm. Even if the gameplay is reduced to simple choices without the possibility to rewind, the game was entertaining. I really love Chloe Price and it was pretty fun spending a few afternoons in her company.

Then, just like the rest of the world, I’ve bought Red Dead Redemption 2. I was so hyped, I almost bought a cowboy hat for the release. Thank god I didn’t… As it turned out, I’m far less into the Far West than I thought. I enjoyed the first chapter, then I ended up alone in that huge world, it felt empty, soulless. Ultimately I got depressed and I deleted it.

That’s when I started the best game of my holidays: The Witcher 3. I had already tried it on PC a year go… At that time, I was still in WoW and other games didn’t easily interest me. Anyway, I got completely hooked, to the point that I instantly purchased the first book of the serie, a comic book, an action figure and a Funko. Now, that’s a world I love! I can’t help it but fantasy is where it’s at for me. I’m ready to explore each corner of every map and to complete all the quests. I’ll be there for a while…

Soforah

I started playing Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles on Switch a few weeks before the holidays started. I had so much fun in this game that I couldn’t resist reaching 96% completion. Yonder is about exploring the island, Gemea. The more you explore, gather materials and craft, the more you advance in the storyline. I’ve finished it all, except for the quest that requires you to find all the cats and planting all the trees. I think that the completion of these 2 quests would take me hours of mindless running around and, while I like to wander, this is too much for me.

After that, I wanted to give a try to Victor Vran on my favourite portable console. I remember quitting this game on PC because of the clunky gameplay, I somehow thought that it would be better on console… I was wrong! This game is even worse on Switch and the Overkill Edition is disappointing. I gave up after one afternoon.

Instead, I started playing Octopath Traveler. This game is a jewel, it’s beautiful and fun. Normally, I don’t like turn-based games, they easily become boring to me, but Octopath is different. I haven’t finished it yet, but I will!

Sardoken & Soforah

On Halloween afternoon, we played a tabletop game, Mysterium. It was the first time that we played this one and, with it’s Halloween settings, it was perfect for the occasion. It was a great moment and we can’t wait to be the next time!

Diablo 3 for Switch was released on the 2nd of November. We went to get it that same day and we haven’t played anything else since. We’ve levelled two seasonal crusaders and we’re currently working on getting to the free set. The Switch is an amazing port for D3, probably the best. We even have more fun than we had with the original.

We also made a major upgrade to our office room. Soforah bought her first Playstation, a black PS4 pro. We’ve both purchased a Steelseries Arctis pro headset and a LG 4K HDR 27′ screen.

This year, our holidays were supposed to be made of walks in the park, video games, horror movies and no coffee. After a few days, we had bought a new Nespresso machine. On the second week, we got our first tattoos and, on the third week, we had our office turned into a gaming room. None of this was planned, but you know what? We had a great time!

Since it was our Halloween holidays, we had planned to watch only horror. Just as the year before, it failed. There was a time when horror was great, we could watch one movie after another and have a great time… Well, that time is no more, horror nowadays is supposed to seduce everybody, that’s why most of it is closer to a psychological thriller than a real horror. While there are a few good movies, there aren’t nearly enough to watch on a three week span. Here’s a list of the things we’ve watched and what we thought about them:

• Hold the Dark: the trailer was promising, mystery, snow, wolves and the super sexy Alexander Skarsgård. The reality was a boring, slow movie where, in the end, you have no clue what the point was. It felt like the movie was created by a drunk apprentice of David Lynch. Thank god for the snow;
• Apostle: this movie was so hyped by horror movie reviewers on twitter, we couldn’t watch it soon enough. Some scenes were creepy and pretty gore, but the movie was mostly too slow. Too bad, it could have been a good one;
• Big Mouth: we enjoy to start a day off with a cup of coffee in front of a cartoon. That’s how we started watching Big Mouth.We love the sense of humour, the hormone monsters, the shame wizard, coach Steve,… so much fun and so many great characters. Jeez, we don’t miss puberty;
• The Haunting of Hill House: another highly rated crap. Seriously, except for the minor jump scares, this tv-show is boredom itself. A psychological drama. The only horror in this story are the long and annoying chats about the characters’ pathetic life;
• Castle Rock: the fist few episodes were promising, but the eternal going back and forth in other timelines and dimensions got confusing. As for the episode about the mother’s Alzheimer, it had nothing to do with the story and could just have just not existed. Another disappointment;
• Fear the Walking Dead: while we liked the previous seasons, this one is a let down. The first episodes were great, with an awesome new character (John), but it had to turn into a slow drama soap again. Why did they have to bring in Morgan? He was boring in TWD, why screw up the spin-off as well?Could we, please have some real survival horror, instead of a debate about the meaning of life? Anyway, we’ll sure watch the end of season 4, some day, when we’re old and we have nothing else to do;
• Castlevania: another early morning cartoon. This one is more serious, but also very beautiful. We loved it so much, we’re keeping the second season for our Christmas holidays;
• The First Purge: finally a good movie! It was so badly rated that we were afraid to watch it.
  Well, we were glad we finally did. We always loved the franchise. We were surprised that the reviews were so negative though. The Purge always makes us think about what we would do if there would be a real one;
• Gotham: one of the rare super hero tv-shows that we enjoy. So, we kept season 4 for our holiday lunchtimes. Every day at 12, we ate our sandwiches and had our cup of coffee in front of an episode. One of the highlights of the day;
• Disenchantment: We fell so much in love with it that we’ve ordered a poster for the gaming room and Soforah made a cutout of Luci for our living room door.We’ll watch it again before the next season comes out, that’s for sure;
• Game of Thrones: by the end of the holidays, we were really in need of some good quality show. While we normally aren’t big fans of re-runs, Game of Thrones totally deserves it. It was like listening to a good song after spending an hour in a supermarket.

That’s it for all we’ve watched during these three weeks. One lesson we’ve learned is not to make an horror program based on reviews and ratings.