2025 in Review

6 Pieces of Media that Defined the Year for Me

Happy New Year’s Eve, everybody!

This year was probably the craziest one for me yet. My life looked entirely different at the end of 2024 than it does now. I have my license, I have a job, I have friends, and I have a Substack.

I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do a year-in-review kind of post, considering how inconsistent I’ve been at posting here, but I decided that this would be a good idea. I’m not just going to be vaguely looking back over 2025 and going “boy, that was quite a year.” I will, rather, show you, the reader, these pieces of media that, for better or for worse, defined the year for me, which will, in the process, tell you how my year was and provide an adequate reflection.

So, without further ado, here are

6 Pieces of Media that Defined my 2025

(By the way, I will be including a few different kinds of music, such as books, movies, and music)

1. The Hunger Games

I read this book series for the first time this year, over the course of a few months, since I am a very slow reader. However, I did tear through both Mockingjay and Sunrise on the Reaping in a matter of a couple days each.

What did I think? I was pleasantly surprised by just how good this series was, especially considering how mainstream it is. Oftentimes something will be popular just because it checks a few key boxes. And though Hunger Games does, on the surface, follow the formula for mainstream success, it’s so much more than that. Suzanne Collins did a marvelous job developing each of her characters and their different arcs.

Literally the only thing I didn’t like about this series was the violence. I think I skipped over most of the last third of Catching Fire because it was mostly just running from mutts and trying not to die. It didn’t appeal to me, and I figured I could skip it and catch up later.

I’ve seen some discourse about how there’s no clear theme to The Hunger Games. I would beg to differ. It was exceedingly clear to me as I read Mockingjay that we’re dealing with the perversion and recovery of beauty. Over the course of the series, the Capitol will take something beautiful—such as love, friendship, nature, and even childhood—and twist it into something hideous. This is the central problem introduced, and the main thing Katniss has to work to remedy.

2. No Phun Intended/Twenty One Pilots/Regional at Best

It’s no secret that I’m a twenty one pilots fan (and I’ll definitely talk about them again by the end of this post), and while I went into 2025 with a decently solid appreciation for their “official” music, i.e., Vessel and onward, I had not fully experienced the genius of this band, which is blatantly on display in their earliest work.

Twenty One Pilots was the first of these that I got into. I had heard some of it before, namely “Addict with a Pen” and “Isle of Flightless Birds,” but I was always turned off by the amateurish sound of Tyler’s voice on these songs. But this spring I turned on “Friend, Please” and was immediately hooked. I started listening to this album on loop for months, and I still love it. It’s dripping with genuine emotion and deep philosophical ponderings on topics like love and friendship.

Eventually I grew dissatisfied with the lack of new music, however, and I went out to seek out the green pastures of Regional at Best. Though the first few tracks on this album are almost torture compared to their enhanced Vessel counterparts, the RAB exclusives still shine brightly. “Clear” was actually the most enlightening TOP song I had ever heard, and I immediately started coming up with conspiracy theories as to why some of the songs were left to die in oblivion while others got to live on with Vessel, but that’s another topic for another time.

Finally, we come to No Phun Intended, Tyler’s solo album that he recorded as a high schooler and can pretty much only be found on YouTube now. Though it is very low-quality in comparison to his professional work, his talent as a musician and poet are still very much here. And I would daresay “Save” features his most gutwrenchingly vulnerable performance to date. However, the best song on NPI is unequivocally “TB Saga.”

3. The Maze Runner

I got The Maze Runner from the library in January, and I read it and thought it was fine. So I read the next two books, and I watched the first two movies, and I always came away feeling very “eh.” This is no great work of literature/cinema, but it’s still going to define part of 2025 for me because of how much of my year I spent ingesting it. In retrospect, I wonder why on earth this series is so popular. It really has nothing going for it, besides shock value, I guess. I never really connected with any of the characters, and how could I? By erasing all of their memories, James Dashner immediately made them basically universally unrelatable. As they go about trying to accomplish stuff, you’re kinda reading along, going “Huh okay I guess that’s great for you. Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Ultimately, this series is nothing but content to be consumed if you have nothing better to do with your time. And in addition to everything I’ve mentioned already, there’s so many other books you could read or movies you could watch.

4. Pirates of the Caribbean

Let me tell you a story. For a couple weeks in July, I went to music camp, where I took piano lessons, played flute in the orchestra, and spent an unhealthy amount of time and energy being obsessed with POTC. Why on earth did I do this? Well, it started with orchestra. We played an arrangement of the music and though I had heard the theme before, there was one section in particular with a flute solo that really struck me for whatever reason. My cousin had begged me to watch Pirates, but I refused, thinking it looked dumb. But when my camp friends asked if I’d like to watch with them, I agreed, and I had a marvelous time. However, we never finished it, and I have yet to see the last, like, fifteen minutes.

And eventually I did stop caring but I was mad about it for a little bit and obsessed with it for long enough for it to make the list.

5. Dune

I watched Dune in June, and now I realize I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.

The movies are both extremely good, and I don’t have much more to say. I love sci-fi, and this is sci-fi at its very best. It’s also a riveting narrative about political intrigue, good vs. evil, coming of age, and so much more.

One part that sticks out the most to me is the black-and-white gladiator battle sequence. It’s a scene that doesn’t rely simply on violence to be shocking, but it stands out because of its very appearance.

6. Breach

Nobody was expecting another twenty one pilots album this year. I for one was not at all expecting to get jumpscared by a new era when I opened up their website on May 21st.

For me, this album will always be synonymous with “the fall of 2025.” The songs “Drum Show” and “RAWFEAR” were especially relatable for me, which is weird, considering they were both written by a man in his late 30s, in a phase of life entirely different from mine. But it’s also not weird, because that man is Tyler Joseph, and he knows how to write a good song that people will listen and relate to.

Breach would have hit hard no matter the circumstances, but the fact that it released a little more than a day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated made it even more impactful. I couldn’t help but hear the “Oh-oh-oh mercy” from the pre-chorus of “Downstairs” as a cry coming out from the entire country.

And I don’t have much else to say except this is probably the best twenty one pilots album ever, and it was one of the highlights of my year.

The End

And that’s all I’ve got for today, and a wrap on 2025. I’m excited to see what 2026 holds.

See y’all next year!