Fran Magazine: Issue #87

The first annual Fran Magazine gift guide

📝 Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a biweekly blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). Wednesday issues are free to everyone and Sunday issues are for paid subscribers only. Consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription for access to more Fran Magazine, and feel free to follow me on the website formerly known as Twitter or the website currently known as Letterboxd.

The Fran Magazine holiday and/or no particular occasion gift guide

I am actually pretty bad at gift-buying, best when I have firm direction or light suggestion. It doesn’t come naturally to me, not because I don’t love making a gesture towards others through purchases, but because I am self-conscious and embarrassed by how much stuff we (I) have and how much we (I) need to get rid of things. The last thing I would want is to give someone clutter. Even beloved clutter! Buying books for people is over — get a library card, or better yet, take your friend to get a library card in lieu of getting them a book. When I think about gifts that are good, usually they indulge in an aspect of buying stuff that I’m often too cheap to get the good stuff or they are some kind of digestible/consumable good. I sort of think the best type of gift anyone can give anyone is a gift card to a restaurant. In lieu of that, however, here are some suggestions from me and a special guest.

A nice bag

When I say “a nice bag,” I do not mean “a designer bag.” I mean a bag that is nicer than a free tote you get for donating to a cause but not a designer bag that you fear for the well-being of. Carrying a bag is back in a big way, regardless of your gender or what you may like to carry. Here are a few favorites.

• Slouchy Shoulder Bag from COS (sort of reminds me of the beloved Acne Studios tote bag, but a fraction of the price)

• Karla Shoulder Bag from Marimekko (on sale! I saw so many of these in Helsinki and thought they were so cute in every color)

• Tote and Boat from L.L. Bean (a classic for a reason! everyone I know who has one of these loves it)

• Leather Shell Belt Bag from Beklina (quirky alarm!!! I also love this, which is on sale)

I even like this one too

Cups and/or glasses

I have too many mugs and not enough cups and/or glasses. You can use a cup for anything: to get pasta water out of the pasta pot, to water plants, to keep paintbrushes, to be bedside table drinking water. Whatever!

• Here’s a cup

• Here’s another type of cup

• What about these cups

Kalustyan’s gift card

This is a must for a New York City inhabitant or visiting New York City in the near-future type of person. Is there a better store in this city? I don’t think so. What do you need — every kind of rice? Spices? Labneh? Every sauce imaginable? Every tea imaginable? What about bitters? Halva? It’s all here. Everything! I’ve never not found anything I’m looking for, and so much more.

Point & shoot camera

Ebay and Etsy are dense with good condition, used 35mm point and shoot cameras. If you like the idea of “getting into film” but you have “no idea how a camera works” — that’s fine. There are so many point and shoots you can get with automatic focus, no focus, automatic flash, no flash, etc. Being the person at an event with a camera is always cool. Learning how to take a cool photo of your friends and family (and pets) is cool. Having a camera is great, especially when it is a cheap(ish) entry point for what can feel like a daunting hobby.

Blu-ray player

Streaming services are going to buy up all the rights to shit you like, and then they are going to sit on it or bury it or make sure you only see it on their own terms. While I think “blu-ray disc collector types” run the risk of pissing me off personally, a used or refurbished blu-ray player is a great gift for someone who likes watching stuff and deserves the best quality vehicle through which to watch stuff. I bought one used for $40 back in 2017. It worked great! Do not be offended by this gift guide suggesting used artifacts more than once. What is more of a gift to the world than RECYCLING!

Supergoop lip balms

Quite pigmented, good flavor. A little pricy — but that’s why this is a gift. This might be the most underrated cosmetic good on the market. I like all the Supergoop stuff I’ve bought but I go back to these the most.

A subscription to a Substack… say… Fran Magazine… but maybe another one…? for your significant other and/or crush

Don’t you want to be able to talk to someone you love about all the things you’re reading on Substack that don’t partake in reactionary politics but instead just recommend some stupid shit to watch with your friends and family? Don’t you want your crush to know about the Maestro moments? Wouldn’t it be great to flirt and support independent media at the same time?

Aren’t you like “that’s actually so true” about the above button? Okay, maybe not. I think the best kind of subscription gift to get someone is usually something they might want to read, like n+1 or Book Forum or, like I said, Fran Magazine.

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Fran Magazine Presents: Phil’s Gaming Corner

Great indie games for $16 or less

Everyone loves seeing someone gifted them a game on Steam. It’s one of the greatest joys one can experience while booting up their computer. For the PC gamer in your life that you know well enough to get a gift, but not well enough to spend a lot of money on, here are six cheap games (including two of the best games ever made that are less than three dollars).

Pizza Tower

Platformer
$14.99 on Steam (Sale Price)

This is simply… tha perfect game. It’s fast paced, easy to pick up but hard to master, and accessible to both casual and hardcore fans of 2-D platformers. A love letter to 2-D Sonic and WarioWare titles that forges its own identity with tight, fluid controls and never-ending gimmicks and power-ups. The most fun I had looking at or playing a game all year, and a surefire hit with basically anyone who plays video games regularly.

Cruelty Squad

FPS/Immersive Sim/Critique of Capitalism. 
$9.99 on Steam (Sale Price)

If ur loved one likes PC gaming + any one (1) or more of the following: 

• death grips

• damon packard movies

• nick land-type nonsense

• the Hitman games

• deus ex

• jg ballard

• bad vibes

• speedrunning

• the good Oneohtrix Point Never albums

• horrible noises¹

They will love Cruelty Squad, which was the best game of 2021.

King Of Dragon Pass

Grand Strategy/RPG/KODP-type. 
$2.15 on Steam (Sale Price)

KODP is the best game no one’s ever heard of. Originally released in 1999, the game is a wholly original blend of Strategy and RPG gameplay with a charming, deceptively simple UI and gorgeous ink-and-watercolor art. You control the fate of an Iron-age style viking tribe in a fantasy setting across multiple generations. This sounds like a million other games that suck, but the secret to KODP’s brilliance lies in its procedural storytelling: Every game of KODP has a unique narrative that builds out of your decisions, and it feels like a REAL NARRATIVE and not just a bunch of random events. Games have been promising shit like this since I’ve been playing them, and almost none of them have delivered, but KODP nailed it almost a quarter-century ago.

Crisis In The Kremlin

Grand Strategy/Retro. 
$1.99 on Steam (Sale Price)

If my hunches about the Fran Magazine Readership Demographic are correct, many of you either are or have partners that are the type of person for whom “little known, highly detailed, and historically accurate strategy game from 1991 where you play as the General Secretary of the Soviet Union from 1985  to 2017, trying to prevent the collapse and thrive in the new millennium” is a real “cellar door” type of phrase.

Chivalry II

Medieval PVP/Team-Based/Action. 
$15.99 on Steam (Sale Price)

It’s more of a AA game than a true indie, but it’s also the only match-based first person team-PVP game I actually like playing. I usually hate games like this, because I’m not very good at them and it always feels like I’m letting my team down, and they usually say mean shit in the chat as a result. Chiv 2 combats this with two key features: first, it features huge, 32 player vs. 32 player matches, which means you’re never the worst guy on your team and no one will get mad at you specifically. Second, it has a dedicated button to make your character yell out “uuaaaaaaaghhh,” which everyone spams constantly. It’s remarkable how this simple addition completely transforms the tone of online PVP, turning something that is often anxiety-ridden and frustrating into something that is a lot of low-stakes fun.

Into The Breach

Tactics/Strategy/Turn-based. 
$7.49 on Steam (Sale Price)

Okay, Fran here. I love this game, and I did get briefly, painfully addicted to it about a year and a half ago. Into The Breach is basically the same plot of Pacific Rim — you are in a giant robot suit fighting monsters — except that you take turns fighting them. You always know what your opponent will do, so you can opt between offense and defense without being caught off guard. I think of this game as chess but less sophisticated, which is true of my personality as well. What I like about Into The Breach (my various 1099 employers, do not read past this) is that because it’s turn-based, I can play it all throughout the day, during work, taking turns here and there for five to ten minutes before I have to get back to the grind. Usually if I want to game, I have to sneak away from my computer for an hour or so to play during the day (I hate gaming at night). Not so with a game I can have going in a window alongside my Google docs!!!

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Last but not least: fruit

Buying an Edible Arrangement is clown behavior, but buying a Harry & David fruit box is not. I’ve received two, maybe three, of these in my life. In the dead of winter, little is better than a box of fresh fruit. It smells good, you eat the fruit, you get rid of it. Maybe you get some cheese and mustard on the side? I don’t know! I’m not the boss of you. When I think about a box of grapefruit I feel truly emotional. Maybe your loved one will feel the same way!

1. Fran here: this game is probably really fun for people who like these things, but I will say as someone exposed to the noises and colors and sensations of this game… it’s a lot. Be careful what you sign up for, being in the same room as this one.