2026

09/03 the witcher: crossroads of ravens lately i've been back in a witcher mood since my friends have been reading the series. as much as i love ciri's story arc and their big adventure, i strongly believe that the short stories are where sapkowski's writing shines and we see the very best of his world, his characters, and his messages. this book is about young geralt and made me fall in love with his character all over again; the execution of his awkward boyish demeanor is perfect and endearing, and through the story we start to see more of what makes geralt so appealing emerge. i still think that season of storms is my overall favorite of his books, but this was a really great read and has its lasting moments.
08/31 wedding blues

the immoral wedding affair BL from breadnomimi released in english today. this has been one of my most anticipated BL releases of the year... ever since i saw the final covers and teaser images i have just been dying to read the whole volume and it did not dissapoint. im always very partial to one-shots because its a great environment for a really concise story to shine. the bittersweet, enslaving, toxic dynamic at play between the main characters satiated a perverse desire in me and i really enjoyed the execution and reveal through the course of the story. i love the balance between greed, morality, lust, love, competition, dominance. left me with a really sick, feverish, tingling feeling in my chest. i'll keep my eyes peeled out for a physical english release...

08/31 katasumi no kioku vol. 1

i had happened onto this release randomly earlier today and read it on a whim because it gave me the impression it would tug on my heartstrings. a BL manga about a bittersweet first love that could never be and youthful nostalgia. this feels like less of a story about romance and is more about the endurance of a life-changing connection, which is in it's own right a special thing. one thing i really liked about this BL was how 'masculine' the characters felt in their interiority and mannerisms. i also love these kinds of stories where 'chance meetings' drive the dynamic; it just feels so especially romantic to envision how 'one encounter could change everything'

08/24 fields of mistria

i've been playing fields of mistria for months, but now that it's fully late i can finally add it to my media log... overall i really enjoyed the approach to the 'harvest moon' style farming game and how the QOL changes felt when it was compared to stardew valley, which doubtlessly has much more to offer within the farming genre than fields of mistria does. the endgame grind does feel really boring to me, but overall the game was really addicting to get into and has more general appeal to people who like "cozy" games. it's probably just because i've been a long time fan of harvest moon and i'm acclimated to the tediousness in those games, but there were times that i felt the game was less satisfying to progress in because it's much easier to build friendships, manage the farm, and work on the museum. i think in a couple of years i would be willing to revisit the game and start a new farm, unlike in stardew valley where i played for hundreds of hours until it lost all its replayability.

08/15 dungeon crawler carl and carl's doomsday scenario

i've been recommended DCC by so many people, i finally decided to give the series a try and was not disappointed. it's a really fun and fresh execution of a premise that is by now pretty tired (isekai...), and it's nice to have a light read to balance out some of the more dry books i've tried to read lately. i'm really endeared towards mordecai and find his alcoholism and hidden intentions charming, and i'm excited to keep reading the rest of the series to see how the story unfolds in the wild and seemingly limitless dystopian sci-fantasy setting.

08/03 bloodborne

not technically the first time i've played bloodborne, but the first time i finished the game all the way through. my friend and i played together and passed the controller back and forth on each death. i was suprised how quick i got through the game, and if anything finally beating it made me want to replay it again once i got back to my own house. i've always loved the designs of the celestial and eldritch enemies, but i also love the design of the "snatcher" enemies too. they're so intimidating..... and that makes them little bit sexy, haha. my favorite boss design is probably the greater amygdala, who i've loved since i first saw her.

07/23 room no. 9 (21+ content)

Playing this vn after my shift was like slipping out the back for a cigarette. This was the perfect pick to unwind after a stressful time at work. After my own torture, I wanted to see fictional men suffering worse than me.
It is a psychological thriller BL eroge about two friends who find themselves participating in a locked room experiment, where they are forced to defile each other in order to escape. This is definitely not a game for everyone. There were a couple of spots in my playthrough where I took a break because the scenes felt so intense, though I felt that this honestly just reinforced the metanarrative of the story; in which the audience is morally corrupted alongside the cast, consuming increasingly more depraved and dehumanizing content from the subjects of the experiment. The game is supposed to be raw, violating and extreme in order to evoke all kinds of emotions in the audience, all culminating in the enema scene which serves to 'wake up' the audience by using an unconventional sexual act to shock them into lucidity. My senses were heightened the entire time; between morally dubious sex scenes I felt my heart literally ache for the circumstance of the characters and the actions they were urged to take. The scenes transition from hot, fetishistic gay sex into gutwrenching internal dialogues, forcing the implications of every scene to linger overhead the whole time. I cried for them; felt their pain as my own and empathized with their struggle. Their reactions to traumatic events are realistically depicted, influenced by each character's pasts and feelings towards the other.
While not romantic in a traditional sense, the intimacy of their relationship is displayed in full as each of them is pushed and pushes the other towards their limit. Reading through the entire story was so rewarding as it gave so much realism and life to the cast. The characters, Daichi as 'Subject A' and Seiji as 'Subject B' are close in a very 'masculine' and surface-level way, with neither one ever revealing or dissecting their deeper feelings. A theme of internalized homophobia permeates the story; the protagonists are not opposed or disgusted to have sex with each other, but the experiment forces them to cross that line before they are ready or able to open those doors inside themselves first. The two dynamics at play throughout the story are the moral degradation and violation of Subject B (Seiji) by Subject A (Daichi), or the alternative of Subject B inflicting physical torture onto Subject A. Each wanting to spare the other the pain of the action they must take, the men are forced to choose "the lesser of two evils" in order to escape the experiment together. There are way more sex scenes than gore scenes, mostly because this is an eroge, but I would also go as far as to say that it heightens the narrative about how the 'wound that leaves no physical mark' is trivialized beside the visible wound. It's about life enduring after sexual assault, it's about the tragedy of internalized homophobia; it captures how it feels to drift away from a friend who was once there for you at an important part of your life. It is not a traditional love story, but love is present at every moment of their actions, thoughts, and motivations. Every task forces the men to choose; is it more merciful to accept the torment without reservation, just to lessen the guilt of the perpetrator? Or is it the weight of that very guilt that makes it more torturous to be the one who inflicts such pain? In the different endings we see how their choices in the room have changed their lives and relationship forever, often in very depressing ways. Ending F "Friendship" is probably the most 'happy' out of all the endings, and the last couple lines of dialogue made me burst into tears. Overall I really enjoyed the game, even despite it's shortcomings and faults, and I can say without doubt that it has left a lasting impression on me. Just completely depressing, raw, sexy, terrifying, deeply upsetting; and all in a way that ravages the emotions and lingers in the mind for weeks afterwards. For days afterwards. I could not stop thinking about it and feeling miserable. One of the best translated BLVNs, for the nuanced psychosexual vn enjoyer who can appreciate art, or at the very least a lover of men with armpit hair...

06/14 mahjong hisho-den: naki no ryu

really cool mahjong series... I fell into another riichi phase, and Ryu guided me to my yakuman.

04/16 - tomodachi life living the dream

SO CUTE... after playing for a long time i really understood why others were disappointed with lack of features, but i'm still holding out hope that there's room for an update... i loved playing touys and seeding my island with phrases, characters, food and other items handmade to make me laugh. i loved hearing about all my friend's islands were progressing and about all the different versions of us that existed. it makes me happy watching the miis I've made of all my friends play with all the other miis of my characters, sonas, franchise-favorites and anything else i could come up with. truly a when worlds collide kind of game i'll be playing and retstarting for years to come.

03/23 - lucid blocks

i really had fun exploring the dream-like world and finding new sights, new blocks and items for crafting with the apotheosis system, and most of all enjoying the lush and surreal soundtrack.

01/09 - elin

this is a game i could easily sink hundreds of hours into while still enjoying fresh content. the game can be so random at times and a lot of the dialogue and events in the world suprise me and make me laugh. i was interested in the game after someone compared it to kenshi, which i played last year and became obsessed with.

2025

01/05 - vintage story

vintage story really feels like the most premier of all the sandbox survival games i've played. i love building so the chiselling system in vintage takes the decoration aspect to a whole new level and is probably what i've enjoyed the most so far. the survival gameplay is pretty challenging but it makes the reward of progression feel so much more worthwhile. it's so easy to spend hours just working away on a base or task while listening to the soundtrack.


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