Slay the Princess

A visual novel style horror “sequence” very much in the vein of “The Stanley Parable” (with a bit of “Doki Doki” thrown in). The art by Abby Howard steals the show, in what is more a non-linear experience, rather than a story. I kept trying to find hidden loops, but as far as I can tell, the story is a straight fanout with narrative building on iterations through the story. Solid game if you’re a fan of the prior art.

6/10

Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau (Whisper Me a Love Song)

Despite the production issues, I’m so glad we got this adaptation. The manga is one of my favorites and the anime feels like a complete story (and there is still lots of great story left for the manga to tell). The middle third suffers a bit from the production crunch, but the final third ultimately delivers on the promise.

8/10

In adding my pixelfed account to Ivory, it drives home that it really is just another ActivityPub server (no different from any other Mastodon instance) where the users have collectively agreed (for the most part) to post images instead of text. It really is an ActivityPub client rather than a different service. I think I’d rather just boot posts from my main account instead of bifurcating things.

Fate/strange Fake: Whispers of Dawn

A Fate production not done by ufotable? Call me skeptical but A1 is probably one of the studios that might be able to do it justice. This is just “Episode 0” and very much a shotgun-style introduction of everything rather than the beginning of the story. The full show is airing now for Winter 2025.

7/10

Neva lets you pet, play, scratch, cuddle, and fight with the dog (and tears were definitely shed in the process). Gris is a better game and I prefer the puzzle platforming versus the combat in Neva, but the mechanics are tight and ultimately satisfying.

8/10

Now that have unified the “essay” (long-form) and “micro” (short-form) content here, I’ve been thinking how I want to handle the syndication aspect. The easiest option is service pipe on the RSS feed (EchoFeed, n8n, etc) but you give up a degree of control or one-size-fits-all unless you divide up your blog into multiple RSS feeds depending on the content. I’m thinking now that having a set of scripts that act on the markdown of the post instead might be a better. By way of an example, this “meta discussion” post doesn’t make sense syndicated to Mastodon & Bluesky and would be tedious to mask from a pipe service.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Improved Persona-esque mechanics with a more complex and flexible combat/upgrade system. The story didn’t quite resonate with me (felt very one note) and while the OST is good, it’s not Persona.

7/10

Arcane - Season 2

An immense visual spectacle, banger OST, and a story that felt like it could have used two more episodes. I’m not complaining! They took their time and delivered on the promise of season 1.

10/10

I’ve wanted forever to unify my blog with both long form (essays) and short form (micro posts). And I think I’ve finally managed to pull it off in a way I’m happy with (not perfect mind you, but satisfactory). Will need to figure out the cross-posting bit and a more pleasant publishing step, but having them unified removes a mental hurdle I always had when writing.

Hazbin Hotel

Masterpiece! I can’t believe I’m so late to this… This is everything I could ever want in a show. The music is out of this world, the voice acting is better than most Broadway A-list shows, the art is pitch perfect! Now, to dive into Helluva Boss.

10/10