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drew Qifrey at the local chalk art festival today. fun clothing folds practice but has this man ever considered wearing a color other than white or black

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if your character is from another country and u are an ace attorney writer u have two choices: make it up or germany

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And no one will ever believe you

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i had this exceptionally talented barber sent off to prison for a 15 year sentence for marrying the woman i’m in love with. i’ve been imprisoning the woman’s daughter ever since haha. his apartment’s also been empty ever since lmaooo. anyway it’s been 15 years and some exceptionally talented barber with a fake-sounding name just showed up out of nowhere and started living in that apartment and keeps asking me to show up for a cheap shave. seems totally unrelated to anything in my past and like a great deal, i should probably go

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Sunrise on the Reaping is great overall and does exactly what a prequel should do (reframes the events of the original series; leans into the painful dramatic irony of how the reader knows the characters' fates but the characters don't) but the ending didn't quite land for me. details and spoilers under the cut.

so first off I would have loved to read an entire book that was just the last chapter, but I've reflected and I understand that "boy spirals into isolation and alcoholism" doesn't have mass appeal. I don't begrudge that arc not being deeply explored in a YA book.

What really didn't connect for me was Lenore Dove's death. Obviously she had to die, but it was too soon and too similar to Haymitch's family dying to have the emotional impact it deserved. I think there were ways to have her killed that would have better resonance with the themes, and been more convincing as to why he felt the need to push everyone else away as a result.

What I anticipated is that Haymitch wouldn't see Lenore Dove again for a long time after the Games. She was under arrest; she could have been shipped out of 12 to an unknown place, with no word for months but also no word of her death (and surely Snow would have forced him to know if she was dead? surely? no, she is alive, a hostage for his good behavior, and he can play that game, for as long as it takes. whatever it takes.)

Then it's the night before the next reaping, and a visitor knocks on his door....and she's completely fine, she's unharmed, pissed at the Capitol as always. An early birthday present. And then that night she dies. Probably the gumdrops wouldn't quite work by then, but there could be any other very similar means that puts Haymitch in the same situation of nightmares and guilt. But in this case the message is even more explicit: you can do everything right for the rest of your life and it will never make up for what you've already done. There's no point in hope.

...And of course, if she dies the night before his birthday, the chapter ends with sunrise on the reaping.

Or.

It's still just the same day or so after his family dies as in canon, and Lenore Dove shows up and there's no gumdrops, it's fine, and then within a week she is deathly ill. Appendicitis. Tuberculosis. Flu. Covid. Hell, even an accident that isn't an illness, maybe a fall from a tree in the woods. Anything that could have killed anyone, but it kills her.

But Haymitch sees Snow's hand in it. And crucially, the reader doesn't know whether he's right. We and Haymitch both have no reason to suspect it was his work other than it must be, but while the reader is left with the unsettled feeling of "maybe it was just a coincidence...?" Haymitch never once considers it might not have been Snow. Implicit submission. Propaganda, the perception of the infinite reach of the Capitol, is more powerful than evidence.

Anyway. The whole book felt like a series of successive punches to the gut and I really wanted the last one to be way harder than it was. If I was truly dedicated I'd write the fanfiction, but I'm just kicking around thoughts at the moment.

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a little while ago i was hanging out with some friends watching severance and at the same time i was browsing ao3 to look for specifically crossover severance fanfiction bc we wanted to see if any brave souls had mapped the innie/outie dynamics onto the miraculous ladybug love square, or vice versa. as of the time of looking they hadn't. conceptual favorites of what i saw there was anya mouthwashing x helly r. yuri and a fic where the cast of the owl house founds ricken's book. but this post is about any of that that this post is the about the fact that while we were doing this i said 'you know who could do a really great severed love square. narumitsu' and in the weeks since i have become increasingly delighted thinking about a world where miles edgeworth gets to essentially kill himself by stepping into an elevator every day.

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this is how they caught aflogi progressive right

(original comic I made in 2022 below)

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i bet Shakespeare watching Severance in the afterlife would be really mad he didn't think of this conceit first. think of the identity shenanigans he could have pulled off.

he'd also think there's not enough gender fuckery in the show. and he'd be right.

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Thinking about Mio again.

Paranormasight is such a good game, y'all.

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Video Game Recs - 2024

I played several video games this year, and while it's still 2024 I'm here to tell you which ones I liked and which ones I didn't.

Top five recommendations:

Murders on the Yangtze River

Paranormasight

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Ghost Trick

Paradise Killer

Below the cut are more details on these recs and all the other games I played this year, ordered chronologically.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (I'd already played THH some years ago) - recommended, with caveats. I love the way DR mysteries are put together -- if you're clever enough, you can solve the entire mystery before ever entering the trial. The style and feel of the trial mechanics are thrilling. I know the endgame plot twists can be very polarizing, but I enjoyed them (yes, even the ending of v3, though I think if the devs weren't cowards the game would have ended about 10 minutes earlier than it did). However, the characters are all annoying teenagers with approximately 1.5 character traits each. I wound up really liking the protagonists of both games, but overall the cast is just… not that fun to spend 30+ hours with. And that's not even getting into the fact that this series just cannot resist counting "horny misogynist" as a character trait. The friend who got me into DR assured me the fanservice was always plot relevant, and sure, it is, but one wonders why they couldn't have just written the mysteries without that. It's hard to be a mystery VN fan without playing Danganronpa eventually, and again, the mysteries are great, but just know what you're in for.

Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane - recommended. Ace Attorney but with magic, and it's not at all trying to hide it. The mysteries were okay. The magic was interesting, but not utilized to its fullest potential. The game was a little glitchy when I played back in April (they might have patched some of it by now). But my god, the characters. The character writing is incredible. Gameplay takes about a third as long as any given Ace Attorney game, but I cared about the characters at least as much as any given AA character in that time. One of two games on this list that made me cry. Good solid game if you're an Ace Attorney fan.

Paradise Killer - recommended. Open-world vaporwave mystery game with utterly batshit lore. I love stories -- books, games, whatever -- that drop you into a bizarre world and let you pick up the worldbuilding as you go along, and my god does PK deliver. Pretty solid mystery, very memorable characters. It does get a bit tedious and grab-the-collectibles toward the end, but that's technically optional. Utterly useless map. If you like your mysteries with a side of running around a vibrant, atmospheric world grabbing weird shit, Paradise Killer is for you. (Invest in the footbaths early, I am not kidding.)

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami - it's cute! kinda on a different scale than other recommendations, but a fun use of a couple hours. The exact base mechanic of Case of the Golden Idol (fill-in-the-blank logic puzzling) but with a divorced alcoholic duck detective as the protagonist, and a colorful cast of other animals. If you liked Frog Detective you will not regret getting this game.

Murders on the Yangtze River - it's my life's mission to get people to play this game. An Ace Attorney-like game featuring a detective traveling across Qing Dynasty China and Victorian London to seek out the truth of his brother's death. The characters, the mysteries, the visuals, the themes, the way everything slots into everything else at the end. I wouldn't call it perfect -- the English translation is a little shaky in parts, and I have some minor quibbles about a case or two -- but I would eagerly recommend this to anyone who liked The Great Ace Attorney.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - recommended. An excellent puzzle/mystery game whose mechanics are intricately intertwined with the narrative. I didn't personally find it lifechanging the way many, many people do, but I can think of nothing negative to say about it. If you like the best parts of Ace Attorney and can handle a bit of puzzle-solving along the way, play Ghost Trick.

Vampire Therapist - not recommended. The rare non-mystery game on my played list. Cute gimmick, some fun character concepts (I'm always a sucker for a Jekyll & Hyde narrative), undeniably talented voice actors. Unfortunately, very repetitive. After the first round or two of sessions, I'd met all the characters, and there wasn't enough depth to any of them to justify the amount of game left. I also didn't enjoy the (non-graphic) sexual stuff with side characters, though that may be primarily because there's one point near the beginning where the protag is expressing pretty clear lack of interest only for that to be ignored. I think it was meant to come across as a joke about American prudishness rather than actual non-consent, but it did not land well for me. The game seems to be well-liked by plenty of people, though. I haven't played the demo personally, but if you're interested maybe give that a try and imagine the same thing for ten hours after you've already learned all the characters' problems in the first two.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes: recommended. Brilliant, atmospheric puzzle game. A lonely escape room in black and white and red. Not a horror game but kept me up at night nevertheless. There is an underlying mystery, but the strength of the game is not its narrative. If Roman numerals and combination locks get you at all excited, play Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.

Heaven's Vault - not recommended. Cool in concept, pretty views, and the baseline mechanic of decoding an unknown language is a lot of fun. I also liked the sailing alright. But after the first hour or two, I found myself kind of aimlessly wandering the galaxy with no real impetus behind any of my actions. None of the characters were especially likeable (or even hateable) so I didn't find anything to really latch onto and engage me in the world. Also, I didn't mind this personally, but I think every other negative review would like me to mention that the movement sucks. If you're an archaeology or linguistics fan and don't need strong narratives in your gaming, it might be to your taste.

Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE+ - recommended, with caveats. A fantasy dystopia murder mystery game set in an eternally raining city under the control of a megacorporation, where you and a handful of other detectives search for the truth behind a series of murders. It's not another Danganronpa game, but… it's another Danganronpa game, and comes with most of the same strengths and flaws. The MDARC characters are a little less annoying by virtue of being adults (and there is some truly peak character design), but the trial Mystery Labyrinth gameplay is also less interesting than DR trials. Win some, lose some; but overall a solidly comparable experience to DR.

Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief - not recommended. The remarkable accuracy of the adaptation could not make up for the tedium of what is, mechanically, a mediocre point-and-click game. I had high hopes for this game, as I love both stealth games and detective games, but this lacked the excitement of either. The connection web looked cool (in fact, the visuals overall are very sleek) but often it and other puzzles were what my friends and I call "guess what the creator is thinking" puzzles. If you're a diehard Arsene Lupin fan, it might be worth it, but if you're just here for clever mysteries or puzzles, skip it.

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo - highly recommended. A heavily stylized horror-mystery game (with entirely diegetic mechanics) that sends you running around Honjo, Japan with a cast of deeply motivated characters and something always right behind you. The other game on this list that made me cry. As I've said elsewhere, I think this might be a perfect game. If you liked Zero Escape or AI: The Somnium Files but wanted a little more horror and a much tighter narrative, play Paranormasight. I wish I could play it again for the first time.

The Case of the Golden Idol - recommended. Logic-puzzle your way through a series of frozen-in-time moments in the deadly journey of the titular idol. I held off on playing this for years due to a dislike of the art style, but honestly it wasn't even that noticeable. The puzzle design is very elegantly done, and if all else fails there's always guess-and-check. If you like logic grids, Return of the Obra Dinn, or trying desperately to remember who the hell that one guy is seriously I just saw him what was his name, you'll enjoy Curse of the Golden Idol. I assume the recently released sequel is equally good, but haven't played it yet.

What Remains of Edith Finch - recommended, I guess? I played it across two plane rides so it wasn't the most focused of playthroughs -- I certainly didn't get the hard-hitting emotional experience most seem to. It's a classic, and deserves it for the innovative mechanics (and the subtitles alone). A good solid use of a couple hours, though go in with caution if child death might be triggering for you.

Call of the Sea - recommended. Picked this up after Paradise Killer and Lorelei with the desperate need to explore another gorgeous locale full of bizarre secrets, and it mostly holds up. Leans way more on the puzzle game than mystery side, though it's easy for a puzzle game. More linear than I like, and the puzzles and lore reveals are definitely contrived, but it's atmospheric and I enjoyed the company of the protagonist along the way. Genuinely emotional ending. If you're looking for a tropical escape room vibe with questions about identity, belonging, and weird black ooze, Call of the Sea is for you.

...and I still haven't managed to play more than an hour or two of Disco Elysium, so maybe I'll finally get around to that in 2025.

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Also while I'm thinking about paradise killer again (good game glad I played it) [also full spoilers because yeah] I think the thing that sticks out to me the most in the "no matter what you do, you didn't change the system" department is the conversation with henry you get if you actually manage to save him. If you actually jump through all the hoops and dig into all the side tangents to completely absolve him, completely get him off the hook of every single thing he's ever been accused of and he's still there in the "drive off into the sunset and/or do some extrajudicial executions" segment to chat with.

Because like. You've done all that. You've Won, with respect to his story, you've Stood Up for the little guy, saved the day. And he's still in prison. He's still a disposable human sacrifice who's getting left behind while the powers that be condemn this entire reality to oblivion. He's still got a demon screaming bloody murder inside him. All you've won for him is the right to watch the world end, a few more hours of breath before his inevitable execution.

And like, damn! That's really potent! It makes you think of the other ways he's unsaveable-you can't give him the like decade of his life he spent in prison on the earlier accusations back, you can't undo the fuckhell of his entire setup as a fall guy for the administration, his very conception being tied up in their bullshit games, you can't undo the way disposable underclass in this society has permanently eviscerated his social existence! And at least assuming my memory of it is intact enough, he's still pretty bitter about all of that! You cannot as the One Person magical Video Game Protagonist really do anything to save him! It's Quite Potent!

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finished Paranormasight and wow, wow wow wow, I think Murders on the Yangtze River still claims first place in terms of my favorite game I played this year, but Paranormasight is probably the best game.

The structure and pacing of the mystery is incredibly well done, such that I was piecing things together just ahead of the characters. It's weird and twisty and requires you to learn a whole set of rules for how the world of the game works, and kept me up at night just thinking through how certain things could have possibly happened within those rules — my favorite mystery gaming experience, and one I haven't gotten since AI:TSF.

The theming and atmosphere are incredibly immersive, and the characters are all believable and compelling! I generally speed through investigation/daily life segments of mystery visual novels, but I would happily spend another ten hours just hanging out with the characters or hearing their thoughts about every random background object, even the ones who are terrible people. (and who knew! you can have a good mystery game without misogynistic humor! are you listening Spike Chunsoft)

My only complaint is that the title is a lie. there are more than seven mysteries of Honjo.

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i love how in paranormasight there are only two people who really, really want to perform the Rite of Ressurection no matter the cost. and it's the woman who lost her son (understandable) and the lady who wants to bring back 19th century's ukiyo-e artist katsushika hokusai to see what art he'd make in the modern day (perfect, no notes).

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I played paranormasight 2 weeks ago and haven't been the same since

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I just finished playing Murders on the Yangtze River, a murder mystery game loosely styled after Ace Attourney and its like. I am fond of the genre despite often disdaining its trappings, but this game broke out of many of the things I dislike and had a beautiful presentation and innovative gameplay ideas.

The narrative was outstanding, combining mystery writing that genuinely challenged me - which is very rare, I'm very good at these sort of games - and a story that brought me to messy tears multiple times.

It features an in-game archive of historical facts that are relevant context to events within the story, which is set in early 1900's China. The political contexts of the time are established and deeply relevant to the story, and it does not shy away from discussing darker subject matters in a way I thought was very well handled, including abuse, addiction and misogyny. One of the characters is plural, and I had a wonderful time with that element of their story.

Murders on the Yangtze River was one of the most compelling games I've ever played, and I am now deeply looking forward to it's DLC, and any further efforts developed by this team. I may purchase the soundtrack. It thoroughly deserves its 98% positive review rating on steam.

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haven't finished the game so I can't say for sure but I think Paranormasight is best played very quickly so the player (me) can remember all the tiny very plot important details

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well that didn't take long! don't worry Mayu me and my spooky ghost knowledge from other timelines have your back

if nail polish remover becomes relevant later in this game I'm going to lose it