Officially the first post of 2024, I’m going to be shaking things up a bit effective immediately. The monthly blog that’s been a part of my site since its inception will be renamed “monthly news” and a new section called “weekly news” will be added. I’m also going to add a big button on every update to cross link the two, since I’ve taken advice from other folks to include “large clicky things” as much as possible. Apparently human psychology can’t help the siren’s call of pressing or opening something up; regardless of how mundane it actually might be! As stated in the 2023 retrospective, the former "mini news” and “weekend synthwave” have been retired and are no longer on the site. Moving forward, all weekly updates will be archived similar to the monthly ones, but I will be more aggressive to trim the weekly updates to prevent site bloat.
Being honest with yourself is a very important step in personal growth. So much in fact, I think in an age of social media where truth and fiction blur the line daily, it’s hard to see who’s honest about themselves with others. I share these thoughts with you because I reflected upon the absolute failure of one of my projects last year which was getting more engagement over to the website. The recently closed mini news section and weekend synthwave were prime examples of my failures, the latter being particularly bad. In the entirety of 2023, the weekend synthwave page I put up for music got less than 100 views! More depressing is the fact that at least a third of those were my own, making sure the video links were accessible in a mobile browser on my phone. None the less, there are many others like me who took on ideas way too ambitious for their own good, and you can see them all over at the Museum of Failure. It might be a bittersweet stroll down memory lane for you older folks out there, but it’s a fascinating lesson for everyone else in the history of those willing to “try”.
This is a double recommendation, in the form of a YouTube creator as well as his website. Stix has been working hard for a while now growing his channel as well as maintaining a gacha gaming news website. Chiefly it is focused on gacha news for relatively obscure games coming out soon. You can check it out at My Gacha Hub. I personally like to thank Stix for his efforts in attempting to organize gacha gaming releases, particularly as they can be extremely haphazard and disjointed. Understandably you won’t find any adult or 18+ title recommendations from him (he’s a growing YouTube channel after all), but if I ever get my act together here on this site, I’ll be happy to fill that particular space!
While I was doing some research for the 2023 retrospective, I came across some news that Kenko_Cross (creator of MGE) was actually working on a game for a while now! I think he’s been low key on it since the expectations are a little high of someone of his standing; literally holding the entire world’s hopes and dreams in regards to bringing monster girls into the mainstream. He’s already done his good deeds by releasing a couple of bestselling books on the matter, but now he needs to step up his game and make a… game. You get the idea - more monster girls!
Artist is Maru_mao
This is a friendly reminder that the soon to be launched weekly news section will have a lot of “in the moment” stuff that’s more time sensitive to talk about. In other words, minor drama and news that’s really meant for a hot take and then moving on. The monthly news updates will always contain more “permanent” recommendations that should stand the test of time better. So, someone new to the site reading a backlog of content can still (hopefully) enjoy a lot of it without feeling they missed anything. Due to the way I’m going to be formatting the weekly news site, comments and questions are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I want to start answering questions and responding to comments on my weekly news, so hence I encourage anyone reading the weekly site to leave them on the bottom of the page. I’ve made sure to allow the process to be as painless as possible, and you don’t have to register an account if you don’t want to (I’ve enabled anonymous posters). I also will try to avoid posting heavily NSFW stuff on the monthly news updates as they’re meant to be more “general”, while the weekly stuff will definitely be spicier. Of course, this site being what it is, expect a very loose interpretation of what is acceptable lewd and not!
Artist is コノシゲ
Obligatory best wishes for the lunar new year of 2024! It’s the year of the dragon, so expect a lot of cool little trinkets and merchandise reflecting this. Speaking of which, did you know that your zodiac sign’s year is technically supposed to be “bad” luck? In superstitious circles, your lunar zodiac year (which is every 12 years for simplicity by the way) has the potential to be very negative if you don’t appease the god of age Tai Sui. In other words, you have to offer some form of acknowledgement that you share the same birth year with the god (read up more on it for details), and that way you will avoid misfortune or ire. Fun little factoid as I think a lot of other cultures would consider “alignment” of any form a good thing than bad.
My final send off for my weekend synthwave section, the above song is an absolute banger and one I listen to often when I take my walks or exercise. It’s pretty crazy how people’s taste in music can differ so much that I should of known better to rely on it as a measurement of engagement. Art (mostly pictures) seem to transcend a lot of personal barriers, but music is quite divisive. None the less I hope you enjoy the song as I think it sounds amazing and is great atmospheric / ambient music for a variety of things. The music video is very well put together as well, but then again anything Blade Runner related is awesome.
That’s it for February! Don’t forget to check out the newly launched weekly news section for more frequent little updates between months. It’s really disorganized and non-sequitur over there, but that’s the whole spirit of the section anyway. Will be back in March for (hopefully) more meaty updates in regards to gaming and other interesting news.