March 16th - March 22nd 2026

TV

• Fruits Basket | 2019 - Still excellent slice-of-life. Tohru gets a bit annoying in her one-dimensional writing, but it’s still season one and the world is expanding. There are enough new characters and moments to keep everything feeling fresh. And then BAM episode 7. Fuck me. The Doctor’s english-language voice actor is also insanely powerful, and his story really started getting me emotional. Darkness, sure, that’s been in the series since the beginning, but this felt truly high-stakes. So much regret and longing. So much of that good ol’ Japanese emotional self-harm for collective, order-based societies.

Music

• CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE | Ecca Vandal - I wish I was this cool. Hits you straight in the teeth right out the gate. Truly the only good thing to come out of South Africa aside from Orville Peck, I guess.
• Stars Above | sweet93 - Kind of what I imagine Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain’s baby sounding like.
• The Firefly Wedding | Thomas Flynn - Dude just wants to be a bug. Let it happen.
• Sakura Chill | Milk Talk - Your really groovy Uncle found the anime synth in his nieces bedroom, voila.
• The Sim | Jam2Go - Heartfelt, sweet, and undeniably computer-y.

News/Essays

• I Roved Out In Search Of Truth And Love Is An Erotic Fantasy Saga That Has More Than Just Spice - 10/10. I’m not big in the smut community//familiar with a lot of the canonical content, but hot red-head in a Dishonored-esque painterly style - how could you go wrong? Get your rocks off y’all.
• Nobody Likes Nvidia’s Weird New AI Porn Faces - DLSS5 - which many of you wil have auto-updated and set to default - is causing lots of discourse and problems. You should know about it.

Books/Manga

• Phantom Tales of the Night - Volume I | Matsuri | 2016 - I picked this up from the library and I’m not sure I remember why. It actually has a pretty solid opening conceit - a highschool student is followed by a horde of butterflies only to be abducted by a demon. His only way out? To trade a secret to the proprietor of a Spirited-Away-esque inn. I do quite like the pacing and how the chapters align with a different secret revealing/taking moment. What left me wanting was that the secrets were never truly given weight. At one point the inn keeper uses it to control a demon, but other than that the creation, disclosure, and ultimate utility of the secrets weren’t communicated well. I don’t think I will keep on, but the art was excellent and its a solid premise.
• The Pōhaku | Jasmin I’olani Hakes | 2026 - Absolute banger from jump. I love the setup and storytelling. I like the bouncing between history and present. I’m only about 50 pages in, and the only complaint I have is the storytelling voice loses Tutu in it, which I understand is difficult. It takes away some of the immersion to throw in a “oh your tutu went forget this…” after pages of fairly standard voice in the historical storytelling. Regardless, my chest swells reading about home and she is, as she did in Hula, doing our home justice. So grateful for artists like her.

YouTube

• Unleashing the Potential of Irish Game Development - Danny O’Dwyer | noclip_2 - Go watch it. It’s good for you.
• INSANE NEW TIMESAVE DISCOVERY IN POKEMON FIRERED EXPLAINED! | Gunnermaniac - I adore the speedrunning community. I regularly highlight content and retrospectives and this is just a pure joy video. A story of accidents and timing and that has changed a community you likely have never heard of and will never meet. Somehow that makes it all the better.
• After 12 Years, The Xbox One has finally been hacked | Modern Vintage Gamer - Really cool for those of us with the OG XBone (yikes). Some penance for having what is likely the worst console in the past 30 years.
• I Built a Goodreads Killer | hyunj - Simple, effective, minimalist. Give me an API and I’m done for. I never used Goodreads, so would be curious to hear from folks if this does what it purports to do. Anything not Amazon-owned is a win.
• The Entire History of Marathon | Jake The Alright - I actually recommend playing 2026’s Marathon and then backtracking to this video after a few hours, and it will feel sooooooooo gratifying to feel the lore fill the pores of the aesthetic painting that is Marathon’s UI/voice acting.
• Yaeji Gives A Tour of Her Playful Powerful Creative Studio | Splice, Yaeji - Sometimes being a music creator can be so chill and songs don’t have to bear the weight of the world. Rad studio and rad creation process.

Games

• Marathon | Bungie | 2026 - I hit 10 hours this week! To be honest, there was a moment where I could have fallen off, but some really lucky random queues has me absolutely hooked. I met up with two brothers who are weebs and super sweet. One talking his niece - his brother’s cat, and all of us being really into anime and Destiny. A more recent queue I actually played with another woman!! She was also way better than me at the game, so grateful to have a solid teammate. We even talked after the third person left just connecting. Also made a lot of faction/contract progress which feels good. Cryo Archive released this week, and while I am nowhere near close to entering it does feel like I am progressing. I think having a team in constant communication has made me more brave for new maps and more PVP conflict. I’m holding my own on my team, and I think it’s only going up from here. I fear my FFVII Remake playthrough is in jeopardy because this game is all I think about.
• DEMO: All Living Things | MOXO - Aesthetic in a way I haven’t really seen before. It harkens to a imagined past I never had of point-and-click adventure games on hardware I simply could not find in my memory bank. Also, Leika Studios. A point-and-click about old English/Latin and alchemy, wherein you are brought into the stories and processes of alchemy. I think to really have this hit you have to do some homework - and want to do it - so not for me right now.