April 20th - April 26th 2026

Music

• Kawaii Morena | Skygarden - Okay, Fili-boos? Pinoy-aboos? Three Japanese dudes that love the Philippines so deeply they are merging Japanese music with Filipino language.
• Forgotten Dances: III. Courante - Here was a a swift (for Max Ernst) | Sean Shibe - Bro, this album is nuts. It’s kind of intimidating instrumentals that feel like fresh classical.

Podcasts

• Total Playtime Podcast | Jank - Silly brits being silly about games and over things. Just a general shoutout for a unique, comedic take on getting your video game news in.

News/Essays

• 1 in 2,000: The Long Odds of Becoming a Pro Gamer in China | Sixth Tone | He Qitong - A really cool article on the esports scene in China post-bubble. The story follows a teen who came of age and became a pro during the 2010s - which was a huge investment period with inflated salaries - and, now, as a coach how he approaches the same scene with meager resources and overwhelming numbers of teens wanting to play. All in the backdrop is government regulations for children’s allowable play time.

Books/Manga

• Vampeerz | AKILI | Denpa - Okay, so I have already covered this series. However, my library has a bunch more volumes I never read, so time to revisit this series. The link there now has an update with the volumes I have read! Not quite caught up on the series, but getting there. Also, it just gets better and the world just gets bigger.

YouTube

• A Noob’s Journey Through Classic WoW [Full Series] | Dedmundz - If you have no interest in playing WoW Classic or just want to relive the nostalgia at a fraction of the time investment here you go!
• Framework Next Gen Event in 10 minutes | The Verge - I have had a Framework laptop for the last year or so and am loving it! They launched their 13 inch laptop in a pro model, and basically of the components are backwards and forward compatible from 2021 models to today! Totally worth the investment. It’s basically the Linux Macbook Pro. Also, it makes me so happy when a company can be in on its own joke, this nerdy ass CEO is giving some really niche jokes and I’m living.
• The Halo Game That Insists Upon Itself | MilkDrinker - New favorite content creator! I love Halo and am always open to new takes on my forever franchise, so give it watch!
• Why I Play WoW Alone - The Solo Experience | Angelikatosh - She is me, I am her. I cannot recommend WoW Classic as a solo experience more. It’s been such a calming, exploratory experience that I am happy to sink in my grind hours into. I really like her video though because it comes from a WoW lifer.
• Achievement Hunter- Where Are They Now? | Floppy Disk Repairman - If you were an Achievement Hunter or Rooster Teeth Girl, you have to check this out!

Games

• Sol Cesto | Tambouille, Géraud Zucchini, Chariospirale | 2026 - FUCK I got real addicted to this game. There have been multiple times where I got bored or frustrated with the repetitiveness or failing a deep run, but then there are these secrets and post-game content that keep pushing you in a very motivating way. The final doorway keep requires that you beat the game four more times. The achievements require that you finish the game with each character (some characters requires really clever and fun unlock conditions). All the while your constellation of unlocks grows larger across the night sky. It’s a really interesting feeling as you begin stacking cash and filling up the screen with characters and unlocks, what once felt like a profoundly lonely and powerless experience steadily becomes one in which you are rinsing through the entire game in 20 minutes. I’ve been sick the last week, so I got my 8 hours in and feeling like I should probably uninstall before I go on another binge. Really great game worth every penny.
• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade | SquareEnix | 2022 - Every time I play this game I am reminded of how incredible it is. The sheer scale and diversity of what you are going in a video game feels novel every time I pop in to play an hour or two. I beat the Hellhouse, which was such a demoralizing fight the first time around. The whole Coliseum storyline is so funny to me cause you’re getting a pervy old guy back into the strip clip and healing a bunch of people with food poisoning after hitting a four-pete in Caeser-like lion pit ass combat. AND IT ALL WORKS. That’s what I don’t understand. 20 hours in and it is all still so fantastic to me.
• World of Warcraft: Classic | Blizzard | 2004/2019 - For whatever reason, I chose to spend $14 on a subscription to the World of Warcraft in our Lord’s year of 2026. The confluence of events makes this feel like an obvious thing to happen - I read Play Nice and the NoClip podcast has been talking about WoW for the last couple of weeks - but underlying all of this is the type of games we have nowadays and the general strain of the world. I’ve never been interested in WoW retail, it just feels like an antiquated and more expensive version of modern MMORPGs with little to offer in the modern day. Now, I grew up in the early 2000s and remember being exposed to sooooooooooooooooooooooo much WoW media, even if my only exposure to the game was replaying the free level 1-20 over and over. There is a dream in the late 90s/early 00s games industry. When the rules were still being made and the market had failed to understand and capitalize on the industry, and ogh my god so much sexism and racism. It’s our garage band era. Reading Play Nice just felt like this impossible and really charasmatic story of 30 or 40 people who could not stop making absolute bangers. It still doesn’t feel real that a couple of people made Warcraft (one of the most beloved worlds in games), then Startcraft (widely considered the best RTS ever made), Diablo (popularized the ARPG genre and Diablo II is largely undefeated 30 years later), and then of course WoW which broke everything. It was so popular it threatened to sink anything good about Blizzard. And yet, we still got Hearthstone and Overwatch. Knowing this history put an even worse taste in my mouth as retail WoW, in my end, is marred completely by Bobby Kotick and represents an LA-based Blizzard that had been thoroughly hollowed, with little to no founding members still around. When they released WoW: Classic in 2019, it’s sat on the back burner of my mind ever since. I have been steadily building an obsession with 00s cool adult culture, like the punk scene and I guess the burgeoning video game scene, and WoW is absolutely apart of that story. But I was a wee child and couldn’t really be a part of that moment. This felt like an opportunity to get as close to that feeling, or at least understanding, of why this game shook the nation and would eventually reach escape velocity and become national and international meme. The short of my hours so far is that I am absolutely loving this game. I’m level 14 playing a Night Elf. I’m rinsing through quests in the very drab Darkmoor, but am loving the worldbuilding having met Asterion and getting to fight off soooooooooooooooo met Murlocs. I love exploring this world. I love how slow it is. I love how simple and straightforward the quests are. They make you feel small and insignificant, which only helps to take off the pressure to be a hero. Your’re not ready yet. It feels good to take things slow and to build a love for a world, even if it is objectively sparse, simple, and with antiquated graphics. It’s full of friction - no mounts until 40. And that makes you feel at one with the place you are in. This is why full-grown men and blubbering at the end of Xenoblade Chronicles. These games know that forcing you to spend the time, no matter the grind or simplicity, it will make you familiar, it will make you know the place. And there isn’t a way to fast-track that feeling. It’s what a makes a local, a local. It’s not about knowing where to go or information about the town you are in, it’s about the people seeing your face over and over and over again. It’s about developing deep, informed opinions - for better or worse - about this place. I will write more about WoW: Classic, I am hooping to hit lvl 60 in a year and a half, so TBD on that haha!