grouchy

Saw Soccer in Sun and Shadow recced in lefty spaces years ago. iirc it has a few stray brainworms about "totalitarian regimes"/Mao/Stalin (don't remember what it was exactly) but it's a light and enjoyable read overall.

(doesn't go deep into politics but does talk a lot about historical context)

Surprised no one's brought up Infinity Nikki, a lot of peeps here would love it (ignore the gacha, the free outfits are plentiful and cuuuuute)

Game's gorgeous even on lowest settings on my cheap non-gaming laptop, and I have NEVER seen another game put so much love and care toward fabric/hair textures and physics. Cute and relaxing way to spend time, though I've heard Nikki lore apparently gets unexpectedly dark, lol. I've been spending way more time playing since launch than I expected to.

I'm a huge Ogre Saga fan so naturally Unicorn Overlord shot up to the top of my list.... except for some reason I ended up restarting Triangle Strategy instead, after dropping it two years ago out of sheer disgust. I have such a love-hate relationship with that game, the gameplay is so good but the writing is fucking godawful. The worst part is some of the individual character writing actually is quite solid (the two old vets, the first recruitable brown lady, maybe a few others every now and then) but the main plot is essentially a wannabe GoT (show not books) with anime characteristics/a truly infantile understanding of politics and warfare, and the rampant Orientalism is absolutely gross. I'm just fast forwarding through cutscenes now (and there are SO fucking many) but it's still annoying enough that I might drop it again lol. Such a shame about the gameplay though if I do, it's genuinely among my favorites in the genre.

This weekend though I'm planning to do a quick run through Eiyuden Chronicle Rising in preparation for the main game's release. Very excited about that!

Also been doing a playthrough of Story of Seasons 1 since it has my fave art in the HM/SoS franchise, but it's very off and on.

I haven't been there in more than a decade (and wasn't a commie at the time*) so can't give advice, but make sure to check out West Lake while you're in Hangzhou! iirc most of the nearby food on the shore is a tourist trap though, so you might wanna arrange meals a little further away, but again, dunno what it's like now. For vegan food, probably look into places catering toward Buddhists (not necessarily vegan but higher chance of vegan items on the menu and/or the people running the place understanding more specific dietary requests), sometimes hard to check even without a language barrier though.

I'm also tempted to suggest taking a day or two to check out Suzhou (Zhouzhuang is super cool and there are a gazillion gardens; Tiger Hill is also interesting but I'm biased cuz I'm into the related history) but that probably makes the itinerary too cramped.

Oh right, this again is probably outdated info but I'd recommend carrying around packs of toilet tissue/wipes as not all facilities have toilet paper. Similarly, some places will only have squat toilets, so that's also something to maybe plan ahead for if it's a concern for anyone in your family.

• I will mention Lu Xun wrote two famous essays on the collapse of the Leifeng Pagoda (near West Lake); I thought it was kinda ironic visiting the reconstructed pagoda but think my feelings have shifted a bit since. It's the kind of place worth checking out once but maybe not a second time, I think, and there's so much to see and do in the area I might not prioritize it personally.

There's a particularly annoying strain of this in Japanese fiction (not just animanga/games, I consume a lot of detective fiction), where it's like

Antagonist: I and others have suffered grave injustices under the system

Protagonist: I'm so sorry. I see you and hear you. I promise to do better as an individual. changes absolutely nothing about the system