Pour Me a Yuri!!! on Ice

Yuri!!! on Ice is unequivocally one of the most popular anime to come out in Q4 2016— if not this entire year, honestly. Most of the reception has been incredibly positive, and there have only been a few nitpicks here and there about the overall theme of romance within the show itself. ……But honestly, a lot of it is unnecessary discourse. Also, Congratulations to it being the first anime I started and finished in the past… year. Thank you to Anne Lee over at Chic Pixel for the 48 hour CrunchyRoll guest pass, so I could watch the finale yesterday!(๑¯♡¯๑)

I've been interested in figure skating for years; it's been a silent interest of mine since childhood [I'll be posting about another one before the year is out, hopefully] and has always been one of those fantastical things that I never thought I could actually indulge in, in spite of already playing several sports back then. Figure skating is one of those sports that focuses so much on technique and encourages a stylised and personal approach to elegance. Despite the silly costumes, the competitors are fiercely loyal to their craft and incredibly disciplined. When I was growing up, figure skating wasn't really on the radar of many people around me. It was solely considered a feminine hobby, if it was even regarded at all, so it's nice to see something like this become so popular and bring fans of the sport, new and old together.

But enough about waxing poetic about ice knives and silly leotards, what about the show? Well. I'm glad you asked.

Ultimate Ultimatum: DATE OR DIE!!

It's been a bit since I've talked about an indie game that I was super stoked about. And this year, I have two! One of which I will tell you about right… n–

Date or Die!! is a thrilling visual novel where the main theme revolves a dating reality game show where everyone plays for keeps. What's to keep? Your life, of course! The game consists of a colourful LGBT cast and a dynamite, sadistic host. To quote the creators: "In terms of inspiration, think Flavor of Love and The Bachelor meets Danganronpa!" Boy oh boy. I can't wait for the full version of this.

I Have a Liebster Award! (ↀДↀ)✧

In all my… ten years of being on Blogger, I don't remember being given this award. When I was a lot more networked, when I was far more active than I am now, I gave and received a couple, but never more than that. So this is my third award in all my years here. I think that makes it more precious.

I was nominated for this award by mchi. over at MCHIouji. mchi spoils me a lot, haha, so I can't say that I'm entirely surprised by this. (Even though I'm absolutely bowled over by having gotten one anyway.)

Check that out, ain't that pretty? Now, mchi has been kind enough to leave some questions for me to fill out. If you're interested in that and my nominations, join me under the cut!

Fredbear and His Spin Offs

So the news has come out that Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location will be coming out on October 7th. That's the rumour in the grapevine so far, and if you haven't seen the trailer yet, do check it out. Dear Mr. Cawthon himself has said that there won't be further trailers. We'll just have to make due with what we have, and I personally enjoy rewatching it.

For those who aren't aware, I am a big fan of the Five Nights series. There are a lot of fan games out there, and I do have my favourites. I won't be able to get into them all, of course, but I still wanna chit chat for little bit about them – let's do this.

Check In: Vrb Headphones

Back in 2014, I received an email from Julie Pham of Vrb Headphones. I don't remember approaching them, but apparently I must have as the email literally starts wtih "Thanks for taking interest in our blogging needs." Huh.

Interesting.

But anyway! On September, I ended up writing a blog post about their Kickstarter campaign which you can read here. I did the promotion because I was very impressed by the Kickstarter and the product and writing a post was something of a remainder for me to get the product myself when it came out in full.

At the time of the email, Pham told me, "We don’t have any headphone samples ready to be sent out for review since they're still in pre-production." Makes sense. At the time, I was mostly interested in the campaign. Plus having a timeline as to when the headphones would come out of pre-production was very helpful for future check ups quite like this.

Unfortunately, this check up is not a good one.

Aaah Nostalgia – New Retro Arcade: Neon

If you haven't guessed already, I live vicariously through Dan's YouTube channel.

Huzzah, and thanks for making it through another personal, quote-unquote emotional personal post previously. If that entry no longer exists, you dodged a bullet. Let's continue!

My Final Fantasies: My Love Affair With Square Enix

Quick life update: I'm not back. Not yet, not completely. I recently moved to Texas at the end of last month. I really love the city I'm in. Unfortunately, I'm also going through one of my famous crises, and so instead of sitting in the middle of the shit tornado – a few turds off from the direct center – blank eyed and completely numb, I decided to talk about something I care about.

Aah, yes. What a colourful imagery to jump into today's topic with.

Since this is a bit off an off the hat post, it's just gonna come out without any real scheduling, but let's kick the dirt for a bit and talk about Square Enix.

Now That's Incredibox

Look at what I discovered at literally three in the morning. There's this incredible music web site called Incredibox, and I instantly fell in love with it. I mostly talk about things that I really enjoy on this blog, but truth be told, it's really hard for me to instantly like something, especially for a long time, but I really feel like this has something special.

Incredibox is a way to "express your musicality". Their words not mine, and in truth, I think it's pretty genius. You get a choice between instruments, percussions, effects, choruses, and beats. You drag and drop what you want onto a guy that slides on your screen, and bam! You get to hear the results in real time. Each musical choice you make has a different loading time because it's going to sync with the other choices you made in your mix track.

There's so much to talk about. WOW! We might as well dive under the covers for this one.

Virtual Realty is Stranger than Fiction

Or perhaps, it's more amazing. Consider this to be me gushing about the future of technology, my expectations, my excitements, and so on.

Due to how things have shaped up in the past two years, I haven't been as up on tech news as I used to be. However, I still catch wind of some things every now and again. This time, I learned about what is essentially the manifestation of my dreams. Believe me or not, but virtual reality is something I've always desired as a kid. Along with my hopes to pursue genetic splicing and help setting an academic foundation for giant robots, of course. You know, kid dreams.

But thanks to Dan aka Nerd³, I'm feeling particularly emotional.

Here's Dan's video on Tilt Brush. Underneath the cut, I'm going to start crying. So I hope you're ready. Hand me some tissues and bring a few bottles. It's been rumoured my tears have regenerative properties. Or was it degenerative? Can't remember – take a gamble.

It's Okay: No One Has to Die!

Moving woes! I'm the closest thing you'll get to a nomadic life… I hope. Also, I have enough rants about writing to keep you all satisfied for the next year, I swear, but no excuses!/more on that later. I want to talk to you all about a game I played earlier in March.

no-one has to die. was created by StuStutheBloo. I've heard about it for a long time, but I never took the chance to actually play it. The image above is the starting screen. No title, no splash screen. Just this. Simple. Beautiful. And here is the actual size of the title screen.

It wasn't until last night at way too early in the morning that I decided to give it a go. I am really, really in love with this game. It's very short. You can play it all in about thirty minutes. As you can see, you start off at the very top and then you branch out with the various story lines. Playing as just one of the characters isn't quite enough, and it's definitely worth it to get the full story.

I always started watching other people play it, but I never watched a full let's play. I probably watched the first two or three minutes of game play, and I finally decided to just jump right into the fray myself. I'll admit, it wasn't what I expected. I thought I would be able to play just one path and be done with it, but then I got sucked into it. I became interested in the characters, and I, as the player, felt like an actual part of what was going on.

It's awesome! The game is short and sweet, and I walked away with a great impression of this all. I got to learn more about the characters and felt my opinions of them change as I played. I definitely recommend this game.

Check it out and form your own opinion of it. Play on Kongregate, on GameJolt, or here on Newgrounds.

GDR Book Club: The Vampire Lestat

This was a gift given to me by a friend. I haven't had a chance to read it until about January.

Anne Rice has a way with imagery and characterisation that makes me melt. Since The Vampire Lestat is a first-person account, it's incredibly intimate. That works to the book's credit as it's very easy to get immersed. I was thrown into Lestat's life right along side him. I shook my head; I disapproved. I was emotionally swayed, and most of all, I was taken away by Lestat's way of speech. My good friends, I have fallen in love with Lestat de Lioncourt. (Even while writing this, I realised that my full name would sound amazing with 'de Lioncourt' at the very end, hoho!)

Check In: Lenovo A820C+ Smartphone

Remember this thing? Aah, it was so shiny and new before. I reviewed it in a previous post (where I mistakenly labeled it as a A850C+). As stated then, I bought mine from Alibaba.

Let's say that I have a long, long history with this phone for the short time that I've had it. I was so, so excited to buy it and to finally have it. I can acknowledge that I have a chronic problem with buying my technology aesthetically. After doing all of the research, I will harshly evaluate whether or not it will fit into my desired look. I know. It's a pain. It really worked against me this time.

Prince Not-So-Charming, Galavant

Aaaaah— What a charming little show. It's really hard for me to do a review about Galavant. I know just that it's one of my favourite shows right now.

One of my roommates, M, was the one who told me about this show. She was on YouTube browsing around and came across some of Galavant's first season clips. She told me about it, and we looked it up together. The first season is available on their YouTube, but each episode is $2.99. Considering the first season is only eight episodes, that's actually not bad at all.

The Macbook Struggle

[ pictured from L to R: Adapter A, Adapter B, Adapter C]

[ not pictured, currently using: Adapter D ]

My Mac was given to me as a hand me down during my school days. Fun fact: it was originally won at a work raffle! I actually used to be a Windows user until about 2010, when my computer malfunctioned and died completely. My Windows was a Vista, and it would have been really expensive to replace it.

I've always enjoyed Macs though, since I was in middle school. My school had the interesting predicament of only having updated computers in their library. Every other system was behind or nearly outdated as a whole. A lot of people complained about the difficulty, but I was always interested. When this MBP was given to me, I was pretty excited (especially since it was already loaded with stuff).

Let's LVLUP!

Happy March 1st! Guess who's jumping back into the fray. And with music at that. It's been a while since I've listened to pop music, especially in English. So let me just say that I was incredibly taken aback when I listened to this group. Now that I've revealed that, let's talk about LVLUP.

I ran across this group because I was blog hopping. Turns out, a blogger is in this group, whoa! I decided to give their video Beautiful a listen, and it's really… Well, let's just say that the title is appropriate.

March 1st - The Comeback Begins

Hope y'all are having a good leap day. I'll see you tomorrow.