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Oh right, this again is probably outdated info but I'd recommend carrying around packs of toilet tissue/wipes as not all facilities have toilet paper.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.

Mostly a lurker here and not in the mood to go into detail, esp since it gives away too much personal info, but it's been a painful, fumbling 20+ year process to get to this point. For a tiny bit of context, I come from a different class bg (specifically, one of my parents did) than most of Hexbear, and I'm also in the upper half of the age range. Also not white.

Let me just put it this way. It starts with trivial inconsistencies that you notice in your day-to-day life. Things as simple and seemingly innocuous/"apolitical" as the way society talks about your culture vs. your actual lived experiences. One by one, these tiny hypocrisies and contradictions start piling up. Small lies or even "innocent" misconceptions from trusted authority figures, from textbooks, from people you love and care about, people you don't want to doubt. It is madness inducing. Just an endless cycle of disbelief, disgust, confusion, undirected anger, denial.

Eventually there came a point where I just couldn't paper over the cracks anymore. Also, the older I get, the more I realize just how damn much I don't actually know -- and how confident I was in my own ignorance at many points in my life. Once it's obvious just how many lies you've been exposed to your entire fucking life, all you can think of is "what else?"

tl;dr the "radical" left was the only place offering sober, logically coherent analysis of the state of the world and honestly, after COVID any last lingering doubts I may have had were utterly demolished.