Souls Like Strings

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.

Being seen as human is truly inconvenient

Keiko is a 36 year old convenience store worker who has worked at the same store for half her life. The konbini is her safe space from the outside pressures of friends and family who seem intent on her getting a 'real job' or 'settling down'. The book makes it quite clear that Keiko thinks very differently from most people, sometimes frighteningly so, but the structured environment of the konbini allows her to fit in and thrive.

Her attempts to fit in by cooperating...

Games

After yet another fitful FromSoft playthrough my journey finally came to an end with Dark Souls 3. Maybe not the best game in the series (that might still be the original for me) but definitely the best possible ending to it. Friede & Gael can stand alongside Malenia/Rellana/Messmer as peers and there's plenty of fanservice (not that kind) to bring on the nostalgia. I'll likely take a nice long break before Bloodborne/Sekiro since there's so much other great stuff to play; but I'm really glad covid forced me back into Elden Ring & then onto my journey through...

• When picking up a legacy JS project, make sure deps are correctly sorted into 'dependencies' & 'devDependencies'
  • Might save you ~2MB of runtime bundle for nothing
• Sometimes clients will surprise you with requirements like 'we want to limit the user to linking at most 1 institution'
  • In a flow whose whole purpose is to make users link more institutions
• The value for grid-areas is not a single string; it's a number of row-separated strings
• Thankfully (but annoyingly in this particular case) it's rather difficult to hijack the browser back button
  • A certain...

What if the noir detective was a lawyer?

Why

• Quality writing & mystery so far
• Nice soundtrack & plenty of visual flair
• Characters & world seem interesting
• Twist surprised me but still felt earned

Why Not

• Seems a little hand-holdy, but it is just a demo

Impressions

This is quite an interesting way to promote your game; a free demo covering the basic mechanics and giving a taste of the story/characters which can then be continued with longer 'DLC' episodes. It definitely worked on me; I'll be picking up the available episodes next time...

One day, tiny flames will dance across the darkness

Why

• A perfect end to the series & its world
• Friede, Gael, the Dancer, Pontiff... so many great bosses
• Fan service galore for those who've been there from the start
• World design is more DS2 than 1, but still plenty of secrets/shortcuts

Why Not

• Nope, just play it

Impressions

It feels so long ago that the pandemic gave me the push I needed to finally play Elden Ring, starting a journey which ends today with the first flame finally fading. I'll play all the other...