Welcome to my profile

Greetings, fellow traveler! Do you enjoy philosophy, writing, or culture in general? We may just hit it off then.

About me

Consider me an online vagabond, drifting aimlessly from site to site. My primary hobbies consist of reading, writing, manga, and anime. [myanimelist.net] I'm a literature student and aspiring author, currently self-studying Japanese.

I've been working on a low fantasy novel for over a decade. While I haven't spent all that time writing, I've created an expansive world with characters detailed in over thirty meticulously organized Google documents. Unfortunately, I'm not great at dedicating time to make significant progress, so I often find myself rewriting early chapters instead of advancing the story. At this rate, I might finish in another twenty years.

I'm deeply passionate about philosophy, particularly existentialism, which often influences my creative endeavors. The exploration of existence, freedom, and authenticity fascinates me, and I find these themes resonate deeply in both my personal reflections and my writing. Right now, most of my writing focus is funneled into short story that delves into these themes.

Video games / Fire Emblem

These days, I struggle to dedicate time to a single game, but I still enjoy JRPGs and VNs. However, I've become a bit jaded with JRPGs after playing so many. I typically enjoy Nintendo games like Ace Attorney, Pokémon, Professor Layton, and Dragon Quest, but have lately begun appreciating more liminal and minimalistic experiences.

Fire Emblem has been my favorite series since 2005. I prefer the games that offer tight, linear challenges with stories woven into the gameplay. FE9/10 are among my favorites for their craftsmanship and homage to Kaga's vision, incorporating elements not seen since FE5. Speaking of FE5, it is also a favourite as a lot of the great mechanics it implements are used to their full extent. Kaga showed a great understanding of what makes the Fire Emblem games great, and evolved and refined these aspects to create good and varied content for what ended up being his last FE game. The gameplay portion of Conquest is also something I like a lot. On the other hand, Awakening, Gaiden (+Echoes), Revelation, and to a certain extent Sacred Stones are the ones I like the least. The 3DS era especially stands out negatively for me. The games that focus too much on supports, include avatars, face petting, pairup, a marriage system that is downright insulting to its FE4 iteration, and are designed around grinding rather than strict challenges, fall short. These games have the very real issue of loosening up the belt and giving players too much freedom in a game where resource management and constant gameplay decisions should make up the bulk of the experience. Endless grinding simply doesn't belong in Fire Emblem, as it undermines core game design. Even then, I'm happy to say that Three Houses turned out to be the best FE we've gotten since Conquest. This is primarily because of the character interactions actually having meaning and depth again, and the systems working in tandem with the story for the first time in ages. It's not the best of the lot, but I'm far more positive looking forward now than I were after Awakening.