ACGGoods – Many super cute acrylic keychains, standees, buttons and pins including some super soft plush pins, tummy plushes, rainbow holo stickers, trading cards, and more! (If you don’t know what some of those mean, give it a look-see to find out!)
Redbubble – Stickers in different sizes, t-shirts in lots of styles, phone cases, and more!
Teepublic – A lot of the same things as Redbubble tbh, but some people like this one more!
INPRNT – Very nice high-quality art prints, focused on paper goods (prints, stickers, posters, cards, etc.) and not “merch” like the other stores above (no mugs, pins, or t-shirts).
“Hey, Einstein, I’m on your side!” ✈️ The second in my hypothetical “What if Star Fox and Sanrio had a collab? 🤔” series. The background image is a real photo of the Eagle Nebula from the public domain.
I really love his big, bright, sparkling eyes in this one. ✨
“We’re Star Fox!!” ✈️ The first entry in my hypothetical “What if there was a Star Fox & Sanrio collab?” series.
The background image is a real photo of the Eagle Nebula from the public domain! (Most NASA pics are btw!) It matches Fox’s colors pretty well, I thought.
My Friendly Little Island – Super cute little Game Boy indie game with good vibes and satisfying progression. Seems like there are a ton more GB Studio games now than the last time I searched for them, so I’ve got to remember that that’s a whole other category of good games to check out and play. I really enjoyed playing this, and unlocked lots of worthwhile secrets!
Hunt A Killer: Lakeside Slaughter – Okay so when the heading of this section is “Cool Stuff I Liked Playing in June 2026”, that means physical board games go in this category, right? We celebrated Memorial Day a little late this year, and this game was something that the fam got together to solve. We’ve played a few games in this Hunt A Killer series, with I think our overall favorite being Dead Below Deck for stumping us the longest. Lakeside Slaughter had a more straightforward resolution but it still led to some great cooperative moments, such as dramatic readings of the alibi interviews, assigning different people to figure out different coded messages (one was a ROT13 cypher! shout out to doyoulikethisvideogamesong), and when we took a lunch break to eat the good stuff from the grill, the conversation about murders and motives continued while sitting on the porch outside (I wonder if any neighbors overheard? 🤔).
For these two, am I allowed to summaries of games I didn’t personally play? 🤔 I watched @wreckscalibur play these, right beside him on the couch, so we kinda enjoyed them together. The experience was there, so I’m officially proclaiming: It counts!
The Adventures of Elliot (Demo) – The full version is out although we haven’t picked it up yet, but the demo was beefy! I’m definitely intrigued by the (Radiant Historia-like?) story and the wonderful characters. The spiritual succession from the Final Fantasy Adventure/early Mana series is tangible, which is a good thing! I’m sure we’ll check out the full version before too long.
Live A Live – Rounding out the HD-2D Power Hour, my partner is playing this for the first time – I’m familiar-ish with the SNES game through the old LParchive Let’s Play. I gave the whole LP a skim and made notes of secrets and missable stuff for him (there are a lot). We still have the last couple of chapters to get through, but man, this game is so good. There’s a reason it’s been such a beloved cult favorite for all of this time, and the remake treatment is both faithful and beautiful. 🙏 My fave characters are Cube, the Earthen Heart Shifu, and [REDACTED]. 🤗
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From the many game showcases and conferences this month, the Wholesome Direct was a massive highlight. My most-looked-forward-to’s are Capy Castaway, Froggy Brews, Humblets, and Otterly Lost.
From Nintendo’s Direct, the strong points for me were Hello Kitty Party Land (the Premium Edition comes with a coloring book 🥺), a new Xenoblade game, and a very brief but very exciting glimpse of the Ocarina of Time remake.
Also, Yoshi & the Mysterious Book released this month. It has a very cute visual style which I love very much but sidescrolling platformer gameplay isn’t fun for me.
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Reading
Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, Vol. 2 – Vol 1 was mentioned last month, Vol 2 is the conclusion (so nice to finish something quickly!). Things wrapped up nicely, with a cute glimpse at a “How did the characters first meet and become friends?” flashback. The colorful, sparkly art is the highlight, or maybe the story emphasis on Gwen’s Mom and her sister Kale, who were once Jewel Riders themselves. Drake is redesigned to be WAY too “cool”; he should be more of a hopeless dweeb to match his role in the original cartoon. It seemed like Merlin’s out-of-character behavior was going to be an important plot point, but then the story ended and a “reason” for his lashing out was extremely briefly mentioned in the epilogue and I was just like 🤨 okay?? We’re just glossing over the casual intention to usurp the throne I guess.
Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Tangle & Whisper – Had to read some backstory just to learn who these characters are, which involved some research into what chapters they first appeared in and which compilation volumes those ended up in (answer: it’s the end of vol. 2 and some of vol. 3). The “Eggman War” storyline was just. not interesting to me at all LOL so I skipped most of that and just started reading Tangle & Whisper. Got some cute one-off chapters at the start, including some which didn’t feature a single Tangle and/or Whisper at all for some reason (cute stories anyway though), followed by a more serious exploration into the friendship between these two and (gasp) Whisper’s tragic backstory! …Also found that they feature in a TailsTube video! How cool to have read these comics and then see them in motion, with voices! I like Whisper a lot, she is super cool. 🥷
Three Blind Mice – Needed an audiobook to listen to on a drive and picked this. Similar in premise to And Then There Were None. Very evocative writing where you can tell what some of the original stage directions were (it was a stage play before being published as a novel), and easily visualize some of the dramatic cinematography. The “other stories” are a handful of Miss Marple mysteries which we’d also recently listened to from a different collection, but also some Poirots which were new (to us). I never get tired of any of them. 😄
The Burning Page – Started reading this in April, then my library hold lapsed, got it back early this month, read a few pages, then totally forgot about it (not the book’s fault, I just super dedicated myself to art and opening up some merch stores), then my hold lapsed again. Then I got it back last week and have slowly (very slowly) been reading just a little bit at a time. Idk, the stakes are high in this volume and the main emphasis of what’s going on is a big confrontation with the big, dangerous badguy, but to me, the story was much more fun when the characters were actually participating in the premise promised by the blurb (world-hopping librarians traveling to unique alternate histories to collect rare editions of books that are only available in that world). It isn’t really this book’s fault that my interest is waning, because that whole concept of “the stakes eventually raise higher than the fun original premise” is so, SO common in EVERY media, it’s like, a staple of storytelling. Just the usual case of me liking the first book in a series the best and falling off after that.
The Fire Opal – A physical book which I’ve set aside for reading outdoors, and I spent recent months reading comics in my sunshine reading time so this one has been getting neglected, even though I’d basically already reached the end. My progress through his book has been on-hold for so long, the last time I mentioned it was in my 2025 yearly summary. Also, this is book 4 of a series I first started reading as a teenager, easily 15 years ago (or more?) – the magic system based on colors & shapes in this world is sooo cool, and don’t you LOVE the beautiful cover art by Stephanie Pui-mun Law? Anyway, now that I’m finally wrapping up the story, the important plot explanations are being discussed by the characters, and I can’t BELIEVE how badly I failed to catch on to the hints that were dropped about the real identity of the male lead from the start. I definitely was supposed to latch on to the fact that the cousin and her husband that he disapproved of were some of the main characters from book 3, and to notice the suspicious way that he smudged his name when he was signing documents… I didn’t even reread book 3 all that long ago, his name & relation to the previous heroes should have been fresh in my mind, so I don’t feel that I can blame the fact that my reading sessions were so broken up. I just wasn’t paying attention and the super obvious hints flew over my head. 😅 But also, yaaay for Ginger landing herself in a position of power just by being her sweet self 🤗 and burning to smithereens everyone that wronged her. 😊 She deserves a little vengeance inferno, as a treat.
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Watching
Oh My Goddess: The Movie – I have an extremely nostalgic connection with this movie because I first watched it over a friend’s house when we had a slumber party (where we also connected our Game Boy Advances with link cables and played Four Swords!). This is such a good endpoint to finish off watching the Oh My Goddess anime series in its various incarnations, even though the actual air date of this was between the 90s OVA series and the 00s one. You need some introduction to Peorth and Chihiro and others just to know who they are, as well as get a feel for the escalation of Belldandy & Keiichi’s relationship, so it’s worth watching the 00s seasons first. Plus, the high drama going on in this movie just makes it the perfect place to wrap up the story. 🤗 (I like Celestine. hes hamdsomne)
Tokyo Mew Mew – I’m in the thick of the back half of this now, beyond what 4Kids dubbed, so I gotta watch subs now, which drastically slows down how frequently I can catch an episode. Man, 4kids really cut off right before things went off the rails in a glorious way, with Ichigo actually turning INTO a cat, and that she can talk to other cats now?! Okay!
Sherlock Hound – Have actually been watching this now and again with my partner for a long while now, but since we finished all of Oh My Goddess we filled in that space with what we haven’t seen yet of Sherlock Hound. These stories are just great. 😊 The doggy characters are soooo endearing, every episode has some manner of very exciting vehicle chase scene, and the vintage English dubbing is delightful. Very fun to see how the Sherlock Holmes stories are adapted, a similar feeling to watching anime Poirot & Marple. Genuinely shocked that even super diehard Ghibli/Miyazaki fans never seem to mention this, and it never gets mentioned in cozy/wholesome anime lists either. Is it really just the fact that absolutely no one knows that Sherlock Hound exists? Well I’m here to tell you: it does, and it’s good!
I’ve been making these “Stuff I Liked” posts on Tumblr and thought I should revive my personal blog with them too. I’m also hoping to make some regular art updates again, and these diary-like monthly summary posts are a good way to keep things personal, too!
Playing
Café Enchanté – Ohhh this is sooooo lovely! My previous Switch otome game was Cupid Parasite and WOW the difference in color palette, even with the same illustrator/character designer for both games… (it’s hard to come back down to reality after the fluorescent neon fever dream that is Cupid Parasite). I love the super sweet angel boy soooo much! He’s such a nerd and the other characters baby him because he has an aura of endearing helplessness. 😆 And he’s sooo pwetty. 🥺 I can’t wait for the chapter where the heroine visits his heavenly home world, and ultimately to see what his personal route is like~
Reading
Miriya & Marie – Yeah, that’s Marie from The Aristocats haha. This comic is sooooo cute! It’s in full color and every page is sooooo piiiiink!! 🌸🩷🎀🍨 And the illustrations themselves are super pretty, with many beautiful fashions and accessories that the heroine wears. 🎀 I actually love that the whole story is contained in one volume. It’s nice to read a full arc and be finished, sometimes!
Free Comic Book Day (thumbnail shows only a few, in actuality I brought home many more than just these 😄) – This was quite early in the month (on the 2nd) and I’m always super lucky that our friendly local comic book shop stocks plenty of freebies! Apparently there was some hubbub around free comic book day this year, because the main publisher that runs it went out of business last year, but more publishers such as Penguin Random House (which owns Dark Horse, Tokyopop, Webtoon Unscrolled etc.) have stepped up to fill in the gaps. I didn’t know about that at all when I went by our store, I only learned it after the fact when I saw that some of what I’d brought home had a different logo (“Comics Giveaway Day” instead of “Free Comic Book Day”) and did some searching on the subject after coming home. I hope it keeps running for a long time, because I always love the excuse to drop by the store and buy a physical book or two, just in time for it to be getting warmer so I have something screen-free to read outdoors!
Out of the freebies I picked up, the Jem & the Holograms + My Little Pony combo is almost like it was tailored for me specifically LOL. This Jem is only okay to me – I’ve actually already read this comic series before but I don’t physically own any of it so this is kind of just like a bonus goodie for me. I like the 80s cartoon much more than this reboot, the truly truly truly outrageous fashion and hairstyles just don’t quite hit right.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is a book that’s been sitting in my library holds for months, so I figured checking out the first chapter in graphic novel form would be like getting a preview, but I’m not sure that I like it. 🤔 I’ll still wait until I actually read the book before forming an opinion.
Sonic – I’m fairly familiar with the Archie Sonic series but these IDW ones are new to me. More than the main comic content itself, a bunch of the ads in the back successfully hooked me lol. Now I’ve got a few more IDW Sonic side-stories on my ComicsPlus shelf (the app my library uses). I don’t know who “Tangle & Whisper” are but I’m about to find out!
Mabel Mulligan – This is REALLY GOOD and I’m looking forward to when the full story releases in October! Loooove the soft art style and coloring. Easily my favorite of everything I picked up.
Also read some others like Street Fighter, Mega Man, and Archie. Didn’t realize that recent Archie has a cast of modern new characters (there’s a nerdy girl that plays TTRPGs!) since I’ve only been reading vintage ones (I like the Betty & Veronica-specific books and have been sorting by oldest when I search them on ComicsPlus). I’ll definitely sprinkle some of the more recent books into my reading now.
Princess Gwenevere & The Jewel Riders, Vol. 1 – Vol. 2 of this was my physical book purchase of choice when I stopped by the store for Free Comic Book Day. I just needed to give vol. 1 a reread to remember what was going on here, which is fine by me because it just gives me more reading material for my time outside. 🏞️ I loooove the color palette of these books. Every turn of the page is just delightful to the eyes. The Jewel Rider outfits have very cool redesigns (Gwen’s in the original cartoon is a little goofy, this version looks much better), although, I wish they could have been given sparkly transformation sequences. Exploring the backstory behind the Queen (Gwen’s mom) and Lady Kale (the main villain) is a worthwhile storyline! Now, I can move on to the new purchase (vol 2) next month!
Everyone in this Bank is a Thief – The fourth in the Ernest Cunningham series which I like quite a lot – every book in the series has been very exciting, and that can’t be said of a lot of other series. (I’ve posted about previous books a couple of times!) Btw, read them in order and don’t skip ahead. Personally, I love the cheeky foreshadowing on just about every page; the writing style is very ‘Did you notice the important thing that I just mentioned, reader? 😏’, which negative reviews always highlight as being grating, and I totally understand that, but idk something about it in these particular mysteries is very enthralling to me. I’m always like “What do you mean we already learned the laptop password, where was it? 😲” and I go scan the previous passage that listed all of the details in the office to try to catch where it might have been hinted. I always speed through these in just a few days because they really hit the ground running and keep you captivated all the way through, with cliffhangers that make it hard to put down between chapters, and again, all of that delicious foreshadowing. They are great books for trying to puzzle out the secrets and mysteries on your own before it’s officially revealed, and the whole point of the hint-wink-nudgey writing style is to encourage you to do so. I can highly recommend this series for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie fans – they’re filled with direct references to both – BUT just know that the violence is much more grisly and gory than any of the old golden age detective stories ever depicted it; these are not “clean” murders, and poor Ernest gets mangled in some horrific new way in each entry so far.
Watching
Tokyo Mew Mew – YO THIS RUUUUUUULES!!!! Would you believe that I call myself a magical girl fan, despite that I’ve NEVER watched this before? Remedying these gaps is exactly the point of this habit… Up until I actually started watching, I thought that all of the girls were cats. What do you mean they have mutated genes from endangered animals?!? Now, I know that there is a pretty recent ‘Tokyo Mew Mew New’ that I could have watched instead, but I deliberately wanted to go back in time and see the old English dub by 4Kids, where its title is actually “Mew Mew Power”. Sure, the modern version or an authentic subbed version without all of 4Kids’ editing and cuts would be “better”… but I’m not here for “better”. 😄 I frickin’ love the catchy “Mew Mew power IN YOUR FACE!” slogan with the super-obviously edited-in-post hip hop-style backup jingle. Absolutely nothing is “better” than that. lmao. Alas, this is in the same situation as Corrector Yui and Saint Tail, where only about half of the episodes were dubbed into English and if I want to see the conclusion, I have to carve out time to watch the subs (can’t multitask when you gotta read 😔). But at least once I move onto the back half, I’ll be able to hear the unedited music and see what the full transformations look like! 👍
Sailor Moon Super S – Things are Fully Weird in this season, which I’ve always heard is because Kunihiko Ikuhara had a lot of creative control at this point in production (can anyone confirm?). Like yeah the monster-of-the-week designs have always been Out There, but now they are REALLY, REALLY Out There. Even so, this is another season that I like a lot, because the shenanigans that the Amazon Trio get up to while in civilian disguises are super fun and it reminds me of Jedeite & Co. from the first season. But more than anything else………… the pretty unicorn boy is one of my all-time favorite characters!!! 🦄 I know it’ll be a while before we see him in pretty boy form but I can wait!!!
Hey, all! I’m bringing this blog out of hibernation so that I can make a neat little post showcasing all of these pics of this super cute blouse I recently bought.
Laid out flat on the left, and worn by me on the right!
See, isn’t the aesthetic of this blouse just super cute? 🌿 Very cottagecore, and perfect for wearing when you want to feel like a Ghibli character.
The botanical illustrations are accompanied by little blocks of text, which are meant to contribute to the botanical theme.
However,
all of the text is absolutely bonkers.
First, a lot of the shorter text is obviously meant to look like scientific names for the plants depicted in the design.
Only some of those are words.
The problem is, all of these names are completely gibberish. These are not scientific names. These are not anything. Here are a few more!:
The one thing I can say about this text is that it is at least slightly relevant to the natural theme.
And, finally, there are my favorite snippets of text on the whole garment. Here are some blurbs about… giving a Powerpoint presentation about marketing beauty products in Taiwan?
This is amazing. The “asdfhj” is my favorite part. I haven’t been able to find if this text is copied from somewhere online.
Lastly, there are a couple of miscellaneous blurbs.
The garbled text on the left appears to be a sort of inspirational quote meant to be shared online. My searches seem to want to attribute the quote to either Charlie Brown or Winnie the Pooh, but I don’t believe it comes from either of those sources. Just another case of one of those random quotes that circulates online with no real attribution.
As for the one on the right?? I don’t know?? What even is there to say about that one. It’s just random copy-pasted text, lol.
If anyone wants to buy this blouse for themselves (you can also get it in a set with a cute suspender skirt!), it’s available to purchase here. This is the same listing I bought mine through. Despite all the crazy text, it’s a super cute shirt!
