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).
Mail Time – Though things irl have been busy, that just makes it more important than any other time to intentionally carve out time to relax, even if it’s only 15 or 20 minutes a day. So I finally resumed my Steam backlog habit!! This game is sooo perfect for the season. It puts me in the same frame of mind as Smushi Come Home, which is one of my very favorites. The scenery (lots of whimsical foliage with rounded shapes) and visual style (earth-tone pastels with chunky brown scribbly outlines) are Perfect™️. And it has my favorite type of gameplay: Run Around And Do Quests For NPCs That Are Fun To Talk To. 🤗 I’m sure Mail Time will become one of my very favorite indie adventure games that I revisit from time to time just to enjoy living in its wonderful world for a little while (my other recommendations are Smushi Come Home, Calico, and Alchemy Story; and while I haven’t played them yet, Capy Castaway and Otterly Lost look to be in the same vein).
Hoping to receive my preordered copy of Hello Kitty Party Land soon (seriously, why did I have any faith that Gamestop would ship it on release? 😒), although I might not have much time to play it with the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake releasing in just a week!
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Reading
Frankensteinby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – Yet another among the classics I’ve never read before. I’ve desired to read this one over the past year or so but wanted to set it aside to read in October! I’m also maintaining my practice of reading the chapter summaries & insights on Sparknotes as I go, which feels so scholarly 👩🎓 and helps me understand some of the 1800s turns of phrase.
The format surprised me – people often express about Dracula, “I didn’t know the story was told through letters!” but I’ve never heard anyone say the same about Frankenstein, which is epistolary as well. It makes for some questioning moments, where the sea captain that’s recounting this story oddly knows the details of Victor’s life in EXCRUCIATING detail. In fact, the very start is almost comedic, where the captain and sailors are dying to know the story of the man they picked up out on the ice, and when he’s finally recovered enough to speak, begins with relaying how his parents met. It’s like the old joke exchange that goes like, “Tell us what happened, start from the beginning!” and the character answers, “Well, I was born in…” 😆
I definitely see the common interpretation of Victor that he is blinded by arrogance and vanity, not only in his pursuit to create life but also by insisting all throughout the narrative that not a single soul in all the world is suffering as much as he is. He’s very “I made a mistake greater than any man has ever made and now I’m sadder than any man has ever been, 😢” repeatedly, at least once per chapter. You know, in 18th century Europe.
And then the monster appears at the end to appeal to the captain, “Well how do you think I feel, I’m the one that had to kill people!” (the captain does have the presence to call him out on this lol.)
Anyway I’m glad I read it! @Washedupslapper is telling me to watch the recent del Toro movie now. Shall I? 👀
Murders in the Rue Morgueby Edgar Allan Poe – Another classic I’ve been interested in for a long time but wanted to reserve for an October read. There are three stories of the Dupin trilogy and I downloaded all three from Librivox but have only listened to the first so far. Alas the twist of this first mystery was already spoiled for me before I even got started, just by hearing other people talk about this story over the years.
The murder method and description of discovering the bodies is grisly! Murder mysteries have overall toned down since this one LOL.
A Study in Scarletby Arthur Conan Doyle – I’m certain that I read this many years ago when I first began collecting all of the Sherlock Holmes books from the old used book store near where I used to live, but all of the details were totally gone for me other than the word “Rache” written in blood on the wall. But this is something we wanted to listen to together to catch all of the references and character names that are used in The Great Ace Attorney, so I sought out this Librivox audiobook. It was excellent to listen to Dupin first, then follow up with this, because Watson exclaims, “You’re a regular Dupin!” and we were like WHOOOAAAA. 🫵🤯
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos – I’ve read this once some years ago and loved it to pieces, this time it was in audiobook form for that long car ride. It’s so, so, funny and has a totally different plot from the Marilyn Monroe movie (and takes place during a different decade). Naturally, the heroine’s phonetic misspellings are lost in audiobook form, but sometimes the narrator enunciates in such a way that you can tell the word isn’t quite right lol. When we finished listening, @Wreckscalibur’s observation was that the heroine “Mr. Magoo’d her way through life”, which had me rolling. 😆
My favorite scene remains her interview with a “Doctor Froyd,” who is just flabbergasted to encounter someone like our heroine, who seems to have no inhibitions whatsoever. He asks, “And what about if you ever desire to harm someone?” and she so breezily answers, “Oh, yeah, I shot a guy once.” (I told you it’s a different plot than the movie.)
I, Robot(BBC Radio Drama) – I found this by accident while searching for an I, Robot audiobook. I, Robot is one of my favorite short story collections of all time and I thought they’d be a blast to listen to in the car, but discovering that radio dramas still exist shifted the whole nature of the rest of my entertainment searches lol. There’s a unique twist to this retelling of the story that isn’t present in the book, so it’s worth giving this a listen even if you’re already familiar with the source material. (And again, the original plot of the book in the first place is totally different from the Will Smith movie plot.)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy(BBC Radio) – The reminder that Radio Dramas Exist brought this series to mind, an old favorite from way back that I’ve experienced in many media formats now. 😅 I’ve read the books, seen the movie, even watched some (very little) of the old TV series… but never listened to the original radio show that started it all. I totally understand now how Hitchhiker’s Guide revolutionized stereo sound and completely bazonkers sound effects for radio because all of the sci-fi spaceship noises in this go absolutely wild. We listened to all of “Phase 1” on our trip, roughly the equivalent of the first book but I noticed that it overflows into the content of the second book (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe).
The Tale of the Pie and the Patty Panby Beatrix Potter – After listening to so many audiobooks during the drive, especially the radio play versions with multiple actors, it made me want to seek out more, and I went looking for an old favorite Beatrix Potter story. This “dramatic reading” on Librivox (chapter 9 further down the page) features different readers for each character and the main ladies are just wonderful. It’s only 16 minutes long and somehow manages to depict pure chaos, a true comedy of errors. I love this silly story so much, I’ve actually posted about it on Tumblr once before, all the way back in 2019.
I Am A Cat: The Manga Edition – Okay, yeah, I only learned who Soseki Natsume is from playing The Great Ace Attorney. But then at least I read the introductory paragraph about him on Wikipedia. ☝️ So I knew of this book, and then saw it (this manga version) at stall at a fair, and thought it looked cute, so I bought it, and read it. The daily mundane events and activities of a 1900s Japanese household from the point of view of a cat is kind of cute. Although the human characters are oddly casual to insult (and aggressively threaten?) their neighbors and others around them, even their friends they are close to. Then they try to be philosophical about it and the cat observes their double standards. Perhaps skip this one if animal death and morbid philosophizing would be upsetting to you! 🙃
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Watching
Magic Knight Rayearth – We’re only like two episodes into the second season so I’ll save that write-up for next month, and instead use this entry instead to talk about the conclusion of the first season. …I love it. 🥺 It’s emotional, it’s dramatic, it’s such a classic JRPG-like twist (and the whole story of this anime, especially their evolving weapons & armor as they level up, is so very much like a JRPG). Rayearth is definitely one of those formative anime if you catch it at just the right age (14-16?) where the plot twist just wrenches your heart and changes your whole life forever because you didn’t know stories were allowed to do that. If you’re like, 25+, it’s more like, “Yeah that’s about where I thought it was gonna go” lol. Anyway, super stoked to see all the new characters that are about to be introduced in the next season, because like I mentioned before, I’ve never seen Rayearth II in anime form but still own the manga today (and it’s from that era where it was printed flipped left-to-right and everything!).
Rio: Rainbow Gate – I don’t know what compelled me to watch this, usually pervy anime tropes are so eye-rolly that I’m turned all the way off, but there must be some magic secret ingredient being used here that transforms the perviness into something cute and light and fun? I guess the easy way to make me want to watch something is by making all of the supporting characters bunnygirls. You see, it’s very simple: horny fanservice is annoying unless I’ve decided that I like it. 😌 The outfits Rio wears are sooo cute (and I bet they come from the animated winning screens of the pachislot game this universe is adapted from. yeah, this is an anime for a pachislot game. Rio is beloved enough as a Koei mascot that she is sometimes included in crossover games), and the gamble-battles are bonkers. And the humor is so lighthearted and silly (like the ghost obsessed with chicken wings) that it keeps the tone just right.
…Is what I typed up when I was 4 or 5 episodes into the series, but then the plot really did take a turn somewhere around episode 7 or 8, and now the ridiculosity at the start is extra weird. 😅 I’m not sure how that resolved because I kinda stopped watching and have been listening to radio dramas during breakfast instead. (That road trip really opened my eyes to them I guess lol.)
Sagas of Sundry: Darkling Gate – An actual play of Call of Cthulu in a Regency setting with really wonderful characters. I don’t have any particular like toward cosmic horror or Lovecraftian things, and I know nothing about the Call of Cthulu game system, but the Jane Austen-inspired setting and general joy around the table has me hooked. A couple episodes in, the dark horror aspect seems to veer toward a spooky Otherworldly faerie nature rather than, y’know, the tentacled squid-face guys, so I’m having a great time.
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If you’re reading this within a few hours of this being posted, I’m probably camped outside and handing out candy to trick-or-treaters RIGHT NOW! 🎃
Fantasy Life i – Continues from last month! (There are MANY hours to invest here…) It’s melancholy to think… was this Level-5’s last hurrah…? 🥲
Hunt A Killer: Game Night Gone Wrong – This one’s a physical board game, not a video game. Played it over Labor Day weekend with the fam! The theme of this one is sooo fun. What a perfect murder mystery game concept – to solve a murder that happened during a murder mystery game. Solving the game-within-the-game is required, so you have to pore over the notes written by the characters that they wrote about the game they played, and most of those players were not super invested in taking detailed notes lol. We got a little sidetracked by thinking that some aspects of the mystery were deeper than they actually were. But the eureka moments are always momentous at the table.
A bunch of really good indies came out this month. Lots of the games in my most-anticipated list from the Wholesome Direct back in July are released now! Otterly Lost and Dressmaker feel like they just came out like yesterday lol. Dressmaker seems to be gaining some popularity, which is truly wonderful because I love seeing the amazing designs everyone is coming up with. 👗👑
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Reading
Platform Decay by Martha Wells – Murderbot book 8!!! 🤩 This released in May but it took this long for my turn to come around in the long list of holds at my library. We’re back in novella format for this one, making it a quick read as well as fast-paced in action. If “Murderbot executing a plan and rescuing everyone” is your favorite thing in this series to read about, that’s what this whole book is, so you will have a great time. Also greatly appreciated seeing more of Three, who is developing into a character that is so delightful. Though it was pretty sad when a different character that I was just beginning to like was unexpectedly removed from the rescue mission.🥲 (Though of course, the emotional response and complicated feelings toward them is The Whole Point.)
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Watching
Magic Knight Rayearth – YEAHHHHH!!!! This is a rewatch for me, but the first time Wreckscalibur has seen it. Did you know the dubs are officially available on Youtube? Although actually, I’ve never seen the second season in anime form (only manga), so that’ll be new to me once we get there, which will probably be an October-November thing. Yeah, there’s a new version of this coming out, but we like to keep things old school around here. Now we’ll be able to compare & contrast with the new one with this fresh in our memory!
Also wrapped up watching Galaxy Angel and Lucky Star! Next month will have all kinds of new stuff to get into.
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This month looks sparse because most things just carried over from last month and I didn’t want to clutter up the summary with repeated thoughts. Honestly, Fantasy Life occupies so many hours that there wasn’t even space to squeeze in other games LOL. So it’s not that I’m enjoying fewer things, they just aren’t reflected proportionately in this month’s post. 😅
AND!! ☝️ I’m making a LOT of art!!! Most of the time I just upload cool stuff directly to my shop without announcing anything about it. Right now I’m building up a series of products with a matching theme, and holding back on actually listing anything until all of the different designs are done, so that’s why creative activities have seemed uneventful. But I’m keeping busy. 😊
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time – YEEAAAHHHH FINALLLYYYY I AM PLAYING THIS WOOOO!! Fantasy Life was my #1 favorite game on the 3DS (do you remember the feature where you could set your favorite game in your profile so it would be visible to your friends? I used Fantasy Life for mine!). I love its adorable and colorful and silly and optimistic world so much. I tried the same approach I used when I played the first game and chose both a combat Life and a crafting Life (I just can’t NOT be a Tailor!), but with a huge skill tree in this game that wasn’t present before, grinding is a little overwhelming. And there’s the new Artist Life that I want to try out too… maybe it would be much better to focus only on one Life and grind others later once it’s nice and easy to warp around and gather stuff, rather than doing ALL of the quests for ALL of your Lifes at once.
There are more layers of complication in this entry as well… in addition to the big skill tree for every Life of your own character, you also need to equip your party members with gear, which was never something you had to worry about in the first game.
And there are so many game modes, too… 😵💫 There’s the ‘main story’ map (“The Past” with some excursions into the Depths area in “The Present”), the town-building aspect (the non-Depths area of “The Present”), the massive open world which is a whole separate map from everything else and doesn’t seem very involved in the main story (“Ginomorsia”), a roguelike mode (“Snoozaland”, which maybe gets a pass because this was added in a free update patch as a bonus after the game released), and I just recently unlocked some kind of temporary instanced dungeon mode that grows from tree saplings? That’s like, a lot of unrelated gameplay to manage on top of juggling the various tasks for your Life (which multiplies if you try out more than one) and the main story.
So, there’s a lot more ‘brain energy’ involved in playing this compared to the first game, which makes it a little less cozy and relaxing… but taking your time and exploring what you like at your own pace keeps the many levels of management stress at bay. There’s not really any way to get anything wrong, just a lot of different areas to invest time in, so you can relax a little.
I’m very, very grateful that there are so many shortcuts in the menu for jumping straight to your Life Master or teleport directly to an NPC that gave you a quest, and the ability to see which material shops in which towns stock the stuff you need for crafting. Shortcuts that make the repetitive stuff and quest management just a little bit easier make a big difference when there are so many other systems.
Mysterious Thief Emerald – Mentioned this last month in my list of Otome Jam 2026 entries I was interested in. I LOVE IT!!! The writing is super fun, the characters are great, and I LOVE A MAGICAL GIRL PHANTOM THIEF, I DO. The Saint Tail DNA is there, with a magical girl “save the unsuspecting humans from the evil jewel that’s subtly stealing their life force” slant, and I am into it, especially when a second magical phantom thief shows up. The dynamic between the three main characters is great because they rib each other but generally get along (feels like the kind of story that would be very easy to just have all the characters hate each other and make all of the dialog sarcastic, but Mysterious Thief Emerald avoids falling into that trap).
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Watching the BF Play
Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – Even with Ages being my childhood version of this duology, I’ve NEVER seen how the game changes when you play a “linked game” version carried over from Seasons, so it’s almost like new! Hey, so it turns out Princess Zelda is in this game?? And bombchu! AND the Biggoron’s Sword?? 🤯 The sword is so big, it shifts around the interface at the top of the screen lmao. Never realized there’s such a significant amount of content that’s totally unique to a linked game that you’d never see if you only owned one of the two games. Playing both from the Switch Online Game Boy collection is nice and convenient, because going back and forth between the two to input codes is very fast and easy. If you have the Switch Online service then I highly recommend playing it that way.
Dual Hearts – The Playstation era is totally unknown to me as a Nintendo kid, and there are soooo many cool JRPGs I’ve never seen before. This is one of them! The character designs and environments in this are soooo nice. And I LOVE the Alundra-like plot of diving into dreams themed around each respective character (same developers, idk how much of the specific team overlaps). Really enjoying this one! Tumble is so cute, he’s like a giant rideable pudding-bunny!
Special Shout-Out To…
A special shout-out goes to Big Walk, which occupied a lot of my attention this month despite that I’m not even the one playing it. I got invested in three different youtube channels playing it (it’s fascinating how each friend group approached the puzzles & their necessary communication in different ways!), but Stumpt is the only group that continued uploading multiple parts beyond the intro and reached the ending.
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Reading
King Arthur & The Knights of Justice – The 90s cartoon this is based on was mentioned last month, now it’s time to read the modern comic. I ended up reading both volumes this month! It’s like a magical boy story but idk, didn’t really grip me, it isn’t goofy like the cartoon, and the premise of “footballers in King Arthur times” is so silly that idk if it works to try to make it serious. Now somehow I have to track down the crossover chapter where these characters meet Princess Gwenevere & the Jewel Riders because that’s the whole reason I put in this research in the first place lol.
Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – Just like with Oracle of Seasons last month, I was able to read along with the manga while progressing through the game, which is quite a treat. There is a bit more story and depth explored in the manga and even more great scenes with Ralph (one of my overall favorite Zelda characters btw). Particularly notable about this volume is the addition of a totally new character that isn’t present in the game, a knight named Raven who serves Queen Ambi in the past and connects Link personally with the time period of the past. And he’s like, rly cute. 👉👈
The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie – A great listen during some car rides. Some investing twists and turns and over-the-top fake-outs (the girl found in the library is SO extravagant, the method of death for the other murder is SO grisly). But no one can pull the wool over Miss Marple’s eyes. 🕵️♀️
In the Forests of Serre by Patricia A. McKillip – Isn’t the Kinuko Y. Craft cover art sooooo pretty? 🥰 This was my beach read over vacation this month!! I liked it so much, I picked this book to talk about with my friends when we had a casual book club get-together (of the ‘talk about whatever you’ve read recently’ variety). McKillip’s writing style is magical and enchanting, like reading a poem, while remaining easily-followable and manages to avoid going abstract or purple. While reading, I feel like I’m enveloped by the spells that weave around the princess in her dismal situation in the stony cliffside castle and the prince stumbling through the mesmerizing forest in pursuit of the firebird that has bewitched him.
Romance at Droitgate Spa by P.G. Wodehouse – This is so frickin’ funny lmao. The breakout star of this story is definitely the magician (“The Great Boloni”, sounds like “baloney” lol) that can’t seem to stop performing tricks with every motion, even mid-dialog. I could envision this character very easily in Ace Attorney with a bunch of animations where they are shuffling cards, pulling rabbits from their sleeves, and producing coins from behind other characters’ ears. This is a public domain short story that you can either read in one or two sessions or listen to as an audiobook on Youtube in under an hour, and I can’t recommend it enough, it’s SUCH a quick and easy read/listen and it’s guaranteed to make you smile.
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Watching
Galaxy Angel – Officially available on Youtube both dubbed and subbed. EXTREMELY silly with EXTREMELY 00’s-style anime humor. Some of the girls’ missions to themed planets and abandoned satellite outposts are great sci-fi premises. I like when we catch glimpses of the absurdly personalized bedrooms each character has on the ship haha.
Sailor Moon Super S – HELIOS TIME AT LAST YEEAAHHH WOOOOOOOOOUUURUAAAAGHH. (One of my favorite Sailor Moon characters btw. I can’t resist a precious gentle unicorn boy 🥺) This is the very end of what was dubbed into English for TV, so the adventure of reliving that nostalgic time has come to an end. 🥲 Of course we could watch the Viz dubbed version of Sailor Stars, and there’s aaaaall of Crystal to go through if we really want to. But once the Super S Movie is done we might call the Sailor Moon Extravaganza quits for now and replace this time with other things to watch. Btw, the ending theme for this arc is bumpin’.
Lucky Star – Yet another old classic which I’d never seen before I started this month… (and yet strangely I feel certain I’ve seen the full introductory dance sequence in the form of gifs… 🤔) Sometimes I check the wiki for explanations of the references after some episodes, a practice which brings to mind my reading of Sparknotes for an extra layer of understanding when I’m reading classic books lol. My favorite character is Miyuki because I love her pink hair and that she is sweet and very smart. 😊
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This was a pretty significant month for me IRL, I don’t think I want to make a regular thing of sharing personal life stuff online but it’s enough to say that August was a very happy month for me. 🤗
The first full-body plushies are available in my store!! I picked Qifrey and Olruggio as my first featured characters. 🤗
I depicted them in their casual outfits and love how silly they look sprawled out on their tummies in this cute, round, exceptionally squishable shape. 😆
There are other keychains & stickers & things available featuring them as well. 😊 What other characters in this plush shape would you like to see next?
