BoM/TWS Message Forum

I have a six year old laptop and don't have a PS5 so something like Baldur's Gate 3 is out of the question for right now. I've also had a tougher time getting into PC style WRPGs since they're not anything I grew up with. I enjoyed Fallout 3 when it first came out and New Vegas is one of my all time favorite games but as much as I like the writing, setting and worldbuilding of the first two Fallout games, the actual gameplay means trying to play them is always kind of a slog for me.

I was playing a lot of Street Fighter 6 in the first month or so that it was out but summer's picked up and the place I'm living is old and dumpy and gets very hot even with A/C so I've put it off for now since playing it gets me worked up. So right now it's just playing stuff on my Switch going back and forth between Dragon Quest XI and Persona 5.

Reading is a weird thing for me because in terms of books most of my "reading" is listening to audiobooks since I work a job where I've got ample time and quiet to do that. At the same time, I'm not really listening to any works of fiction or prose but it's almost exclusively history or related things. I just finished longish (like 40+ hour) books about the Enlightenment and the history of western political philosophy.

A lot of my actual reading at this point is manga and a small list of stuff I'm currently reading and following looks like this.

Shima Kosaku series - Long running business drama about the Japanese corporate world.

Hirayasumi - Slice of life about a freespirited young man and the people connected to him. Can't say enough good about it.

The Onee-sama and the Giant - Isekai about a rich girl from our world and a giant girl on a quest for revenge against the people who betrayed them. Avoids a lot of the pitfalls of the genre, very interesting world building in the fact it's a mixed fantasy/sci-fi setting instead of a pure fantasy one, characters are great and it's very much focused around the morality of their actions.

Plinivs - Historical drama about the life and times of Pliny the Elder. It's done by the same author as Thermae Romae and it's maybe the single best piece of Roman historical fiction I've seen (only because I have yet to watch or read I, Claudius) helped by the fact that the general time period it covers (from Nero through most of the reign of the Flavian dynasty) is largely my favorite period of Roman history.

Liar Satsuki Can See Death - Girl has the ability to see someone's corpse 24 hours before they die and has to work to figure out how they die so she can prevent it but it's not helped by the fact she's incredibly socially awkward so most everyone finds her at best to be a creepy annoying weirdo. A sort of pre-murder mystery that gradually evolves into a cat and mouse style game between the MC, who thinks all lives should be saved no matter what, and an antagonist who thinks that some times people deserve to die, and questions about whether or not some people are irredeemable.