Rundown (5/04/2025) There Will Be No 2025 re:Dreamer Re-Review

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This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
There Will Be No 2025 re:Dreamer Re-Review

Let’s kick off this Rundown by announcing a change to my previously stated schedule. Every year since 2020, I have revisited and re-reviewed re:Dreamer, a TSF visual novel by CaptainCaption. Specifically on June 3rd, because 63 is a distinct yet TSF-adjacent number for reasons I delved into a few years back. Learn the lore! However, I would like to announce that I will not be continuing this tradition, and will forego a 2025 re:Dreamer review. Though, I will almost certainly come back with a review in 2026.

The reason I’m not giving the game another review is both simple and complicated. The game has not received an update since August 2024, meaning there is not enough new content to warrant a re-review. At least in my opinion, and this is my site, so my opinion means a lot.

Why has the game suffered from such stagnation when its creator, CaptainCaption, is working on this game as their job and primary source of income? Well, the short version is that Cap has been dreadfully sick over the past year and change. Constant nausea, mental issues brought on by their neurochemistry and a deluge of ailments they’ve picked up over the past year, namely mononucleosis. They, conveniently, put out a new Patreon update while I was working on this Rundown if you want more details. They have been slowly getting better, but are not at their prior rate, and their pace has been further slowed by newfound memory issues. And not just being forgetful, these are pretty serious.

As in, Cap will step away to use the restroom then need to spend 15 minutes re-familiarizing themself with what they were doing. They cannot keep track of what is in their fridge and have left things in there for weeks as they accumulated mold. This is very troubling, especially when remembering that Cap is only 31-years-old. But they seem determined that this will go away and things will get better even if they have been dealing with mono for six months at this point.

This latest health hurdle, combined with all the bullshit that Cap has been through over the past… 3 or 10 years, depending on how you look at it, really has me concerned about Cap’s future, just in general, and by extension the future of re:Dreamer. Their Corticobasal Syndrome was already a ticking clock that veered their life off course. After they were pressured into taking unprescribed medication by a gaggle of psycho bitches individuals of a wretched caliber and their parents nearly killed them, I was hoping that everything would be on the up and up. But then Atlanta became a chemical disaster zone, and they got sacked with a bunch more ailments for good measure.

Considering all of this, I have personally accepted that re:Dreamer will never be completed, and not even a single (main) route will be completed, as it has been over five years and not a single (main) route is even 50% done. At this point, I personally would rather see CaptainCaption focus on the things only they can achieve— the outlining and the writing— rather than the technical and audiovisual end of things. However, re:Dreamer is ultimately their project, their baby, and their legacy, and they are rightfully calling the shots. …Though, I suppose I could try to use my Sustainer privileges to get them to focus on creating an outline, as I offered them a sizable amount of financial support that I would rather not disclose—

Akumako: “About $4,500.”

…Thanks, wife.

Akumako: “Also, the hell are you going on about with outlines? Cap’s written outlines!”

Nah. Those outlines are well devised, well-written, but they are too short.

Akumako: “…One of them is over 73k words long, ya dumb bitch!”

Correct, but that outline is inflated with pre-written dialogue. To write a story as detail-oriented as re:Dreamer, you want an obscenely dense outline, as it helps reduces the amount of thinking and processing that needs to be done with a creative work on a macro level. The key events, the large actions, the themes, the arcs, the topics of conversations, ALL of those should be part of any outline, and the more detailed your outline is, the easier it is to write the actual story. It’s pretty much how I write things. I approach the story on a macro level, decide what I want to cover, and handle all the big decisions. Then I write the actual story, following the outline at a rate of 70% to 90% accuracy, writing the overwhelming majority of the dialogue, and focus on what is in front of me— that micro level shaz.

This is the philosophy that I have carried with me in creating my stories, and it makes me so much happier and more comfortable with the final result. It helps me avoid rewrites, revisions, continuity errors, writer’s block etc. All while making the prospect of writing a longer-form story more digestible and understandable.

Though, even I will say I can go more than a little overkill with things. Psycho Shatter 1988 had a 33k word outline for a 110k word story, with about 3,000 words just being pre-written dialogue for the Richard ‘Rooadoot’ Ratters (Ronald W. Reagan analog) interrogation. Verde’s Doohickey 2.0 Acts 1 and 2 had a 73k word outline, and the end product was 370k words long. Meaning that I work with a 20% to 25% outline to work product ratio. That’s pretty dang excessive. But I was only able to write them, and write them in such a narrow time frame, because I planned things out. Because I knew the end goal, how to get there, and just had to follow the instructions.

…And if I ever planned on giving my project over to someone to see it through, I would want to give them as detailed instructions as possible. I mean, I would never do that, but that’s ‘cos my stuff is too stupid and nobody reads it. I have the stats to prove it! While re:Dreamer is a great piece of fiction, and one of the best TSF things ever made.

Akumako: “You do realize that, for a lot of creators, not knowing where things will go is part of the fun, right?”

Not knowing where you are going is how you drive a story into a ditch. Outline everything, plan everything, and have more than a vision in your head and a scattering of notes spread across chat logs, Word docs, and a damn legal pad!

Akumako: “…So, how’s Verde’s Doohickey 2.0 Act 3 going?”

Still not evolved past the 50,000 word outline, because of crunch time at work, Rundowns, TSF Showcase, and my decision to indulge in playing games for review. One of these things has got to go, but I don’t wanna give up any of ’em!

Akumako: “You should give up video games.”

…Why don’t I just give up on life at that point?

Body Swap Story – Aunty Yui & Yuto is Out
(Well, That Was Fast…)

…Well, this is a convenient segue.

Continuing with the niche subject of TSF visual novels, I am accustomed to things taking forever to be completed, if ever. This was the mindset I had when I played A Body Swap Story Between a Prematurely Ejaculating Nephew and an Insensitive Auntie (Now called Body swap story—Aunty Yui & Yuto or Body Swap Story – Aunty Yui & Yuto) for a TSF Showcase at the end of 2024. A promising, and sexually focused, little visual novel that I used a machine translator to play before it, surprisingly, saw an update that added an English script. That was a wild development, well beyond anything I ever expect from a niche doujin game.

However, it gets wilder!

On April 27th, the developer posted an update on their Ci-en DLSite page, saying that the game was done and would launch soon. Then it came out on DLSite two on April 29th, and it’s currently slated to come out on Steam. The sheer speed and casual matter-of-factness shook me to my core, right in my guts.

I am always down to cover a new TSF visual novel, so I plan on reviewing Body Swap Story – Aunty Yui & Yuto sometime in May. I’ll delay my upcoming review of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy to give this far shorter game a spotlight. Also, just to be clear, it will be its own review, rather than a TSF Showcase. TSF Showcase 2025-06 will be released on May 27th, and it will cover a 24 chapter manga series.

Actually, I managed to finish the game in a day. I’ll save my full thoughts for later, but it is WELL worth checking out if you like body swap stories where both perspectives are acknowledged. And if you enjoy the more erotic end of the TSF genre, you should be more than pleased.

Body Swap Story – Aunty Yui & Yuto is currently available on DLSite for a smooth 1100 yen, and should be on Steam for… an amount that’s to be determined.

Also, I don’t know when this happened, but DLSite supports Visa and Mastercard again! Meaning you don’t need to buy points at a separate website to buy your hot Japanese doujin works for a cheap price. Which is great, as I love shopping on DLSite! Everything is 15% or 18% off, and because of currency conversion, it’s also cheap as heck!

Natalie is in… The Money Zone!
(Mo’ Like Natalie.Dochy)

Still fresh off of the big April 15th tax rush, my work has slowed down dramatically. I am no longer putting in crazy hours as my boss recovers and we wait for clients to bring us their goodies. …And as new clients come into the door, because the fun of helping people deal with multi-year tax issues, or IRS audits, never ends!

Naturally, I have been enjoying my ‘break’. Enjoying the opportunity to get some quality gaming in. And enjoying the security of not needing to put in any 50 hour works until September at the earliest. These things are all mentally comforting, but what’s also comforting is the fact that I got paid!

With the end of tax season, and YTD corporate billings exceeding $150k, I was finally awarded with the $10k bonus I earned last year. I received the almost $5,000 paycheck that I skipped in March 2025. I am slated to receive over $5,000 in tax refunds since I was finally able to file my return. And I received a stock bonus valued at $5,000 that may translate cash in a few years. (With accounting practices, you typically buy them for their annual billing and pay out the owners over the span of a few years. Like 3 or 4, as the new firm siphons the value from the new client list.)

Now, I try not to fixate too much on money, but my work is ultimately financial, partially involves billing people, and my mortgage and assessments are worth more than a minimum wage person’s paycheck. So money is something I need to be consciously aware of, and need to keep accumulating if I want to maintain my life/home.

However, my views on money have been steadily changing over the past few months as the American economy is veering toward a nasty nosedive, and I am forced to reconsider my options in life. Do I hunker down and hide my cash while the fascists decline the value of the US dollar? Do I take my resources, leave my mother to her own devices, and hold up in Germany of wherever while working in a country with a sane government, eating into my cash reserves of roughly $65,000? Do I play the role of the generous soul and give away my money to causes that need it? …Well, I already did promise $1,500 to a charity once my tax return is processed. But IRS is quoting people at taking three weeks for refunds, so… I dunno when I’ll get that! Still haven’t gotten my 2023 amendment refunds either.

Honestly, I am most inclined to go with the first option and just try to survive while staying in a country led by people who vehemently oppose due process and have disdain for other branches of government. All while hoping that by being in the Fuck Nazis capital of Illinois will keep me safe from ICE raids. …And I should really start looking into buying that dang self-defense weapon I keep badgering on about. I know where to buy it, but getting there on public transit would be a pain, and I don’t want to carry a weapon on a bus. That doesn’t seem right. …I also should think about getting that coveted Canadian Costco gold, as saving interest rates are going to go down in the foreseeable future.

These are not things I should need to be considering, but I am fortunate enough to have the ability to consider them.

Something I regularly struggle to understand due to my sheltered existence is how so many Americans are just financially fucked. I do not understand what it is like to be living from paycheck to paycheck, without a windfall or support to call on. The idea of taking out loans to pay for groceries sounds too absurd to even be a detail in a work of cyberpunk dystopia fiction.

I’ve pretty much always had financial security, having grown up in a house in a nice slice of suburbia with two working parents who made good money while I was a kid. I managed to get by at discount university, using state money to fund my tuition and books, so I have no student loans. And while I have worked a lot over the years, my pay has grown from $9/hour in 2013 to something approximating $56/hour in 2025. So even after losing all my fucking money in 2017, I’m damn near affluent compared to a lot of other people my age. Which is really weird, as I don’t do much with my money, and try to control my spending through budgeting and diligent practices. I’d say that much is easy, but I have family members who’ve struggled with keeping their bill in any kind of order.

The Japanese Game Preservation Society is On The Verge of Shutdown
(So Please Give Them Money)

Natalie.Dochy should be a recurring icon…

So, here’s something I did not know about until this past week. The Japanese Game Preservation Society is, as the name implies, a non-profit dedicated to preserving video game history however possible, archiving and sharing what it can with the world, and cataloging information before it is lost. They are doing the actual hard preservation work I regularly get on a soapbox about, and I am incredibly pleased that such an entity exists in Japan. For a country whose prominence in global culture stems so much from video games, an organization like this is not only necessary, but should receive adequate Federal funding. Alas, Japan is a nation with a multitude of imperfect politics. Meaning, despite being the impetus for much of modern video gaming, the organization is largely funded by members and contributions. And, per a report by Time Extension, they are on the verge of shutting down.

If you are a freak about game preservation, like me, I would highly encourage you to donate to the Japanese Game Preservation Society. Donations take the form of annual or monthly subscriptions of 3,000 yen, which translates to a bit over $20 USD, processed via Stripe, so international credit cards are accepted. I really hope that an influx of international support can help the organization stay alive during these trying times, and if anybody reading this has $20 to spare, I would encourage them to throw some money their way. I already bought a few ‘shares’ of membership myself, and I would have given them more, if not for how US tax laws work.

The short version is that because I pay a lot in property taxes, state taxes, and a mortgage, I am able to deduct 100% of my charitable contributions made to applicable organizations, saving me approximately $0.22 in taxes on every dollar donated. However, the US tax code does not allow one to deduct contributions (directly) to foreign organizations, so I have less incentive to give to them. Mind you, my incentive is keeping money out of the US government’s hands, which I think is a plenty good one. Even the billionaire class will agree with me on that.

With that in mind… Oh! I know! Once I get my plump tax refund— I’ll give more money to the Video Game History Foundation. Similar organization, similar goals, and while I’ve supported them in the past with a magazine and cash donation, I should give ’em more love. If I give $500 to them, then I need to pay $110 fewer dollars to the fascists in the White House! Now that’s what I call Tax Planning!

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is Doing Big Numbers
(And There’s Some Dumb Discourse About It!)

So, this was a surprise. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 made some waves when it was featured in Microsoft’s 2024 summer media conference thing, and was pushed as a Microsoft supported title earlier this year in Microsoft’s January media showcase thing. It looked good from a jump, and as a French-developed turn-based RPG from a newly formed studio, with a svelte dev team, I was rooting for it from the get-go. Because this is the type of thing that big publishers would balk at 15 years ago, insisting that nobody wants it.

However, the game came out, and has been the subject of the three C’s of success. Critical success, with a 92 on Metacritic, something that even GOTY candidates can struggle to get. Commercial success, selling half a million in a day and a full million in three days. And communal success, being favored by game-likers all around as the IT game over the past week and weekend. Which is impressive, as 2006 GOTY winner The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion just got a remaster, and you’d think that would dominate the RPG genre for a month or so.

This is all great news, and we here at Natalie.TF love to see it!

Akumako: “What’s this we stuff? It’s just you and me, the imaginary friend you made up because it’s easier to discuss things with a foil or devil’s advocate.”

This should be a rousing time for making merry, but I think some people are just predisposed to anger as a default state of being. I say this because I have not been able to avoid this frankly dumb discourse about why Clair Obscur is doing so well. Because lord permit that people accept that a game with a good marketing push, appealing visuals, quality production values, and rave reviews just do well for being a great game. Instead, it has resurfaced this dumb 25-year-old cyclical argument for or against the merits of Japanese-style RPGs. Which… Akumako, give the nice people at home a history lesson. RE:JRPG!

Akumako: “What? Why do I gotta— Screw it! It’s easier to swallow when you don’t resist. The lineage of the RPG genre in the world of video games is one born from an influx of different cultures and cultural adaptation. The RPG genre extensively got off the ground with early purveyors like Richard Garriott’s Ultima (1981) and Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981). Despite being American creations, these games spread to international waters by enthusiasts, licensing agreements, and probably piracy, as piracy was cooler back then. This led to a deluge of innovation, permutation, and alteration, cumulating in the establishment of many different yet systematically interlinked RPGs types. This is how we got the dungeon crawler, the real-time action RPG, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and pretty much everything that could be considered an RPG, all during the… ‘boom-boom years of the 80s.’ Why does Natalie make me read shit like this?“

Akumako: “In this establishment of norms— establishment of genre— various aesthetical, mechanical, and structural elements became common across specific regions/markets. This led the Western world of computer RPGs to develop differently from the Japanese world of Famicom RPGs. In fact, pretty much every region at the time— China, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, even Russia, they all had RPGs in some way, shape, or form, but all had differences due to the culture they were developed in and what the market was receptive to.”

Akumako: “This resulted in various subgenres and styles of RPG. CRPG, SRPG, JRPG, WRPG, ARPG, and whatever other guff you want to throw around, but the one that people really seem to latch onto as a distinct genre is the Japanese Role-Playing Game. Why? Because there is a juicy, fat overlap between people who like these games and spend too much time on the internet, and throughout the 1980s or 1990s, they were the most successful form of RPG in the world. Every Japanese computer gamer had a copy of Xanadu (1985) in the 1980s, pirated or official. Every numbered Dragon Quest game would sell millions of copies in Japan alone. But for most western RPGs, selling over a million copies was rare.”

Akumako: “The dominance of the JRPG would last until the rise of Windows 95 Gaming in the late 1990s, where many of the most celebrated classic RPGs were released, this time to a far larger, and more global, market. This, combined with an international boon in Japanese RPG, bolstered by Final Fantasy VII (1997), made for a prosperous era in RPGs. However, with the rise in these two disparate ends of the genre, it became necessary to distinguish them. And the Americans decided that calling them JRPGs was sufficient. They existed simultaneously but separately, largely due to the divide between PC and console gaming of the late 90s and early 2000s, but with the end of the PS2’s legendary sweep of dominance, things began to shift.”

Akumako: “HD development bit the Japanese games industry right in the dick. Studios either struggled to make games work on the hardware or they divested their resources toward handhelds, as costs were cheaper, and most Japanese people were playing games on handhelds at the time. This, combined with the American games industry really coming into its own both financially and developmentally— the kids who grew up on NES were now working at studios making games— led to a documented friction between Japan and the West, mostly meaning America. The American taste-makers of the industry— proto-influencers, writers, editors, and so forth, began delivering a narrative laced with pride, racism, and western publisher support to forge the narrative that the Japanese games industry is dead. And, more specifically, that Japanese-made genres like JRPGs and survival horror, were dead. It was all about shooters! Also, Americans largely thought Final Fantasy XIII (2009), which was seen as a proxy for JRPGs in general, was not very good.”

Akumako: “This anti-JRPG narrative persisted for about a decade, and it did not really shift until Japanese game developers began delivering lauded HD JRPGs that thoroughly impressed people and began selling oodles of units. Games like Final Fantasy XV, Persona 5, Nier Automata, Xenoblade 2, Dragon Quest XI, Octopath Traveler. Dark Souls and Monster Hunter World should be on that list, but some people as farty-pants bitches and in the anti-JRPG wave of, like, 2007 to 2016, the understanding of what the genre was got all fucked up.”

Akumako: “A JRPG is not an RPG made in Japan. Just because something in Japanese does not mean it has to physically come from Japan. It means that it is an RPG with Japanese sensibilities or style. The fuck does that mean? Well, if it looks like an anime— the most successful source of soft power ever invented by any nation in the history of the world— and is an RPG, it’s probably a JRPG. If it has remnants of distinctly Japanese game design, which is nebulous and difficult to define— think of it like a vibe if ya must, it’s probably a JRPG. If it has the archetypes, themes, mechanics, and elements often associated with the genre— if it smells like Dragon Quest— then it’s a JRPG. And our definition of RPG here is very fluid. If it has an equipment system, leveling, party members, numbers ‘n’ shit, it’s prolly an RPG.”

Thanks Bae! Per this ham-fisted definition and its ramble-some delivery, I would absolutely consider Clair Obscur to be a JRPG, which in the eyes of some, makes its success unusual, if not unnatural, and leads to questions on how/why it achieved such success. I mean, besides being a good game. (Sometimes shit like that just happens, dude.)

The main points of surface-level differentiation between the archetypical JRPG and Clair Obscur are its use of action elements in its combat, requiring players to defend and parry in accordance to seemingly inconsistent button prompts. The story was written by a Western team White people for Westerners White people, because some people, i.e., racists, insist that storytelling is inherently different, i.e., worse, when it comes from Japan. The game does not have the semi-typical mid-budget anime game jank. Everything is fully voiced, they use subtitles rather than dialog boxes, and the whole thing is more television-scented than ADV-flavored. (I feel like I’m running from the cops when I spit lines like that.) And the game, while spiritually anime as fuck— France has loved anime longer than basically any Western nation— the game does not look like anime.

Yes, yes. This topic, like all discussions of JRPGs, ultimately comes down to the subject of anime. Not meaning Japanese animation. Meaning something that looks, taste, feels, or has an anime vibe, if not the full-blown generally accepted anime aesthetic.

My stance on this should be obvious. I’m a child of Pokémon and Dragon Ball, I talk about a manga about every month, and most of my favorite games are Japanese, and when I write my novels, I picture things in an anime aesthetic. Hell, I remember my life in an anime aesthetic, imagine in anime, even think in anime. But anime aesthetic acceptance is a spectrum that varies with the generation of a person, how much of a dork they were as a youngster, and so forth.

On the far end, some people just think anime is lame, cringe, cheap garbage for fascist losers who failed in life and want to fuck 12-year-old girls, because that’s the vibe they be copping. Some people like a few anime and will watch it here and there if something is good, but scoff at lesser class works and the weaboo/Wapanese diehards. Young’uns grew up with anime just another tab in their streaming service, and enjoyed accessible anime streaming, and so did their peers, making anime just cartoons for a wider variety of audiences. Some people just preferred a time before they could see the anime in their favorite IPs, back when things were thoroughly Westernized. Converted to their existing palate.

There are a lot of reasons why someone might not like something, and I think that saying they just don’t vibe with it should be sufficient explanation. It can be hard to decipher why something does or does not resonate with you. Now, I personally am great at that, but that’s because I spent a decade bloggin’ about shit, yapping about fly ish, and trying to unlock the reasons why I like or dislike something. Most people? Well, most people are living from paycheck to paycheck and are discouraged from learning by myriad factors.

With all that in mind, I think that’s why there is some bad discourse around Clair Obscur. Because people are bad at understanding complex topics, expressing their opinions, and moving beyond feelings-based urges and intonations to reflect upon themselves.

…Gosh, I remember when I wasn’t compelled to be aware of discourse like this, but I need to follow the feeds and forums, because that’s where I learn so many things! That’s where the information LIVES nowadays, and I don’t like it!

Microsoft Indulges in Price Hikes Thanks to Trump Tariffs
(Nintendo Helped Too!)

Source: The Game Business

Welp, I knew this was happening, and it may as well happen now. When word about Nintendo Switch 2 games costing $80 broke last month, and rampant confusion was wafting around that because of Nintendo’s trash messaging, I knew this was the start of something bad. I was confident that other publishers would use this as an excuse to indulge in charging $80 for new releases. Not because they need to due to Trump’s utterly/deliberately moronic tariffs that sunk the market, so billionaires could steal billions from working class people’s retirement accounts. That would be the stated justification, but due to the inflation that has hit the market since 2020, they just want even more money, and know that this will appease their shareholders, causing their stocks to go up.

So, who was the first publisher to announce their Trump Tariff Price Hike™? Well, the Genocide Enablers at Microsoft, of course. Yep, their stock shot up a rousing 11% after they detailed their price hikes, and these price bumps ranged from a from a 10% to 25% increase.

  • Xbox Series S 512 – $380 (up from $300)
  • Xbox Series S 1TB – $430 (up from $350)
  • Xbox Series X Digital – $550 (up from $450)
  • Xbox Series X – $600 (up from $500)
  • Xbox Series X 2TB Galaxy Special Edition $730 (up from $600)
  • Xbox Wireless Controller (Core) – $65 (no change)
  • Xbox Wireless Controller (Color) – $70 (no change)
  • Xbox Wireless Controller – Special Edition – $80 (no change)
  • Xbox Wireless Controller – Limited Edition – $90 (up from $80)
  • Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 (Core) – $150 (up from $140)
  • Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 (Full) – $200 (up from $180)
  • Xbox Stereo Headset -$65 (no change)
  • Xbox Wireless Headset – $120 (up from $110)
  • Select First-Party Title Standard Edition Price Cap – $80 (up from $70)

…Damn. Microsoft really did it. They now have the most expensive console on the market with their Xbox Series X 2 TB edition, charging more than the obscene $700 of the PS5 Pro. Though, that is probably going to get a price increase. Sony already raised prices in other regions last month, but were likely holding off on boosting the US price until Microsoft blinked first.

This is all ultimately bad for gaming, bad for US customers, and the price hike have and/or will affect other markets as production quantities shift and fewer consoles and games are ultimately sold. Nothing about this is good, and I’m surprised that Microsoft did not suck up to Trump to nab an exception to gaming hardware, which is still being subjected to the obscene tariff on Chinese goods. However, gaming is merely one sector that is going to be affected by these tariffs in the coming months.

Already, people have documented how these tariffs have caused some of the busiest ports in the United States to grow vacant as suppliers are refusing to ship goods and US customers are unable to buy them. This has been impacting entire industries, non-profits, businesses of all scales, and things are going to get worse as the excess supply currently in the United States is depleted. Companies are going to be forced to shut down, properties will be foreclosed as they become unable to pay their rent, jobs are going to be lost, and nobody is going to hire anybody. The mainstream media is discouraged from reporting on this information or performing public analysis due to how the Trump administration only wants to allow press access to loyalists, and people are not going to feel the effects of this until their bills suddenly become drastically more expensive.

People have already noticed the import charges on platforms like Temu— I never used it, but like half the country apparently uses it each day. And I believe that, despite exemptions being made for computers and the like, this will just make everything more expensive. Which… I mean, I just talked about how millions of Americans are in food debt earlier in this Rundown. And with grocery conglomerates indulging in ‘legalized’ price gouging, I see no reason why domestically grown food shouldn’t also be subjected to the same 10% to 25% price hikes. Because fuck poor people who need to BUY their food!

Things are going to get worse, and this actually makes me hopeful for the future. As people are priced out of living, as they become unable to pay rent, unable to buy food, they are going to get beings of raw fury. They are going to have nothing to lose, and will seek revenge upon those who stole everything from them. At the start of the second Trump administration, it was fucking January. Everything was cold and icy, people were tired from an exhausting year, and wanted to hope for the best with this new administration. I had to entertain at least one parachute salesman who thought this— all this, exactly, note for note, no exceptions, all according to The Writings of Donald ‘Jesus Christ III’ Trump Himself— would be fantastic for his business and pocketbook.

(The joke is that Hitler was Jesus Christ II in the eyes of the most evil fuckers who ever walked this bitch we call Earth. And Trump couldn’t write something as detailed as Project 2025. I doubt the dumb motherfucker could even string together a Middle School quality essay, or even understand what was written in Project 2025.)

But now the Famous™ 100 First Days have past, Trump’s popularity is declining at a stunning rate. As things get warmer, as ICE becomes more aggressive with their raids, abductions, and robberies of the American Caucasoid Caucus, as we enter primo Protest and Homicide Season, I am swelling up with hope. Hope that resistance starts becoming prominent, that positions are toppled, and more people— particularly students who are out of school— will start getting shit done. And I hope that the Trump administration does not back down one iota. I hope they continue to incompetently shit themselves as they rush forward, alienating the vast majority of people, and indulge obvious crimes against the Constitution, human rights, and most importantly, professional standards. I want things to get fucking terrible, because unlike these dimwitted fuckbags, I view things in the long-term.

I want them to start sending judges to CECOT in El Salvador, for them to be murdered, and for that shit to be uploaded to TikTok so White bitches can dance to that shit like dey’s Black. I want the unemployment rate— not the real unemployment rate, the Official Democratic Unemployment Rate— to skyrocket to 15%. I want a million Americans to be either disappeared, imprisoned, or murdered by Trump’s militarized police force. I want travel bans to the United States to be implemented across the board. I want the European Union to become a fierce ally of China as they abandon the United States.

I want China to do fucking nothing in response to these tariffs, letting the United States stab itself in the dick. I want hundreds of thousands of children to contract diseases and develop lifelong debilitating injuries, because I want their parents to suffer for their sins, and for them to become an unavoidable part of daily life for tens of millions of people. A reminder that you need to vaccinate babies! I want US Treasury to collapse and for Social Security checks to not be issued for three months. And I want the World Cup to be an unmitigated disaster of State-sponsored terrorism, where 5% 10% of all visitors are either disappeared or murdered. I want things to get horrifically bad, for disaster breeds revolution, and the only way to make these brainwashed morons wake up is to beat them with a metaphorical sledgehammer. Because a bat wouldn’t hurt enough.

They say that things must get worse before they get better, so it only makes sense to hope for The Worst.

Also, don’t you just love the contrast in these Rundowns! Some might find this inconsistency in tone to be gauche, but I view it as just the modern way things must work. All news, all updates, must be congealed into a single feed. There are always be specks of humor and snark in even discussions of genocide. And there are always be allusions of societal collapse in even the most decadent escapism. It’s how information is consumed these days, how humans are supposed to work!

Bye Bye Giant Bomb and Polygon
(The Video Games Press is FUCKED!)

It has been disheartening to see how the games press has been treated… since 2008 basically. So many publications were shuttered back then, and while new ones cropped up over the ensuing decades, there has been a slow death of the games press in the past few years due to corporate vultures. Specifically companies like Gamurs, ValNet, and Fandom. They are all examples of a disease plaguing not only the games press, but the press side of just about every industry, but let’s keep the topic narrowed to video games.

A gaming website is built and propped up by its writers, personalities, and ability to reach out to individuals to gather and corroborate compelling stories that garner attention from the gaming audience. Whether it be an exposé, detailed postmortem, exclusive leak, a poignant piece of writing with a unique perspective or enough insight to capture the subject’s purpose and intention. There are a lot of things that can make a website known or remarkable, but the most vital thing is the people who make it, the ones who write the words people read. However, the capitalists controlling the games press have continuously expressed a callous disregard for these people, viewing them as expendable cogs whose writings should only be measured through a simple ratio. Number of clicks over the time it takes to write them.

These capitalists do not care about quality, do not care about the community, about gaming, about journalism, or about the people who they employ. They view the purpose of a website— of everything, really— as a thing that makes them money. When they find a way to make more money, they will pursue it even if they need to destroy everything in the process. They will burn the reputation and value of the website that became a well-known name, no matter how prestigious. They will cast aside even the most skilled and renowned writers, regardless of their reputation or ability to draw in an audience. And they will destroy everything on a whim, without any regard for the legacy they have legal ownership of.

At best, the website lives on in a zombified state. An entity propped up by a few desperate members of the old guard while AI-generated regurgitated press releases creep onto the front page to capitalize on any scrap of news that comes in. This has happened to many of my old standby gaming websites, like Destructoid and Siliconera. Not only were their visual identities commodified to a template, but the writing in the articles has reached a low that I frankly found insulting. The kind of writing you get when you are expected to churn out eight articles a day and need to cover whatever hot topic is on your assigned radar, even if you have nothing to say.

I hate that this has happened to sites that I once visited several times a day, and cited regularly back in the 2010s. But with the rise of AI generated slop articles, it has only gotten easier for companies to ransack these sites of all value. They buy them out, fire all the people who made them, and use them as a tool for underpaid, overworked, writers to churn out clickbait. Reviews and press releases with no sauce or personality. Sentences that read like they were written by an AI who doesn’t know up from down from yo momma’s butt. And blasé guide pieces with half completed information, missing sections, and little of value to add, but at least it managed to get some clicks.

I hate seeing this. Hate what these companies do to gaming publications. Hate that they are robbing creators and writers of their labor and turning their past bylines into names synonymous with dogshit. Yet, this keeps happening, and just this past week, two more stalwart staples of the gaming press have fallen. The much beloved Giant Bomb fell to its Fandom overlords, beloved personalities of the staff have been laid off, and nothing has been published in several days.

So it’s safe to say it’s dying and being retooled to something bereft of its renowned personality. While Polygon was sold to ValNet, who laid off the majority of the staff. All of which they are doing months before the release of the Nintendo Switch 2 and Grand Theft Auto VI. Typical big-brained capitalist move right there. These motherfuckers should write a book or something! …But they’re such untalented hacks that they couldn’t do it without the ‘help’ of AI.

At this point, I think the only response to all this is that the games industry needs to start up their own platforms without these capitalist hacks muddying their hands over things. That those working in this field, or in online journalism in general, need to form a union to protect themselves. And these lifeless husks of websites need to be blacklisted by the community, never visited or shared around, at least when another, reputable, institution is available. But to really change things, the means of production, the capital, and all that good ish needs to be seized by the masses and disenfranchised. Which is a hard, drawn-out process, even if you have the capacity for productive violence.

Grand Theft Auto VI Delayed to May 26, 2026
(There Goes the Biggest Game of the Generation…)

Well, this was a sour note to wake up to on Friday morning— after I edited and get the rest of this Rundown all nice and ret-2-go. There has been speculation about Grand Theft Auto VI slipping from its previously announced 2025 release date for a while now, and Rockstar has made it official. They are delaying the game to next year, kindly providing the specific date of May 26, 2026.

This is bound to be an upset for some, who have been patiently anticipating the game for the past 18 months, based on that one trailer, but I personally am just glad that we have such a specific date for the title, which will allow publishers a la carte to fill up their 2025 release schedule without fear of being consumed by a game that will likely break all the sale-through records, and will ‘hopefully’ cost $200, as people want.

Which people? I don’t even know at this point. People just love speculating the price, so I think they’d get a real kick out of it costing as much as a console did back in the days when capitalism was tolerable. I remember $100 GameCubes. My mother bought me one in exchange for going to summer school, where I was the smartest kid in class. I did math and read books back then. Good times!

Anyway, that’s all I have to add, as I am that rare specimen who is invested enough in gaming to do something like this, but has never played a GTA game.

Progress Report 2025-05-04

This past Sunday I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and… that movie garnered such a viscerally angry reaction when it came out. However, looking at the movie, analyzing it as a film, as a sequel, fresh off of watching the first three, it does not feel like much of a deviation from what came before. Indy is of course older and not as capable as he once was, but he still kicks ass and is plenty capable of performing impressive acts, while relying more on other characters. Which is far from a bad thing, as Indy was a bit of a lone hero before, and part of growing older means relying on others.

Indy’s character is a believable representation of where someone like Indy would be in middle age. Still eager to get his hands dirty, still working his university job, and while not as romantically inclined, he’s also not a young stud looking for some hot ass to fool around with. He’s arguably a bit overly spry for someone his supposed age, but he has always pushed a bit beyond typical human limitations, so I’ll assume he’s just built differently. And it makes sense that someone as prone to just ditching everything to go adventuring would have the life he does.

He is mobbed and adored by a select few, but ultimately lonely, having lost his colleagues due to age and having pushed away the many women he had flings with. His character is intact, and thinking back to the South Park inspired claims that ‘they raped him’ I am left confused as to how people could view this as wrong or disrespectful. Maybe these Suburban White Man-Children™ just did not like the idea of a childhood father figure growing older and not being a rousing success at everything. Your dad wasn’t perfect and he got old, live with it.

That is one commonly cited frustration point, but the others, per my half-my-life-ago memory, were centered around three things. The Mutt, the aliens, and the sillier elements.

Per the construction, narrative arc, and ending, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was partially envisioned as a ‘passing the torch’ film that would see Indy’s son, Henry “Mutt” Jones III, played by Shia LaBouf, become the lead of a successor action adventure series. This makes sense, as Harrison Ford was too old to be an action hero for much longer, and LaBouf was a hot product in Hollywood at the time. His portrayal in the movie is… more than sufficient, I’d say. He can be a bit of a brat, not the most respectful, and not experienced, but he’s not an idiot kid. He is capable of holding his own in action set pieces, and considering his ruffian nature, I can buy that he is able to sword fight on a moving car through a jungle, or swing from vines like a monkey. I mean, I’ve seen what his old man got up to when he was a whippersnapper.

However, LaBouf went from ‘that kid from Holes (2003)‘ to ‘the guy who ruined Transformers,’ due to his starring role in Transformers (2007). Now, he did not do anything wrong. I have not seen the movie since it came out, but his performance would not even make it into a top twenty list of problems with that movie. It was a negative association that the aforementioned Suburban White Man-Children™ used to label him negatively, and were subsequently offended at the notion of him, this curly haired soft boy, replacing a Beefcakely Masculine childhood icon. They just did not like the idea of him existing.

…Also, I’m not going to say anything more about LaBouf as a man. He was part of that legendary just do it meme, which I enjoyed at the time. People just need to do shit! But I dunno what he’s done over the past decade, and I don’t really care. In my head canon of reality, he became a goat farmer.

Next, the aliens element is something that some have umbrage with, as they viewed the series as being based more in mythology, religious superstition, and… magic in general. It is a world where voodoo dolls are real, ghosts are real, and several gods exist. All of which is in line with the types of superstition that were held in the religion-dominated world of the 1930s and in the pre-WWII era in general. But this is post-WWII, in the 1950s, set at the start of the space race. Alien superstitions were rampant, and sci-fi, while not often respected, was booming! And this was, potentially, going to be the one return, the one Indiana Jones adventure to take place in the decade, the potentially final part of the story and escalation of all that came before! So it made sense to go beyond gods and explore extradimensional, extraterrestrial beings.

And lastly, we have what I dub the sillier elements. The fridge that withstands a nuclear bomb. The incredibly intricate temple mechanisms. The downright magical crystal skull that attracts gold and metal. The zany escalation of the motorcycle chase sequence. The monkeys swinging on the vines, guiding Mutt back to the action. Et cetera. I understand why these scenes would not hit hard in the jaded post-9/11 pre-Great Recession White male audience, where silliness was gay, gay was still an acceptable insult, and retarded was as acceptable as the word bitch. Indiana Jones movies are not serious. They universally have a number of fantastical leaps, and are not afraid to embrace comedy. Sure, there are silly moments in this movie that arguably push the envelope, but the deviation is not vast.

As a whole, I think it was a good fourth entry that came out 20 years later— make of that what you will— but I do have two gripes. One, the main cast is too big. They should have merged the spy character and Oxley, the crazy guy who was mind-warped by the crystal skull, into a single character, as there just is not enough time or room for the two of them to feel like much more than tagalongs.

Two, this movie is remarkably racist, and not because it is about a society of Brown people who invented something before Caucasians because of alien intervention. That is a racist trope, but it’s kind of baked in with a premise like this. My problem is the inclusion of Brown people who live to serve their gods, live in the walls of catacombs in order to attack intruders, and only exist as opposition, with no greater character or depth. There is a lot of racist shit in Indiana Jones movies. It’s worth pointing out and just… accepting, because the world, her people, their creations are all flawed, and the 80s were not a decade of cultural sensitivity. They were a decade epitomized by AIDS, Thatcherism (Nazi lite shit), and Reaganism (Nazi lite shit). But doing this stuff in a 2008 movie is far less forgivable. Sure, it is in line with the originals, but they could have also just… not done this.

Overall, I’d give it a 7 outta 10. Not great, better than the average action romp, and retains the spirit of the original pretty well.

Just so it’s clear to my readers, the header image is meant to depict the reality of the re:Dreamer universe breaking down, as indicated by the background giving way to a black background, basically a green screen analog. Keisuke’s eyes are not loading as the soul leaves his body, Sam is full of despair, because she knows exactly what is going on, Britney is seeing past her understood dimensions, hence the purple yandere eyes. Zach has seen this shit before in their drunken dreams. Ai is getting hijacked by a purple (Natalie-coded) entity. And… that’s basically the thought process I had here. Reality is breaking! I wish reality would break! It would make everything better! Just like if America was [REDACTED].

2025-04-27: More Last Defense Academy, along with movie time with friends and a hair cut. Only played about five hours or so.

2025-04-28: Wrote 1,000 word re:Dreamer bit. More Last Defense Academy. I forgot to log how many hours.

2025-04-29: More Last Defense Academy, forgot to log how many hours… AGAIN!

2025-04-30: Wrote 3,100 words for the money zone, Japanese Game Preservation Society, Clair Obscur, and Body Swap Story bits. Then played Last Defense Academy for… damn it Steam, you really need a daily play summary. why TF are so many platforms so bad at logging this shit. I know they are collecting the damn data!

2025-05-01: Wrote 1,300 words for the Microsoft Political bit. Then wrote the 850 word Giant Bomb and Polygon bit. Made all the header images for this week and edited the Fundown. Editing took forever, as I had to also take care of my finances to double check things, and finances are complicated when you have so many accounts! Also, had to draft my finances for 2025, so I could save money on taxes. Oh, and then I started Body Swap Story.

2025-05-02: Finished Body Swap Story Aunty Yui and Teenager Yuto. It thoroughly impressed me with its main route, though you can tell the creators were only interested in one outcome for this game, and included the others as an obligation. For what it is, for what it is trying to be, I think it is fantastic. It’s some grade-A smut at the very least. Will work on the review when I feel like it. Then I played Hundred Line for five hours, until 3:30 because I got roped into a battle by accident, and wanted to wrap it up.

2025-05-03: Played about 5 hours of Hundred Line, did some early drafting for the Body Swap Story review, because I got distracted and did not want to commit to it.

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