(incoherent rambling)

The Girl with All the Gifts is a 2014 novel written by M. R. Carey. It's based on his 2013 short story, Igphigenia In Aulis , and also has a 2016 movie adaptation. I haven't watch the movie so this review is entirely focused on the novel. I wasn't familiar with Carey prior to reading this novel, and was surprised to find out that he is a very prolific writer across many mediums, including, notably, comic books. I'm ashamed to admit one of my first thoughts when I found this out was "wow The Girl with All the Gifts has pretty good prose for someone who writes comic books". I found out later that Carey actually has something like a dozen novels and a few poetry/short story collections published. But I digress. One of the overarching reoccurring themes in the novel is the idea of duality and that fine line that separates two sides of the same coin. It asks classic questions like what separates monsters from humans? What separates a deranged sociopath from a sel

Shiniyuki Kimi Yakata ni Mebuku Zouo, also known as Nikuniku, is a eroge released by Bug System in 2016 written by the prolific Ban'ya. Like many of Ban'ya's other works, it features a decently ambitious story despite being largely marketed as a guro nukige. The game's narrative and themes are centered around some classic but never boring questions: how do we define morality? Should morality be viewed subjectively or objectively? How do we find meaning in our lives? Are some ways of living more just or meaningful than others? Ban'ya provides satisfactory but not particularly in-depth or ground-breaking interpretations of these ideas. This trend of being satisfactory but not notably interesting is something that is echoed across most aspects of this game. The story is interesting and for the most part well paced but there wasn't anything about it that stood out specifically for me. There's some neat lore and worldbuilding that doesn't really get expanded