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I still don’t know if I should keep Where Winds Meet as a game in the DB. There was a time when I felt very motivated to play the game seriously , like actually learn what weapons and martial arts do, keep a journal of my exploration/quest progress… but then the end of chapter 1 really affected me, to the point where I progressively dropped the game (not just because of the story, I also just didn’t have enough time to play consistently).
Now I want to go back to the game, but I don’t know how much I’m going to study/post about it, so having its own entry in the DB feels unnecessary.

I like having two ratings for books, how good I think the book was, and how much I enjoyed reading it. These can be two completely different ratings.
I went over my archived books to add a heart rating (how much I enjoyed reading them). I don’t remember most of these books enough to give a star rating, but I still more or less remember if I enjoyed reading them.

I couldn’t sleep last night, so I listened to the second short story, 伤. This one was another fascinating story. It’s crazy to think we’re spending such a short time with the characters, but I feel like I’ll never forget about them.

Given that I’m almost not playing R1999 atm, I went back to Where Winds Meet. The last two or three times I opened the game, I had to download a new patch, this shows how rarely I play…
But I made a lot of progress on the story today (chapter 2, made it to Kaifeng!), and it is so so so great. I can’t understand everything, in fact there’s a lot of things and dialogues I don’t understand, but I’m still enjoying the story very much.

I’m completely ignoring the menus, the events, the farming and stamina system, and I’m just doing the main story

I listened to the first story, 只有你听到, today, and it was such a nice listen. Otsuichi’s stories about loneliness feel so relatable. His characters never get the easy happy ending too, which always makes me feel melancholic.

Wow, the plot is really good!

Finished chapter 6! It’s very suspenseful, I really love it.
I love how the novel closely follows the real case, but with a completely different plot at the same time, It’s really well done!

R1999 SP confirmed that I have no interest in the collab… And I’m not interested in the current story either, so I might just log in to do dailies in the next weeks, and just skip the content I’m not interested in.
I’m afraid I might end up playing Reverse less and less.
I find the a lot of stories really annoying (especially everything related to Laplace, which we had a lot of recently), and overall I find that on auto the stories have a lot of dead time like transitions between the dialogues, which I’ve always found a bit irritating. And the combat is often too long and a bit boring to be honest. Animations take forever so playing for 10 or 20 rounds feels very long. Casting cards just takes a few seconds, then I have to sit through countless animations that don’t require any input from me, so I’ve kind of lost interest in combat. I think it would be fine if I could let the combat play while I’m working on something that also does not require full attention all the time, but I have everything on the same device, so that’s not really possible.

I continued the aquarium management game, and I like it a lot. I think I’ve unlocked all the major things, I just need to continue playing and progressing.
It’s so much better than the theme park thing we had in Fontaine last time. There was nothing to do apart from clicking on things again and again. Here at least there are several activities and we really get to do things.

Even though I never played Assassin’s Creed, I was very excited for the R1999 collab, and I ended up P5ing Ezio. He’s still one of my favourite character and I love his playstyle a lot. I also loved both stories.
However this time… Atomic Heart… yeah not really my jam. I’m sure they’ll do something great and the characters will look good and all, but I’m almost certain I’m going to skip. I’m not playing a lot of Reverse at the moment anyway, and I’m afraid the collab won’t be what brings me back into the game.

Finished chapter 2!
Mmh, I enjoy reading this novel, and it also reads very easily which I appreciate, but it probably won’t be a favourite either.
We’ll see with the next story! (Each chapter is a different case).

Also finished chapter 5 today!

陳進興: Chen Chin-hsing
A character refers to a murderer called 陳, it’s probably Chen Chin-hsing who kidnapped and killed Pai Hsiao-yen (白曉燕) the daughter of a celebrity in 1997. During the months that followed he and his gang kidnapped, killed and raped several other victims while the police seemed unable to stop them. The manhunt finally came to a stop in November when Chen took hostage the family of the current South African military attaché to Taipei. After negotiations with politicians and access to media, he finally was surrendered to the police. He was sentenced to death in January 1998.
The government’s inability to arrest Chen has led to major civil protests.

The kidnapping and murder of Pai Hsiao-yen is referred to as 白案 (short for 白曉燕命案), it’s then referred to clearly by Hsieh Cho-en who wants to avoid a repetition of the negotiations and exposure given to Chen when he took hostage the South African attaché’s family.

Finished chapter 4, this novel is very suspenseful and fast-paced!
Knowing about the real bus hijacking case makes reading the novel even more interesting! I really like how the author rewrote the case.

建國黨: Taiwan Independence Party
Founded in 1996 and dissolved in 2020.
The party was founded by members of the Democratic Progressive Party who found the that DPP was becoming too moderate in its position for Taiwan’s Independence. The Party never managed to gain real influence, though they did won one seat in the Legislative Yuan in 1998 (legislative elections were held in December, so the novel - set in April - takes place before).
(Kuo Jen-kuei is a fictional character)

Legislative Yuan (立法院) is Taiwan’s unicameral legislature today, but in 1998, while the Control Yuan had been dismantled, the National Assembly (國民大會) still existed, though it was largely powerless at the time (it will be abolished in 2005, making the Legislative Yuan the unique parliamentary chamber).

There’s a mention of 巡邏箱! I learnt what it was in 警察執勤中：正義的代價!