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self_made_human  amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi  3mo ago (ussri.substack.com)   2947 thread views

Pokémon for Unrepentant Sociopaths: A Review of Reverend Insanity

ussri.substack.com

Well, this is just about exactly what it says on the tin. I've finally mustered up the energy to write a full-length review of what's a plausible contender for my Favourite Novel Ever, Reverend Insanity. I'd reproduce it here too, but it's a better reading experience on Substack (let's ignore the shameless self-promotion, and the fact that I can't be arsed to re-do the markdown tags)

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It's fascinating how a person's favorite stories are so often a direct window into their soul. It's almost like a cheat code. If you want to understand what someone's all about, you can dispense with almost everything else and just ask them what their favorite books/games/movies are.

(Not at all saying that you, self_made, are an "amoral sociopath" or anything like that; it's just that, if someone had asked me what your favorite novel was, this is exactly what I would have imagined.)

Well, now I must know yours!

It's hard to pick just one! So many are good for different reasons and offer different things.

Joyce's Ulysses was almost wholly responsible for educating me on what art can and should be; everything else is just filling in the details in comparison. So that has to rank up there.

Ryukishi07's Umineko deserves a mention because it pulls off the rare combination of being interesting on both a formal/experimental level while also just being an amazing page-turner mystery story. Only story I've ever read where I was skipping meals because I wanted to keep reading. I highly recommend it to everyone. (Gwern described it as "mind-screwy; and awesome, and awful. It was long, intricate, baffling, a gorgeously flawed achievement. Everyone should read it; no one should read it. I still don’t know what to think of it. Is it ridiculous self-indulgent tripe which exposes my own mush-headedness, or the deepest mystery I will ever read?" Don't look up Gwern's full review though because it has spoilers for the whole thing.)

Hmm, I had watched Higurashi, which I enjoyed very much, but then never got around to Umineko, which at that time seemed to me like just more of the same, but as a "normal" murder mystery. Seems I misjudged things. Would recommend the manga or do you have another option? I probably won't play on the PC for some time, though maybe the fanported android version.

I'm going to second playing the games because the sound design in Higurashi/Umineko in particular is 100% a part of the experience. It's probably the best use of sound I've seen in any VN.

Play the game, it’s fantastic. The author really, really thought about how to write a murder mystery after he did Higurashi and the result is literally like nothing else.

The main sticking point is that the beginning until the first death is very slow and the characters seem kind of weird until you get where they’re coming from. If you stick in there it gets a lot more exciting.

but then never got around to Umineko, which at that time seemed to me like just more of the same, but as a "normal" murder mystery.

Yeah it's kinda the opposite. Higurashi is amazing too but ultimately it's "just" a good murder mystery story. Umineko is capital-A Art.

You really do have to play the video game version. If it's been ported to phones that's fine too. I've never watched the anime or read the manga but I've been told the anime is awful. Apparently the manga is pretty good, but no matter how good it is, the video game version does some things that really work best in a digital medium. Plus it just has an amazing soundtrack, it's an integral part of the experience.

Play it play it play it play it! I played the android version, it works great. The manga you could do, but it's slightly different from the game, just different enough that you'll feel disconnected from what people are talking about. I say this because I went anime, manga then the game, each time hoping I could get the goods with less time spent only to have something that wasn't mentioned spoiled that made me want to dig deeper. In the end my attempts to reduce the amount of time I spent with it ensured I ended up spending as much time as possible.

I can't wait for Silent Hill f. I hope they don't reign him in too much.

Just to be clear, you mean the umineko project port, right?

I used the 07th-mod, it's really easy.

Hmm weird, I can't find anything on how to play that on android. The umineko project version is a bit tedious to get running, but so far it seems to work, so I'll just use that.

Oh, there used to be android instructions. It's not too hard though it's pretty much - install on Windows using the Windows instructions, then install onscripter plus on your tablet, then transfer the game's folders across to your tablet, then run it. If you can get umineko project running may as well stick with that though - when I played it UP ran like crap on android.

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