Cosmia

  • Climbing Out of the Underworld With the Power of Family for the Hades Game Trade Review

    It’s that time again where I make a certain Spartan play a game and then he makes me play a game and then we both write lengthy blog posts ranting about our respective games. This time around I sent him on a brutal shinobi quest in Sekiro, and he wanted to make sure I struggled through something as well. His solution? The widely acclaimed indie roguelike based on Greek mythology known as Hades. Climbing out of Greek-Hell That Isn’t Actually Hell but Still Looks and Acts Hellish at Times is tough work y’know?

    This situation reminds me of a certain video I’ve seen. It involves two women engaged in particular activities. One woman acts frustrated and proclaims, “I’m trying to punish you, you’re not supposed to like it!” The other woman continues to quietly oblige, not looking particularly bothered.

    Usually I keep mentions of my kinks to a minimum in these reviews, but this game’s not entirely unrelated. Particularly this idea of a punishment that’s enjoyed. It gets at the heart of what makes a game like this work. So unlike the other woman, I have quite a bit to say about my purported punishment. A whole review’s worth.

    You can click here to read the Hades review
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  • Crossover Review for Petshop of Horrors Part One (Volumes 1-2)

    Spartan: Welcome to the Cosmia blog’s first ever manga discussion, I’m Spartan and joining me is the host of the blog, Mr. Cosmia.

    Today we’re reviewing the first two volumes of Petshop of Horrors by Matsuri Akino.

    Petshop of Horrors volume 1 cover. It shows Count D holding what appears to be some sort of fishy lady.
    Cosmia: That creature he’s holding doesn’t show up until Volume 2. False advertising smh


    Cosmia: Is it the first ever manga discussion? Well, I guess it’s the first one that’s a group act.

    S: Now that you mention it, I guess it is.

    So the basic synopsis of nearly every chapter involves Count D, a mysterious peddler of pets giving people companions, telling them very specific rules on what they need to do to keep the pet (and themselves) alive, and more often than not they don’t, shenanigans ensue.

    C: Count D’s pet shop is run in Chinatown. Which Chinatown? IDK probably the New York one.

    S: Oh it’s definitely the New York. Most of the buildings line up with the NYC. Actually wait, I’m wrong, it’s in Los Angeles.

    C: I guess that makes more sense in a way. So it’s a Japanese manga in an American setting with a Chinese main character. A rather international setup you don’t see that often from Japanese media.

    S: Indeed, it is rather refreshing. Also uses the setting to its advantage with the multi ethnic nature of the US to its advantage.

    C: Pretty much all of the customers have been pretty damn white as far as I can tell so far, but yeah, theoretically it could.

    S: They have? *fervently checks through chapters* son of a gun they have been!

    This dialogue keeps going. You can read the rest here.
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  • Pokemon Violet Game Trade Review

    Hello folks welcome and/or welcome back to the Game Trade Reviews. Where I play a game upon a certain Spartan’s request in exchange for making them play one of my things and then we both yap about it. The Game Trade Reviews have been going on for quite some time, predating this whole ass blog’s existence. I could not tell you how many we’ve done total, but I can say this marks the 5th one I’ve done for this website. 5 is a special-ish number. So for such a special-ish number let’s talk about a series near and dear to my heart: Pokemon.

    I’ve been a fan of Pokemon for a long ass time. I still remember when I got my hands on Pokemon Sapphire for the Game Boy Advance when I was like 4 or some shit. I couldn’t even read yet but I was still enthralled. I was so into it that my parents regretted giving it to me and took my whole Game Boy away. It was a losing battle.

    Pokemon was very much my shit in elementary school, still a solid interest in middle school, and it’s a big part of how I bonded with my closest friends from high school. Including a certain Spartan I do these reviews with. Would the Game Trade Review exist at all without Pokemon? Perhaps not. So it’s only fitting that a Pokemon game get featured in it. But wait a second, why is this game part of the Game Trade? If I love Pokemon so much wouldn’t I want to play this game unprompted without ever needing it featured in a trade? Well… there is a reason. Stay tuned and I’ll explain all about that, and how my experience went with this whole ass game. I’ll also be covering the Teal Mask and Indigo Disk DLC. So much shit to talk about yeesh. Welp, let’s get into it.

    click here for a long rant about pokemon
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  • 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim Game Trade Review

    ‘hoy folks, Spartan here with another exciting continuation of the much tolerated game trade, where me and blog owner Cosmia recommend games for each other to play and write a review on them. It’s been a while since the last one, so I hope that I’m able to evade another FromSoft game….

    An Atlus game eh? yeah, I can do this! they were partly responsible for the first ever game trade (the fated Kingdom Hearts X Persona 5 trade) that started all of this. I also expect to hear a lot of familiar VAs in this one from previous ventures that Mr. Cosmia might not be familiar with.

    Read the review here
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  • Tokyo Ghoul is Still Depressingly Relevant

    Hey guys remember 2024? I’m not so sure I want to. To be fair it wasn’t all bad. It was the year I finally got around to reading the Tokyo Ghoul manga after all. It was pretty good. Yeah… Oftentimes when people watch anime, read manga, whatever, they use it as a means of escapisms. For a moment you’re taken away from whatever ails you in the real world and get wrapped up in whatever fantastical shit’s going on in the anime world instead. I wouldn’t say that’s the only reason I like weeb stuff, but it’s certainly part of the package. Usually. Not so sure it applies to Tokyo Ghoul.

    Seriously, who the hell reads Tokyo Ghoul for escapism? Maybe if you’re really into the fight scenes and incurious enough to not notice the distressing real world parallels. Or maybe you like to feel better about your own mental health by seeing others in a worse spot.

    I'M DONE WITH DREAMING. Goodnight Haise. This abstract intense background the dark shadow of his hair and clothes and darkly illuminated face. One eye is inverted colors like a ghoul and the other is relatively normal looking but still fucked up.

    To be fair to escapists, no matter how bleak a chapter in Tokyo Ghoul gets it’s still a fictional world. Any number of things could happen and the problems stay contained to the page. So don’t worry about it and think about which characters you want to see kiss instead! I’m not even knocking that, it’s part of the fun. But I’m not going to turn away from the uncomfortable things this manga reminds me of. Come join me in this blog post as I parse through my thoughts on this mammoth of a series. Or don’t, nobody’s forcing you. Either way I’m going to go ahead with it.

    Click here for the ramble

  • End of the Year Update

    Hello folks, as 2024 comes to a close I’d like to take some time to reflect on this year and give you guys a taste of where this blog’s headed next year. And uhhhhh… that sure was a year alright. Remember Aaron Bushnell, the guy who self-immolated in protest of the war on Gaza? That was 10 months ago, and the killing continues indefinitely. Soon we’ll get a new guy in the White House who will find innovative new ways to make it worse. Exciting stuff all around.

    Okay, 2024 may be pretty bad in that macro global events kinda way, but how about for this blog specifically? Well, I wrote a blog reflecting on Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation and other people who committed the same act. It was one of four blog posts I published on this site all year, along with another one by my good friend Spartan. I went into this year hoping I’d average at least one blog post a month. Guess not.

    I could offer plenty of excuses and explanations for why that happened. Y’all don’t need to hear them. But let it be known, I have not forgotten about this. I may prioritize certain things over this blog most of the time, but I miss it when I do. There’s a lot of things I want to write about. Because I haven’t published much they stack up and increase in number, and I want to let more of that out next year. Here’s a preview of what I intend to write about next year.

    Let me know if there’s anything you’re particularly interested in reading my thoughts on. It’ll be more likely to happen if you do. But hell, even if I never wrote another blog post again I’m pretty happy with how this site has panned out. It has helped me rediscover my love for writing, and I have people all over the world visiting here. Mostly for my Blue Lock post, hot damn that series gets a lot of love. A genuine worldwide phenomenon. To everyone who took some time out of their life to read my thoughts on the internet, thank you, seriously. I hope you got something worthwhile out of the experience. Either way, I’m going to keep going.

    By the way, if there’s anything I’ve learned this year, it’s that plants are amazing. This is officially a pro plant blog, even though I probably won’t talk about them much on here. My world became noticeably more lively when I brought more plants into it. It could do the same for you as well.

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  • No Shade in the Shadow of the Erdtree

    If you’re a gamer/In the Know you probably heard that FromSoftware recently released a new DLC for Elden Ring. Other companies may have handled the DLC by giving you a few more weapons to play with and the option to put Ranni in a swimsuit. I might’ve been okay with that, but FromSoftware decided to basically give us a whole new game instead. Shadow of the Erdtree’s map isn’t quite as big as the base game, but it’s still quite massive. So much so that it took me three months to complete it. I wouldn’t call my playtime entirely representative, but the point remains that the DLC turned out bigger than most expected. I poured a lot of time into Shadow of the Erdtree. So now I’m going to use this blog post to share my thoughts on it. The short version is that I mostly liked it. The long version? Well…

    Read the long version here
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  • Game trade review: A Night In the Woods

    Hoi folks! Spartan here with yet another review for the time honored Game Trade, where Mr. Cosmia gives me something to play/review and vice versa. Let’s see what we’ve got today, really hoping it isn’t a FromSoft game…….

    Oh, Night in the Woods, perfect! I live to see another day without having to put up with Dark Souls level difficulty of combat. I remember reading about this in a GameInformer magazine once and how it tackles a college dropout returning to a small town where not much goes on. I didn’t drop out of college but I live in a small town so this will be a refreshing perspective to me.

    Read the rest here
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  • Sister

    Do you believe sexy nuns are inherently problematic? If so, you’d find yourself right at home on ex-Twitter. An artist made the following provocative tweet, and the Discourse took it from there.

    @pykle_ writes: "dont care how much religious trauma u got, stop sexualizing nuns (im serious)" Below that is a digital illustration of a nun. Well, it's two nuns but it appears to be the same person in two different poses. She is wearing standard black and white nun attire, with long flowing robes that obscures her form. She is wearing a cross necklace with a golden hue. In the first pose she smiles with her hands together in prayer. In the second pose she holds her arms are down and she holds an arrow with her right hand. Except you can't see the hands under the robe. She has a look of disapproval.
    12 million views. 27 thousand likes. This is truly what the people needed to see.

    I honestly mostly like this artwork. The colors are nice, the poses and expression are drawn well, and it’s got an effective simple art style that conveys a lot without being overly elaborate. I’m not sure what that arrow she’s holding in the second pose is supposed to mean, but whatever. Her expression says enough. That being said, I take issue with the words attached to it. I don’t want to attack the artist here too much. I checked their page, I think they got pretty good art and some cognitive dissonance. I hope they grow into an amazing artist with better takes. In the meantime I want to focus less on the person saying it and more on the idea of sexualizing nuns.

    One song frequently came to my mind when I looked at tweets relating to this art: “Sister” by She Wants Revenge. An all time great song about a man’s sexually charged encounter with a religious woman. I love this song, it’s my favorite one off the album and there’s some tough competition. Yet if I were to fully subscribe to the above take loving it would be wrong. The title “Sister” is meant to allude to nuns in the Catholic tradition. If we want to get technical there is a difference between a sister and a nun, but it’s not an important distinction for our purposes. I am quite confident the OP wouldn’t want you to sexualize sisters either. In this song titled “Sister” the woman offers kinky sex to the man. It’s an entire song about sexualizing nuns, GASP! Does that mean loving this song makes me a bad person???? You can come to your own conclusions, but I don’t think so. I’ll explain what I love about this song and my position on the issue writ large.

    Read the rest here
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  • Those Who Light Themselves Ablaze

    Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire and then shouted, “Free Palestine!” until he no longer could. At the time of this blog post’s release it has been a month since it happened. He went ablaze and subsequently died on February 25th, 2024. Since then plenty of people have came to their own conclusions about what to make of it. Is he just a crazy dude whose actions should be ignored, lest some other unfortunate soul tries to replicate him? Is he a hero who put his life on the line to protest atrocities?  Is he a secret third thing?

    Regardless of the answer, it’s worth noting that he is far from the first person to die in this manner. He almost certainly won’t be the last. Self-immolation is one of if not the most painful ways to die possible, yet it keeps on happening. How do we make sense of that? This blog post is dedicated to pondering the significance of Aaron Bushnell’s final act and other similar incidents. In my view self-immolation is neither exclusively a political act nor merely a reflection of poor mental health. By the end of this post we’ll come closer to figuring out what concoction of factors that secret third thing contains.

    Click here to continue
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