䷰ Xīn Jīn Měng @xinjinmeng@dragon.style

Yes, hello! I am Xin Jin Meng, the Novelty of the Golden Fantastic. Welcome to my social medium!

I am a furry, a dragon, an enby, a primadonna, a virago, a vorarephile, a sybarite, an aesthete, and if there's any time left over after all that, an artist.

I have come to Mastodon because I want to talk about things that matter to me on a personal level. I will endeavor to respect your feelings, with content warnings and elsewhere, but I am not safe for work.

Ah yes, that part of the conversation where someone says, "And then he left the furry fandom because people were acting r___". Time to mask up and to close doors.

𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝗯: Apprentice Strumpet
𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝗯: Primadonna at Liberty
𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝗯: Assistant Strumpet
𝗗𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗝𝗼𝗯: Dongzhi Fēichuán

In Memoriam: Jace (aka Brian Harp) 🙏 A light in the darkness.

Honorable mentions:
Ico
Sly Cooper 2
Final Fantasy 9
Brutal Legend

Dark Souls 2:
This one remains my favorite of the series. It's open-world, it tries new ideas and strange environments, it has complex weapons and interactions. It's not yet ossified. And it really feels like a world filled with all its own strange little happenings, where you're an explorer, not a conqueror.

Zeno Clash:
Here's a game that's very tough to love. A first-person brawler in the Source engine. There are few game experiences that can match knocking someone into a table and watching all the knickknacks go flying. The Zeno-verse would go off in different directions, none as pure or as satisfying as this first outing.

Abe's Oddysee:
Speaking of transitionals, the packagers felt they needed to stress that this game has "unlimited lives". A puzzle-platformer with anti-capitalist themes, it somehow never lets the runaway artistic ambition destroy the playability. Later games would iterate the formula, but the original retains that joy of discovery.

Bushido Blade 2:
This game really needs a remake, one with an open-world with no loading times. The opposite of modern fighting-games - no meters, no gimmicks, one-hit kills, gloomy 3d arenas, awkward realistic weapons. Also supported the PSX link cable for a unique experience. I'm starting to think that I hate fun.

Fantasy General:
You can get this on GOG. That 1980s Tolkien-wanna be fantasy art running headlong into the 1990s MtG anything-goes era, all to push a 1970s-era Panzer-General clone. I played far, far too much of this. You can name your units!

Captain Blood:
What is wrong with me. This game is a baffling ordeal that requires memorization and precise timing. I can't shake the idea that an open-sandbox game where you can only communicate in emoji has some legs.

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny:
I have a fondness for Ultimas, and this one remains my favorite, right in that sweet spot of open-world, linear-quest, and clumsy weirdness. U4 is more experimental, and U6 & U7 are more ambitious, but this one hews closest to fantasy adventure. I really should try the Dungeon Siege remake.

Jumpman:
A classic that I'm always surprised doesn't show up on more lists of all-time-greats. Possibly because it's extremely 8-bit? Or that Super Mario Brothers ruined all other platformers. Each level is an entertaining little puzzle, sometimes with unique rules, sometimes not. And a unique visual aesthetic to each one. A transition from the era of think-fast quarter-eaters to the expansive offerings of later-gen storage.

Suspended:
Infocom's experimental game of unreliable narrators. It crams a lot into a tiny space, and is more of an exercise in patience than a puzzle to solve. I remain fascinated by its story-telling techniques, and I wonder if it can be updated for modern audiences.

Raiders of the Lost Ark:
In this era, where people google walkthroughs before they even start playing, the Raiders game required you to read the manual to have any idea what was going on. An ambitious project of juggling several plates while being a technical marvel for the Atari 2600. Solving this game remains one of my boasts.

Gang of Four by Paige DeCobray 
https://mobile.twitter.com/serpentspell

I think about this one panel a lot.
It's exemplar of the chanbara genre. Usagi the rabbit's plea is desperate, not scary. He's convinced that Yagi the goat's swordsmanship is great, but that Usagi's is greater, and if they keep dueling, it will result in Yagi's death. And he doesn't want to kill Yagi. Usagi is our hero but he doesn't want to use violence. Meanwhile, Yagi's son Gorogoro prepares some trick.
Sakai's drafting is impeccable. The full-black shadows of Yagi's kimono, Usagi's pants, and the shadow of the cart separate the foreground from the background. And the background has enough detail to make it out while not being distracting. All of this is done without color.
This is everything I love about comics.

The question was, 'What's a comic page that loves rent free in your head?' This is a panel from Usagi #24 (Fantagraphics 1987 run), by Stan Sakai.