This short psychological horror visual novel by Brazilian developer Tiago Rech follows Candelaria, a professional mourner. Leaving a funeral to go to her next job, she finds that the bus ticket in her pocket has been replaced by one that leads her to a different bus altogether—one where the passengers are surreal and distorted creatures who ask peculiar, probing questions, and the washroom mirror reflects a face she does not recognize.



I found this to be an absorbing, intelligently written game that expertly uses horror to craft a character study. Several character studies, really, since your choices largely determine the answers to questions about who Candelaria is, why she went into this unusual profession, and where she goes from here. Though it has some freaky imagery and spine-tingling moments, the most haunting aspect is how the game explores Candelaria's trauma, denial, and loss, and the many paths before her that could lead to new strength, or to self-destruction, or to otherworldly possibilities she never could have imagined before she boarded this bus.

I would say the primary theme of the game is sitting with discomfort. Many people dread going to a funeral, but for Candelaria it's become a soothing ritual. From that starting point, the game approaches the idea from different angles. You could keep looking away forever from the things that scare you, but what if you faced them instead? A creature that seems monstrous might actually have something to say that's worth hearing—did you try sitting down and talking to it? Candelaria keeps saying the seats on the bus are too hard, too uncomfortable, but maybe this is where she needs to learn to sit.

A playthrough takes about an hour, so it's short enough that you can easily go back and try for other endings. I played through several times and got invested enough to use an achievement guide to make sure I had seen all the endings and dialogue, and I never do that with VNs! I was impressed by how the game leverages decision points and different orders of events to play out a wide variety of outcomes, and invites the player to bring their own interpretations rather than spelling everything out with rigidly defined "good" and "bad" endings. There are outcomes that you could argue are good or bad depending on how you see things. Ultimately it's Candelaria's life, and it's up to her to decide what it means and what she wants it to be.

I Did Not Buy This Ticket is normally on Steam for $7.99 USD, but it's currently on sale for $3.99 USD. There's also a free demo.

After rewatching the Original Trilogy, sdk and I allowed our enthusiasm to carry us forward into rewatching the Prequel Trilogy. That was... well, it was certainly a decision that we made.

I saw this movie in the theater and had not seen it since then. I knew it wasn't a cinematic masterpiece, but I did go in with a positive attitude hoping to enjoy some cheesy silliness and at least have fun razzing it. I'm afraid I was not able to maintain that attitude; I actually found the movie unpleasant to watch. So if you love it, maybe skip this post.

( cut for length and negativity )

In conclusion, I don't recommend this movie. I do, however, recommend this:

Embedded video: Music video for Weird Al's song "The Saga Begins", which retells the plot of the movie to the tune of "American Pie" by Don McClean.


Nonetheless we plan to persevere with Attack of the Clones, which I think I have seen part of. Maybe it will be better! Let me dream!

This young adult novella (also appearing under the title A Very Long Way From Anywhere Else) is one of Le Guin's few published pieces of non-speculative fiction. Set in the Pacific Northwest, it follows a friendship between two gifted high school students. Owen wants to study at MIT and go into science, but he feels pressured by his parents to be a "normal" guy who likes cars and girls and goes to State; Natalie is a musical prodigy, but feels constrained in her options due to her conservative father and the lack of opportunities for female composers.

The book is very short but densely packed with close observations about the pressure to conform, not only the overt pressure to conform to positive expectations, but also the covert pressure to conform to negative stereotypes and sexist narratives about how guys and girls interact. It's incisive in its portrayal of being very smart but very young and knowing basically nothing about the world outside your home town, and taking a first shaky step towards a broader perspective.

Owen and Natalie reflect a specific kind of gifted experience that wasn't the same as mine. They're aware that they're different from others, but able to play the part of a kid who's kind of an overachiever but basically normal, well enough that they can hide in plain sight. Not that that makes things easy—it's hard to choose to be yourself when the safety of conformity is a real option.

Many synopses of this book say that Owen and Natalie develop romantic feelings for each other, but that is emphatically not what happens in the book. What the book actually says is this: "I had decided that I was in love with Natalie. I hadn't fallen in love with her, please notice that I didn't say that; I had decided that I was in love with her." Owen is very clear that he tries to force himself to be in love with her and to be sexually attracted to her because he thinks it's what other people expect of him. You don't have to read Owen as aroace, but that is a possible reading and I see a lot of my aroace experiences in him.

But even if you don't read it that way, the point of the book is that their connection is about who they are as specific people, and when Owen tries to make it conform to a generic "he was a boy, she was a girl" heteronormative narrative, that connection is almost destroyed. Some of the ideas Owen has already absorbed about hetero relationships at 17 are a little scary, I think intentionally so. He's at a crossroads where he can go down the path of seeing Natalie and other girls as people, or as objects of male conquest. I think it's a good example of using a male POV to demonstrate why all of us need feminism.

The book is really good and I'm not sure why Le Guin didn't write any more like it. Maybe in between other projects she didn't have the time. But this book makes it easy to imagine an alternate timeline where this was the genre where she found success, and came to be best remembered as one of the standout contemporary YA writers of the 1970s alongside Judy Blume.

After some consideration of my options, I have made a Star Wars icon that pleases me. It's a screenshot of the music video for Jeremy Messersmith's "Tatooine" with animation by Eric Power.

Embedded video: Paper cutout animation retelling the plot of the Star Wars Original Trilogy.