Cheki check-in
10th July, 2025
It's hard to believe that it's been eight years or so since I fell down the rabbit hole of alternative idol groups. Basically, what happened is this: YouTube recommended me Necronomidol's first album, Nemesis, and I clicked it without really expecting much. My expectations were surpassed, as the act blended traditional idol pop, synth-driven goth bits, metal and more. I found Homicidols, a site that was dedicated to all kinds of unconventional idol acts, and I was quickly hooked. Within a year, I went to see Necronomidol in London, and a year later I ended up interviewing them for Metal Hammer. Necronomidol has been inactive since going on hiatus in 2022, but I still follow Isiliel, the metal solo project of Necroma's Himari Tsukishiro.
I got talking about Isiliel on Discord tonight, and realised that now that I have a scanner again, I can get proper scans of my cheki. If you don't know what a cheki is, don't worry. I was completely oblivious to idol culture when I went to that first Necronomidol show in 2018, to the point that when Saki Chitose, who performs solo as 2&, extended her hands for a handshake, I was exceptionally dense and had no idea what was going on. Anyway, a cheki is simply an instant photo with either a member or a whole group. You can go signed or unsigned, but I think most people tend to pick the former and typically you spend a little time talking with the performer while it's signed.
Honestly, I didn't think that this was an aspect of the idol scene that I'd get into, but I took a "well, when in Rome" approach that first time around and now I have a cheki album that is getting towards being full. In an increasingly digital world, the cheki is something tangible tied to a memory of a good night out, which is something that I think is quite nice. Looking back over mine, they each have specific significance – the nerves I felt having the first one taken, the masked one from 2021 that represented tentative steps back into the world after a long isolation, even the one where I did Chun Li's win pose with Himari because of a cosplay she'd done (which I got printed in the magazine, haha).
The two below are a couple of my favourites. The first, with me in the Slipknot shirt, is with Himari Tsukishiro at Hyper Japan in 2019. That was the day I'd interviewed Necronomidol, and we spoke briefly about Danganronpa because I was wearing a Monokuma badge on my lanyard (you can actually see that she's drawn his face on the right, just above my hand). The second is with Yuffie Sakimura, who has a solo industrial metal project called GARUDA. She's been to London three times and I've been there for all three – this cheki is from the most recent time, in 2024. Unlike the first time, she didn't jab me in the throat with the marker she was signing the cheki with, and we had a bit of a chat about Sakura Wars.
Hate to say I told you so
5th July, 2025
One year ago today, Kier Starmer became the UK's prime minister, bringing Labour back into government after 14 years in opposition. Here's what I posted on Facebook on the morning of election day:
You might notice that I've been quiet about this election. Truth is, I can't wait to see the back of the Tories – for 14 years, they've been needlessly cruel, nakedly corrupt and occasionally incompetent, in ways that would be hilarious if they weren't messing up the lives of real people up and down the country. If you don't know they're out of ideas, talent and purpose right now, you never will. Like more than a few of you, I'll take malicious delight in watching high profile Tories losing their seats tonight.
I'd love to be excited for what's coming next, but I can't. For years, I wanted to believe that Starmer was playing things smart. He was simply keeping his cards close to his chest so as to avoid the demonisation that Jeremy Corbyn received, and managing expectations so that the electorate didn't expect monumental changes within weeks. But after years of vague policy direction and U-turns, I don't trust him or the party he leads.
Starmer's whole message this time has been “Change,” an interesting word that implies difference without actually saying that anything might improve in the UK. Indeed, when you look at Wes Streeting's enthusiasm for selling off the NHS, Rachel Reeves going after the long-term sick, Starmer's refusal to face up to the failure of Brexit and his pandering to JK Rowling on the issue of trans rights, there are plenty of ways in which it's hard to have any faith that it will.
Get out and vote (unless you're voting Reform, in which case I have some magic beans to sell you), and enjoy the party tonight if you're so inclined. But don't let Labour off the hook for continuing certain Tory policies, as they have explicitly promised that they will.
Watching the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg and Liz Truss lose their seats was as wonderful as I'd hoped, but as you can tell, I did not welcome the new government with the highest of expectations. I simply didn't feel like I could trust Labour with my vote, so I voted Green with the knowledge that I wouldn't end up with a Green MP, but with the hope that they'd at least keep their deposit – thankfully, they did. I wish I was posting here today to say I'd been wrong about Labour, but it's obvious to anyone that has been paying attention that I was perfectly right to be concerned. I was remiss in not mentioning how bad they'd be on Israel and Gaza, but on everything else I was pretty much bang-on. They went after the disabled, they've been appalling on trans rights, Wes Streeting is still enthusiastic about funnelling public health money to private sector providers, and there has been only minimal improvement in relations with the European Union.
In fact, if I was wrong at all, it was only about just how bad they would actually be. The expectations were so low that the bar was in Hell, but Starmer has busted out some world class limbo skills. The winter fuel allowance debacle was an unexpected and unforced error, the moves to appease Trump have been as disappointing as they were predictable, the cuts in international aid are alarming, and the use of anti-terror powers to stifle dissent has been appalling. It's telling that the government made far more noise about some paint on a plane than the tens of thousands of people killed in Gaza in recent times. Oh, and of course they seem exceptionally willing to burn down the UK's hugely successful creative industries in exchange for some AI magic beans. Brilliant.
This government came into power with a huge majority, a rather flattering one given the relatively low percentage of the vote that delivered it. People are sick of a system that has been failing them for many years, and that majority offered Labour a rare opportunity to radically reshape it. Unfortunately Starmer's Labour is squandering that opportunity, having seemingly taken the view that people were broadly fine with Tory policies, and just wanted administrators that seemed slightly more competent and grown up. But they're barely even managing that, as Labour have looked not only out of their depth, but frequently cruel and occasionally quite stupid during their first year in government. Worse yet, they respond to slumping poll numbers by spending ever more effort on courting Reform supporters, alienating their core voters to appeal to people who have told polling groups that they're incredibly unlikely to ever consider voting for Labour.
If things look this bad after just a year, I fear what nonsense we'll see over the next four years of this Labour government. Even more than that though, I fear what a desperate electorate will vote for afterwards.
Toilet paper
29th June, 2025
I wasn't expecting that discoveries on the walls of public places would become a blog topic again so quickly, but my friend Lola saw something that I just had to post. Picture the scene: I'm enjoying a quiet Saturday with my family, when I see I've been tagged on Discord. Naturally, I wonder "Hmm, what could this be?" And so the message reads: "@HKT3030 spotted in Isle of Wight bathroom"
Wait, what?
Son of a bitch.
This loo has been decorated with a bunch of pages from various comics, and evidently issue 185 of Retro Gamer. You can see the Minority Report on the Game Gear, and the Pushing The Limits spread on STUN Runner – weirdly, both of these were things I wrote. Neither of them had my face on them, but down there in the corner, you can see my Retro Revival on Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge for Atari ST, and there it is. Printed on that page is my illustrated face, clear as day. What's worrying is that this issue is from 2018, so people could have been trying to dump with my little face staring at them for the best part of seven years. That's insane. Anyway, my sincere apologies to anyone who has found themselves in that highly unfortunate situation.
The writing's on the wall
20th June, 2025
There's an underpass under St Andrew's Avenue in Colchester, and it is the dodgiest one I've ever used. The underpass connects two dark, narrow alleyways that don't feel all too welcoming as it is, and even though I never had any trouble there, nor did I know anyone who actually did, it's the kind of place where you know you're getting mugged. Frankly, I'd rather have avoided it altogether but it was easily the quickest way to get between the student-heavy area of Forest Road and the big Tesco, so laziness won out over concern for my personal safety, as it did for many an Essex student.
Anyway, the dodginess is one of two reasons that this underpass sticks in my memory. The other is a piece of graffiti that I saw there, which made an impact on me because it was so different from the graffiti that I'd seen growing up in Harlow. There was plenty of relatively benign stuff done by stupid kids, but there was always an undercurrent of nastiness to be found, with the level of literacy depending on the venue. The bus station hosted some simplistic racist shit, whereas one toilet cubicle at BHS featured a diatribe about Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Daily Mail, effectively combining competent writing and rampant xenophobia. Anyway, the underpass graffiti was nothing out of the ordinary for a student town, simply saying “STOP THE WAR” – this being 2006, it would have been the war in Iraq – but it served to show that the vibes really were going to be different.
As a result, I tend to take notice of the graffiti in new places to get a feel for the vibes, and what I've seen since moving back to Harlow makes me feel like the place has changed. I still see plenty of standard tags with nothing to them, but the stuff I see in the area around the town centre is more encouraging rather than disheartening. For a while, there's been a “FREE PALESTINE” on the path from the town park to the town centre, near Sainsbury's, and “TRANS RIGHTS” appeared on the walls of the cycle track leading to Bird Cage Walk shortly after the Supreme Court ruling. I'll take that over the racist shit any day.
It seems that not everybody is quite so keen to see all of this, though. As you can see above, an attempt has been made to remove “FREE PALESTINE” with the use of some kind of power washing tool, though it hasn't been entirely successful. Likewise, the “TRANS RIGHTS” message has been crudely painted over. You'd like to think that this might be part of an initiative to clean the area up, but plenty of normal tags have been left intact, in some cases right next to the ones that have been erased or covered as you can see below. It seems pretty clear that these messages are being selectively removed by whoever is behind the efforts, whether that's the council or private property owners, and I think that's a pretty sad indication of their priorities.
That long-awaited week off
8th June, 2025
A week off is a truly wonderful thing, isn't it? It goes in the blink of an eye, though. Last week was the first week off I'd had since Christmas, and I greatly enjoyed it – even when you have a cool job, sometimes you've just got to take a break. It certainly felt all the more valuable because the week before I went was quite intense, as was this week. I was out for a couple of meetings, one of which was a visit to Sega's new office in London to play Shinobi: Art Of Vengeance (you can watch me play that below), Sonic Racing Crossworlds and Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2. The other meeting is one I can't really talk about yet, but it's enough to say that it was the kind of fun one that comes with the territory of having a cool job.
Anyway, back to the week off, which kicked off well thanks to the fact that AEW Double Or Nothing was so bloody good. I knew I had to watch the show after Ospreay and Hangman's promo on the go-home Dynamite, and I'd love to say that the match didn't disappoint, but I'd be lying slightly. The action was utterly compelling throughout, and while that's obviously a lot to do with letting two fantastic wrestlers go out and put on a banger, in large part it was because the story had been expertly built in such a way that there was no clear favourite going in. Of course, you've got to have a winner and a loser and I was backing Ospreay all the way, so that's where the disappointment kicks in. It's not the end of the world, as there's an interesting story to be told in where Will goes from here, and Hangman is arguably the right person to take the title from Mox.
Speaking of, the Anarchy in the Arena match was fantastic in so many ways, but most of all because the Death Riders finally got to show a little vulnerability. But bloody hell, it had everything from comedy spots to sick shit (bloody hell Swerve, stop with the hardcore spots involving your mouth!) to Mark Briscoe looking like he'd survived an explosion. Big shout to Willow Nightingale, who looked like an enormous star and surely has to be in line for some gold soon. Elsewhere, Mercedes Moné and Jamie Hayter had a match that was as good as I was hoping, despite the predictable outcome, and similarly I was expecting that Okada's match with Mike Bailey would be a fairly short and decisive bout, but the match was likewise way more exciting than it had any right to be given that the outcome was never in doubt. Visual of the night had to be Mark Briscoe looking like something out of a horror film during an entertaining war of a Stretcher match with Ricochet.
We also finished What We Do in the Shadows, a show that has been a joy for us as a family over the last few years, and one that I feel ended at the right point as I was just starting to feel like ideas were running thin. I was worried that the introduction of Jerry would be a shark-jumping moment, so it was nice to see how his presence was eventually resolved, and while there were some laughs to be had from Cravensworth's Monster, I can't imagine there was an awful lot more mileage in him than what we saw. Still, I think the overall story of the series – that of Guillermo trying to establish a life independent of the vampires – was the last really interesting one that was left to tell after the events of the fifth series. I'm pleased that they stuck the landing with the final episode too, not least because I'd be hearing about it for months if they hadn't.
It's quite hard for us to find things to watch as a family. My sister can't do anything with crowd noise, and she hates cringe humour – Super Hans is her second-favourite Peep Show character, just behind the kitchen table. I never loved the supernatural stuff she was into, whether that was Buffy in the past or True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and, erm, Supernatural more recently. My mum loves crime drama and my sister is sometimes down for that – she liked The Mentalist but hates Cracker – but I'm generally not. We started watching Knuckles yesterday so we're set for a while yet, and we've still got Letterkenny to finish off too.
I played through Duck Detective: The Secret Salami and had an excellent time with it. It's not the longest game and I've certainly played more mind-bending mysteries, but I did love the overall tone of it. Aggretsuko is referenced on the back of the box, and that makes total sense as the animals live fairly ordinary human-style lives with occasional silliness, like Eugene McQuacklin's bread addiction. The sequel recently came out, but I won't be playing that until the inevitable physical release. Speaking of things I won't be playing, I feel like almost the only person on my BlueSky feed who didn't get a Switch 2 this week.
The biggest thing I had planned for my week off was a trip to London on the Friday, where I met my friend Myst offline for the first time after a decade of chatting online, as well as their partner and a friend of theirs. It was really nice to just give one another a big hug for the first time and then sit and chat in person, but we did some other fun stuff too – we had lunch at Shoryu in Soho before playing games like Bishi Bashi Channel, Jubeat and Mario Kart Arcade GP DX at Las Vegas on Wardour Street. I was leading for a lot of Mario Kart, before getting totally Mario Karted right before the finish line and falling back to fourth place. Of course.
Of course, we were headed to London for the common purpose of seeing Babymetal at the O2. We parted there after a Nando's (spicy, spicy lemon and herb), as I was seated and they were standing. I've never been to the venue before and was stunned by just how efficient it is – I was in and seated very quickly, which gave me time to ponder just how high up the upper level is, as I'll be sitting there the next time I go to the venue. In a word: blimey. I did end up having a nice chat with the person next to me and her friend, both of whom who had their 3DS hardware in the hope of grabbing some Streetpass action.
As for the show itself, it was a great night. I hadn't really kept up with Bambie Thug since Eurovision and I have to consider that a mistake, because it was a good set. However, Poppy was the support act I was more excited about (YouTube told me this week that I'm a top listener of hers, which I hadn't expected). She only did seven songs but covered pretty all the ones I most wanted to hear, including I Disagree, V.A.N., Scary Mask and New Way Out. To be honest though, the only one that was absolutely essential was The Cost Of Giving Up, a song that resonates with me as strongly today as it did from the moment I first heard it, for reasons I can't explain. (Well, I could explain them but I don't care to.) She performed it, and that would have made my night on its own.
But everyone had told me that Babymetal are excellent live, and they weren't kidding. I'd wanted to see them live for a long time, and I'm glad I got to do it this time around as their arena show really is a sight to behold – lasers, pyrotechnics, smoke machines, an elevated stage, the works. There was even a drone flying around getting shots of the group and the crowd. More importantly, it was a great set filled with old favourites (Megitsune, Pa Pa Ya!!, Gimme Chocolate) and songs from the new album (Kon! Kon!, Song 3, Ratatata), with an encore that brought Poppy on and concluded with the fantastic Road Of Resistance. Should you have any interest in the group at all, I highly recommend going to see them live – you're very unlikely to be disappointed. I was a long way from the stage so my photos weren't amazing, but click here if you want to see them.
Though that was pretty much it for my week off, I've come away from it energised. In part that's because of all the cool work stuff, and I'm finally getting back to streaming on Tuesday after a lengthy absence – I'm really looking forward to playing through the original Sakura Wars. But I think it's also because I've broken out of a bit of a rut that I'd been in. I've not really been out much this year, and finally getting out and meeting a friend and getting to a show has done me a world of good. Thankfully, I don't have to wait so long for my next week off and I've got plenty of stuff booked for later in the year, so I shouldn't be in any danger of falling back into it.
