SerenBlogs

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust website asks its readers, ‘When did you last see a hedgehog?’ , a prevalent, concerning issue, as this time last year the prickly mammals were classed as ‘threatened’ and placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s ‘red list’. Urban development and intensive agriculture have been attributed to the significant loss of hedgehog habitats, with a lack of mobility on offer due to the loss of hedgerows and changes in farming practices

Difficulty in video games has always been a sort of sore subject for me. As someone who has delved into indies and Triple AAA titles, I had always thought my skills would be substantial and even improve. However, as time goes by, I find myself stumped by difficult games and exhausted by the challenge. It made me start to wonder if that is what I look for in my experience with playing games and if I should be ashamed of it. People arguably look to games as a hobby to escape th

There’s nothing more grounding yet tragic than experiencing the lives of others through literature, as it enchants me how a single person can concoct whole societies and populate them with people with their own personalities, quirks, and histories. I love to lose myself in these characters’s lives and maybe even pick apart aspects of them I can relate to. This is exactly what I did in ‘Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead’ by Emily Austin, a character-driven narrative a

It’s 39 minutes past midnight, I completed Omori about 5 hours ago and all that pours out of me is thoughts and tears for this game. As a 20 hour game it felt right to binge, and normally this was a rare occurrence for my lacking attention span, but the hook of Omori sinks deep inside you from the first few hours with its hope and popping pastel colours. Yet there is a simmering feeling, a something, that needs to be uncovered. So you keep playing. I want to use this review a

My love for the Fire Emblem series has dated back to Fire Emblem Awakening in 2015 when I innocently sighed out loud that I was £6 off buying a copy off of Ebay (a time when this game was merely £30) to my dad. A pleasant memory of which my dad insisted on making up the difference which lead to a love for a franchise that reaches up until the present day. A game genre I had never touched before, and something none of my friends had heard of, I cherished it as my thing. What

The legacy of The Legend of Zelda franchise is a behemoth in the gaming world, with every entry an innovative fresh start, an element that has kept the series so relevant. If the cartoony style of toon link to highlight the child-like self-discovery adventure Windwaker didn’t vibe with you, they proceeded to change things up in Twilight Princess in its dingey coloured landscape and serious themes to convey the impending twilight. There is something for everyone in terms of ga

Watching Across the Spider-verse for the second time was an unexpected choice, considering I hate everything Marvel and rewatching films. Swamped in extremely mediocre and uninspired writing, Tom Holland’s Spiderman films just weren’t my thing, but I had always had a sweet spot for Spiderman as a character. Peter Parker just being a simple dorky high school kid was the foundation that grounded his character and made his growth believable and fun to watch. This was why I didn’

Parts. In films and books, different media pieces are separated into parts, these can range from subtle separations in story beats, to concretely placed chapters in novels. They are used to wrap up a thought and then to chase a new one, it makes sense when you consider how films have begun to enter the 3-hour mark and books can be well over 900 pages long, it makes a story coherent and easy to follow, but can there be other reasons? With a focus on films, there are a myriad o

!Warning! This is a deep dive! I can't help myself but unpack everything this book has to offer... A few years ago in my uni flat, I stared at the stand still state of the world Covid had placed us in, and thought, hm, what to read. This was a perfect start for new beginnings, and I found this in literature that would help form my time in University. This book was Circe, and this was my fated (you’ll be sick to death of that word by the end of these reviews) introduction to t

POV, you’ve just had the worse two days at work, at a job you hate but have to keep to actually keep yourself financially afloat. You’ve been battered by seething comments and stacks of plates shoved into your arms, and you’re now lying in bed wondering what the hell you can do. Now that sounds like a pretty deep question, but I only wanted a simple solution. A cosy 2-3 hour experience that would drip feed some kind of joy. I never thought I’d find something so perfect a fit