The Rice Digital Friday Letters Page, November 19, 2021 – The Monster Mash

Good afternoon everyone, and a very happy Friday to you. It’s the end of another week and, thus, time for another Rice Digital Friday Letters Page, in which you lovely people have the opportunity to spew your innermost thoughts all over our pages, and we get to respond to you using rather more sincerity than the occasion perhaps warrants. I like to believe that’s part of the appeal, though.

If you’ve never written to us before, doing so is very easy! Simply hit up the “Write to Rice!” widget that you can see on the right-hand side of every page on the site, then leave us a message and your nom de plume. No personal info is required.

Alternatively, a new option from now on: if you’re signed up to the Rice Digital Weekly Digest, simply reply to the latest issue and indicate that you’d like your message to be included in the next Letters Page. If you’re not yet signed up and want to receive a hand-picked digest of some of our favourite articles each week, hit up this link or simply sign up with the form in the right sidebar, underneath the ads.

Anyway! To business!

Short but sweet

Hi Pete,

Keep up with your excellent work,

KERIFT

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Hi Kerift, and thanks for your kind words. While I’m more than happy to accept your generous praise, this also seems like a great opportunity to highlight the fact that Rice Digital is very much a team effort, and the site absolutely would not be where it is today without the assistance of our lovely team of writers — not to mention the equally lovely technically minded people who work tirelessly behind the scenes if and when things break.

The best thing about having a team of writers working on a publication like this is that everyone can bring their own experience and specialisms to the mix. When you’re talking about a niche-interest publication, it’s all the more important that you bring in specialist writers who know what they’re talking about — and that’s why I’m extremely grateful to have Lilia, Trent, Conor and Isaac on hand to keep things ticking along and our output nice and varied. Especially when they’re able to comment on things I don’t know as much about!

Between Lilia’s encyclopaedic knowledge of all things otome, Trent’s passion for exploring the incredibly varied worlds of both anime and Japanese music, Conor’s immersion in all things shounen and Isaac’s relentless pursuit of the most interesting and relevant news stories for you all, we’ve got a great team, and I’m really happy to work with them all on a daily basis. And we hope you enjoy what we do, too!

Thanks for your kind words, and we hope we keep you around as a reader for a long time to come. Tell your friends!

Obligatory weird letter

Dear Rice,

I like it I like pomkon to rice

Jayden wang

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This letter was posted by someone who was looking at our feature on anime Zoom backgrounds from a while back, so I can only assume the “it” they are referring to relates to some or all of the backgrounds we provided.

Pomkon I can see being a misspelling of Pokémon, so from this we can determine that Jayden here is a fan of Pokémon, and he feels a sense of solidarity from the fact that we like Pokémon too. Essentially, he is saying “I liked your article on anime Zoom backgrounds. I like Pokémon too, Rice.”

Alternatively, it’s entirely possible that “pomkon to rice” is actually an attempt at Romanising the phrase “ポムコンとライス” or “pomukon to raisu” which, clearly, is an expression of enthusiasm for our upcoming convention celebrating the life and career of Nijisanji EN’s Pomu Rainpuff.

We call it The Pomu Convention, or Pomucon for short, but fans have taken to calling it “pomukon to raisu” or “Pomucon and Rice” due to the fact that Rice Digital branding appears prominently on each and every flat surface in the building that is playing host to the event. You literally can’t look anywhere without seeing us smiling back at you. Yes, that includes in the toilets. We’re always watching you. And watching out for our girl Pomu.

None of the above is true. Or is it?

Realising one’s dreams

Dear Rice

Recently I’ve been getting into a series called Interspecies Reviewers.

Since the premise of the series involves the protagonists going to brothels containing various species and -frankly just gonna be blunt here- have a fuck with the different species of the world, my question is, what would be the most unique experience of partaking in Interspecies hanky-panky?

LethalJoke

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Ah, I love Interspecies Reviewers — though I must confess I think I enjoy the manga more than the anime adaptation. Your question is one that has doubtless tormented many a man over the years — many a man who has fallen to the admittedly irresistible charms of monster girls, that is.

Now, I notice you’re not asking what you think would be the “best” experience with a monster girl but rather the “most unique” experience — but I’m going to ponder what would be most appealing first anyway.

Obviously individual tastes will vary quite a bit here, but as someone who enjoys a good hug just as much as hanky-panky, the opening chapter of the Monster Musume manga left me with a pretty much insatiable urge to get it on with a lamia. I think that would be a pretty amazing experience, so long as you’re not overly claustrophobic.

Also every time I play Final Fantasy II (which I estimate I have done more than most people out there, since no-one likes that one) I can’t help but think that Firion should have just banged the lamia anyway before getting into a fight with her. Maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, as for most unique experience… hmm, that’s a tricky one, for sure, since typically the concept of “monster girls” tends to assume that at least certain body parts are where you would expect them to be, and as such once you got over the more obviously “monstrous” aspects of the girl in question, your experience would likely proceed as you’d think it would.

An exception specifically from the Interspecies Reviewers series comes in the form of “dream eaters”, who provide you with a custom fantasy based on your strongest desires, and they feed on this.

The actual sense of intimacy is more simply about sharing your innermost thoughts with someone than necessarily being physically intimate — and I think that would absolutely be a distinctive, fascinating experience to be part of. Plus potentially an opportunity to realise some fantasies that would be impractical or at the very least difficult to explore in the “real” world!

So yeah. I’ll go with the dream eaters.

Logjam

Dear Rice,

Any advice for dealing with a considerable backlog of games? How do you folks handle it when you have things you have to play for the site as well as things you just want to play?

Backlogged of Bicester

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I’m afraid I’m probably not the best person to ask because I have a backlog that extends into the hundreds at this points, and I still keep telling myself I’m going to play them all at some point.

My trouble is that when I start a new game, I like to play it thoroughly from start to finish in order to give it a proper chance. This is partly down to the fact I’ve always enjoyed writing about games — and in order to truly write about a game authoritatively it’s best to have experienced the whole thing — but also simply personal preference.

I feel like I’m disrespecting the creators of a game by dropping it before it’s over — particularly since I’ve played a number of titles that some people might argue took a while to “get good”. But practically speaking, at some point you probably have to make some difficult choices!

I think ideally what you need to do is set up some sort of system where you at least try as much as possible and decide if they’re games that you want to continue on with. If something particularly speaks to you when you first give it a go, play it through. If it doesn’t grab you immediately, put it on the back-burner. Don’t necessarily trade it in or get rid of it — it might just be that you’re not in the right place mentally for it at the time you tried it.

In fact, you know what? This sounds like a potentially interesting idea for a feature. Stay tuned.

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Anyway. That’s your lot for the week. It’s time for me to go and have a nice lie down and maybe eat some cake, not necessarily in that order. We here at Rice Digital sincerely wish you a very lovely weekend — and we’ll see you, as always, bright and early on Monday!

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