Unlike some famous Christies like Orient-Express and Ackroyd where I knew the solution in advance, I managed to read this one unspoiled, probably because the solution itself is uninteresting.

Thankfully the works that were influenced by it copied the interesting part which is the premise. Which is a good thing because it's a great premise. Decagon House murders (which I read last year) hommages it very closely but manages to have an actually fun twist to go along with it. Maybe it was a mistake to have read it first...

Compared to the drama and ambition of the premise, the solution feels too weak and mismatched. It's like oh, fake dead culprit with doctor accomplice, ok... (I guess Umineko copied that too uh) It also does the string-tied-to-the-door thing but unfortunately I wasn't raised on Detective Conan so I don't find those exciting.

The alternating povs make the read dynamic but I thought they were used more smartly in Decagon with the red herring about the order. Maybe there was a pattern to it and I just didn't notice though. It is a bit hard to keep track of who's who though, because character and motive tend to take the back seat in short mysteries like that. Umineko went the complete opposite and put the focus on those to the detriment of the tricks.

It was still a valuable read because of its importance in the history of the genre but I didn't get much personal enjoyment out of it. But I'll keep reading stories about people stuck on islands as I find them probably.

I just thought that was kind of interesting. Wow, it's even today too !

It's like Higurashi if no one was actually friends with each other. Thankfully the universe is all-loving.

The visuals and musics are really charming and have a lot of personality. I liked how the story puts you in the head of someone with a radically unique mindset. Most memorable moments were the tower climbs.

Technically read it at the end of 2025 but I wanted to write some thoughts anyway.

I love the movie adaptation so I checked out the original book. I'd say the movie is better but I liked the book ending a bit more since it's shorter and didn't feel as superfluous.

The decision to use modern music in the movie might have come from the importance of rock and electronic music in Furukawa's oeuvre but it's not mentionned in this book.

The book is very short and quite breezy to read, with the chapters also super short and the style being kind of barebones, but this kind of simplicity can be hard to render in translation without making it sound boring so I sympathize.

I want to check out the japanese version if I can find it. I'm curious to see if it's doing something with the oral storytelling style or period language (which would maybe be less visible in translation) and if I can find similarities with Furukawa's modern translation of the Heike monogatari (that's also waiting to be read).

I'll start writing my thoughts on everything I read this year here. Feels appropriate to start big with 1 Over X (the X is not silent).

https://archiveofourown.org/works/73361096

You can read it here and I recommend it. Next will have spoilers.

I'm having a bit of trouble sorting out my thoughts about it. I certainly enjoyed it but I can't pretend that past like the midway point I was looking forward to the eventual making-off post as much as the new chapters (not that it will contain a definitive interpretation either). I'm also looking forward to rereading it.

I saw the nonstop stream of symbols, recurring phrases, parallels to parallels to parallels as a way to put the reader in the mindset of Enid grasping at straws to construct narratives. It was successful judging by the very high comments-to-views ratio and the gigabrain theorizing going on in there.

This was possible only thanks to relentless TSBACing on the part of the author so there is intent to putting all the discussion in one place instead of it being relegated to a certain webfiction author discord beyond statsmaxxing. It maximizes the amount of information the reader has access to, since they can see other the result of other commenters' investigation into the references, historical figures, places, etc, they might otherwise have missed by not digging themselves (if Bavitz was so worried about that he could have put those into the novel himself ?). For a story that's (in part) (probably) about the horror of being trapped in your own head, being confronted with the viewpoints of other (probably) human beings is important and it certainly made the serial reading experience exciting. With the work now complete the amount of people commenting on chapters except the last might decrease but I hope the theorizing doesn't die down. (you might develop some favorite and least favorite commenters too !)

In a similar way, the style is not difficult to read per se but it's full of depersonnalization-like pov shift, inconsistent characters counts, unclear dialogue attribution, etc. (who is speaking... except it might be a soliloquy since Enid seems like she only listens to herself) The narration puts you through the experience of trying to make sense of a reality/nonreality way beyond your understanding. It also feels like it gets worse as it goes on but that might be just an impression. I want to pay more attention to the narration on reread to see if you can gain more insight into Enid's mental state.

Aside from the #themes, X Over 1 is also about all the various ways to kill and gore highschool girls. I thought the atmosphere of unease was very well done but as for the gore scenes themselves, Bavitz's style is almost too sophisticated so sometimes the aestheticism took precedent over the horror for me but I found the best horror were the scenes which emphasize the characters' struggle to escape rather than the instant kills. Gotta appreciate the creativity too. (car window kill ! giant maw kill ! scissoring kill !) The action is amazing though, with some super cinematic moments, or the chaotic finale with two or three quickly alternating setpieces, or an epic title drop in the final chapter.

I like the way the structure played with expectations, with first the establishing chapters at the school, then the horror movie excursion into the Breakers where things starts to go to shit only for all (?) to escape unscathed, then return to normalcy for a bit only for it to go even more to shit then explode. The main monster being defeated by a side character and the final antagonists being touching grass and the manifestation of toxic masculinity is pretty funny.

So it goes from the danger being the intrusion of the Outside to the Inside to being trapped on the Inside (or both at once). In the end the ending doesn't offer any solution either. To go back to the information theme, your two options seem to be Not sure what happened or Not sure what happened with more information (unless you're that guy that figured it all out with numerology).

The most enigmatic part of the ending to me was Corbett ultimately espousing the Kill them all mentality (as an aside the way lock in was used is so funny), like closing the hole as it's done in the ending stops the horror shit but also Enid retreating completely into herself is presented as a bad ending (or not if you're into that i guess) (but given how much the author went on about the retreat into oneself and how it's bad for art) but going outside will Also kill you. I liked the ending and I think I'll have more insight about it on reread.

Despite talking about Enid's self-centeredness, I mostly only talked about her character. Most things that are set up about Ryan, the triangle that is set up with Enid and Corbett etc, is unresolved and she becomes a flatter character as the story progresses, along with the shallowness of her makeshift ideology (should've stuck to copying Corbett instead of internet grifters smh). On reread I want to pay more attention to Corbett's character as well as the ranks, parents etc, of the f̶o̶d̶d̶e̶r̶ side characters. Noel is such a bavitzian character. Miranda is also great, though I can never be like you Miranda sorry this is the best I can do, enjoy the theories tho. Tate is cute.