Author: Trip the Space Parasite

Boo, office. Apparently the local COVID admissions are still green, though, so the CDC does not recommend that everybody else in the office mask. Arm widget said my fried chicken sandwich lunch was No Good, I guess it’s okay that all the breakfast carbs were for the capitalist oppressors.

Read: The Skull Dragon’s Precious Daughter vol 1 (Ichi Yukishiro): An elderly dragon adopts a discarded human girl, but finds that even death cannot release him from his parental duties. I’m not sure about the role models that are being provided for this poor girl!

Read: Magical Girl Incident vol 1 (Zero Akabane): An office worker encounters a monster and in a fit of heroism transforms into a bona fide magical girl. WTFery ensues, but there is apparently some rhyme or reason to what’s going on. Not clear why the coworker has such disturbing resources.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 1.7-9: Almost to the end of the first season, and of course the problem Kipo thought she had is not the real problem.

Written: FAIL.

No idea what that’s about, but it sounds like fanfic.

I had an hour and a half of meetings before my normal workday even started, so it was not a day of great cheer. Technically I was sad that we didn’t have Brooks and Kelsey and had to cancel gaming, but really it’s probably for the best that I didn’t have to try to brain in the evening.

Written: FAIL.

I didn’t think mountains really needed a day, you can’t miss them, but okay.

I did some work, I guess, and then I did gaming homework. My Lancaster build is almost certainly the worst one ever, and I must never show it to Ken, but hopefully he won’t ask too many questions about it. (He absolutely will, and will think I am stupid.)

Written: FAIL, mech design doesn’t count.

These cats are very insistent that they are entitled to three gooshy meals a day and a minimum of eight hours of snuggles!

Played: Librarians Errant. The team’s first assignment this session is tracking down the entrepreneur jerk who tried to hoard all copies of an important textbook. This requires beating up her little gang of  undergrad goons, but Thaïs gets to use a second-level spell and anyway the opposition are kind of wimpy. Only Flint gets beat up much before the team returns to the library in triumph. The next day, as they sort books, the library is invaded by bullywugs looking for volume one of the magical series! Every librarian is mobilized, and the team is set guarding a door deep in the lower lower stacks. Bullywugs come from the sewers, so this is not as pointless as it might seem, but it’s still a surprise when a  very senior librarian appears, chased by bullywugs and fire-breathing giant toads. She is definitely authorized, and also the shelves of archaic legal tomes are now on fire, so the team piles through the door after her and tries to lead the bullies off in a different direction through the maze of even more obscure (and now burning) stacks. Then they find the opening to the Elemental Plane of Books, or something, and the magic card catalog. Thaïs was already looking for books on shoggoth-banishing, so she makes a catalog card for it, and everybody follows the card across the walkway of flying books to the book island. The book on the podium tries to bite Thaïs’s hand off, so she zaps it, and we break as the other books flap to attack.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 4-6: A master villain! Mysterious powers! Metalheads! The shortest romance subplot ever! Probably for the best, as Kipo is way younger than I thought.

Written: FAIL.

Tried to see The Marvels, but there were only two showings a day and neither of them convenient, so I just bought some groceries and went home.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 1-3: A human girl from a postapocalyptic underground enclave is trapped on the surface where everything is mutated and weird and has picked up random scraps of human culture. Fortunately she falls in with some other humans who are willing to help her find her people, although they don’t like the way she tries to make friends with everything. It’s not up to the level of Steven Universe or She-Ra but it’s pretty entertaining.

Written: FAIL.

What do you mean, “pretend”? Same direction and speed as everybody else, though.

Watched: Derry Girls 3.4-7: More hijinks, but then sudden tragedy and the future and even more future, the end!

Read: The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This vol 4 (Takashi Ikeda): And they achieved some professional success and stability, and lived happily ever after, the end!

Written: FAIL.

I rode the other bus to the other train station to catch the same train, which required getting up a little earlier but was otherwise entirely satisfactory. But, was the bus being pretty much on time today just a fluke? There’s not a lot of margin for error there.

Training meeting made me feel like I know something about my job, but that’s just hubris, I’m sure. Lunch was chicken tikka with both rice and naan, which made the line go up Too Much. It was quite tasty, but maybe no white rice next time.

Read: I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl vol 3-4 (Azusa Banjo): Romance! Cuteness! Other romance! Beach episode! Summer festival episode!

Watched: Derry Girls 3.1-3: Crime hijinks! Maternal hijinks! Colm’s powers used for good(?)!

Written: FAIL.

 

Hooray!

Tried to go into the office, was betrayed by the bus simply not showing up, ended up super-late. I obviously need my robots to make me a better plan. Beet salad for lunch, which even with chicken did not make my line go up much.  Then tried to replenish the cats’ gooshyfood, but forgot how these particular busses work and missed the gooshyfood emporium’s hours. I have enough for tomorrow’s breakfast and that’s it, so I better not mess up tomorrow!

Read: I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl vol 2 (Azusa Banjo): New characters are introduced, but there are still zero (0) people being mean to our genderfluid cutie, which is probably completely unrealistic for modern Japan, but is exactly as it should be.

Watched: Derry Girls 2.4-6: Teenage hijinks, morbid hijinks, teenage hijinks, major historical events!

Written: FAIL because I am dumb.

A mysterious figure who abducts and devours poorly-behaved children is all well and good, but I’d rather be eaten by the Yule Cat for not wearing my Christmas socks.

I can see the line on my phone (which I only check one million times per day) go up when I expect it do, but it seems to also randomly go up at some times and not at others, so hell if I know how this carbs thing works.

Had to get up early because it’s Tuesday but then that was preempted by getting up even earlier for a different meeting. Ugh.

Played: Lancer. Two weeks in a row!  We finished in the fight from last week in like half a round and then steamrollered the negotiations between the various factions of the rightful inhabitants of the planet and the corporate newcomers by showing them our spaceship. 110% Pancakes brings us success once again! Next week we’re playing the corporate team getting murdered by possessed machinery, so I guess I should actually build that Lancaster.

Written: FAIL. I should be working on the other scene, or more productively, trying to outline the project that got bogged down in detail. I don’t have an ending, exactly, but I do at least have a list of mysteries that must be revealed.

I keep resisting the urge to buy More Dice. Maybe I’m a bad gamer. I mean, for more reasons than previously mentioned.

Finally managed to start using the new bloodometers (the kind you stick on and leave in place for two weeks), so at least I could tell the doctor I was doing it. She probably would have been happier if I had done it months ago like I said, though.

Also finally dragged my computer desk into my bedroom so I could plug it back in. Fortunately it is not too far from the wifi router.

Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 1-3: After the end of the first episode (which was suitably surprising to Marith), it’s all the other characters all the time! I heard that this show is partially a response to people who esteemed Scott too highly (looking at you, SP) and now I believe it.

Written: Regular FAIL.

I did actually buy some tiny apple pies when I was grocery shopping, although I probably shouldn’t have.

Read: Handyman Saitou In Another World vol 1 (Kazutomo Ichitomo): Okay, I think the isekai-to-D&D-videogame-world genre is played out. New idea plz.

Watched: Derry Girls 1.5-6, 2.1-3: It must be a new season, Gerry has a mustache! The other characters are not much changed, even Clare, but they are still ridiculous and definitely their own worst enemies.

Written: FAIL, haven’t plugged my computer back in.

Most of the day I spent being a useless lump, yet available for customers if they needed help, but then the cats showed a great interest in the nook next to my computer desk, and when I looked, the electrical outlet there was smoking heavily. I unplugged everything from it and it stopped, but it obviously needs replaced. Maybe it’s time to think about a better apartment, but I’m not sure I’m up for doubling my rent.

Since my computer is also unplugged, I had to order pizza and watch TV.

Watched: Derry Girls 1.1-4: Everybody said this is very funny and it is! They are all sincerely ridiculous.

Read: O Maidens In Your Savage Season vol 7-8 (Mari Okada, Nao Emoto): Somehow, everything gets sorted out by the end, and yet sex remains pretty much a mystery. Also nobody dies, which they definitely would have in the US.

Written: FAIL, my computer is unplugged!

 

How is it December already? Didn’t we just start this year a few months ago?! But on the other hand, I’ve used up my brain budget, so year has to be over.

Watched: Nothing, Marith is dead from work.

Read: Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 1 (Yu Yoshidamaru): Her brain produces several horny thoughts per second. His touch causes people to blurt out whatever’s on their mind. Together, they fight crime try not to die of embarrassment. It’s nice to see a female MC with a libido (instead of the secondary floozie character), although the whole thing is still awfully heterosexual

Written: FAIL.

A natural followup to Crystal Skull Day, I guess?

Back to work! It wasn’t bad, I just don’t like getting up in the morning.

Played: Lancer. Of course our attempt to get the non-corporate refugees to safety was interrupted by killer robots. We got most of the civilians out with Abrakyl’s power to make everything teleport and teleport and teleport, but the victory condition is to have all of us inside the zone and none of the enemy in the zone at some point after round three. We got to the middle of round three before having to call it a night, and it’s looking pretty good for next week. Roll20 gave me the good numbers this time and I got one or more crits every time I did a barrage, so the worst enemy is gone, as is one of the foliage management units. I was almost cool!

Read: My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress vol 1 (Chisaki Kanai): An elite anti-vampire cop with amnesia breaks a legendary vampire-killing vampire out of secret government custody. Together, they fight crime vampires. A weird mix of awkward romance between the leads and action-horror with body parts as spell components and casual use of high-level pyrokinesis in downtown Shibuya.

Written: FAIL.

*thows up sign of the horns*

Knowing that Saturday would be traveling, and Sunday would be gaming, I cleverly took today off to do weekend things, by which I mostly mean grocery shopping and eating chicken tenders. That went okay. I also read manga and performed my most vital duty, feeding the cats.

Read: Spy x Family: The Official Guide: Eyes Only (Tatsuya Endo): The usual recaps, character info, setting info, promotional art, interviews, etc.

Read: Spy x Family vol 10 (Tatsuya Endo): Loid backstory!

Written: FAIL.

Not sure exactly what that’s about, but better not offend The Skull.

Played: Librarians Errant. We were chasing down a grad student who was using the overdue book for clues to treasure in a dungeon full of unexplained monsters and improbable traps, so it was a surprisingly traditional D&D adventure. The treasure was a book that didn’t belong to the library, so we left the grad student and visiting scholar to their tawdry het romance novel and noped out with the book we were sent for and some incidental loot. Level UP!

That was pretty much it for today.

Written: FAIL.

While I was on vacation, I saw a very cute baby who can stand up while holding onto things (which lets him get off the Baby Preserve), went on a three-mile hike with Ken and Dave, got help with Squaredle, ate a million unhealthy foods, saw many people I rarely see, and stayed up too late playing board games. I slept more than I wanted although not as much as my body wanted. It was a good vacation, but now, despite traffic, I am back. Marith did a great job taking care of Sage and Nightvale, because she is Best Lizard, but she was not in a position to feed them three gooshy meals a day, so they were glad to see me.

Played: Dominion. I did not win, although maybe I could have if the game had gone on longer.

Played: Ra. New to me, all about drawing tiles from the bag and bidding on them with numbers. As often happens, I seized the lead in the first epoch and then got no more points the rest of the game.

Played: Holiday Fluxx. Like all Fluxx variants, it is fundamentally Fluxx, and this is the rule of Fluxx.

Played: Puerto Rico. Moral depravity and I wasn’t even good at it! (Although neither was anybody else; it was a really close game and late at night.)

Played: Dungeon World. Jus wanted to play D&D, but nobody else volunteered and I wasn’t going to do that, so I compromised with an iron fist. An immolator, a rogue, a druid, and a wizard walk into a dungeon… and SET IT ON FIRE! Also there was some tussling with mooks and mutant frogs and traps, but by the time they got down to the heart of the dungeon, Jus had run out of gas. However, we stopped in a good place, and only had four players who are all likely to be up for gaming next visit, so I kept the character sheets and my terrible notes and maybe we’ll pick it up again.

Read: Perils & Princesses: You are fairy-tale princesses, going on D&D adventures. You have Resolve, Grace, Wit, a fairy godmother, a magic gift, one magic die per level(max four), and the contents of your inventory slots, because despite the fairy-tale theme, it’s a GLOG game. It has the usual D&D problems of “roll d20 to have nothing happen” and “everybody’s a bucket of hit points” but the system is simple and mostly player-facing. Also, because all lists and examples are numbered, it’s possible to create a character entirely randomly, which makes me want to try it for a con game.

Written: VACATION

That would have been better yesterday, for finishing My Happy Marriage.

I got up at the usual weekday time to feed some ravenous cats for the first time in their lives, but then I went back to bed. I had an alarm so that I wouldn’t sleep so much I actually decomposed into loam, but I woke up naturally by being done with sleeping, and both cats were snuggled up against me (so I must have been sleeping correctly instead of flailing). Even though it was 11:30, I’m going to declare that winning at morning.

The rest of the day was kind of meh, but I did eventually accomplish a few things on my to-do list, and also complained about writing.

Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 1: Although animated, it’s not just a remake of the comic or of the movie (although apparently it’s mostly the same cast). Same story until the end of the first episode, when it goes in a different direction. Minor detail? Complete derailment? Only another episode will tell! Maybe I’ll watch it with Marith if we both survive Thanksgiving.

Read: Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue (Dlanora): Romance is difficult! Feelings are complicated! Families are questionable!

Written: FAIL. But I complained a lot!

Nightvale counts, even though he is partly stars!

Getting two cats got me two weeks of Fact Or Share, but this time I had to use a fact, which is that deepsea anglerfish are not the size of a Nerf football, they are big enough to swallow you whole.

Watched: My Happy Marriage 10-12: We find out what’s up with the secret family and why whatsisface is being so creepy and how you should definitely not underestimate Miyo. Happy ending!

Read: System Collapse (Martha Wells): Oh man, poor Murderbot! I’m glad it has a terrifying friend to watch media with, and also that it is developing non-murdery skills for saving the day. Plus, “capitalism sucks” never grows old as a theme.

Written: FAIL.

I’m short on bears, though. Also, shouldn’t this be shortly before Fat Bear Week? I’m sure party snacks are dense in calories!

My mucus is decreasing, but possibly asymptotically and not necessarily to zero, so still not in the office.

The new Murderbot is out, but it seems to follow on directly from the previous situation, so I had to reread.

Read: Network Effect (Martha Wells): This is the one the new book follows on from, I could tell even though I apparently didn’t remember it very well until I read it. I thought there was a lot more stuff with [SPOILER], but no.

Read: Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells): Published after Network Effect but set earlier, when Murderbot was hanging out on Preservation keeping an eye on Dr Mensah. I therefore did not have to reread it right now, but I did anyway, because Murderbot.

Written: FAIL. Only reading.

I mean, I kind of do, I’m just really bad at it!

Skipped going into the office to avoid sharing my mucus, although possibly I could have gotten away with it.

Read: She Who Became The Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan): It’s fantasy China, the Mongols have invaded, tragic backstories for everybody, but tragedy spawns ambition that will not be denied, which in turn spawns a whole lot of murders. There are a lot of terrible people, including the protagonists, but also a few good people and a lot of people who are just trying to get by. There isn’t any magic per se, but there are definitely supernatural elements to the world that can be taken advantage of by the few people aware of them. There are So. Many. Feelings. I was afraid this would be too hard to read with my 2023 brain, but although a lot of terrible things are done, it was not too much to deal with.

Written: 189 words, which is almost more than nothing.

Happy birthday, Nonny!

I had to get up early for bonus meetings, which are actually a feature of every normal Tuesday now but that doesn’t make me like them any more. I had no brain, I did some work, I read some more GLOG stuff, I coughed up a bunch of mucus, I read an essay about how Tolkien orcs and D&D orcs are in fact still racist no matter how much you say “it’s right there on the page they aren’t human” or “Professor Tolkien would never”. It also convinced me that D&D-style stats are bad, even if you manage to avoid racial modifiers (which hardly anyone does). All the “natural ability” or “innate potential” type stats are like thinking your IQ is what matters, instead of what skills and decisions you actually make with it. This does affect my game design thoughts, since I was already tending toward BitD-style actions or Castle Falkenstein-style skills for the Champions thing.

Played: Nothing. Not only is Ken busy with Nonny’s birthday, Vivian got her brain electrified today.

Written: FAIL. Too many snuggles, not enough free hands.

 

Yeaaaaah!

Of course Monday the 13th is also the most cursed of days, but that’s on theme. Probably explains why Coworker T brought COVID back from vacation, so he’s still out and Coworker K just left on vacation.

Still kind of coughy and generally disgruntled with biology.

Read some more GLOG stuff. BONES gives up on stats as chance of success entirely and uses them only for slot-based inventory capacity. A sword, a spell, a best friend, a bag of gold, a recurring nightmare, each one takes up a slot in the appropriate inventory. Wounds and stress and madness take up slots too, and kick out what you already have if there isn’t enough room.

Written: FAIL.

I had pneumonia when I was a smol, so will never say anything against antibiotics or modern medicine.

Gaming was cancelled because plague and infirmity abound, so once again I did nothing useful. I read more GLOG stuff and like all OSR stuff I have very mixed feelings (not even counting my growing dislike for hit points). It is (or can be) way cooler than the Hasbro (or wannabe Hasbro competitor) focus group product. Roll twice on this list of vaguely goetic, extremely specific extradimensional entities to see what you can summon. Oh, you want them to be useful? Sounds like a you problem! Anyway, the world is composed of four elements: ash, bones, blood, and fish. Artificial fire is the divine element and will not burn the righteous. Dogs are sacred because they’re warm! At the start of every day, tell us which saint’s day it is, who they’re the patron of, what they help with, and how they were martyred, and get one miracle die for each one you tell us! But on the other hand, I want my characters to be cute and successful and have to roll on the Death and Dismemberment table just because the d20 hates me. I know, that’s definitely a me problem.

Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 3 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): And now Kasuga (the one who likes to eat) has put a name to her feelings for Nomoto!

Written: Continued, unending, FAIL.

I don’t feel at all qualified to comment on what’s happening in Israel, but pretty sure an armistice would not be bad. Alas, when all you have is a nation-state, everything looks like a rival nation-state.

I was well enough to eat chicken tenders and buy groceries today, but not to do any braining, so it’s good that customers didn’t want anything from me. Instead of braining, I read a bunch about GLOG, which is a (more) minimalist, (more) DIY submovement within OSR, or something. The first rule of GLOG is obviously that there are no rules to GLOG, but if there were a rule, it would be that classes only have four levels worth of stuff, so there are no boring levels, and if you don’t die (which you probably will, because OSR) you will end up multiclassing. Other commonalities among  Many Rats On Sticks (Skerples), Runaway Princesses (Alcoops), Nuclear Ooze (Micah A), Moonhop (Type1Ninja), Vain the Sword (Phlox), and Ultraviolet Gloglands (Skerples) are slot-based inventory, copious random tables, and a magic system where you spend some of your precious few magic dice on a spell, the parameters of the spell are based on how many dice you rolled and the sum of them all, doubles and triples are bad, and only dice that roll low come back for reuse. Roll under your stat instead of vs target number is common but not required. What happens when you get to zero hit points usually involves a Death and Dismemberment Table.

This is irrelevant to my own game design struggles, since I want no hit points and do want superpowers and mostly nonlethal combat and the ability to play vampires, robots, goo monsters, tulpas, living black holes, or whatever other craziness can happen in Champions, which is an entirely different paradigm, but I’ll pretend looking at any game design is helpful.

Written: FAIL.

My theory: Everything wrong with the US today is a result of insufficient Sesame Street.

Watched: My Happy Marriage 6-9: It was nice to see the random rich guys who thought they were so great pick a fight with an actual military monster hunter, but Cinderella still needs to communicate better!

Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 2 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): It’s kind of adorable how Nomoto (the one who likes to cook) is just “Welp, guess I’m a lesbian, I should check the Internet to find out how that works” and now she has a pocket friend to discuss things with. Plus, new character with a completely different relationship to food than the main couple.

Written: 184, although it took me like two weeks to accumulate what should be half a night’s work. Neither kitties nor germs are conducive to writing. (Also I suck.)