Author: Trip the Space Parasite

HAPPY HAPPY JUS-DAY!!

Wait, how is she TWELVE? I remember when she wasn’t even 12 grams! :scream emoji:

New regularly scheduled meeting, but it’s with the manager I like best.

Read: Some Girls Do (Jennifer Dugan): High school romance between a very out athlete girl who got kicked out of private Catholic school and a not-at-all-out beauty pageant girl who really just wants to fix cars. Drama and confusion ensue because they’re seventeen, they can barely tell what they want, never mind what other people want.

Read: Gunboat Diplomacy (Terry Mixon): Apparently the series about saving humanity from the tyranny of the AIs didn’t end with the victory, because of course humanity has to be reconqueredunified in the name of the Empire.

Words: Check, surprisingly.

Work meetings, some regularly scheduled and some with customers. At least the customers don’t demand to gaze upon my grotesque visage.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. There is some fear that Kelsey and Vivian may want completely disjoint things from games, but Ken hasn’t interviewed Kelsey yet, so we just don’t know. The remaining PCs got sent to deal with another thing that turns out to in fact be another tentacle of the same thing, but now those forks have an actual goal.

Words: FAIL.

Early morning meeting with boss3, explaining how things will be Different and Better as we become more of a real company and every business on the planet has to buy our product to properly surveil their customers. Unfortunately my skill set is pretty much only valued by big tech, and big tech is pretty much all morally dubious, so here I am.

Read: Storm Forged (Linday Buroker): Book 6 wraps up all the plotlines that have so far been introduced with pretty much a HEA. Books 7+ will go into backstory or something.

Read: The Last Graduate (Naomi Novik): Sequel to A Deadly Education, equally awesome. El is still such an El, Orion is still such an absolute spanner, but somehow she likes him anyway? The entire order of the Scholomance is upended, privileged characters are jerks but not irredeemable, plans are laid and executed, and then CLIFFHANGER! Apparently it will take at least one more book for El to [SPOILER].

Read: The Case Study of Vanitas vol 1 (Jun Mochizuki): Pretty much the same as the first few episodes of anime (or vice versa, I guess), ending about where Vanitas decides what to do about Jeanne.

Words: Check, but after reading The Last Graduate, it doesn’t seem like there’s much point.

Sleeping on a different mattress, in a different room, is weird. Hopefully it will be more successful when I have done it more than once. Perhaps I will even manage to move some stuff into my new room to make space for turning my old room into an office thing. It could happen!

Read: Sinister Magic, Battle Bond, and Tangled Truths (Lindsay Buroker): First three of the “Death Before Dragons” series, about an urban fantasy bounty hunter who gets almost murdered deputized by an extremely arrogant yet distressingly hot dragon and slowly warms up to him while fighting assorted monsters with assorted horrible plans and accumulating a bunch of pretty charming side characters.

Words: unending FAIL.

Got my new mattress today! Now it’s set up in the other room, so I can start emptying out my erstwhile bedroom to put desks and stuff in to turn it into an office thing, and I will find out whether I like sleeping on it better than the futon which has been hauled away.

Apparently that fifteen minutes of activity used up all my energy for the day, though because I haven’t done anything else except read webcomics and listen to KPop. (I like Dreamcatcher, they are more rockful.)

Read: Hell High archives (Chris Hazelton): A Misfile spinoff, high school students literally in Hell (though only the first circle) because they were born there, or fished out of the Styx, or whatever. More slice of life and existential angst than theological adventure, although there is some kind of plot going on. Lots of fanservice.

Read: [un]Divine archives (Ayme Sotuyo): On a fictional Spanish-speaking island, an unhappy high-school student fools around with an old book and ends up summoning a helpful demon. This doesn’t make him any happier, but things go okay until the angels start showing up. Sadly on hiatus now.

Words: FAIL.

I bought a new mattress! It will be delivered tomorrow. Hopefully I will not regret spending $800 instead of $4000 (or instead of $0).

Played: Zoomwarts. Apparently I have forgotten how to GM.

Read: Not Even Bones (Rebecca Shaeffer): Another recommendation from Iron Widow, but this one is even darker. The main character has spent most of her life dissecting dead supernatural creatures her mom brings home into parts for sale on the black market, but then her mom brings home a live one and everything goes to hell. Cannibalism, torture, murder, slavery, difficult moral decisions, monsters both human and otherwise. Not recommended for anyone prone to nightmares.

Read: Mage-Commander (Glynn Stewart): 11(?)th of the missiles-in-space-but-with-magic series. Not a lot of interesting new material, and the major threat is still completely offscreen and unknown to most of the characters while they deal with threats on their own level.

Words: Check.

Now it’s Friday again and I haven’t accomplished anything all week. I mean, I did some capitalisms, and sustained my pointless life, but whatever.

Read: Shatter the Sky (Rebecca Kim Wells): Recommended in the acknowledgments of Iron Widow. A girl from the mountain that dragons used to come from has her girlfriend stolen by the Bureau of Creepiness from the empire that stole all the dragons and makes a terrible plan to get her back. Dragons and ghosts and perfumery are also involved, but not much questioning of the social order. Much more standard YA than Iron Widow.

Watched: My Hero Academia 95-98: Mostly shōnen combat, but we did get some One for All plot. Also Bakugo was somehow not 100% awful

Words: FAIL. I have no excuse, I’m just very dumb.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. We ran out of pictionary, so finally it was time for Meathab and the cultists and the second-order cultists and a lot of whiskey and also hall lizards. The other instance of my character seems to be handling the memetic virus responsibly, but is there actually any way to be responsible with such a thing? A question for next session. Kelsey has abandoned us, though, because Eclipse Phase isn’t doing it for her. Which is sad, but it is kind of niche, at least the way we play it. I’m sure other tables have spaceship chases and laser fights every session.

Words: FAIL.

Read: Cazadora (Romina Garber): Sequel to Lobizona, in which our heroine and her friends have many adventures in the magical realm but do not overcome the weight of culture, leaving them in an even worse position but ready for a third book. Also, smooches.

Read: Iron Widow (Xiran Jay Zhao): Inspired by the history of China’s only female emperor, apparently, but recast in the form of a mecha war story against alien hordes and also against her own society, government, and oligarchs. The main character kills a lot of people, who mostly deserves it, manipulates people who probably deserve to be killed instead, and finds out very upsetting things. A fine book, but not for the squeamish.

Words: Check.

Read: Lobizona (Romina Garber): I tried to read this last year but got stuck halfway through because pandemic brain. Now that I finally got around to finishing it, it’s pretty good. An undocumented Argentinian girl in Miami finds out that the reason she and her mom are hiding from everybody is not what she thought, and there is a whole world of magic waiting for if only she can get documented and also overcome their entire culture of sexism and humanophobia. The world of magic is actually pretty fantastic.

Words: Check.

I have determined that I should get a new bed, with an actual mattress! But it seems like a lot of work. I guess I’ll go to the mattress store on Saturday, since it’s nearish to grocery shopping? I probably shouldn’t order any mattresses off the Internet without at least trying various soft and firm ones in person.

Read: Broken by Magic (Lindsay Buroker): Third in the series, after Art of the Hunt. The artifact opens the door to even more trouble, while the original trouble continues to explode around it. The universe seems to be full of pretty unpleasant people. Also various romantic pairings inch toward

Read: Reborn As A Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting The Strongest Starship vol 1 (Shunichi Matsui, Ryuto, Tetsuhiro Nabeshima): Isekai but Eve Online instead of WoW.

Words: Check.

Arrr! It be Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye scurvy dogs! Filthy landlubber that I be, tho’, I didn’t so much as keelhaul a Trump voter today. I barely weighed anchor to replenish th’ hardtack.

Read: Mao vol 1 (Rumiko Takahashi): Nothing to do with the Chinese dictator! A schoolgirl with a tragic past finds a shopping street where she can travel back in time to the Taishō era (1920s) and meet a cursed, (nigh?-)immortal exorcist and get tangled up in his hunt for the ayakashi who cursed him. I think I see where it’s going, but maybe I’m wrong. Takahashi’s style is still distinctive.

Read: Art of the Hunt (Lindsay Buroker): Sequel to Kingdoms at War, in which the doom that was foretold comes to pass in various ways and yet still nobody will listen to the faction that says the artifact was better off under the volcano. Also, cute animal mascot.

Words: Aye!

Cleaner showed up early, so I was able to go grocery shopping in the morning instead of halfway through the day, but it was still just grocery shopping. I did, however, while getting Thai lunch, snag the last three packs of Diet Snapple at Bevmo!

We didn’t even try to go over to Ayse and Ken’s place. I don’t even know, man. Between Marith being exploited and abused by her job and Delta everywhere and everything, does life even happen any more?

Played: Zoomwarts. More canon contents, with dementors, but the PCs turned their prisoner over to Dumbledore and got grounded. Also Bella got dumped?! That can’t be right! Why is Heron acting so weird? Is everybody doomed?

Words: Check.

Read: Kingdoms at War (Lindsay Buroker): Start of a fantasy series where mages rule everything and treat the non-magical about as well as Africans during the age of empires. Non-magical archaeologists uncover something that everybody wants, even before they find out what it really does and the dangers thereof. Intrigue and adventure ensue. Also like four romance subplots, but they all seem to pretty slow-burn.

Watched: My Hero Academia 90-94: We got one episode of Endeavor trying to redeem himself to his family and Hawks plotting, but then it was back to UA and class 1A vs class 1B in not-entirely-lethal combat so everybody can show off their new techniques.

Words: Continued FAIL. Apparently my brain has to be useless for a certain number of hours every day, even though those hours could be used for writing.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. We found the confusing NPC and played terrible Pictionary for the fate of the solar system.

Read: Pumpkin (Julie Murphy): Set in the same small Texas town as Dumplin’ a couple of years later (the previous main character appears in a secondary role), a fat, very gay boy is nominated for prom queen and uses the power of drag. Among other life events.

Read: Puddin’ (Julie Murphy): This actually goes in between the other two books, but whatever. Two extremely different girls in the same Texas town somehow become friends despite a lot of everything.

Words: FAIL.

Apparently the Republicans failed miserably yet again. Not that Newsom is great, but compared to everyone else on the ballot…

Watched: Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: It was pretty swell! Non-white actors, female characters who kick all of the ass, non-English dialog, technoninjas, MIchelle Yeoh, no obligatory romance, training montages, mysterious creatures, the whole nine yards! See, Marvel, you can do it if you try!

Words: FAIL

I committed An Democracy (as my pocket fronds say) (well, it would be a crime if Republicans had their way!). Go me.

Read: Dumplin’ (Julie Murphy): A fat girl enters the teen beauty pageant that is her small Texas town’s entire reason for existing while love-triangling and dealing with death of an aunt and horribleness of a mother.

Words: Check. Also I did make some progress on being able to publish, but to do proper testing I need to set up another WP site, which is annoying.

Monday the 13th, most cursed of days!

Read: Otherside Picnic vol 1 (Iori Miyazawa, Eita Mizuno, Shirakaba): This gives me strong The Hollow Places vibes, with the seemingly-pastoral other dimension littered with artificial structures of unclear origin and full of unnatural death. It is creepy enough that I should perhaps not have read it right before bed!

Words: Check.

Despite the actual shortage, I have obtained some Diet Dr Pepper! Still no Diet Snapple, though.

There is some kind of old car parade? convention? show? on my shopping street today, which makes me unjustifiedly grouchy. I like the shops on that street to not go out of business, and this is probably a big part of that, but you know who likes old cars? Old people. Lots of old people and their entire extended families. Who all walk veeeerrrryyyy sssslllooowwwwlllyyyyy.

Words: Check. I found the 100-odd words that needed changing to resolve the continuity issues, and then wrote some of the thing that isn’t happening in October or November after all.

So apparently this is supposed to be called “Patriot Day”, because DHS and TSA and Gauntanamo Bay Torture Facility are all things to celebrate. Do Not Want. Republicans Fuck Right Off.

Despite a general hatred for Americans, I managed to go grocery shopping and stuff, so it’s like a successful Saturday. Still no visiting at Ayse & Ken’s because Nonny didn’t sleep and so everyone is frazzled.

Played: Zoomwarts. I tried to implement some of the doom I made notes on from the movies, but I think people were too unfocused to do anything with it. Maybe next time. Also Bella has apparently dumped her new love interest already.

Words: I found a continuity error dating from a year ago in the kitten words, which destroyed my motivation. I later found out that it didn’t come up until just a couple of months ago, but by then it was too late.

Apparently I forgot how to sleep again, but fortunately there was not a lot that needed to happen at work today.

Eaten: Creamy lemon dill chicken, zucchini, and snap peas.

Watched: My Hero Academia 87-89: Last two of S4 and then the first one of S5, a lot of which was recap anyway. Can Endeavor really be redeemed, though?

Read: Pahua and the Soul Stealer (Lori M Lee): Another from the “Rick Riordan Presents” line of middle-grade fantasy in non-white-people mythoi. This one is Hmong, about which I knew nothing going in, but was not surprised to find it similar to other E/SE Asian cultures.

Read: Amelia O’Donohue is So Not a Virgin (Helen Fitzgerald): Scottish all-girls boarding school drama. I saw the big plot twist ahead of time, although perhaps not at the very first clue.

Read: Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Diseases (Kristen O’Neal): It is in fact about both those things, and also Internet support groups and friendship and love and family and life goals.

Words: FAIL. I am not smart enough to write.

I did not want a three-hour customer meeting on top of the regular Thursday meetings.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. After a lot of looking up images for Meathab, we actually played the PCs going to the Titanian outback in search of a fleeting network connection and now they are taking to the sea Kraken Mare in a rental boat piloted by someone named Wriggly Sven in search of someone who may be harboring a dangerous memetic virus.

Words: FAIL.

I guess I did a work. Wheee.

Watched: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Manne, I completely forgot to put any of this stuff in Zoomwarts even though it’s supposed to be happening at the same time. I think Bella and Rosamund need a werewolf attack, and also Harry needs to get sucked into a temporal vortex.

Read: Fleet of Knives and Light of Impossible Stars (Gareth L Powell): Rest of the trilogy that started with Embers of War. The solution to everyone’s problems of course turned out to be more of the same problems only bigger, with additional problems. Then in the middle of the third book, a completely new character appears to fix everything. Also the author does not understand basic physics. So overall, a weak ending to an okay beginning.

Words: Check, kinda.

Monday, observed, but not too bad for all that. Customers attacked, but we fended them off, and I cleaned up after some previous attacks.

Watched: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: This movie is too long (2:40, an entire evening!) but I took many notes about horrible things to do to Bella and Rosamund.

Read: Asylum (Lindsay Buroker): A new “Star Kingdom” novel, following new protagonists, which is still charming, but I am annoyed that Buroker seems to only write straight people. [character] wants to have sex at least once in her life, [other character] wants to have sex basically all the time, and yet! I sulk.

Words: Check.

It’s Labor Day, so I should be helping build guillotines for Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, or something, but instead I’m being a useless lump. I managed to do a grocery shop, but that’s about it.

Read: The Ruin of Angels (Max Gladstone): Sixth novel in the Craft Sequence, about colonialism and hubristic tech startups and surveillance and brain squids and criminal gods and broken reality. Gladstone apparently understands that there’s just no point to male characters.

Watched: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Not very good as a movie, but I was just watching it for inspiration for Zoomwarts. The movie had a lot more random magical nonsense (like the flying keys and chessboard), more monsters (troll in the castle!), magic without specific incantations or even wand use, and a distressing lack of suits of armor to hide behind. It didn’t even have much in the way of secret passages, just the one area the Golden Trio found “accidentally”. Also a distinct lack of romantic drama, of course, but not all 11-year-olds can be as boy-crazy as Bella.

Words: Check.

Played: Lancer. This time we had two combats, one against opponents with special powers that went about how it did in Dave’s simulation runs, and then one against a bunch of mooks that went really quickly because a) we all used our daily power, b) they couldn’t roll for beans, and c) we almost never missed. It was still pretty rough, I think the PCs took an average of at least 1 structure damage each, but now they are in control of the printer and can get a full repair. Apparently we are having enough fun that we will force Dave to come up with a second adventure.

Read: Devil’s Candy archives (Rem, Bikkuri): Up through the beginning of chapter 14. I really like this comic, it has a very TFOS vibe.

Words: Check, I guess, kinda.

Read: The Night Raven (Sarah Painter): Outlying daughter of one of the four magical crime families of London comes back to wait out fallout from her non-magic-crime job in Scotland and gets sucked right back in with missing cousins and horrible uncles and ghosts and hit men and hot detectives.

Read: Days of Love at Seagull Villa vol 3 (Kodama Naoko): Sorry, [character], you had literally years to ask [other character] out, but all you did was neg her and pretend to be straight, so now you’re stuck with a dumb boy while [other character] gets all the girlsmooches. The end!

Watched: The Case Study of Vanitas 7-10: Lots of backstory, more eccentric characters, and a final, season-ending, terrible reveal. Also vampire bites, which seem to count somewhere between kissing and sex.

Words: FAIL.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Ken was not ready to run Meathab, so instead the PCs investigated more on Titan even though Kelsey wasn’t around to play Svafa. Then they egocast to Mars (Chi got a swarmanoid morph for Gimel, because no one that cool should have to be humanoid if they don’t want to) and sent Njal poking around the hab next to the hab that went dark, which has apparently become a military problem for the Planetary Consortium. Surely this will all be fine.

Read: You Have Been Judged (Craig Martelle, Michael Anderle): A young prosecutor, having snapped and murdered a scumbag who got acquitted even though she knew through inadmissable telepathic means that he was guilty, is sentenced to get cybered up and fly around the galaxy being judge, jury, and executioner, and otherwise enforce Imperial law without oversight. Neither the empire nor its laws are particularly just, so the whole thing is quite unsympathetic.

Words: FAIL, but at least I made some notes about what to write later.