Luckily the company meeting was first thing in the morning, so I was able to hear how the financials are doing great and everybody loves the Sales team before going off to the dentist. My expedition was not all poky bits and horrible fluoride gunk, though, because I encountered a wild Ayse! She is not dead! She is not a ghost! She is still my friend! Someday, there will be visiting again.
NaNoWriMo Words: 6980 + 762 = 7742. 700 per evening seems to be about what I’m good for.
We had five people on our team, one of them not really present due to easing back in from maternity leave and also about to go on an extended trip twelve time zones away, and one just got fired. From the sounds of it, he was really not coming up to speed, but this is definitely the wrong trend. (I guess I should feel better that I wasn’t the least productive member of the team, but what if I am now?)
Read: The Drones of Keldora (Alex Raizman): Conclusion of this series, with extremely ominous last line, but apparently one of the major characters is going to visit the series with dinosaurs, so maybe I’ll read that one.
Read: Wrath and Pride (Alex Raizman): First two books of the series with dinosaurs. I mean, dinosaurs! Yay! But the dungeon core stuff is all so arbitrary that it’s basically made entirely of deus machina. It’s so weird that D&D leveling, which was supposed to be an abstraction of the actual process of learning from experience (okay, very abstract in some editions) has become its own thing by being filtered through derivative computer games.
NaNoWriMo Words: 6267 + 713 = 6980. It’s not nothing, I guess? But I know I used to be able to write more.
Forgot to do laundry. Or much of anything.
Read: The Guns of Keldora (Alex Raizman): Fourth book of the series, and things are getting even more ridiculously OP on both sides. It’s clearly supposed to be a book about the MC being clever, and he’s not not clever, but mostly he’s just using free stuff that gets handed to him because he got handed enough free stuff to make the Maguffin of Infinite Upgrades, which undercuts that.
NaNoWriMo Words: 5559 + 708 = 6267.
People were doing some kind of fun thing on my street, disrupting bus service, but I managed to go grocery shopping anyway. (Many of the things I wanted to buy were out of stock, but that seems to be normal for 2021, because fucking rich people and their yacht money.)
Read: The Motors of Keldora (Alex Raizman): More crafting, more threats, more OP, beginnings of entanglements with the author’s other litrpg series. Roll on the Random Limb Loss table!
NaNoWriMo Words: 4416 + 1153 = 5559. That’s even better than yesterday, although still not great considering I still had nothing to do today. What’s a plot? Can you eat it? Have I used this joke already?
On-call all day, so no shopping. No anything, only dumbness and sloth.
Played: Nothing, Jus is too sick for Zoomwarts.
Read: Apocalypse: Dungeon System (Macronomicon): Third book in the series, further delving into the deep mysteries and getting annoyed by OP wizards, fairies, birds, children, and gasoline-drinking babes.
Read: Spy x Family vol 6 (Tatsuya Endo): Love is hazardous for both adults and first-graders, apparently. I bet the dog could have helped if they had listened to him more.
Read: The Wastes of Keldora and The Trains of Keldora (Alex Raizman): More litrpg, lots of crafting that makes me think Minecraft the way it’s described but could be from any of a million games, cricket-elves, mental health issues, snarky teenagers, exponential growth.
NaNoWriMo Words: 3788 + 628 = 4416, which is pretty sad considering I had literally nothing else to do today, but still better than yesterday.
Yay, we made it to Friday. I wish I had some brain left.
Watched: RWBY Fairy Tales 1: Don’t got into the forest, geez!
Watched: My Hero Academia 107-109: Some disturbing information about the Nomus, then back to the League of Villains, who haven’t been idle all this time!
Read: Apocalypse: Generic System and Apocalypse: Fairy System (Macronomicon): Isekai/litrpg with magic crafting and subterfuge, then getting screwed over and having to survive in the post-assimilation world, with some delving into the deeper mechanics underneath what is presented to mortals as classes and levels and stats. Also fairy bargains, mad science, and video games. I stayed up until forever o’clock reading, so I guess they’re engaging, at least at the level my brain can handle.
NaNoWriMo Words: 153 words, which is pretty much a FAIL. Marith thinks writing even a single word during the month of November qualifies for winning NaNoWriMo, but I’m a purist. Or maybe just grumpy. 3635 + 153 = 3788 total.
Hurray, Nonny got immunostabbified! We do not have to send hippos to eat the CDC!
I felt smart in the training meeting today, which I’m pretty sure means Dunning-Kruger. (Not that we can believe the Dunning-Kruger effect exists, because no social science results can be replicated, sigh.)
Played: Nothing, Brooks has to get up early tomorrow because his mom has medical stuff.
Read: Venomous (Christie Wilcox): Animal venom! All different kinds! Combinations of thousands of different molecules each carefully evolved to interact with a specific biochemical pathway! Just waiting to be mined for new drugs! Venoms of death! Venoms of pain! Venoms of zombification! One of my prescriptions is based on gila monster spit! (Sadly, I have not grown blackpink beaded scales to make the K-pop fans jealous, but I’ll keep taking it anyway.)
Read: Galaxy Stop 910 (Soya S Holm): Nonbinary feelings in spaaaace.
NaNoWriMo Words: 2359 + 1276 = 3635 total. Still feeble, but a step in the right direction. It’s still possible I will trip on a plot hole and die, though.
I don’t want to help the annoying customer, I want to sleep.
Read: Schoolbooks and Sorcery (ed Michael M Jones): Anthology of stories about teenagers learning different kinds of magic in different contexts, most of them explicitly queer (mostly lesbian or trans, for whatever reasons). Variable in quality, but none of them were a waste of time.
Read: It Stems From Love (Soya S Holm): Complete story about romance and coughing up flowers and near-death experience.
NaNoWriMo Words: 1618 + 741 = 2359. Still pathetic, but at least I’m not losing half my wordcount every day.
No customer calls today, and also coworker k is back from vacation
Read: Prince Charming (Rachel Hawkins): Set just before Her Royal Highness, an American high school girl gets mixed up with obnoxious royalty and unwanted fame when her sister gets engaged to the crown prince of Scotland (which has its own royal family in this AU). Sadly het.
Read: Into the Odd (Chris McDowall, Johan Nohr): Shiny new edition of a very simple system for exploring weird dungeons in search of mysterious artifacts. Combat involves only damage rolls, stats are used only for saves to avoid unpleasantness and decrease the more you get abused. Prequel to Electric Bastionland.
Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 15 (Kore Yamazaki): Unfortunately I am not able to keep all these characters straight, because I am a dumb, so much of this story arc is being lost on me.
NaNoWriMo Words: 535 + 1083 = 1618 total. I am less than half a functional NaNoWriMoer.
I spent most of my workday on an 8-hour customer call that was probably at least 80% pointless. Listening to people chatter away in Hebrew with English technical terms interspersed is only entertaining for the first hour or so.
Apparently I’m doing NaNoWriMo now? I blame Kit. I was going to do “what if Hogwarts but space pirates instead of wizards” but decided I should work on the project that has been languishing for months, which is already kind of like that and has some plot laid out.
Read: Her Royal Highness (Rachel Hawkins): High school senior lesbians, at an exclusive private school in the wilds of Scotland, one of them is a normal girl from Texas, one of them is an actual princess with more rebelliousness than foresight, some smooches, no guillotines.
Read: Pink Lemonade 1-120 (Derppycat.Amaya): Starts off as humorous, how can she be so dense that she doesn’t realize he’s asking her out and thinks of her as a girlfriend, but eventually gets into her tragic backstory and why she doesn’t think anyone can love her. Ongoing.
Read: Rainbow and Black vol 1 (Eri Takenashi): A young Japanese woman prone to black and white thinking becomes owner of a peculiar, adorable, vocal, possibly semi-sapient pet, and perhaps starts to experience personal growth.
NaNoWriMo Words: 0 + 1083 = 1083 total. I’m not going to make it at this rate.
Played: Lancer. We finally found the problem, and it is both non-Euclidean and hungry.
Read: Burn the Witch vol 1 (Tite Kubo): Young witches vs assorted magical entities in London and Reverse London. Apparently part of the Bleach universe, although we have not seen any Reapers or other Soul Society types.
Words: Check.
I did things today, but it feels like I didn’t accomplish anything. Bah.
Played: Zoomwarts, but I’m a terrible GM so meh. I should have had trolls bust in to Bella’s birthday party. Also I forgot how I was going to present the present.
Words: Check.
Got all my cases caught up again, even the one that required someone smarter than me to solve.
I forgot how to read books again. Maybe I need to find more YA lesbian romance. Maybe I need to start Hands of the Emperor. Maybe I need to slam my head in a door until all the vacuum comes out.
Words: Check, surprisingly. Also I realized that the easier project is probably easier because it has almost no description or dialogue.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Why is the space station made of meat allergic to us now? We didn’t do anything!
Read: ReDawn (Brandon Sanderson, Janci Patterson): second of the three novellas between the second and third books of the main trilogy. These are not at all side stories, major alien butt is being kicked plot developments are occurring! Despite how the other characters talk up the MC, they have no problem doing the thing or the other thing.
Words: FAIL.
I got all my cases responded to, although not necessarily sensibly.
Read: Daughter of the Deep (Rick Riordan): The descendant of Captain Nemo finds out about her legacy and all the people who want to steal it. Yes, apparently Nemo really was that over the top. Adventure ensues.
Words: Check, but what even is the point when people like my pocket fronds in #notwriting exist?
The customers attacked in great profusion, but only one of them demanded a call.
Eaten: Chinese food to celebrate Marith’s birthday!
Watched: My Hero Academia 103-106: One swimsuit episode, some intrigue plot, some Endeavor family plot, some work-study. Fuyumi got so many sparkles when she appeared, I was sure Deku or Bakugo was going to have a crush on her, but apparently not.
Read: Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating (Adiba Jaigirdar): Bengali-Irish high school lesbians, fake dating, horrible white girls, racist administrators, the freedom of completely disappointing one’s parents, almost no boys because who even needs them.
Read: The Case Study of Vanitas vol 5 (Jun Mochizuki): Any French supernatural murders must involve the Beast of Gévaudan! Also it looks like the Jeanne-Vanitas thing is really a thing, not throw-away.
Words: Check.
New webcam works, but I need some way to tilt it downward just a few degrees.
Read: Dust & Grim (Chuck Wendig): A 13-year-old cosplayer tries to get her share of the mortuary business left to her estranged older brother and finds out that it’s not at all what she thought and also everything is magical and doomed. It wasn’t bad, but somehow I expected more from Wendig? Maybe there’s only so much you can do with the genre, though.
Read: The Case Study of Vanitas vol 3-4 (Jun Mochizuki): Just past the first season of the anime, met a creepy new character. Also poor Jeanne’s cunning plan has failed miserably.
Words: Check.
Rain! It rains! Life-giving water drips from the sky! …what do you mean, I have to go grocery shopping?
Turns out the onion chips I like are back in stock, so a little rain is worth it!
I also went to Target, which was very successful in terms of getting everything on my list and hardly anything not on my list, but boy was there a lot of weather outside.
Read: I Want To Be A Cute Anime Girl 1-198 (Azulcrescent): Unspeakably adorable trans slice-of-life. Everyone is so understanding and supportive! And cute! Ongoing.
Words: Check, although not much for a theoretically free day. I did name a ship after a pocket frond, though.
HAPPY HAPPY AYSE-DAY!!
I was on call all day today, which made things like grocery shopping difficult, but the customers did not attack, so I’ll take it. I can do things tomorrow.
Played: Nothing: Jus is still busy building Death Stars.
Read: Kiss It Goodbye #1-128 (Ticcy): Extremely cute Japanese lesbian couple finally tell their friends their history together, which is pretty cute, although some of those broken noses definitely had it coming. Main arc complete, although there are allegedly side chapters in the works. Did I mention it was cute?
Read: Wrong Spell #1-56 (Ayleendeer): Three small girls summon a demon, who only smites the wicked so has to take care of them until their gram returns to send him back. Cute kid hijinx, chemistry between the demon and the local priest, church intrigue, then back to cute kids. Ongoing.
Read: Thrive (Kenneth Oppel): Conclusion of the trilogy. Probably not a spoiler to say that the alien invasion is thwarted. It was the sort of YA story where the adults are dumb (if not actually malevolent) so the teenagers can be correct, so not entirely successful from the PoV of a nominally adult reader. At least, I’d like to think Canadian OCS is a little better on the importance of intelligence gathering and exploiting enemy weaknesses than that.
Words: Check, somehow.
Good job with the immunostabbification, Jus!
Read: Realms 1 (ed Jeff Vandermeer): Collection of the first year of Clarkesworld. I suppose technically a few different genres are represented, but it’s all pretty horrific, if not actual horror. In tone, I mean, not skill! Anyway, not cheerful.
Read: The Goblin and the Dancer (Allison Tebo): A retelling of that fairy tale with the one-legged tin soldier and the music-box ballerina, or whatever, only it’s eloi and morlocks C19ish elves and goblins and jealousy and unexpected trips through the undercity and too many tentacles and the real magic is friendship. (But not in a poly way.)
Read: Hatch (Kenneth Oppel): Sequel to Bloom, with mad scientists, further alien ecoinvasion, daring escapes, adults who just won’t listen, and maybe some actual aliens.
Words: Check.
Burger.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. The PCs more or less accomplished their sub-quest goals and returned to Meathab with suitable amounts of SAN loss on everyone’s part, rescuee included.
Read: Cradle and Grave (Anya Ow): I was turned on to this by a James Nicoll column about books in which changing the laws of physics definitely is a good plan and cannot have any unforeseen side effects, but it’s mostly post-apocalyptic for obvious reasons. Horrible mutations, road trip, cannibal weirdos, monsters, betrayal, totally sus patrons, additional mutation in real time.
Words: FAIL.
Read: Bloom (Kenneth Oppel): Three sickly teenagers on an isolated island discover they are the only ones immune to the alien murder plants suddenly sprouting everywhere.
Read: Ample Time 1-217 (e Pon): College freshthing lesbians, a fennec with severe anxiety (but a helpful roommate) and a terrifyingly beautiful civet, group projects, longing, racism, childhood philosophy flashbacks.
Words: Check.
Busy morning, but then it tapered off and my brain dissolved into sludge.
Read: Her Name in the Sky (Kelly Quindlen): High school senior lesbians with the bad luck to be in extremely Catholic heteronormative Louisiana. Lots of angst, religious imagery, suicidal ideation, assorted drama.
Read: Late to the Party (Kelly Quindlen): High school (almost) senior lesbian finds love, but mostly it’s about her learning to make new friends and tension with her old friends, the romance is not that rocky.
Words: Check.
No customer calls at all today! Shock! Surprise!
No brain today. Shock. Surprise.
Words: Check.
I only did one thing today, and the travel was much easier than in times past, but apparently that still used up my entire brain. I got hard-boiled eggs from Marith, though.
Played: Lancer. Leveling up worked a lot better with the other players. Apparently I’m support and spotter for the sniper, but also leader, and getting licenses for the SSC Swallowtail. New mission, which requires us to get out of our mechs (clutch pearls). No combat so far, but next session should be exciting.
Read: The Falling In Love Montage (Ciara Smyth): High school senior (equivalent) lesbians, genetic doom, “it’s just a summer fling”, family drama, surprisingly awesome stepparentage, rom-coms are a highly dubious guide to life.
Read: The Case Study of Vanitas vol 2 (Jun Mochizuki): Noé’s tragic history flashback and Vanitas’s tryst in the middle of the Masked Ball Attack.
Words: Check.
The cleaners were at 10 instead of at 8, which threw my whole morning off, but I managed to go shopping and eat a lunch and stuff. Not prepare for gaming tomorrow, though. Also I was on call all afternoon, but nothing happened. Good work, customers!
Played: Zoomwarts. That was a pretty good session. Bella and co saved the missing rats and only Bella got double-grounded (for cheating in a duel against her romantic rival at lunch).
Read: “The Tomato Thief” (Ursula Vernon): A scary old lady and the monster that’s stealing her perfect tomatoes.
Read: Amissio ch 1-5 (Paroro): Lost humans in a mysterious realm of lost things and tentacle monsters and other weirdness. Creepy cute.
Words: Surprisingly, check.
Team meeting, multi-hour customer call, internal call, another extended customer call.
Sharks are older than trees.
Read: Balanced On The Blade’s Edge (Lindsay Buroker): Wizard in suspended animation since the days when magic was part of society is revived in a time when wizards are hated and feared, hijinx and het romance ensue.
Read: Only Ashes Remain and When Villains Rise (Rebecca Schaeffer): Rest of the trilogy that started with Not Even Bones, containing more murder, betrayal, cannibalism, torture, media manipulation, and torture, most of it perpetrated by the main character and her partner. These are extremely dark and brutal books, I can’t believe they’re even technically YA! (I came up with a fanfic explanation for the existence of all the unnaturals, but it’s not that interesting, so never mind.)
Words: check, finally.
Got up early for medical stabbing again, but actually the stabbing has been referred to a more specialized specialist. I did get explained to, however, and apparently even if the special stabbing determines the worst, it’s totally treatable. Probably. Mostly.
More customer calls. No end of customer calls. Only doom.
Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Lots of investigation, most of it virtual. If I were converting Eclipse Phase to a better system, I probably wouldn’t make infosec a niche. It’s too useful all of the time, it needs to be divided up so everybody can do different parts of it. Maybe like the domains in Spire?
Read: Inhibitor Phase (Alastair Reynolds): Feels like the conclusion to the “Revelation Space” series, even though it’s not the last story chronologically, maybe because it’s after almost everything is wrecked, or maybe because it has some tour-of-the-setting feel, or maybe because even more is wrecked after the PCs visit it. Also lots about identity to go with the alien mysteries.
Read: Tell Me How You Really Feel (Aminah Mae Safi): High school senior lesbians, cheerleader vs film student at fancy private school, mortal-enemies-to-mandatory-group-project, feminist film-making, LA landmarks, the burden of ancestral expectations.
Words: FAIL.
Got up much earlier than I wanted to so I could go get blood drawn, then had to come back home and do more customer calls.
Read: She Drives Me Crazy (Kelly Quindlen): High school senior lesbians, coming out, basketball vs cheerleader, nemeses to fake dating, terrible exes.
Read: Not My Problem (Ciara Smyth): Irish school (transition year? what even?) lesbians, hostile acquaintances to oh-no-she’s-hot, a tangled web of favors, poverty, strange Indian guys, midnight hijinx, Irish cussing.
Words: FAIL.
It’s finally cold enough that I got a second blanket to keep my feets warm.
More customer calls today. LDAP is the worst. TLS is second-worst.
Words: FAIL.