Category: Life of a Space Parasite

Rachel is apparently feeling much better, so we had gaming.

Played: Dark Matter. We had a fight with a bunch of different poison AoEs in a confined space, but survived by letting the least-aggressive demons watch their movie in peace. In fact we even won, although our vampire buddy might have been permanently corrupted by cinematic torture. He was very grateful and gave us paper to use for books to try to bribe the dragon with. (The paper we made from the evil mushrooms was also evil.) But then it was revealed that one of the four Maguffins was with the Mad Max faction and the demons knew, so after getting healed of the demonic afflictions, we headed over there and arrived just in time to enter the race.

Written: 235.

I thought I had nothing scheduled for today, so I lay abed for a million hours, but then I found out it’s Minecraft day! I made my shopping trip extra-short so I could make it to Monkeycat Towers by 14:00, and we crafted some mines. Literally, I think we all spent most of the afternoon underground. I found a cave with a spider spawner and a treasure chest, but that was all there was to it, so I started delving into the depths of the cartesian coordinate system, and found some coal and iron but also a vast underground realm with way too many surprise pits over lava. I put a door on it to keep the endermen from getting out and started a new minestair, but maybe I should go back and work on building walkways over the pits. I have iron pickaxes, so in theory I should be able to mine better stuff than coal and iron that far down.

I wonder if it would be any fun to play Minecraft on my own.

Written: FAIL.

Staying indoors and never interacting with humans is a good way to avoid holiday nonsense.

Today’s meeting fact: Lizards can’t breath while they run, since they have to bend side to side, so their endurance is pretty limited. Boss²’s lizard Smaug was on the call, so I had to clarify that dragons are special lest he take offense.

Read: Homicidal Aliens Are Invading and All I Got Is This Stat Menu (JJ Ackerknecht): Pretty much what it says on the tin. Enigmatic aliens provide select humans with superpowers via a video-game interface to fight off murdery aliens. Basically the backstory to Stray Cat Strut, but just our regular cyberpunk dystopia, not a future one.

Written: 220.

Yay, customer meetings. No, wait, not “yay”, the other one.

Read: MonsTABOO vol 2 (Yuya Takahashi, TALI): Wow, that was brutal. Next volume starts the revenge tragedy, I guess!

Read: “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.” (Fran Wilde): Faerie fashion plus labor rights, although only snacking on the rich.

Read: “The Sin of America” (Catherynne M Valente): More literal scapegoating than our media seems to prefer, but not that different.

Read: “Proof by Induction” (Jose’ Pablo Iriarte): I see why the story is written that way, but I’m not sure that would actually be a one-use technology.

Written: Still FAIL.

I did not eat delicious pie today. I did some work, though. Customers, manne.

Played: Lancer. We almost didn’t play because of power outages, but PG&E came through for Dave. Ken was busy packing for a business trip, so next week he will be very surprised at where Tinca could not talk the PCs out of ending up.

Read: The Grief of Stones (Katherine Addison): Second of the spin-off from The Goblin Emperor about the detective-priest who gets mixed up in the most appalling schemes. This time: the depravity of photographs!

Written: Continued FAIL.

Work was not particularly more annoying, but Monday the 13th is definitely inauspicious.

Read: Revealed (DI Freed): Second in the series about a girl who starts off with no martial arts powers and then starts becoming increasingly OP for unclear reasons. Also she remains mostly not a jerk, at least compared to most martial artists. This book, she goes to martial arts death college, now with 32% more murders.

Written: FAIL.

Grocery shopping worked so well yesterday that I was able to sleep in until it was time to get ready to play Minecraft. Then I went over and played Minecraft and did not die hardly at all. Also we had a barbecue and stayed up partying and fighting off zombies all night. I still don’t dare go underground yet, but I chopped down a bunch of trees and dug up a bunch of sand and stuff. Then we logged out and ate Thai food.

Read: The Ascension Game vol 1 (Ace Arriande): LitRPG apparently based on some game that’s like Minecraft with more boss fights, but I’m pretty sure the ridiculous smut parts were added later. They do not help.

Written: FAIL.

Slept in forever, but then went grocery shopping in the afternoon and miraculously it worked out! The store was full, but things were not particularly sold out. In fact, I was able to stock up on the bird meat that’s usually out of stock.

Read: Backpacking Through Bedlam (Seanan McGuire): Alice, having finally found her long-lost husband in the depths of the multiverse in the previous book, finally gets him home and straight into a war with the monster-killers their family defected from. Alice’s choices continue to be pretty questionable.

Written: FAIL.

Was I smart today? Only vaguely, I think. Mostly I read Nebula nominees, and probably didn’t appreciate them enough.

Watched: My Hero Academia 6.16-17: Backstory for Hawks, additional backstory for the Todorokis. I understand that regulating parenthood would be nothing but wall-to-wall abuse, but some people really should not be allowed to reproduce.

Read: Wild Massive (Scotto Moore): Artificial multiverse, colonization/assimilation, genocide, theme parks, revenge, sufficiently-advanced sorcery, unethical experimentation, higher powers, sufficiently-advanced technology, mayhem, shenanigans, narrative warfare, and no romance. It was a pretty wild ride.

Read: “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” (John Chu): An actor meets basically-Superman in his secret ID at the gym. Slice of life.

Read: “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold” (SB Divya): I figured out which fairytale this was as soon as we saw the MC’s full name, but I don’t think it was supposed to be a puzzle, just less Eurocentric.

Read: “The Prince of Salt and the Ocean’s Bargain” (Natalia Theodoridou): Original fairytale with a  modern sensibility.

Read: “Rabbit Test” (Samantha Mills): I really hope Christian fuckfaces aren’t still going to be denying women reproductive freedom in a hundred years…

Read: “Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home” (CL Clark): Kind of Beauty and the Beast, but sapphic and there’s a lighthouse and it’s different.

Read: “The Calcified Heart of Saint Ignace Battiste” (Christopher Caldwell): Young priest spies on a spooky ritual in Spookytown and learns that the orthodoxy is a lie.

Read: “The Goldfish Man” (Maureen McHugh): Homeless lady has a hard life for a while and then meets a strange person on the streets.

Read: “Ribbons” (Natalia Theodoridou): Another modernish fairytale, in a world where fairytale things happen. Not sure what the ribbon is a metaphor for — there’s already plenty of queerness.

Read: “This Village” (Eugenia Triantafyllou): Welcome to Wicked Witch Town.

Read: “The Coward Who Stole God’s Name” (John Wiswell): The most beloved man in the world reveals his true self to a reporter. Chaos almost doesn’t ensue. Read to me like a direct commentary on celebrity/billionaire adulation.

Written: FAIL.

New boss definitely likes to talk a lot more in meetings than old boss.

Played: Lancer. I think we got through three whole rounds of combat this time.

Read: Beauty and the Besharam (Lillie Vale): An Indian-American girl who absolutely refuses to shut up, downplay her talents, or otherwise be modest, and her childhood friend/rival have extremely intense feelings over the summer between junior and senior year.

Read: Lazy Dragon Queen vol 6 (Ace Arriande): Even more ridiculous and somewhat lewd, to make up for the strange inclusions of seriousness.

Written: FAIL.

No gaming, Rachel is sick enough to go to urgent care (although apparently not with anything exotic). Since my day was suddenly free, I went over to play Minecraft with Nonny and everybody. I accidentally cut down Ken’s prized birch trees, but also cut down trees from the forest and built a wooden house to keep monsters out and got killed by zombies and spiders and drowning. You win some, you respawn at home some, I guess. Also we ate food and played “IRL Among Us” which works surprisingly well.

Written: FAIL. Maybe a couple of hours of Minecraft is all my brain is capable of in a day.

Somehow made it to Friday, but I must be doing something wrong. I’m pretty sure a very mild workweek like mine should not lead to such bleargh. I barely had enough energy to eat Chinese food and watch anime with Marith.

Watched: My Hero Academia 6.13-15: Well, that was inconclusive, except for all the people who died. Setbacks are par for the course in shonen, though.

Written: 148.

Read: Death in Irish Accents (Catie Murphy): It’s another Kitbook! The main character really will never be known as anything other than the murder driver, no matter how much her girlfriend doesn’t like it. (I saw someone complaining about the “unsupportive partner trope”, but “murder is bad and you should stay away from it” seems like a pretty uncontroversial position to me.)

Read: “We Have Always Spoken Panglish” (Suzette Haden Elgin): Colonialism and the loss of indigenous language and culture and the resentment of that loss.

Read: Lazy Dragon Queen vol 5 (Ace Arriande): More shenanigans, including the fluffiest possible sheep and increased undead lewdness.

Written: So much FAIL.

How is it March already?! (I know, one second at a time, same as every year.)

Read: Shield of Humanity (Terry Mixon, JN Chaney): After last book was all about the human infighting, the alien problems in this three-front war get some attention, and a potential fourth front opens up. I’d say the protagonists can’t catch a break, but they actually can, they just need even more breaks than they’re catching.

Written: FAIL.

 

Read: Dusk Gate (Benjamin Medrano): Not litrpg, but extremely D&D. Not even lesbian romance can save it.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 23 (Tomohito Oda): Finally, after twenty-three volumes: love confessions! At least after all that build-up, they took up pretty much the entire volume. I suspect we’re near the end of the series and this is the final configuration, but I’m still hoping that even though the male lead is a pretty good guy, the two girls will run off together.

Written: FAIL.

Oh yeah, I don’t like going grocery shopping on Sunday because it’s way more crowded and things might be sold out. But the salads are fresher…

Ayse has germs, so Marith stayed home but I went to play Minecraft in person with Nonny and Jus and everyone. I’m still really bad at it, but at least I can go to sleep when it’s night. I put my smoker down somewhere with part of an earthen-walled compound and forgot where I put it! Then I ate some of Ken’s delicious cooking and petted three cats and heard about Jus’s love life and went home. There was rain.

Written: FAIL, but I have an idea, it just needs a bunch more ideas and an actual plot.

I meant to get up and shop a grocery, but instead laid in bed until noon. Surely this cannot be related to being sick and yet staying up every night to read web serials, right?

I wasn’t actually caught up on Katalepsis, there were a couple of chapters on Patreon, but now I am, and all the other web serials I’m following too. Should I start another one? (No, I should not.)

No customers attacked this afternoon, which was nice even though I am awake and theoretically capable of dealing with them.

Written: Still FAIL.

It may have been a three-day work-week for me, but somehow being sick is not like an actual long weekend, so I am perfectly happy with it being Friday.

Watched: My Hero Academia 6.10-12: Dabi’s big reveal! Immediately undercut, but still, fuck that guy.

Read: Katalepsis ch 19.1-14 (Hungry): Oh no, I’m caught up!

Read: Past the Redline (RavensDagger): A spaceship racer from Earth is flung across the galaxy by a mysterious technobabble accident and runs roughshod over all the aliens there by virtue of advanced technology and a massive suit of plot armor. Many poorly-justified murders ensue.

Written: FAIL with FAIL sauce and a light dusting of FAIL.

Back to capitalism, although maybe not very competently. Really I was pretty useless all day, but I did manage to brave the freezing Californian cold to get Taiwan special beef noodles. They were really good, although possibly I shouldn’t have eaten them all in one meal. I think not eating for a couple of days shrank my stomach.

I am too lame to clean up my own mess (also I have no cleaning supplies) but I got the regular cleaners in a bit early and now all my floors are walkable again.

Read: Katalepsis ch 15.1-19, 16.1-9, 17.1-15 (Hungry): Back to Earth, then lots of new friends (although friendship means different things to different entities), and another appearance of a rat bastard.

Written: FAIL.

My symptoms are pretty much gone, but I had no energy at all when it was time for work, so I took this as a sick day and did a lot of nothing. Well, I tried to clean up some of the mess from yesterday and stuff, and some of the household objects I ordered arrived, but mostly nothing.

In the afternoon I went grocery shopping, because I didn’t do that yesterday, and now I need things to eat. It was, as they say on the Internets, FUCKEN WIMDY. First the wind tried to kill me with a tree branch, then it threw my hat into traffic to get run over repeatedly. I did manage to buy food, but it was much too adventurous and exhausting for such a mundane errand.

The wind also took out Ken and Dave’s power, so no gaming.

Read: Katalepsis ch 14.1-18 (Hungry): Back to [SPOILER] and surprising information and annoying side characters and DOOOOM.

Written: Still FAIL.

Oh no, I am not better at all, as I found out in the middle of the night. The events are too horrifying to relate, but I think it’s norovirus. I hear that’s going around, and the symptoms match. Anyway, I spent all day half-asleep, neither eating nor drinking, and not being much use for my on-call shift. New Boss R couldn’t find anyone to cover, but fortunately the customers were all observing the holiday too.

Read: Katalepsis ch 13.1-14 (Hungry): Yep, I still really like this.

Written: Ahahahaha FAIL.