Category: Life of a Space Parasite

Pretty sure this one is also every day.

Intestines still sus, did not go to the office.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 3 (Yoshimurakana): Look, another girl for Kuroko to mack on! Also a cult.

Read (novel): Strange New World (Vivian Shaw): It is way more fallout from the previous book (Grave Importance) and way less road trip than the blurb led me to believe. Still Greta being competent and not too judgmental about who she treats.

Written (game design): 306:

If everything is skills, then we need a set of skills that covers
everything PCs do (that they might do under pressure and have to roll
for, anyway), something like Scum & Villainy’s twelve actions, although
it’s probably fine for there to be more of them, maybe up to twenty or
so.

(Is this really just stats by another name? No, because a) these are the
skill ratings, not just extra numbers that go into calculating the
ratings, and b) framing them as things you learned to do instead of
things you just are is different to the human players.)

Every character has to have ratings in all these skills (except maybe
special ones like magic or flying, for capabilities not all characters
have access to), even if it’s default/+0/8-, so we can’t use that for
determining whether somebody knows what they’re doing for purposes of
not getting more Difficulty when doing the thing. We could set a
threshold, like if you have 11- or better you count as knowing what
you’re doing for anything within that field, but having a low value is
already its own punishment. Knowing what you’re doing depends on your
history: what did you learn to do? This can be like 13th Age
freeform backgrounds: jobs, hobbies, raised by giant spiders,
whatever. If you have at least one that applies to what you’re
trying to do, you don’t get the extra Difficulty for being clueless.

Allowing freeform backgrounds can be fraught, because there’s always
somebody who will take “Literally Batman” and somebody who will
take “Worst Hockey Team Mascot Ever”, but at least here they don’t
give bonuses: how good you actually are at getting things done
depends on your skills. Also, like in 13th Age, every character can
have a few, so it’s fine if one is only for flavor.

Meep.

Still not feeling great in the intestines. Bah.

Read (novel): Renaissance Bear (Murphy Lawless): The boolean returned by bear.isFatedMate(person) is always correct, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be very confusing!

Read (manga): My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today vol 4 (Kiyoko Iwami): The big reveal! And yeah, I usually am in favor of the poly option but these characters are barely emotionally ready to date a single person each, if that.

Written (game design): 202:

No stats! The essentialism is bleah, and it only gets worse when you add
in racial stereotyping modifiers. They’re also an extra two hoops to
jump through on the way to getting the value you actually use in play,
instead of just buying the skill you wanted directly. Plus, it’s much
better for a character (as opposed to a wargame unit) to be described by
what they learned to do rather than by some immutable potential their
elementary school teachers saw in them. (Not that ability scores are
even that in more recent D&Ds, since they constantly increase; they’re
just bonuses to predefined skill groups.)

Strength has only a few skills, but it does have other aspects (damage,
encumbrance, lift bars and bend gates, etc) that make it worth keeping.
Without other stats to line up with, though, it doesn’t have to have any
particular shape; it could be less granular, like a feat with a couple
of levels.

Constitution has even fewer skills, only saves (which come up pretty
often unlike Strength) and hit points.

Hi Earl!

Also Writer’s Rights Day, not sure what that entails. Probably just copyright.

Feeling somewhat gastrointestinal. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten Thursday’s pizza on Sunday? I’m not sure what else I have eaten recently that was sus.

Read (short): “The Thing About Ghost Stories” (Naomi Kritzer): Academia plus ghost stories that insist on not remaining mere oral tradition.

Written (game design): 190. In fact, these 190 words right here:

IF you’re trying to do something and you
– know what you’re doing
– have the tools and capabilities you need
– have enough time
– don’t have anything else in your way (goblin attack, blizzard, etc)
THEN
– you succeed
– there aren’t any unforeseen consequences

Obviously, this is where you want to be with everything you do, but
that’s not going to happen. The more of these factors you lack, the more
Difficulty you have. If the Difficulty is too high, then you just can’t
do it; you need to get more resources or eliminate some adversity.

When there’s some Difficulty but not enough to make the job impossible,
that’s when you have to roll. If you roll well, you still get
consequence-free success, but if you roll less well, you have to give up
one or the other, and if you roll really poorly, you may lose both.

Knowing what you’re doing needs to be as binary and easy to judge as
having the appropriate tools, not something like D&D where the GM is on
the hook for inventing a target number and never does.

I have some friends, but I’m not sure who is my best friend. Maybe Marith, maybe Ayse?

Played (D&D5e): Librarians Errant. Cut to the Temple of Sobek-in-Chains on the Demielemental Plane of Egyptology! Grim, having ended up in the trash compactor with the beautiful high priestess and her roguish love interest (but no wookie or droids), is fleeing the over-armored and under-trained Stormcroc Troopers down one corridor, and the rest of the Reshelving Squad is fleeing a quartet of literal giant crocodiles along the intersecting corridor. They’re reunited, but they have to make a stand! Fortunately Grim’s fey-granted power of animal control is extremely effective when the only significant threat is giant crocodiles, and the day is saved. The restored priesthood of Sobek will not be dismantling the giant sun-cannon on top of the temple, which surely will not be an issue. Decorations and rewards for all (including sweet crocodile tattoos of protection for Thaïs so people will stop teasing her about being unarmored), level UP! And now, back into Bibliospace to finish the journey to Renwick’s laboratory for advice.

We have to bring this campaign to a satisfying conclusion by the end of the summer, as two of our players are moving, and also figure out what to play next. Apparently people actually read this page? So maybe I should have something to playtest by then? And figure out how to explain all the D&Disms I want to get rid of in positive terms.

Read (novel): Like Cicadas (Fiori Manni, tr Emma Sayers): A girl goes to summer on the coast like her family always does, but this year all the girls her age are having puberty and making eyes at boys instead of wanting to do anything fun, and there’s a new girl who is completely amazing, and no one in 1990s Italy knows what lesbians are so great confusion and also great adolescent drama ensues.

Written (catgirl): 268.

I probably eat about the right number of donuts (hardly any), but wish I ate a few more. I never see a donut shop when it’s donut o’clock, though.

Marith has zoomed away on her vacation with her mom. I hope she is not eaten by whales or vikings or the Newark airport.

Read (novel): System Collapse (Martha Wells): Immediate followon to Network Effect, it’s still hard being Murderbot. Its humans are a big help, though. Corporations still the worst.

Read (short): “The Repairer of Reputations” (Robert W Chambers): One of the OG King in Yellow/Yellow Sign stories, an extremely sus young man tries to become king of a sus future (of the time of writing) America based on The King in Yellow and the advice of a mysterious creepy person. Nothing goes well for anyone.

Read (short): “The Yellow Sign” (Robert W Chambers): The other seminal Yellow Sign tale. An artist and his model/muse are afflicted with a ghastly apparition. Nothing goes well for anyone.

Written (catgirl): 222.

That’s every day, for humans!

Went to the office, did some work, ate a torta or at least picked out the insides.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 2 (Yoshimurakana): More horndoggery, more crazed killers, a murder mansion, still no redeeming social value.

Read (short): Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells): Murderbot solves a murder mystery and is still the best.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.5: What’s up with this new character?! Marith and I suspect different things about them, which could both be true.

Written (catgirl): 270.

Insert mockery of the current regime here.

Missed my train stop but still made it in to the office, Coworker D is on vacation, ate some popcorn chicken, had my first 1:1 with Boss T.

Watched (live action TV): Leverage 5.3-4: The one where Nate doesn’t listen, and the one where Eliot helps Parker have an emotion.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 1 (Yoshimurakana): A mass-murdering lesbian horndog kills criminals the police can’t handle in a city named R’lyeh. It’s over-the-top action-horror, not cosmic horror despite the Lovecraftian words scattered around, and all the monsters are nominally human, but it’s not surprising SAN is in generally short supply. Very unwholesome, zero redeeming social value.

Read (novel): Shroud (Adrian Tchaikovsky): It’s not a Hal Clement novel, but probably as close as we get in 2025. Two unfortunate explorers from a von Neumann corporate dystopia are stranded on a world that’s a cross between Venus and Titan and have to trek across the alien terrain full of alien creatures to get off. It’s more xenobiology and xenopsychology than chemistry and physics, though.

Written (catgirl): 198. Oh, that’s what was behind that door.

Well, Dinosaur Day and National Animal Rights Day, but the combination is obvious.

Read (novel): Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me (Django Wexler): I thought this series was going to take longer, but nope, Davi and her sexy orc girlfriend figure out what is going on (possibly by getting hit in the face with it), avoid breaking up too much, and generally save the day despite what’s going on being utterly terrifying.

Read (short): “Asymmetrical” (Garth Nix): Not a failure mode of demon-summoning I had previously considered.

Written (catgirl): 162. That’s not very much.

Not sure those two really go together (I said, in a sentence fragment).

Tried to get runs and sets together for the used book store, which seemed to work pretty well.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 17-18: More interparty wrangling with Shuro’a and Kabru’s teams, a big Falin reveal, intraparty conflict with dopplegangers.

Read (novella): Exit Strategy (Martha Wells): Conclusion of the initial plot arc. Mensah is the best, but Murderbot is really the best.

Written (catgirl): 259.

Check! Also International Creativity Day, which, maybe not.

I did not get much work done because Sage wanted to sleep on my all day, but then exactly at quitting time another department completely screwed up a shared resource and I had to spend an hour and some helping get things recombobulated.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.4: I’m glad we got the line about Dr. Mensah being an intrepid galactic explorer, but we didn’t need the idiot or the spurious countdown.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.2: The one with the hockey. I think they formed an autonomous workers’ collective at the end, which is always good.

Read (manga): The Whole of Humanity Has Gone Yuri Except For Me (Hiroki Haruse): One morning, a high-school girl wakes up in a world that has had only women for a hundred years. This is not just a setup; figuring out what happened and what the main characters feel about it is the plot. The art could be better, but there are girl-smooches. Complete in one double-sized omnibus.

Read (novella): All Systems Red (Martha Wells): The TV show is all well and good, but I felt a need to reread the books, and yep, they’re better. Because Murderbot is the best, and the non-goofy Preservation researchers are also the best.

Read (novella): Artificial Condition (Martha Wells): ART is also the best.

Read (novella): Rogue Protocol (Martha Wells): I guess Miki could have been the best, but… CombatBots are definitely the worst.

Written (catgirl): 301.

A pink flamingo is a well-fed flamingo full of brine shrimp!

Also End of the Middle Ages Day, which is apropos since I was thinking about how D&D is not medieval. (It’s mostly Renaissance, with some Wild West and Post-Apocalyptic thrown in.)

Went to the office, ate German food with vat-grown sausage, did some work.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.1: New lair, and Nate is up to something that’s probably self-destructive. The one with the airplane.

Read (novel): Advocate (Daniel M Ford): Frontier town necromancer-sheriff has to go back to civilization to help defend her mentor against trumped-up charges, which lets her use her noble background but also involves a lot of annoying politics.

Written (catgirl): 299.

They have built-in pockets for their favorite rocks, and trade rocks as part of courtship.

Went to the office, Coworker D is on vacation, Boss K is gone, ate a salmon sushirrito, did some work. Had a meeting with new Boss³ M (or maybe he’s only boss² since boss and boss² are currently collapsed into one) to tell him about everything that’s broken and ridiculous.

Read (manga): Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon vol 2-3 (Shio Usui): They definitely have feelings, although so far it’s still a mess. The little sister ships them, though.

Written (catgirl): 148.

Except fear itself, of course.

Meant to take another load of books to find new homes, but failed. Meant to get cat supplies, but failed. Did not manage to do much of anything.

Read (short): “Our Dead Selves Lie Like Footsteps in Our Wake” (Jeff Isacksen): Wizards contend with the mess life makes of all young dreams, and also with patriarchy and ablism.

Read (manga): Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon vol 1 (Shio Usui): She pays attention to fashion and presentation to get a good son-in-law to make her parents happy, she has given up all hope of romance because everything is for her little sister’s sake after they were orphaned, together they have no idea that they are going to be in a workplace yuri story.

Written (catgirl): 194. I think most of this last bit is filler that can be expunged, but that’s a problem for Future Me.

No, not “happy”.

A holiday is like Saturday, so I did my usual shopping and lunch and reading Katalepsis, and also my usual being very useless. Monkeycats came home today, so I didn’t have to visit the cats, but they just got home from an expedition today so there was no anime.

Read (novel): Necrobane (Daniel M Ford): Second book about the necromancer who gets assigned as the sheriff of a frontier village where someone has just woken up all the undead left over from the recent war and also maybe Tom Bombadil. Nothing that can’t be solved with a lot of magic and a daring heist– oops.

Written (catgirl): 332, which is a lot for present me, but really next to nothing.

Are you a hoopy frood who knows where your towel is at? Good, good.

Played (D&D5e): Librarians Errant: The Reshelving Squad (minus Grim) and their new Adorable Crocodile Boy flee from the molasses flood burbling down the tunnel… right into the clutches of Glinda and her Emerald City Pikemen! A sticky battle ensues, with blinding sugar-dust, plummeting tiny houses, and toppling lollipop trees. Eventually, Thaïs manages to get her eyes clear long enough to teleport herself and the Adorable Crocodile Boy to the realm above the Lollipop Forest, where she finds herself running late for a final exam that she hasn’t studied for. It was all a dream! In fact they are safe(?) and sound(?) back in the university, and soon learn that Grim has been dragged into the river that was running down University Street by a saltwater crocodile. The only reasonable conclusion is that Sobek is mad about his temple being taken over by the body-hopper and the squad is on the hook to fix it. Shoggoth Bob is bribed into regurgitating the spellbook found earlier, with the body-hopping spell which is so evil that nobody thinks they could learn it without an alignment change (except Martin, and nobody believes him), but Renwick is already a lich and a demigod of magic, so what’s the worst that could happen? The squad sets out for his laboratory, and as Lilli’s divination magic indicates that Grim can be retrieved from the temple of the god who took him, they will look for a temple of Sobek on the banks of the Dessarin Valley.

After gaming, I went all the way to Dave’s place to check on the cats, who were still fine. Good job being cats, guys!

Written (catgirl): 208.

And yet I did not play Perils & Princesses!

I did go to the farmer’s market, check on Ayse & fam’s cats, and eat fresh veggies and cheese with Marith.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 1.1: Rewatched to see who the recurring character at the end of season 4 was. Oh, that guy. Yeah, fuck him. Also, Parker was a lot sexier in the premier. Not intrinsically, but she had more sexy scenes.

Written (catgirl): 191.

Turtles are good.

I am on vacation, because I didn’t retract my request for days off even though I am not worthy to go to Roseville.

Slept in until forever because I stayed up too late reading last night, then took some books to the used book store. They didn’t keep as much this time, but on the other hand I was finally able to move a bunch of stuff from the couch onto shelves. Not sure those couch shelves will ever recover, though.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 3: Not a lot happened in this episode, or at least it didn’t have an arc. Not sure what Gurathin’s deal is, but I don’t think he’s just being pointlessly creepy.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.17-18: Season finale! The one with Nate’s dad and the patent office and the return of the guy from before (who sucks). I thought this was the end of the original series and was bummed that there was no OT3, but actually there’s a whole season yet.

Read (manga): Sachi’s Monstrous Appetite vol 1-2 (Chomoran): Middle-school boy discovers that the high-school girl next store he has a crush on is actually a giant whale(?) monster and he smells delicious to monsters. Together, they fight crime keep the local monster population under control and have feelings.

Written (catgirl): 271.

Hi Ken!

Went to the office, some coworkers were there, ate samosas and saved my chicken biriyani for later, tried to straighten things up for vacation.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.15-16: the one where they help a rich guy, and the one where Hardison tries to be the mastermind. Only two episodes left in the season, so the guy who shows up at the end is probably going to be important for the finale.

Read (RPG): Under Hollow Hills (Meguey Baker, Vincent Baker): You are a fairy circus that travels around performing and getting involved in fairy shenanigans. Pretty much the opposite of Apocalypse World tonally, yet still very PbtA. Shifting toward Summer or Winter, planning shows, ensuring there’s always someone who doesn’t want you there, attending your own funeral, all the important fairy tropes are covered, in a way that’s generic enough to let players come up with their own ideas of fairy but evocative enough to always be Fairy.

Read (novel): The Devils (Joe Abercrombie): In an alternate Europe full of anthropophagous elves, murder, religious schisms, murder, various forms of holy and unholy sorcery, murder, etc, an extremely hapless monk is given command of a band of monstrous criminals and sent to deliver the lost princess of Troy to her throne. It’s Abercrombie, so it’s the darkest and murderiest of comedy, but surprisingly for alternate-historical grimness, I don’t think there’s any sexual violence. Stayed up way too late finishing it.

Written (catgirl): 171.

Not sure what that one’s about, poetry or body horror or both.

Went to the office, closed some more cases, got official notification that Boss K is leaving, ate a veggie burrito.

Read (novel): The Incandescent (Emily Tesh): Magical dark British academia, from the perspective of a teacher, written by somebody who knows what it is teachers actually do all day in the modern world. Also, did you know that teachers are supposed to protect their students and not use them as pawns? Yes, even the orphans! Plus, a real magic system with suitably alarming supernatural entities.

Written (catgirl): 127.

Also underrated.

Played (Changeling the Lost): Berkeley 94. Everett has a run-in with fake cops at his work, but defeats them with the power of stoicism and railroad tracks, Thessaly does tarot readings, Longfingers takes more notes on how to be a grown-up lesbian, Siddy gets supplies for more urban farmsteading stuff, and Theophania does approximately nothing. I should probably drop out.

Written (catgirl): 197, splitting the different between a whole page and going to bed on time and thus accomplishing neither.

Super useless all day. Did manage a little shopping so at least I got out of the apartment.

Watched (anime): Somali and the Forest Spirit 8-9: Backstory of this enclave with humans, and then on to the next city with some recurring characters. No, 6-year-olds are not good at keeping secrets.

Read (nonfiction): Rise of the Zombie Bugs (Mindy Weisberger): All about the various fungi, insects, worms, etc, that change the behavior of the creepy-crawlies they parasitize. Sadly there was not a lot here that was really new to me. I know too much about biological horror.

Written (catgirl): 181.

Also World Telecommunication Day and National Walnut Day.

Only failed a little at taking the bus to the used book store, and ended up on the same bus as Dave, who was on his way to play board games with people who had suddenly found room in their schedules. Only failed a little at the used book store, but I couldn’t fold up all my bags for the return journy, which was annoying. The bus failed me on the way back, so I was at lunch like an hour later than I had hoped, but it worked out okay.

Marith was dead from mucus or travel or something, so I made my own way to the Eurovision party and we ate many foods and made technology bend to our whims.

Watched (live-action TV): Eurovision Song Contest 2025: There were fae and wacky legs and a Polish lady who sang while dangling from rings despite being 52, at least two performances that had to be bowdlerized, some eye candy for Ken, gender of assorted densities, etc. Israel’s song was so boring that none of us felt bad about booing them, but they came in second anyway. The actual winner was deserving of victory.

Written (catgirl): 135.

Why yes, every aspect of the world is completely fucked up.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1-2: Surprisingly, I didn’t hate it! Sure, the main casting was Wrong, but at least it was a real actor who could be misanthropic, and everybody else was fine. The changes were appropriate for the medium, the Murderbot voiceover wasn’t terrible, the Preservation crew were weird space hippies with ethics and feelings instead of profit motive, etc. Worth signing up for a free trial of AppleTV for.

Written (catgirl): 250 exactly.

One of two, and that’s not counting Velociraptor Awareness Day.

Went to the office, spaced out during a long all-hands meeting, ate some rice and vegetables and meat, put up with Coworker R being a libertarian and also engaging in the British national sport of complaining (I have no moral high ground here), closed some cases.

I complained on slack about being ditched for the journey to and from Roseville, so now everybody there can hate me too. They’re right that I could at least look for a taxi if I hate both gig economy and people doing things for me, though.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.14: While the girls were out righting a wrong at a fancy party, the boys were getting into some kind of mobster trouble with an idiot.

Read (novel): Emberstone Farm vol 2 (L Meili): More OP-ness, world events that are alarming to people who think they live in reality, system usage that’s alarming to people who think they live in reality, extremely off-screen sex, nothing like an actual problem for the MC.

Read (manga): Assorted Entanglements vol 2 (Mikanuji): Apparently it’s been two years since I read volume 1, so I don’t remember if any of these are the same characters, but they’re all super gay and somewhat ridiculous anyway.

Written (catgirl): 202.

One for Jus.

Went to the office, metaboss T was there but only briefly, ate some meat and potatoes and kale, closed some cases.

Apparently nobody else is going up on the train to Roseville for Memorial Day after all, so I have to travel by myself if I even want to bother making people put up with me. I’m not sure I should.

Read (manga): Chainsaw Man vol 11 (Tatsuki Fujimoto): Well. That’s one way to make sure a defeat sticks. That’s the end of the arc, but looks like it’s only the first of two or more. Not sure what Denji is going to do for an encore, though.

Written (catgirl): 195