An excellent day to not destroy the world!
Also an excellent day to buy some food, I guess.
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.14-15: Poor Yuru. But at least he got to pet a dog.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 159, but I ended with an explosion.
It was tempting to stay in bed forever, but in fact I stayed in bed about the usual amount and then got up to shop and stuff. I even had enough time to catch up this journal through today. It will inevitably fall behind, but at least it’s no longer falling further behind. Yet.
Ayse granted me the boon of leftover pozole. I will eat it for lunch tomorrow.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.28: That turned out better for the others than I would have expected. But now, the end of the mage test arc, and of the season. Will we go straight into S2? Maybe, or maybe we’ll watch something. Only Future Us knows.
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.12-13: Oh right, that guy is really nasty. Also between the mass murders and the escapes, the village is going to be completely depopulated by the end of the season.
Read (novel): Lillith of Endings (Dreamer’s Riot): A militant anarchist is isekai’d into the body of a small girl in a fantasy world with classism and sexism sliders set to max, and combines her advanced Earth physics knowledge with magic to become OP and start dealing with the ruling serial-killer class and their monopoly on magic. Because it is Misogyny World, she is threatened with rape at every turn, but is actually only beaten up a lot.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 163.
I did not do a good job of getting out of bed, but did manage to shop and stuff in time for anime.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.27: Third phase of the test, completely anticlimactic. But now they have at least one first-class mage for the trip into the northern doomlands. One episode left in the season!
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.10-11: That poor kid, dropped into the middle of these lunatics. He’s not even crazy enough to fit like Yuru was.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 114, but I had to count it by hand, because my bugfix wasn’t actually a fix.
I went to the place to see the kittens Jus thinks I should add to my collection, then went to the other place to get supplies for the cats I do have, and then to yet a third place to get even more supplies. It was a lot of hours and travelling, for what didn’t seem like much accomplishment, but it was probably healthier than staying at home all day.
Watched (anime): Baka & Test 1.1: I saw a clip that made it look like there might be interesting gender fuckery, but it turns out I don’t care enough to watch it far enough to find out.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 156.
Only slept in a moderate amount, managed to go shopping and read Maidens of the Fall before lapsing into uselessness again.
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.9: Apparently we’re done with the cute daemons for now; it’s time for mythological horrors.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.25-26: Conclusion of the second test, with cunning plans and terrifying magic. Also Denken was right, they should all have listened to him.
Read (novel): Your Boyfriend Needs an Exorcist (Justine Pucella Winans): A girl who has become a terrible squirrel-eating ghost accidentally possesses the boy her crush is dating, and everything goes downhill from there. Way, way downhill. With murders.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 246.
I was on call today, but the customers did not call. Good customers. I only slept in a little, and did the usual shopping.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.24: Fern is convinced she could kill Frieren. Is she right?
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.7-8: Big fight is over, time for the recrimination phase! Also cleanup, because these are not the superpowers that avoid collateral damage.
Read (novel): Cattywumpus (Ash Van Otterloo): In a small North Carolina town where witchcraft is frowned upon, two girls who are hereditary rivals are having trouble with their magic for completely different reasons, which means when they interact, they can cause enormous problems, but can’t cooperate enough to fix them.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 130.
I did not eat any angels, but I did do the usual weekend sleeping and shopping. I did not manage to do any reading.
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.6: Big daemon fight with the sister-stealers!
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.22-23: Downtime between the test rounds (Stark knows what he did wrong), and then on to the second round.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 120.
As foretold, there was no gaming. I did some minor shopping but that was about it.
Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 17-18: Plot twist! Reversal! Another plot twist!
Read (novel): The Dungeon Book (Gareth Hanrahan): A baby princess is kidnapped by a dragon, but it takes a whole dungeon to raise a child. It’s a very D&D dungeon, with all kinds of random monsters, talking skulls, wizard overlords, etc. Also the scourge of adventurers, but fortunately the monsters have a human of their own.
Read (novel): Maggie the Dread (Austin Gilkeson): A hapless middle-school boy accidentally releases a goddess of destruction just in time for the solar eclipse when she will destroy the universe. But in the meantime, she has to go to middle school too. Probably the least unlike Daniel Pinkwater of anything I’ve read recently.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 117.
Today was the last day of Doug, the bookstore guy who has been selling books at (various branches of) the bookstore I go to since before I moved to California. I hope he has a good retirement.
Gaming for tomorrow is definitely cancelled. Freed of worrying about how to spend points, I should have been useful today, but I wasn’t.
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.4-5: Yuru has no time for the “learn about the modern world” subplot, he has supernatural sidekicks and a conspiracy to unravel!
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.21: And thus concludes phase one of the mage test. There was not as much murdering as it sounded like going in.
Read (short): Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk (Travis Baldree): That is definitely one of the more unusual detectives I’ve seen, even in fantasy mystery.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 116.
An extremely blessed day, even if Daleks are trying to steal it with a fiendish plan involving zucchini custard.
I only slept in a couple of hours, but still spent the day being useless.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.20: Lots of fighting, Fern being kind of intimidating even to psychopaths like Übel and Wirbel, Denken’s buddy overpowering Frieren’s teammates, but Denken is the most doomed because he’s facing off with Frieren and she has a plan.
Watched (anime): Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1.3: Yuru doesn’t understand the modern world, but he’s not letting that stop him!
Read (novel): Empire of Light (Gary Gibson): After following the alien breadcrumbs to the alien maguffin, the problem is resolved, mostly by crashing civilization in this arm of the galaxy. A few of the people who died deserved it, though.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 145. Still kind of stuck.
Did I do anything today? I put on this hat and then everything is a blur…
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.17-18: Jeez, are Fern and Stark ever going to get together? Maybe not, if they need a counselor to keep them on speaking terms.
Read (novel): The Mortons (Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld): The Morton family doesn’t rule the world, they just ensure the people who do, rule it the way they want, by taking care of those little problems for them. But what happens when one of their enforcers wants to stop making the world worse? Content warning for all the murders and violence and manipulation and sociopathy and harm to animals and insufficient harm to the rich.
Read (novel): Calculated Whisk (Lindsay Buroker): Fantasy romance between a retired mercenary and a dragon chef who were on opposite sides during the war. Book 1/N, so they are barely on speaking terms by the end. D&Dish in that the alleged medieval fantasy is actually very modern socially, and also unnecessarily heterosexual.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 137.
For no sensible reason, I am on call both days this weekend, so I just have to take my computer everywhere during the day and cross my fingers that I don’t need it. I completely failed that by going back to sleep for about four hours after taking handover and feeding the cats, and then as I was starting to move toward going out, the customers attacked. It wasn’t terrible, but it did use up the entire afternoon. I guess I’ll have to try again tomorrow.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.14-16: Side quests, old friends, Stark and Fern’s relationship progressing , Stark and Fern suffer while Frieren eats donuts.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 171. No good plan yet, although some bad plans dismissed for being unethical or impractical.
But not me, don’t marry me.
The cats helped me stay in bed, but eventually I did manage to get up and do an errand and read a Maidens of the Fall and go to an anime.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.12-13: Into the snake cave of the ancient chrysomorphs! Accommodations for trauma brought on by bad pedagogy! Plummeting and doom!
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 179.
Also Father’s Day, so good news for druid dads, I guess?
Played (Hero 6E): Kaiju Academy. Labyrinth shenanigans result in the cohort ending up on an English airship headed for a commando strike to steal the new French dreadnought, the Emperor Napoleon. There’s some initial nervousness about the giant spider and women on an airship, but soon the girls are all in on assaulting the dastardly and inflammatory French in exchange for a lift back to the flying mist-form labyrinth. Surely nothing bad can come of May feeding an anti-air Frenchman through the port engine, right?
Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 15-16: Finally, the dreadful secret behind the Life Fiber!
Read (manga): Dandadan vol 19 (Yukinobu Tatsu): That thing where parts of the world just disappear is getting kind of serious. I wonder if this means we’re getting near the end. Will Denji die some more? Will he achieve ultimate power? Will these be distinguishable?
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 306, although both today’s and yesterday’s numbers are bogus because I accidentally deleted something and had to restore it. Also, even though it’s Tall Girl Appreciation Day, I was mean to my MC. (It’s some time in November for her anyway.)
I think the bourbon means it has to be National (US).
Slept in a lot, did one shopping expedition, that’s about it for today. Did not manage to rally against fascism.
Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 12-14: I’d say that’s it for the school fighting drama arc, but really the national conquest arc is pretty similar.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 282.
Usual shopping and Maidens of the Fall (back from hiatus!) despite the 90° heat, returned home with a pile of comics. A pocket frond live-slacked an extremely alarming yet eventually okay saga that she dealt with much better than I would have in the same circumstance, I’m sure. Ken gave me sausage bean cabbage when we went over for anime, which was quite nice.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.11: Start of the escort quest test, whether Richeh likes it or not! Also, introduction of the world’s shittiest teacher.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.12-13: The hero’s sword stuck in the rock is introduced. Will that be important later? Who can say? But finally Frieren’s party has a cleric, and is up to four members which is the standard for heroic adventures. Double mages instead of double warriors like her last party, though.
Read (manga): Sanda vol 2 (Paru Itagaki): This world is even weirder about youth than it originally seemed, probably because it’s not just cracktastic, it’s also social commentary.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 109.
That’s giving the ice cream to the children, not trading away your offspring for tasty tasty frozen desserts.
No gaming, only Zuul.
Watched (anime): Mistress Kanan is Devilishly Easy 4-5: Still no redeeming social value
Read (comic collection): Unnatural vol 3 (Mirka Andolfo): Okay, they did get the line about some animals being more equal than others in there. More creepy fascist conspiracy, past life possession, final confrontation, The End.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 162.
It’s always sad when being on call means getting called. I couldn’t even draw a black bear to eat the customers, because I can’t draw worth beans. Fortunately I eventually stopped being on call and could go over to watch anime. Ayse is Abroad, for Tourism, so we did not get distracted, and also Marith’s laundry took a long time, so we had plenty of anime.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.10: Turns out that able-bodied people being ableist doesn’t make disabled people any less competent.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.9-11: The issue with the demon diplomats is resolved, thanks to Frieren’s special technique, which is presented in such a way as to be legitimately kind of terrifying. Turns out you can get really good at something if you practice it constantly for a thousand years.
Read (novel): Ladies in Hating (Alexandra Vasti): Rival gothic novelists in C19 England, sapphic longing, a mysterious and decrepit manor in the countryside, some light haunting, more sapphic longing. Apparently part of a larger series but the other books seem to be about men or something, so whatever.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): Finally wrote an email about astronomy resources.
Also National Creativity Day. I am doing better at one of those than the other.
Didn’t sleep in quite as much as most Saturdays, so I guess that’s good. Did some shopping.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.9: Just because you’re 11 doesn’t mean you can stay up forever, Coco! Also, Tartah, don’t ask those questions, it won’t make anybody happy if you get answers.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.7-8: And now we find out what demons really are and why they are that way, and how some humans still fall for it.
Read (manga): Love Bullet vol 1 (inee): Cute girls saved by the goddess of love from actual death become cupids but it’s the 21st century so they have guns with heart-shaped muzzles, and also they’re kind of fighty, probably because they can’t fall in love even with each other.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 210. Rewrote what I wrote yesterday to make it more consistent, which arguably is not something I should be doing now, but it was All Wrong.
Although sadly I am not playing a gay little fungus goblin today because it is an off week. However, fungi can have up to tens of thousands of sexes, so they’re still against queerphobia. (No word on whether fungi have gender, though.)
Slept in only two hours today, did three successful shopping expeditions, and took no naps.
Watched (anime): Kill La Kill 9-11: The fight against the Elite Four continues, but then suddenly, forget all that! New enemy! Extremely high Taunt rating!
Read (novel): A Parade of Horribles (Matt Dinniman): I no longer remember who any of these characters were, and impressed that either Carl or the author does. Maybe they asked Princess Donut to keep track. Anyway, aside from the mandatory PvP, there is also some backstory about an important character. The foot thing remains a mystery.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL. You know, maybe this means I should be taking everything off the shelf and disposing of it, since I’m apparently not motivated to read it.
Written (second rewrite of Geometry for Mutants): 204.
Have you even seen a pickle salute?
I not only slept in before shopping, I took a nap after shopping. Then we went to see anime and I made Marith stay in the cat-infested house until she expired of sneezings.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.7: The carriage disaster.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.4-5: And now they have Stark, although he doesn’t realize it yet.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (second rewrite of Geometry for Mutants): 381. I need to keep a list of everything my MC makes a mental note of, though, because
I was on call today, so I didn’t do anything. Some of the doing nothing was sleeping, but some was just doing nothing. Despite that, I was late to hand over to the next person, because I am dumb. I did manage a little shopping after handover.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.6:We finally meet Olruggio and Coco gives him the rant about her love of magic. Then Agott gets to head out to help with the carriage disaster.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.2-3: Fern joins the party (over the course of like eight years). Frieren really does not understand any people, which is a problem because she is herself a person. She does love magic, though.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (second rewrite of new project): 301.
Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 7-8 Having defeated someone important, Ryuko is suddenly elevated in the town’s hierarchy, which means sudden wealth for her host family. But then, the Main Villainess plays the Total Reset card!
Read (novel): Platform Decay (Martha Wells): Obviously Murderbot’s life wasn’t hard enough before, so now it has to deal with children and also emotion checks. At least these Preservationists aren’t as recklessly self-defeating as the usual ones. The half-deserted planetary torus is a good spooky setting, but although fans can explain literally anything, it doesn’t seem like it quite fits with the scale of the rest of the setting.
Written (second rewrite of new project): 203. I’ll get there eventually! And then I’ll have to figure out what comes next.
Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 5-6: Another member of the anti-magic-clothes organization Nudist Beach appears to cause trouble, and Ryuko faces the guy who sees things.
Read (manga): There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… vol 8 (Musshu, Teren Mikami, Eku Takeshima): Another actual declaration of love! If only Renako would go to therapy and maybe read up on polyamory.
Read (novel): Friendly Fyre (Kia Leep): Cross-isekai litRPG, the main character gets cast in the role of an historic leader, with an underground refugee community that’s more than a bit of a fixer-upper. Apparently part of a larger series,
Written (second rewrite of new project): 244.
Fascists take double effect from psychic attacks today.
I planned to get up at a reasonable hour to practice for the work week, get myself some lunch, then do some shopping and get my cranial filaments shortened, but instead slept in forever and had no lunch. I did manage to run most of the errands.
Watched (anime): Dorohedoro 2.4: More of Nikaido’s backstory, which explains why certain actions were taken in recent episodes. Also, Caiman’s not looking too hot.
Watched (anime): Kill la Kill 3-4: Ryuko discovers the secret to unlocking the power of the magic uniform is a complete lack of modesty. Also, she was totally hitting on Broken-Arm Girl, wasn’t she?
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (second rewrite of new project): 339.
Did my usual sleeping too much and shopping and reading Maidens of the Fall.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.4-5: The dragon maze sequence, with extra fluffiness.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (second rewrite of new project): 281.
An entire subgenre of superheroes with time cards and OSHA posters in the break room definitely exists, I have read some of it, but it is not entirely my thing.
Went back to work today, although the office is occupied with the Big Yearly Sales Meeting so I didn’t have to try commuting. I was somewhat functional, but sleepy. The all-hands was about how to extract the maximum money from the AI economy, and I really don’t think there is any. It’s just Nvidia fronting data-center fraudsters money to pay Nvidia for products that make no money. I wish I had spent the past thirty years being neurotypical enough to save and save and save, because I’m not convinced I’m not going to have to retire next year when everything collapses.
Managed to do some cleaning and other household chores, which is good.
Read an essay from famous game designer Jay Dragon reminding me that no amount of blathering about a game by myself is worth anything; games have to be played. Pity I don’t have any gamers.
Watched (anime): Dorohedoro 2.1-3: Still adding to the plot, and the murders, and the horrible bugs, and Caiman’s head exploding with backstory.
Read (manga): Kirio Fan Club vol 1 (Chikyu no Osakana Ponchan): Two high schools who both like the same (ew) boy. There is no sign of them coming to their senses. I bought this because a long time ago I thought the two girls in This Ugly Yet Beautiful World were interesting, but nah.
Written (new project): 226. I finished the first chapter, so I need to figure out what the rest of the story is, and also a title or at least a tag to distinguish it from other projects.
Still too lethargic to get up and log in to work in the morning, but being sick is really boring. Less coughing, so maybe tomorrow I will do the thing. Any thing.
Watched (anime): Dorohedoro 1.10-12 + OAVs: All the plot lines are colliding. The OAVs don’t have any plot, just backstory.
Read (short): The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale (CM Waggoner): An entry in the “discuss fantasy/fairytale tropes in the commentary on a fairytale story” subgenre. It’s fine, everybody loves witches and their gay adopted sons, but I’m not sure anyone will ever beat Diana Wynne Jones.
Written (new project): 206.
No gaming, since Dave is also sick, so I slept way way in, took a shower with steam to try to clear out my respiratory system, did a little shopping, was mostly useless. Do I have less coughing, though? That would be nice.
Watched (anime): Dorohedoro 1.7-9: All the plotlines are colliding, plus a neighborhood baseball game in the Hole. It is as gruesome as you might expect. Other than that, things seem to be moving to the sorcerers’ world.
Read (novel): Broken Prince (Glynn Stewart): Nth in the Adamant series, switching to the brother of the previous viewpoint character. Plenty of missiles in space. Also pirates.
Read (from the shelf): SICK.
Written (new project): 175. No alien centaurs, not even any sex.
After feeling bleah for a while, I finally felt bad enough to not do work at all. Instead I slept uselessly and maybe also cuddled some cats.
Watched (anime): Dorohedoro 1.4-6: Zombie night, sorcerer intrigue, etc. Still ultra-violent.
Read (from the shelf): SICK.
Written (new project): 109.