Tag: anime

Technically I was on call today, but only as backup in case the weekend shift (we have that now!) ran into something they couldn’t handle, but they didn’t, so I guess I’m fairly gruntled. I was much less gruntled with my whole endealment yesterday and the day before.

I felt a little queasy so instead of getting a big wad of pastrami and sauerkraut, I had a normal roast beef sandwich while doing my shopping and it worked very well. Good job, me.

I did a little landscaping in Minecraft. A diamond shovel with Efficiency 5 just tears through hills, but it also tears through bees that wander into the line of fire, so I had to take a break to go recruit some bees from another hive and breed them up and stuff. Still haven’t managed to set up a flat place for aging copper.

Shoulders still sore, weather still hotter than I would prefer, but embodied existence not much more unpleasant than usual today.

Holy crap, what happened to Republicans thinking “gun control means being able to hit your target”?

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 1-3. I have seen some episodes of this, but did not remember the way [SPOILER] walks in and goes “nice comedy show you got here, let me BLOODILY DISMEMBER it”.

Read: No Man’s Land (Elliott Kay): My reading list says I read all previous books in this series, but I don’t remember any of the new alien threat events that this book follows on from. I was able to figure out what was going on well enough that I didn’t feel a need to immediately go back and reread, although I may at some point. Also, I hadn’t remembered that main character’s original job in his local armed forces was specifically preventing war crimes, but there need to be more people on that duty. Also also, extremely worrying details about aliens. I feel like the humans are not scared enough of the Krokinthians, never mind some of the new guys.

Read: Buck the Halls (Zoe Chant): I thought I had read all of Kit’s “Virtue Shifters” novellas except the latest, but no! I had somehow not read this one! I really liked it, because Inner Stag! Tragic Antlers Incident! Additional, Possibly Even More Tragic Antlers Incident! Also no sex and I didn’t miss it, so I must be old now. (Narrator: What does he mean “now”?)

Written: 368, somehow. I guess it’s easy to write a 13-year-old being dramatically depressed?

I need to get some paper bags to put books into for taking to the used book store. Maybe Marith can steal some for me.

Lying with my head on a pillow kind of worked for sleeping, but not very well. I had to take the morning off to recuperate, but my upper torso is feeling a lot better, so I was able to actually do so, and then work in the afternoon. Also, none of us have to stay late on Fridays any more under the new system.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.24: A little bit of climax, mostly denouement (spellcheck thinks I got that word right on the first try, go me). This is where the latest English volume of the manga ends, so we’re completely in sync and left waiting for more to be translated.

Read: The Witches’ Marriage vol 3 (Studio Headline): Surprisingly, the end! The challenges Melissa and Tanya face in this volume are the Final Trials, and to nobody’s surprise they manage to open the gates by acknowledging their true feelings and enter paradise.

Written: 134.

Another massive failure on my part.

It is the Saturday before a normal work week, so I went grocery shopping as normal (including pastrami sandwich and webserial chapters and bookstore accidents), and it is a normal Saturday so Marith and I went over to watch anime with Dave. I am going to declare that chapter of Covid closed.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 22-24: This usurper has a more cunning plan than the last, but his personality defects are not any less. HEA!

Read: Hell For Hire (Rachel Aaron): 5000 years ago, Gilgamesh conquered the afterlife and now controls almost all magic, access to heavens and hells, enslavement of demons, suppression of human awareness of the supernatural, etc. Not everybody appreciates the rule of the Eternal King, though, and various people’s dissatisfactions lead to violence. (Also possibly romance.) The FL’s secret identity is not actually very secret, but that’s okay. Presumably the revolution will really get going in the next book.

Written: 104 of catgirl high jinks, but also some prep for gaming tomorrow.

Don’t cross the streams! It’s bad when a whole asteroid becomes a meteor!

I managed to get some things done today! I ordered some stuff online, because I can do that from quarantine, I filled out PDF character sheets for the six (not eight!) classes in Perils and Princesses and added a bit to the adventure. Still needs somebody to talk to in case nobody picks the gift that talks to animals. Then I rewarded myself by going to Ayse’s skleleton factory and murdering forty-plus levels worth of skellies and getting covered in bones and arrows and crappy bows. It still wasn’t enough to enchant all my stuff because I didn’t think to take it with me, but I only need like eight more levels to finish. Then I can think about getting axe/shovel/hoe in enchanted diamond.

After a week of eating the same old food I bought just before testing positive, I doordashed some Thai food. Just the appetizer was enough for dinner, but that’s okay, I can eat more tomorrow.

I caught up on journaling, too.

Watched: She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man 1-4: Too much pointless backstory, not enough animation budget.

Written: 158.

 

Also Atheists Solidarity Day.

I did not go into the office today, which is for the best because I was already very slow and coughing.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.21-23: Finally we get all the backstory and the villainous plan and Chise being blasé about being in people’s memories, and yet still a cliffhanger.

Written: 150 of editing.

 

No mermaid sightings today. Not even manatees.

Tomorrow I am on call in the afternoon, so I had to run all my weekend errands today. Food for me, food for the cats, drinks for me, lying in front of the fan.

My Minecraft character now has a good bow again, since even a terrible bow will give a fair bit of durability, and anybody who fishes (Dave. Dave is the one who fishes) will have a million bows with very low durability. Also I went to see the Ice Spikes biome (spiky!) and then delved into the depths to get diamonds to make armor and a sword now that I have enough bookstore credit to enchant them.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 19-21: Well, that seems bad.

Written:182.

Really a pretty swell invention, even though I haven’t used one in ages.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.7½: The Sally Mae-visits-Millie special. A bit of the old ultra-violence.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.8: Marith is right, the fic writers already watched this episode 377 times in simulation and knew how it was going to go, but that didn’t make it less painful. And Blitz was almost a functional adult for some parts of the episode! (Loona, as usual, was secretly MVP.)

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.17-18: All the pieces of the doom are converging!

Written: 132.

DInosaurs, milk, olives, pineapples, black bears, hazelnut cake, nail polish, …

I accidentally turned off my alarm, so I ended up sleeping in until after noon without even meaning to. No dinosaurs for me! However, I did make it to errands and back home in time for Saturday Minecraft. Marith showed me her village and fishpond and evil shrine and ginormous cavern, which were all very nice, definitely better than my black castle of blackness. I also got a bunch of stuff moved from the temporary work camp into the black castle of blackness, and barrels with signs so possibly I can find things.

Ayse did not play Minecraft with us because she was busy finishing up and posting her Minecraft SMP fanfic to AO3. I don’t know anything about the source, but it is a good story in its own right and gives me Amber vibes.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 17-18: Apparently that wasn’t the final boss of the season, but he was super-annoying anyway.

Written: 242

Two great observances that go great together!

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.15-17: That actually seems pretty tame for a bunch of teenagers locked up for weeks on end.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 17 (Kore Yamazaki): Now I’m ahead of where we are in the anime, and yikes!

Written: 268. Am I drawing this scene out too much? Am I summarizing the wrong parts? Am I just an extremely bad writer?

Your private-equity flower bulbs will not save you from the most cursed of all days!

It is also Frog Jumping Day, and D&D needs way more secret frog magic and way fewer 1st-level wizards with the exact same carefully focus-grouped spells as other 1st-level wizards.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.13-14: Creepy alchemists, creepy alchemy, monster-murdering class.

Written: 300 exactly.

I, myself, drank one or more beverages today!

Also I did a work or something. Whatever.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.10-12: So many sketchy people (and things) acting sus! Okay, I guess attempted murder isn’t exactly sus, they were very clear on that.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 4 (Kore Yamazaki): Yay, more dragons!

Written: 161. Second drafts are the worst.

My plush baby tapir probably needs a better name than “Baby Tapey”, don’t they?

I did the usual shopping things, got unjustifiably mad at Marith for destroying one of the campfires I set up under beehives when I find them, then got Jus’s house blown up because approximately one million creepers attacked while I was stopping by on my way to give Dave dripstone points for a lava factory. Apparently I should just hide in my own valley and never leave.

Played: Minecraft, very very badly.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 12-13: Poor cat princess! She needs to grow up to overthrow the patriarchy! I am very disappointed that the hyena-soldier is a boy, too.

Played: Kick a ball very ineptly down the street so kids can get energy out.

Written: 124. Can’t blame capitalism this time.

Played: Minecraft on our shiny new server! We all logged in at the same time to start off the tree-punching, but by the end of the session, I had barely made a tiny house of plain planks, and other people had enslaved entire villages and mined diamonds. I am really very bad at video games, even ones I enjoy. (So like everything else, really.) We have a lot of cherry blossoms at spawn, though.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 9-11: Anubis and a lot of other beasts still don’t like Sariphi, but so far the king is keeping her safe. Maybe Anubis will eventually come around.

Written: 296.

I feel like my youth has a slightly higher number than it did on Tuesday, oddly enough.

Did some capitalism, although as usual after two days in a row of going to the office I was not that swift.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.5-6: More personal drama, of students Chise already knows and ones that are new to her, but so far it has not bubbled over into violence in the halls. Snakes are friends!

Read: “The Chatbot and the Drone” (Geoffrey A Landis): What it says on the tin!

Written: Finally decided that even though my outline isn’t done, the last line is “need better plan” and I can revisit that once I’ve gotten the characters up to that point for real. 275 words of actual text.

A very good day, should come around more often.

I feel like I should say more about work, but… it’s just work. Whatever.

Read: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou omnibus 3 (Hitoshi Ashinano): Alpha goes for a walk around Japan, because what’s a year when civilization is fading away and you’re an immortal(?) robot? The leftovers of the past seem a little inconsistent, but then that’s what you might expect from a handful of random leftovers.

Read: Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing vol 1 (Mito): Wolf-lady butler discovers that the beautiful sheep-girl princess she serves is smitten with her. Gay hijinks ensue.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.1-4: Chise goes to magic school, and Elias signs on as a teacher so she won’t be unguarded. So far pretty much the same as the College arc in the manga, but I’m having a slightly easier time keeping track of the new characters. Bug-nurse is even more disturbing in color.

Written: 140 of planning. This seems like a final confrontation, but I don’t see how it can be resolved in a satisfying way. Maybe it’s only the confrontation where it becomes clear that things cannot be resolved peaceably.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! There, how was that?

Had to be on call in the afternoon, and there were annoying customers, but I escaped to Monkeycat Towers for anime night anyway.

Watched: Princess Tutu 5-6: Uh oh, Fakir is getting suspicious! Although he was pretty sus to begin with.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 8: Hah, called it!

Written: 177. Got to a point in planning where I diverge from the first graph, so that’s probably something.

Yay, I finally get a day!

Did a grocery shop, was useless and dumb. Fed the cats, though.

Watched: Princess Tutu 4: More feelings for Mytho, but Fakir is becoming suspicious. (He was always pretty sus, to be honest.)

Watched: The Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 7: Well, okay, I guess.

Written: 122.

The weather was so nice today, I did actually buy tortilla chips and guac and salsa. Also ate my pastrami sandwich outside.

The traffic was not so nice when an accident forced us to double back and wander lost in the maze of brightly-lit car dealerships, but if I were not so dumb, we would have been fine.

Watched: Princess Tutu 2-3: Anteaterina! Also some plot stuff about why Ahiru’s necklace glows or something. Jus concurs that Drosselmeyer is not a good substitute for a cute animal companion, though.

Read: Wear Wolf (Murphy Lawless, Zoe Chant): The most recent Virtue Shifters book. When the blurb said the FL also had a secret, that is not what I was expecting!

Read: “It Answered” (Anastasia Kirchoff): Maybe we shouldn’t have asked… But hey, how can you complain about utopia?

Written: 121. Could possibly have been more if I hadn’t had to finish reading somebody‘s book about a fashion designer and a schoolteacher with a secret.

Hurray for pangolins! I don’t know why I like them, but I do.

Apparently I also like being a useless lump, because that’s what I did today. I was on call in the afternoon and had to do some work, but only for a little while. Then in the evening we accomplished anime night again. Huzzah!

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 5-6: You can tell that new character is no good, he was mean to Amit!

Watched: Princess Tutu 1: Apparently we aren’t showing Jus Utena just yet, but Tutu seems weird enough for now.

Read: Crawljammer vol 4-6 (Tim Callahan, et al): More space adventure nonsense for DCC, random tables and adventures and random tables and classes and random tables.

Read: Dog of the Dead (Delia Marshall Turner): A no-nonsense middle-aged English teacher is bequeathed a mysterious giant egg by a student she sort of recognizes, and then everything goes downhill. Way downhill. Everything is eventually explained, but it is dream-like and elliptical getting there. I liked it, but it was pretty weird.

Written: 190. No, still not right.

I had the ice cream for lunch dessert, but it was Humphrey Slocombe “Secret Breakfast”, so I’m saying it counts.

Apparently my new Saturday routine is to go to Togo’s and eat a pastrami sandwich and drink multiple flavors of Diet Dr Pepper from the drink robot, on the way to the book store and grocery store. The ice cream store doesn’t open until noon, and I usually try to get my act together before then, so it will have to be intermittent.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 10-12: The end! Jus was appropriately emotional at finding out Homura and Madoka’s deal. Not sure what to show her next, maybe Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Written: 122 of outlining. I don’t know what these aliens should look like. I wrote some stuff down, but it’s probably not right.

But does “chocolate cake” mean chocolate crumb and any kind of frosting, any kind of crumb and chocolate frosting, or chocolate crumb and chocolate frosting?

Today I ate a pastrami cheesesteak, which was okay, did some grocery shopping, and was a massive lump because I felt lethargic and headachey and bleah. My guess it was side effects from the vaccination yesterday. Still better than anything I’ve ever heard about shingles.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 7-9: Oh good, Jus was appropriately disturbed to find out how the magical ecosystem works and what Kyubey’s role is.

Written: 147.

Penguins! They exist! Had you heard?

Today I accomplished all the things I planned to do, surprisingly. I did get up too early to get phlebotomized, then made it to the bookstore, a sandwich shop, and the grocery before arriving back home in plenty of time to be on call all afternoon. I was even able to almost entirely ignore customers and travel to Monkeycat Towers to watch more Madoka Magica. So yay me, I guess.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 4-6: We finally got to the episode where Kyubey explains what’s really involved in becoming a magical girl. “Why does everybody react the same way when they find out? I don’t understand humans.”

Read: D&D5e Tome of Beasts 3 (Scott Gable, Richard Green, Kelly Pawlik, Sebastian Rombach, Mike Welham, et al): A pretty good monster book, although like all modern D&Ds it takes a Linnaean approach to monsters.

Written: 175.

Today was a day of uselessness I mean relaxation.

In the evening, we had anime again, so I at least had to leave the apartment, even if it wasn’t exactly useful.

Watched: Puella Magi Madoka Magica 1-3: Jus is now old enough to see this! We got to the all-important third episode, so she wants to keep watching.

Written: 254.

Finally, something I can participate in!

I slacked in sick to work, because I did not sleep at all last week, and slept all morning instead. By afternoon I was able to go get my glasses fixed and scarf some fries and soup, and now I am pretty much back to normal except for my face being even uglier than usual.

Read: Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers vol 7 (Chorisuke Natsumi): Only seven volumes and copious help from shippers before a love confession!

Watched: Wednesday 7-8: Yeah, yeah, Uncle Fester, power of friendship, mysteries, plot twists, all fine, but a of all, it’s 2023, Wednesday and Enid can totally smooch, and second of b, the final boss was boring. The secondary villains were fine, it should have been just them. It seems extremely likely I will watch the second season when it comes out anyway.

Watched: The Seven Deadly Sins 1.1-3: Maybe the plot is great or something, but the “hero” is always perving on a young woman who is completely dependent on him, and it’s just not funny.

Written: FAIL.

Didn’t manage to go into the office, but otherwise not too dreadful, the customers have been fairly quiescent. However, I apparently forgot how to operate my body, and there was vasovagal syncope and blood everywhere and my glasses got bent, and nothing was any good. Not what I hoped for from an evening!

Read: Evil Empire (Joel Shepherd): Sequel to Angelina. After the exciting events at the end of the last book, all the protagonists have a powerup, but so do their enemies, and now they’re finding out why. It’s not good. However, the looming threat seems more pulled out of someone’s hat than grounded like the first book.

Read: Slugblaster (Mikey Hamm): I’ve read most of this, I’ve played it a few times, but now I have actually read it all the way through.It’s still great, there are zillions of random tables for everything, maybe I should try running it at Big Bad Con next year. Except I’m too old and not cool enough.

Read: Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 2 (Yu Yoshidamaru): Now that the gimmick has been established, it doesn’t have to come up as much. Ogami being a horndog and Yaginuma being whatever he is and their friends shipping them is enough for most of the drama. You can get it, Ogami!

Watched: Komi Can’t Communicate 1: The anime is much like manga panels put on the screen, and I’ve already got 394569 volumes of the manga.

Watched: Wednesday 3-6: The plot thickens! Wednesday’s doom increases, as does her parents’ and her friends’ and really that of everybody she comes in contact with, and the other characters are actually not shy about calling her out on it, which is nice.

Written: Only FAIL.

 

Darn, I’ve run out of chocolate-covered chocolate.

Somehow I got up and did things today. Not sure how that happened, but here we are, with fresh produce and bao and flu antigens and the return of anime night and everything.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 2.3-4: Looking for Kipo’s backstory, but getting Wolf’s along the way.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 1-4: Our first show for revived anime night! It’s pretty fluffy, with hardly any humans being devoured on screen, and so far the princess is only being compassionate, not getting into administration like rumor has it she will. It’s a full season, though, so we have plenty of time yet. Probably not enough for the cat princess to redeem herself, though.

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom vol 8 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): More of the same, including a flashback to Katarina’s earlier teen years when other girls were just as unable to deal with her. Apparently next volume they graduate and get jobs, but I can’t imagine it will change Katarina at all.

Written: FAIL.

Nightvale counts, even though he is partly stars!

Getting two cats got me two weeks of Fact Or Share, but this time I had to use a fact, which is that deepsea anglerfish are not the size of a Nerf football, they are big enough to swallow you whole.

Watched: My Happy Marriage 10-12: We find out what’s up with the secret family and why whatsisface is being so creepy and how you should definitely not underestimate Miyo. Happy ending!

Read: System Collapse (Martha Wells): Oh man, poor Murderbot! I’m glad it has a terrifying friend to watch media with, and also that it is developing non-murdery skills for saving the day. Plus, “capitalism sucks” never grows old as a theme.

Written: FAIL.

My theory: Everything wrong with the US today is a result of insufficient Sesame Street.

Watched: My Happy Marriage 6-9: It was nice to see the random rich guys who thought they were so great pick a fight with an actual military monster hunter, but Cinderella still needs to communicate better!

Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 2 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): It’s kind of adorable how Nomoto (the one who likes to cook) is just “Welp, guess I’m a lesbian, I should check the Internet to find out how that works” and now she has a pocket friend to discuss things with. Plus, new character with a completely different relationship to food than the main couple.

Written: 184, although it took me like two weeks to accumulate what should be half a night’s work. Neither kitties nor germs are conducive to writing. (Also I suck.)