Tag: marith

Friend noodles!

Went to the office, did some work, ate some dumplings, sat on the phone with a customer but contributed nothing. Also made a dumb mistake trying to help another customer, but did get it sorted.

Marith gave me some of her vegetable vegetable vegetable vegetable chicken so I wouldn’t die. Look, vitamins!

Read (manga): I Wanna Be Your Girl vol 1 (Umi Takase): She’s a trans girl who is publicly out for the first time now that she’s starting high school. She’s her childhood friend who is addicted to getting mad on behalf of others and also is in love with her. Together they fight crime gender norms and make friends. Is it just me, or is Yankee flirting with Anger Goblin?

Written (game design): 385:

I was thinking about doing things to enemies in combat besides scoring
hits to wound them, and wondering why you would bother to do that after
taking the trouble to chew through all their HP, except in very special
circumstances. I might be falling into the fine-grained D&D paradigm,
though. In D&D, if someone hits you with a special attack that knocks
you down, you remain motionless on the floor, with the Prone debuff, while
somewhere between 0 and N-2 other units activate, after which you can
spend some of the few footsteps allotted to you to stand up, move to
another square, swing your sword once, etc.

If I haven’t yet been talked out of having a round be a larger chunk
of combat and actions be simultaneous, though, then getting knocked
down is just a thing that happens during the round, and you can get
back up without having to account for every muscle contraction to
the Time and Motion Consultant. Knocking someone down, or throwing
pocket sand in their eyes, or whatever, is just Aid Another, if
it’s much of any action. I think.

Or maybe the key is that rolling your attack die against somebody you’re
engaged in combat with isn’t an action. You’re in weapon range, you get
to just roll your die (but so do they). Your action is something more
interesting like “keep them away from the wizard” or “push them off the
cliff”. I’m dubious about there being a “fight this guy harder” action
even if it’s not clear what else you would do in a one-on-one duel, but
“fight all these guys” so you can attack more than one of them is
probably valid.

Another list that we need: actual actions while fighting somebody.

    • Defend a person/place/thing
    • Push your opponent back or otherwise position them
    • Open your opponent up to attack by your ally
    • Also attack another opponent
    • Intimidate your opponent (force a morale check)
    • Seduce your opponent (got to draw in those Thirsty Sword Lesbians players…)
    • Play to the crowd
    • Knock something away from them
    • Strike at a weak spot

These are the things that you’d roll for if there end up being
combat action ratings; some obviously use another action like Issue
Commands to intimidate or Put On a Show to impress the crowd.

I used paper bags to take books to the used book store, but then had to take more than a quarter of them back home. Used reusable bags for grocery shopping and taking watermelon snacks to anime.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 20-21: The party tries to integrate Izutsumi the ninja, with limited success, but then they get to the Heart(?) of the Dungeon(?). Not sure how they’re going to end this, since this like volume 6 of the manga and we’re almost done with the season.

Read (graphic novel): Huda F Are You? (Huda Fahmy): Autobiographical story of a hijabi Muslim girl who moves to Dearborn, which despite being full of Muslims is not any less horrible, because being a teenager always sucks (Had time to read all of this while waiting for my books to be processed at the used bookstore, so I didn’t buy it, but not bringing a book in is as good as getting rid of one, right?)

Written (game design): 343:

Do we need a list of actions? (Eventually.) Do we need a better name for
them? (Absolutely.)

    • Attune to the Flow of the Universe – see the unseen, recharge MP
    • Craft Something – build a shelter, repair armor, smith a sword
    • Creep Around – hide, sneak, grab things when no one’s watching
    • Get Over There – leap chasm, swim moat, climb cliff
    • Heal an Affliction – wounds, disease, poison, curses
    • Issue Commands – lead troops, interrogate prisoners, orate stirringly
    • Mingle with Crowd – blend in, don’t stand out, pick up gossip
    • Put On a Show – bardic performance, distraction for the ambush
    • Scavenge Something Up – search the room, hunt for food
    • Sway Hearts and Minds – make friends, subtly grill people, seduce dragons
    • Tinker With a Machine – pick locks, disarm traps without wrecking them
    • Wrangle a Beast – befriend wild animal, bait for guard manticore

That’s 12, which is about the smallest number I was expecting, so I’m
probably forgetting something. I could add some for doing fancy combat
tricks in melee/ranged/magical combat, but I bet we could fold that into
the attack roll.

These all have an implicit “under pressure” attached, since if you have
an appropriate background, all the needed tools, and ample time (ie, 0
difficulty), you don’t have to roll and it doesn’t matter what your
rating is.

Another thing that makes no difference when coding the video game
version but could matter to players: does every character have a rating
in every action, or is there a default for everything they don’t
specifically have? For that matter, does everybody have the same set of
actions? Maybe some characters have special ones like “Perform Ritual to
Empower Equipment Against Demons” or whatever their special deal is. We
don’t want those to overlap with the basic moves, though; narrative
positioning to use those in weird ways is the province of abilities
(which also need a better name).

NPCs can definitely have just the important actions and one for
Everything Else, to keep the load on the GM low.

Apparently I’m not British enough.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.7: The one with the car guy and the Mafia guy.

Read (manga): FAILED. Because I suck.

Read (novel): The Lies Arcana (Glynn Stewart): Seventeenth or so in the missiles-in-space-with-magic series, following the diplomat we picked up in the last couple of books and the spy ship captain from a while back. Despite the massive undertaking from last book, there is a whole lot that needs to be done, and also some secrets revealed both in and out of character.

Written (game design): 274:

If HP is Hit Protection, is MP Magic Protection? Conjuring up a
lightning bolt to throw at someone probably goes against their HP,
since you’re trying to hit them with something, but trying to put
a curse on them, or otherwise targeting them as a person, could go
against MP. Is using the same stat for defense and fuel bad? On the
one hand, it would cut down on the numbers on a character sheet (or
the associated postit note for numbers that change a lot), but on
the other hand, it would be a weird dynamic in combat. I’m not sure
spending HP for martial abilities is correct when it’s defense and
not health, or ever, so there could be an annoying inconsistency,
but I’m not sure it’s not, so ugh.

An alternate flavor for MP could be synchronization with the flow of the
cosmos, which gets disrupted when you push on the cosmos to do magic.
The hit from overspending might be more wild magic-flavored than soul
damage-flavored, but otherwise the implementation would be about the same,
just less metal.

Another difference between HP and MP would be that HP can be recovered
in combat, or at least pretty immediately outside of combat, since
it’s “just” energy and alertness. I’m not sure how fast MP should
recover, though. Maybe it’s okay to also recover quickly? It depends
on how much you can do with a spell, I guess, that determines how
powerful being able to cast spells all day is. What does “powerful” even
mean when there’s more to life than level-appropriate encounters?

Every day is kitten day, for every nation! [gavel emoji]

Went to the office, had a chat with New Boss² A (he did most of the chatting), had a chat with Newish Boss³ M, ate a Beyond Meat wrap, finally made progress on the thing I’ve been putting off. The explanation for Former Boss² B’s dismissal was kind of sus, but I don’t know enough to refute it.

Beyond Meat sounds like it should be delivered by TARDIS from the far reaches of the continuum.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.10: Despite all the changes made for TV, it did end in the same place as the first book, so that was good. There may have been Feelings. Also, set design! I hear a second season has been approved, although no idea when it will come out or what it will cover.

Read (manga): This Monster Wants to Eat Me vol 3 (Sai Naekawa): Rival girl monster makes a strong showing with the dramatic gesture!

Read (short): “Hart-Struck” (Murphy Lawless): It’s an entire Virtue Shifter novella compressed into one scene!

Read (manga): Lonely Castle in the Mirror vol 5 (Mizuki Tsujimura, Tomo Taketomi): The dramatic conclusion, in which we find out what everybody’s personal deal was, and also what the deal with the castle was, and what happens when there’s a wish and everything. The End!

Read (short): “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” (Martha Wells): A non-Murderbot (but ART) story, somewhere between Artificial Condition and Network Effect, where we see what kind of stuff ART’s crew gets up to and also maybe ART has a feeling.

Written (game design): 372:

Other magic I don’t like, even though it does something instead of
plusses, is remove curse/dispel magic. A proper curse should take more
than a single generic spell to get rid of. Likewise, unenchanting
something enchanted should take more than a single abracadabra. We spurn
the level-appropriate adventure, negative (or positive!) consequences
don’t have to be gone by the next morning to keep everything calibrated.

I also dislike detect magic, although that might be a matter of
presentation. We need more enemy mages appearing as hundred-handed
god-monsters in the astral realm and fewer color-coded arrows, but that
may be a lot of work for the GM.

Related to remove curse, I want to unify curses, diseases, and poisons
conceptually and mechanically, but I’m not sure how. It’s either a minor
issue that can be put off, or a key to the entire system.

For that matter, I don’t even know exactly what to do with the kind of
wounds PCs are expected to accumulate. When the enemy’s attack roll
exceeds your remaining Hit Protection, you take a hit, but what does
that mean? Are you out? Do you go through some degrees of woundedness
before being taken out? Should there be something like a roll modified
by how much attack exceeds HP, so that a better attack hurts more? I
like that because it offers the possibility of varying the results based
on whether you’re a huge dragon, or a slime zombie with no vital organs,
or whatever.

A lot of OSR systems have Dismemberment & Disfigurement tables, or
something named very similarly, to roll on when you take a serious
wound, but I may be too attached to my characters being cute to go for
that. We are assuming some kind of healing magic, though, so temporary
disabilities are fine.

I don’t think I want healing in combat, but that opens up the whole can
of worms about what magic is available and how fast it can be cast. It’s
not fantasy adventure without fireballs, but ritual magic is overall
more interesting.

Every day is Chocolate Day!

I slept way in (and had more dreams than when I was sleeping in Roseville, which suggests I need to fix something here) but did manage to go chocolate grocery shopping and read Katalepsis. Should probably have done more shoppings, but whatever. There’s always tomorrow.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.9: We thought there were ten episodes, but nope, looks like the end! Also, Dr Mensah has reached the levels of badassery she started with in the books.

Read (manga): The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 20 (Kore Yamazaki): Yay, finally a new volume! It’s mostly recovery over Christmas vacation for all the characters after the last plot arc, plus small talk with the gods of Britain, foreshadowing of doom, mistletoe smooches and talk of romance, etc.

Written (game design): 366:

One thing I noticed about Pathfinder that’s probably not as annoying as
the others is that you have to recalculate every number on your sheet
every time you level, because level is the most important aspect of your
character. It would be unseemly for a 1st-level character to get more
than +1 in any bonus type, but by mid-levels, you have to be able to
stack bonuses to roll skills at +30 or +40 (or so I hear). Over here in
the land without level-appropriate encounters, we don’t need
ever-increasing target numbers–hey, we don’t even have target
numbers!–so do we even need levels? There are two things that come with
levelling up: bigger numbers, and more/better abilities. And I guess more
uses of abilities, which is a combination. Since we have a single value
for magic points instead of different trackers for every ability, the
equivalent would be reducing the cost.

Since spending MP is doing damage (to your own soul) I was thinking
it should always be random; costs are d2, d3, d4, d6, etc. It’s
magic, you can never be certain how much you can use without hurting
yourself, or whatever taking a hit from overspending MP is. (It has
to be painful, so casting a spell for 1d4 MP when you only have 2
left is a hard decision.)

It’s hard to quantify some aspects of how much D&D characters improve
from level 1 to level 20. Since NPC numbers improve as the
appropriate level for the encounters improves, the chance of success on
a skill or attack doesn’t change much (until you get to things like
expertise in 5E), but they get about 13-15x in HP and something like
5-10x in weapon damage (spell damage is just a mess with area effect vs
various groups, damage types and resistances, etc), which seems like a
lot. HP (Defense? Guard?) and attack dice are more a measure of skill,
though, so I guess it depends how many regular soldiers a hero is
supposed to be able to hold off for how long.

Watch me agonize about how much characters should improve and then end
up recreating the D&D curve.

I like tapioca, but I might be weird.

Took four bags including all my D&D3/3.5 books to the used bookstore and got nothing back, yay. Successfully shopped for lunch and groceries and books, which was enough errands for one day. Marith is back from the fjords and also not dead from travel, so we were able to visit people and hear about Ayse’s new job and how humans are the worst part, and also about Jus’s love life and how humans are the worst part.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 19: A new ninja joins the party! Also, dream magic.

Read (manga): FAIL.

Written (catgirl): 205.

Fuck yeah, Wobblies!

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.6: The one with the 70s flashbacks and the twist.

Read (manga):I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 4-5 (Yutaka):The overnight study session episode, which veers more into standard rom-com with accidental contact, unintentionally hot borrowed clothes, jealous fiancees, etc, but then back to doing bad things and fraternal conflict for a bit before the summer festival yukata episode.

Read (novel): A Broken Darkness (Premee Mohamed): Our viewpoint character has not really moved on from his feelings at the end of Beneath the Rising, but that’s too bad for him because the world is in danger again, or maybe still, and the person he hates still has some claim to being the only person who can fix it.

Written (game design): 245:

Something the OSR talks about is “tactical infinity”, the idea that you
can use actual tactics (ie, cheating) and have it be effective. D&D
gives lip service to this, but clever tactics can’t actually be more
effective than the abilities granted by your class levels, or you’re off
the power curve and the level-appropriate encounters aren’t appropriate
any more. This isn’t so much of a problem in a home game, but D&D as a
branding entity wants to have a consistent experience across the
published adventures, Living Whatsit sessions, etc, so no incentive to
encourage going off-label.

By the same token, opponents are limited, not just individually to the
actions on their character sheet, but globally to some set of mechanics.
If the GM sets up a battle against ghosts that are immune to physical
damage, that’s not cricket because then everybody’s attacks they got
from their level don’t help and the calibration is off. However, if we
yeet the idea of level-appropriate encounters and having to fight
everything in set-piece battles with only what’s on your character
sheet, it’s fine. If you can’t beat up the ghosts, you can go around them
or come back later with exorcism incense or buy them off with cow blood
or just not go that way, there’s probably nothing interesting over there
anyway.

Hopefully includes air conditioning for our friends on the East Coast!

Went to the office, the train worked out okay going but I need to change it up on the way back, ate some meat and veggies and rice and tea egg, did some work, told other people how to do work.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.8: Uh oh, Murderbot has a plan. And yeah, I thought we hadn’t had the name reveal until now!

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.5: The one with the cheerleaders and the federal government. It seems pretty obvious what Nate’s plan is, but we don’t know his motivation yet and there’s probably a twist.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 7 (Yoshimurakana): The unwholesomeness from last volume is still going on in the background, but now Kuroko has an entire terrorist organization to murder, so that should keep her occupied for a bit.

Read (manga): I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 3 (Yutaka): Oh no, someone else has noticed that our heroine is smoking hot and apparently also bi!

Written (game design): 320:

Leaving the primary spell-casting classes aside for the moment, what
other combined classes do we need, if we need classes? Fighter,
barbarian, and ranger are basically the same, they just have different
combat feats/fighting styles. (D&D rangers have spells, but I think
that’s just shoehorned in because as previously mentioned, everything is
spells. Two-weapon fighting and animal companion are more central to the
class.) Paladin and monk are more magical, but again, it doesn’t have to be
spells. Innate powers seem just as fitting, and possibly there’s not a
difference between those and advanced combat feats. Again, I’m okay with
nobody being able to claim punching through a brick wall isn’t magic.

There’s a school of thought that holds that D&D jumped the shark
when thieves were introduced. Suddenly, there’s a class that has
Climb Walls, Read Scrolls, and Backstab on its sheet, which means
all the other classes don’t. 3rd ed somewhat reversed that by
making most of those things skills that any character can have, but
the idea that you can do what’s on your character sheet and can’t
do things that aren’t was pretty firmly embedded.

The major thief ability that didn’t get turned into a skill is Backstab,
which has also gotten progressively genericized until now it has nothing
to do with stealth or surprise or distraction, and just gives a damage
bonus if the thief has a buddy nearby. This is as lame as calling them
“rogues”. It’s not that great to make only one class able to get an
advantage from ambushing people, though. Stabbing your enemies in the
back is a basic tactic, not a superpower. So, thieves are part of the
fighter superclass, differentiated only by the feats they take.

That’s another thing we need a list of, or several lists, or a tree or
something.

Yay! It’s a day for me! I’m a stupid guy thing!

Played (D&D5e): Librarians Errant: The sending to Renwick’s grad student doesn’t produce any results after an entire fifteen minutes, so the Reshelving Squad sets off into Bibliospace. Somewhat later, as they cross the vast empty savanna of young adult romance, they see giant scavenging books circling in the sky way over there. It seems like a long walk, but Lilli conjures a divine meerkat that indicates that’s the way, so they go, and find a grad student, half-dead from the lack of serious literature, crawling across the landscape. This is Hannibal, Sophia Sharpe’s research subject assistant, who has been sent to find them and lead them to Renwick’s. This works great until, while fording the famous Stream of Consciousness, they are all swept away by a surge of best-seller nonsense and washed into a deep cavern on another plane. Which plane? The Library of Sobek-in-Chains, where Bob the Mummy sits on his throne, lording it over his army navy of crocodiles, and dominated in turn by the dark overlord Walter, of course! The fight is not much fun, because Bob has very annoying magic and everything is difficult terrain, and poor Lilli gets death-rolled, but Grimm can subvert the other crocodile, and Walter is only there in the form of seventeen books in a trenchcoat, which Lilli’s shoggoth is optimized against, so eventually Pergamum prevails. Finally, the Squad arrives at Renwick’s. Of course he can work out a variant on the spell that will trap Walter forever, but of course he needs someone to go fetch the fourth book of a famous three-volume set first.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.6-7: Well, this is going quite far afield from the books! Also, the armor is giving SecUnit black-bordered word balloons.

Written (game design): 235 of rambling nonsense:

D&D defines a broad genre, but only a few elements of setting: wizards,
elves, swords, drow, dragons, dwarves, taverns, gods, ancient ruins,
orcs. (Maybe this is why it’s become the default Generic Fantasy setting,
although being amplified like a virus in video games and being adjacent
to LotR probably helped too.) It leaves open who the PCs are, at least
in theory, although somehow being an adventurer usually overshadows any
background and everybody starts with the same 3d6x10gp or standard class kit
or whatever. Is having the PCs set apart by their ability to use magic
consistent with this or not? They usually set themselves apart by their
behavior anyway, even if the GM has some idea of Renaissance social
roles (D&D hasn’t been medieval in decades).

The overarching question is, what do we need in order to replace D&D?
(Not worldwide, I don’t have that much hubris; just at one table.)
Anti-canon ancestry covers most of elves, dwarves, orcs, drow, etc,
unless someone is deeply attached to a specific feature from a specific
D&D edition that I don’t like (ie, darkvision). Any game can have kings
and castles and swords of one shape or another. I guess we’re back to
figuring out what wizards, gods, clerics, etc are like. Oh, and dragons,
because I also have opinions on how everything in D&D is a species
and/or one of an unlimited number of the same.

Or Winter Solstice on the other side.

Still gastrointestinal, bah. I do have to eat and drink to sustain life, but nothing seems much like food or beverage.

Marith has returned from the fjords, un-be-whale-eaten.

Read (novel): Beneath the Rising (Premee Mohamed): He’s a normal teenager, she’s an incredible prodigy who is revolutionizing the world and may have just destroyed it. Together, they have a globe-trotting monster-fighting adventure where he mostly has no idea what’s going on but doesn’t like the SAN loss (along with many other extremely reasonable feelings given the Cthulhoid circumstances). It’s hard being a sidekick.

Written (game design): 254:

I listed academic magic and divine magic separately, but I think that’s
actually something that started with D&D. John Dee, pretty much the RL
archetype of “wizard”, used his ancient Aztec scrying mirror to talk to
angels. Paracelsus and Hermes Trismegistes weren’t secular either. In
fiction, Merlin was half-demon; Gandalf and Saruman were maiar, angelic
creatures. Even in swords-and-sorcery stories, the sorcerers have
ancient tomes of forbidden lore, but they get power from worshiping
extraplanar prehuman abominations.

In original D&D, clerics were lightly reskinned Christian priests, and
certainly there’s precedent for Christian paraphernalia warding off
magic, but that’s usually faeries and pagans, and there isn’t really any
of that in D&D, just a generic protection theme to clerical magic
(except against the undead and literal demons). I’m good with discarding
Christianity entirely from any game that’s not explicitly historical
anyway.

Not sure where this is going. Before, I had divided the spellcasters
into wizard-type and cleric-type, but maybe it’s actually warlock-type
and sorcerer-type, depending on whether the greater power teaches you
spells or modifies you to have innate powers.

Then we have to figure out what spells are and how they work. Ritual
magic, enchanting or creating tools that can be used fast enough to be
helpful in combat? Vancian casting, which is kind of the same thing?
Summon spirits and keep them in cages until you need them to eat your
foes? Of course not all spell usage is combat, but usually out of combat
you have time to do the whole ritual.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yep, there it is! Still not a velociraptor.

I used the Miracle of the Wheel to take four whole bags of books to the used book store this time, and also set out at a more auspicious hour, so I was able to get everything sorted and go shopping and get lunch without dying despite the busses being all messed up due to some kind of running cult observance.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 15-16: More monsters, more oppression for Marcille, but also the return of Falin’s admirer and his ninja ladies, and a glimpse of the new, improved Falin.

Read (short): “Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare” (Seanan McGuire): Looked this up to tell someone who had read Overgrowth, ended up rereading it. Changing the setting to modern for the longer, more serious, version was probably the right choice, but that means no ray guns.

Written (catgirl): 298. Hey, that’s more than 250!

Because fuck Nazis, that’s why.

Went to the office, only Coworker T was there, ate a Thai(?) ground pork and rice thing, did some work.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.13: Everyone attempts to have a night off, but Parker, Sophie, and Tara find a leverage job. As always, nobody can get anything done without Hardison, but the other boys are pretty useless.

Read (graphic novel): Fangirl vol 3 (Rainbow Rowell, Gabi Nam): Boy trouble, writing trouble, sister trouble, parent trouble.

Written (catgirl): 169.

Also Hug a Friend Day, National Pretzel Day, National Veterinary Day, and of course Independent Bookstore Day. Sadly, there was nothing I wanted at the bookstore this week, but there has been before and will be again.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 12-14: Quest complete! Story’s finished, right? …oh. Also, flashback to Kabru and his followers.

Read (nothing): Nothing, but I have made a huge dent in my physical TBR pile and didn’t buy anything new today, so I’m probably fine.

Written (catgirl): 171, some of it even story and not just notes.

All hail Emperor Maximilian XXIX of the Northern Shores!

But no parades for my digestive tract, which apparently was working up to being really gross and causing me to sit on the toilet in the middle of the night so I could faint onto the floor and break the litter box and scrape up my face and bang my tooth, and also sleep poorly. I stayed in bed until later in the morning, but eventually it seemed like I was enough of a hollow husk of a body to get up and log in to work. I accomplished several tasks, even.

Marith claimed the mysterious shoes, so that’s good.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.12: That was a very silly episode. Maybe Nate should put more work into not being a jerk and less into speaking Football.

Read (anthology): Duties (Moe Lane): Another four-story collection, with a robot who won’t shut up about how gross meatbags are, a dryad, the secret base where the US government sends everything that you might naively assumed would go to the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a frog.

Read (manga): Avant-Garde Yumeko (Shuzo Oshimi): Yumeko doesn’t want to sleep with anybody, she just wants to know what dicks look like. Then it gets weird. Contains actual pictures of dicks, which I was really not expecting. So many dicks.

Written (catgirl): 119, still notes. I should probably stop futzing around and write something for real.

Er, I mean Easter.

Coworker N is still on vacation, so I had to work 7-13:00. Bah, early! But there wasn’t too much work to do, and the next person logged in punctually, so I was able to trundle down to Monkeycat Towers have Easter dinner with friends and search for the lost art of conversation. It was also very nice, although I feel bad for not being cool or doing things.

Read (manga): Dandadan vol 12 (Yukinobu Tatsu): Alien invasion! Astral travel! It’s pretty much the next part of what was going on in vol 11.

Read (anthology): Revisionary: Four Tales of the Mythos (Moe Lane):More or less the Cthulhu Mythos, anyway. Four stories of terrible things that happen to those who mess with things beyond human ken (cursed books, death-world monsters, interdimensional visitors, New England, etc).

Written (catgirl): 143 more of worldbuilding notes.

Also Garlic Bicycle Day.

Slept in too much, but made the bus to shopping with about one minute to spare. Also gave a little old lady directions.

In the afternoon, I was functional enough to go over to Monkeycat Towers to help dye eggs and clean out leftover adobo. It was very nice, because friends are good.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 10-11: Finally, the red dragon!

Read (manga): Reincarnated as a Sword vol 1 (Yuu Tanaka, Tomowo Maruyama, Llo): A random schmoe isekai’d into a magic sword and an orphaned 12-year-old catgirl team up to be highly OP in a generic litRPG world.

Read (novel): Castaways (Craig Schaefer): Teenagers in magic school, in the same setting as the Daniel Faust etc books. Kids who don’t have any better options get sucked into another dimension and enrolled in a magic school that even they can tell is not a shining example of the genre. Bullying, dangerous magic, hardass teacher, reformed serial killer teacher, dangerous wildlife, going off-campus once a year to shop, all the standard tropes. Also interdimensional zwilniks and girl-smooches.

Written (catgirl): 107. This trend is in the wrong direction.

It is very important to be aware of velociraptors!

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.11: Parker seems a little too into that role, although Hardison’s not complaining. Also, I’m not sure that’s a fight Nate should have picked for them, but on the other hand, fuck all those guys.

Read (manga): Nightfall Travellers vol 2 (Tomohi): More exploration of hills and shrines and other spooky places. Maybe it’s actually the other girl who will turn out to be a ghost?

Written (catgirl): 109 of notes.

Musk is doing his best to make it suck, but his shitshow is transient.

Once again slept until 1030, then got up and did some shopping.

Ken gave us delicious chicken adobo (probably not cockatrice), and we talked to Ayse about kitchen history because Dave was surprised at the lack of kitchens in Ptolus apartments. It was a nice visit.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 8-9: The undine, and the gnomes and Nomari. So far this seems to be following the manga pretty closely.

Read (manga): Asumi-chan is Interested in Lesbian Brothels! vol 2 (Kuro Ituski): A near-miss with meeting the girl she’s looking for, so she has to have a threesome and cosplay instead. Still completely lacking in redeeming social value.

Written (catgirl): 437 more of worldbuilding notes, but mostly lists of names.

I have some of those! Victory!

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.9-10: The one where they have to save the day with only an airport as resources and the one where Sterling talks them into stealing a technobabble from a chess tournament.

Read (manga): Leviathan vol 1 (Shiro Kuroi): Scavengers investigate a derelict spaceship while reading the journal of one of the schoolkids who descended right into savagery when the ship was damaged.

Written (catgirl): 234 of worldbuilding notes.

If only! We could use a nice alien conquest about now.

Slept in as usual but instead of grocery shopping, I went to the rally downtown because seriously, fuck all those motherfuckers. The crowd was pretty old overall, but there were a few youngsters, so perhaps there is hope for the future. I tried leaving my phone behind, not because I expected trouble today, but to see if it worked, and yeah, it was fine. I think I was the only one who did, though.

Ayse is back from her expedition to Nashville, with bonus tornadoes. Er, stories of tornadoes, she did not bring any actual tornadoes.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 6-7: The one where they eat a mimic, and the one where they eat a kraken.

Read (manga): After God vol 2 (Sumi Eno): Less bizarre than the volume that introduced the weird elements, as is inevitable, but more gods and people getting massacred unexpectedly and even more gods and creepy powers and creepy people.

Written (catgirl): 157.