Tag: office

It’s not true that without internet friends I would have no friends at all, but I’d definitely have many fewer.

Went to the office, Boss K was there visiting from Texas, ate a sandwich and chips, tried to do some work but was thwarted by my laptop having some kind of password explosion.

Read (manga): Nightschool omnibus 2 (Svetlana Chmakova): Apparently I had read this before, I just didn’t remember the ending. It wasn’t supposed to be the ending, but as far as I know no further volumes have come out, so it’s pretty abrupt.

Read (novel): The City of Spires (Erios909): Third and possibly last in the series about the isekai girl who started as a demon and has become an angel. After the destruction of book 2, the MC and her girlfriend and their refugees find a new city to live in, defend it against invaders, achieve high position, etc. There’s obviously way more room for leveling up, but that seems to be it for the series for now.

Written (game design): 145. I should probably start putting numbers on these things, even if they have to be changed later.

Evolve, evolve, OK! (Probably illegal in the US now.)

Went to the office, had the room to myself because Coworker D was out, ate pad woon sen, did some work, read about how noodles are the worst (carbs plus oily).

Read (manga): Nightschool omnibus 1 (Svetlana Chmakova): Apparently I didn’t remember much of the plot, just the snarky lines and the art. I like the school bits better than the grim and serious hunter bits.

Written (game design): 111.

If it’s not from the Canada region of North America, it’s just sparkling tree sap.

Went to the office, got rained on, ate a Korean bento with tofu and veggie stuff, did a work.

Read (manga): The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Jack Flash and the Faerie Case Files vol 3-4 (Yu Godai, Mako Oikawa, Kore Yamazaki): A shadowy master criminal who claims to have an ideological motive! This will definitely not be a disaster.

Written (game design): 158, but am I actually getting anywhere? I’m not sure I am.

Mostly I only have fondue at New Year’s, although I guess technically there’s nothing but laziness stopping me from getting it at other times. It wouldn’t be the same without friends, though.

Went to the office, ate spicy eggplant (fondue was not on the menu), did a work.

Read (novel): Demon World Boba Shop vol 5 (RC Joshua): Our isekai’d human finally accepts that he has a valid life, he is doing his part in the world, people love him because he deserves love and not out of pity, etc. The end! Owlgirl is still the best.

Read (manga): The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Jack Flash and the Faerie Case Files vol 1-2 (Yu Godai, Mako Oikawa, Kore Yamazaki): Spinoff about two changelings (one in each direction) working as PIs in New York for the supernatural community. Ghosts, maguffins, faerie meddlers, horrible rich people, magical informants, all the important magic detective tropes.

Written (game design): 136. But what if all the ideas I started with are wrong and I should start over?

I have outsourced all my dinosaur drawing to an expert.

Went to the office again, ate beef and gouda dumplings and pickled vegetables, did a small amount of work.

Read (manga): Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! vol 2 (Sumito Oowara): Through making a deal with the Robot Club, and the culture fair and Character Animation Girl’s parents.

Read (manga): Yokai Cats vol 1 (Pandania): Like Monster Cats, but with Japanese monsters instead of European/D&D. I guess this was the original.

Read (novel): Something Extraordinary (Alexis Hall): Third and probably final book in the series, since everyone in the group is partnered off. The runaway fiancé from the first book saves the extremely gay man who was in love with her brother from a terrible marriage mandated by his family by marrying him and not wanting him to sleep with her. People have Ideas about marriage, but not ones that can’t be overcome.

Written (game design): 251 of farting around with skills.

Happy New Year, Moon!

Went to the office, had to mask because Coworker D was there, ate a brisket sandwich and coleslaw, did a work I guess.

Read (manga): Peach Boy Riverside vol 13-14 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Is this not going the way it originally appeared? What are the odds? But at least most of the main characters are back together.

Written (game design): 414 of erasing and rewriting lists of skills. I know I want to have no abilities, only skills, but that means I need a reasonably-sized list of skills that cover everything a PC might do. I started with the list of skills from D&D, and the examples of things that might require a plain ability check from the PHB, made my own list of skills based on verbs a la FitD, made a long list of things adventurers might do, made another skill list based on occupations that do adventuring-type things (soldier, burglar, hunter, hobo, murderer, etc), made another list of skills, etc, and don’t seem to be any closer to making a definitive list of 20ish skills that would fit on a character sheet.

I probably should, but I won’t. Even though my pad theoretically would accept it, if my stylus worked.

Went to the office, ate salt and pepper tofu with onions, did a work.

Read (graphic novel): Be Wary of the Silent Woods (Svetlana Chmakova): MIddle-schoolers in the Weirn setting, going where the adults explicitly told them not to, and finding a whole lot of trouble that they can’t quite get out of on their own, at least not without severe social damage. I liked both the YA Weirn graphic novels and the author’s other middle-school GNs, so this was great.

Read (manga): Marriage Toxin vol 3 (Joumyaku, Mizuki Yoda): Poison Ninja finishes saving another young woman from a rival ninja, getting no dates but another friend in the process, and then gets recruited by a ninja who may be in more trouble than anybody can handle.

Written: 204.

Sage is full of questions, such as “Gooshyfood?” and “Treats?” and “Cuddles?” Fortunately the answer is practically always yes. Nightvale is more taciturn, but does leap quite surprisingly to my shoulders, so that’s okay.

Went to the office, ate some chicken nuggets, enlightened a customer, placated some other customers.

Read (novel): Asunder (Kerstin Hall): A somewhat strange book in a very strange world, where civilization was sustained by divine servants of questionable benevolence until the terrifying things from outside ate them, and now a warlock of the outer things is trying to help the person she accidentally doomed and also avoid her own doom and there is creepy magic everywhere and also a lot of angst, because her life is kind of terrible, honestly. I liked it, because creepy magic everywhere, but it is not a cheerful book.

Read (novel): Death of an Irish Druid (Catie Murphy): Is our cursed driver finally resigning herself to her fate? Her friends from the US aren’t helping with any kind of normality, that’s for sure! Unfortunately this is probably the last book of the series, unless it finds another publisher.

Read (short story): The Body in the Zero Gee Brothel (Cameron Cooper): The mystery was not the point, the setting twist was the point, and I have to admit, I did not see it coming.

Read (manga): Marriage Toxin vol 2 (Joumyaku, Mizuki Yoda): Having failed to get girls through normal socialization, our poison ninja is now (on advice of advisor) rescuing women who are in the kind of trouble a ninja can help with. This plays to his strengths and is much more successful, although he’s too much of a nice guy to pressure a woman into dating him just because he saved her life. He does another friend now, though, which is definitely something. (His friend has a shark. I’m pretty sure this will come up again later.)

Written (game design): 235, although mostly notes on what D&D thinks would call for an ability check, to make sure I’m not missing anything obvious. It’s like research or something.

I read a book with a dragon, does that count?

Also National Quinoa Day. Hi Ken!

Went to the office, did a customer call, ate a barbecue pork sandwich, was only minimally functional.

Read (novel): The Hexologists (Josiah Bancroft): A married couple solve mysteries in a quasi-Edwardian world where the Industrial Revolution is powered by feeding wood through a hellish alternate dimension to produce superfuel. Royal intrigue, rich bastard intrigue, necromantic visions, horrible monsters, lost magical arts, tragedy, and marital bliss ensue. I liked it enough that I may go back and try the author’s earlier series that I originally bounced off of.

Read (manga): Dark Gathering vol 1 (Kenichi Kondo): A college student who hid in his room for two years due to a traumatic supernatural encounter starts to socialize again, and ends up tutor to his childhood friend’s small cousin who is extremely creepy and obsessed with hunting evil spirits. Road trips to haunted locations and additional trauma ensue, but the spooky little girl does actually know what she’s doing.

Read (manga): Hello, Melancholic! vol 2 (Yayoi Ohsawa): Trombone Girl and Drums Girl continue to have feelings. Trombone girl finds out about Flute Girl and Bass Girl’s secret relationship and backstory, which is not what I expected from how they’ve been presented so far.

Written: My script says 392 words of changes, but most of that was shuffling stuff around for better(?) organization. Kit says she counts that as half, so I’ll call today 196.

I wore one of those!

Went to the office, had the room to myself because coworker D didn’t make it in, ate some beef and rice that was tasty but sadly lacking in vitamins, did some works.

Read (manga): Hello, Melancholic! vol 1 (Yayoi Ohsawa): An awkward trombone girl gets dragged into playing music by a cute popular girl and somehow ends part of the all-girl band. Probably one of the two has a crush on the other. Jazz ensues.

Written: 327.

There is a lot of playing god in the “Dungeon Crawler Carl” books, and so far it’s not going that great for them, because fuck alien oligarchs.

Despite staying up too late reading, I went to the office, ate hipster onigiri, and sort of did a work.

Read: Monologue Woven For You vol 1 (Syu Yasaka): One college girl is an actress, the other acted in high school but gave it up for some mysterious reason, they fall in love, but the one girl’s dark past may come between them.

Read: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Matt Dinniman): A level designed to give the humans extra trauma, an unwise bargain, and a lot of forces outside the dungeon on the move. Also the dungeon itself seems to be freaking out more and more, which must be a good sign, right?

Read: Kidd Commander vol 1 (Aria Bell): This is Marith’s favorite comic ever (I probably exaggerate), and I have not previously managed to get into it, but I got through the entire first paper volume (which goes up to the waitress’s big reveal), and although it is very Early-Web-Comic, it is also pretty cool.

Written: I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere with the project I had switched to writing in summary form, so I switched again to working on the ideas I had to simplify(?) D&D5. Game design is pointless and stupid, as people barely have time to play games that have already been published, never mind playtest new ones, but arguably not more so than my fiction writing. Anyway, 126 words of that.

That is BY DEFINITION every day!

Went in to the office, didn’t have it to myself because Coworker D is back, ate some crispy chicken bits with coleslaw and pickled veggies, did a work or something.

Read: A Conventional Boy (Charles Stross): A hapless D&D player who was sent up the secret river back in the day finally breaks out of the Laundry internment camp so he can attend a convention. Alarming LARPs ensue.

Read: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! vol 1 (Sumito Oowara): So far, pretty much like the anime. There’s Backgrounds Girl, Character Girl, and Business Girl, fantasy sequences, the disintegrating clubroom, the screening for the student council, etc. I don’t remember exactly, but I think the end of this first volume of the manga is pretty far through the anime series.

Written: 138.

I’m not sure I understand the difference between emo and goth, but I’m old and terminally uncool and nobody cares what I understand.

Went to the office, ate Thai fried tofu and roti, did a long call with a customer.

Read: Daily Report About My Witch Senpai vol 1 (Maka Machida): Some people are just witches, can’t let that get in the way of a het workplace romance. Ditz x stoic.

Read: Raven’s Hope (Glynn Stewart): Conclusion(?) to the series about a heroic starship commander and a heroic diplomat trying to keep things from exploding after the alien empire was overthrown. I’m not sure I approve of the resolution of the threat of the last three or so books, but I guess if someone is making war against you, there’s only so many kinds of responses.

Read: Chainsaw Man vol 7 (Tatsuki Fujimoto): And now, a bunch more crazed devil-wielding freaks for Denji to get mugged by!

Read: The Twelve Failed Careers of Oddmass (Chris McDowall): A supplement for Electric Bastionland with twelve bizarre and vaguely Christmas-themed failed careers to generate characters.

Written: 200 exactly.

About to become illegal, no doubt.

Went to work, sat on a customer call with Coworker K while the customers talked endlessly among themselves until she used the “we have a hard stop at (now+15m)” line to get them to do the thing, ate something called a sushirrito, was the only person left in the entire office by about 16:00.

I keep thinking about how to simplify  D&D even though this is completely pointless. People barely have time to play games they already know; nobody has time to learn a new one, never mind playtest.

Read: Chainsaw Man vol 6 (Tatsuki Fujimoto): Wow, that turned out even worse than I expected.

Read: How to Survive at the End of the World vol 3 (RC Joshua): Technically our handyman is past the end of the world now, making his janky OP way in a System-enabled galaxy. Surely nothing can go wrong from this point.

Read: An Unreasonable Doubt (Jonathan L Howard): A mysterious crime, mysterious people with ideas about it, and a British detective who doesn’t need any of this.

Read: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You vol 1 (Jinushi): A middle-aged salaryman, a mysterious young woman, lots of cigarettes, and slice-of-life interactions.

Written: 141.

I guess it’s just the thoughts that are unmentionable, not the festival itself? Anyway, hope you had an obscure one!

Went to the office, ate crispy chicken fried with cheddar, did some work I guess.

Read: Cheerful Amnesia vol 1-2 (Tamamushi Oku): A young woman loses three years of memory (in that neat way of fictional amnesia), forgetting how she got a girlfriend or what having a girlfriend was like, but it’s okay because when she wakes up to find the girlfriend next to her hospital bed, she immediately falls madly in love all over again. Genki idiot x stoic butch, rampant horniness, moderate high jinx, very silly.

Read: Tournament of Ruses (Kate Stradling): Second book in the trilogy, a young woman from country nobility gets sucked into the capital after the upheaval of the first book and doesn’t like it much but manages to make do and find a boy and save the day and only get killed a little bit. Still very conventional, still cute.

Read: Partridge in a BEAR Tree (Murphy Lawless): Sequel to OctoBEARfest, the cousin of the male lead from that one discovers the drummer of the female lead is her fated mate, and shenanigans ensue. Major shenanigans that I was not expecting, and also a crossover with the non-Virtue, non-Renaissance shifter books I haven’t read. But, gay shifters! The Virtue books were so conventional as required by the Zoe Chant Collective that I wasn’t sure that was even possible.

Written: 128.

I know kaleidoscopes used to be big, but now there’s an app for that. Wait, is there actually an app for that? … Yes, several, although a lot of them seem to be for drawing your own symmetric patterns or filtering your photos into symmetric patterns.

Went to the office, did a work, ate a Korean BBQ sandwich.

Read: Kingdom of Ruses (Kate Stradling): A kingdom founded on lies, a handsome young man who Remington-Steeles himself into the lies, annoying younger brothers, a well of magic, het romance, political intrigue, mysteries. Sadly very heteronormative, but cute.

Read: Lucy, Uncensored (Mel Hammond, Teghan Hammond): Not heteronormative at all. A trans senior girl tries to find a college drama program that isn’t terrible, despite cis guys and transphobic school boards and unsupportive parents and her best friend’s poor dietary choices and dodgy dog.

Read: Throw Away the Suit Together vol 1-2 (Keyyang): Also not heteronormative. A lesbian couple in their last year of college give up on the Tokyo rat race and run away to an island to live in a borrowed family beach house. Sadly a dilapidated house is not enough to survive on, so they have to deal with people and capitalism and everything. I’m not sure if it’s exactly slice-of-life, because that usually doesn’t include so much upheaval, but it’s close. And cute.

Written: 223.

Zoom!

Went to the office, ate a bento-type thing, did a work. Boss K is visiting so even though Coworker D is still out sick, I did not have the office to myself.

Read: Tearmoon Empire vol 1 (Mizu Morino, Nozomu Mochitsuki, Gilse): The princess, somewhat deservedly, is guillotined by the revolutionaries who have overthrown her corrupt government, but wakes up as her tween self. She isn’t any less shallow or self-serving, but she really doesn’t want to get executed, so she does her best to shore up the kingdom and make people not hate her. This combined with her  knowledge of future events leads people to believe all kinds of untrue things about her, but she’s doing her best (such as it is)!

Read: Eden of Witches vol 1 (Yumeji): All the plants in the world have taken the animals and gone off to hide, leaving humanity in a barren wasteland. Only witches can grow plants, so instead of hiring them, the populace murders them at every opportunity. Very women-witches-nature good, men-science-civilization bad, so bleah.

Written: Another 130 of notes. Am I running out of ideas?

<code>Hello, world!</code>

Went to the office, did some work, ate some hummus pita chicken shawarma.

Read: This Used to Be About Dungeons vol 1 (Alexander Wales): I guess it’s litRPG? There’s no popups, though, the world is just arranged into 12-mile hexes with one dungeon per hex, parties with intraparty chat can be formed by a simple spell everyone knows, etc. I guess it’s diegetic litRPG? Anyway, it’s weird. The party is one guy and four girls, but it doesn’t seem likely to turn into a harem as nobody has chemistry with the guy and some of the girls already have crushes on each other.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 12-14 (Ryoko Kui): Read the last three volumes all at once because gaaaaah. Climactic confrontations! All the side characters are back! Everything is almost doomed! But Laios’s love of monsters saves the day! Epilogue! That was quite something.

Written: 237.

Observe and remember while it’s still legal.

Went to the office, ate tofu bibimbap (needed more tofu), did a work or something.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 11 (Ryoko Kui): A lot of stuff happened and now everything is a huge mess. It’s great.

Written: 212.

We could use a lot more of that around here, especially in voters.

Went to the office, Coworker D was also masking because he’s sick and not American, ate a brisket sandwich, did a work.

Read: Otherside Picnic vol 11 (Iori Miyazawa, Eita Mizuno, Shirakaba): Humans, as always, are the biggest pain to deal with, even when they aren’t technically monsters.

Read: Heretical Fishing vol 3 (Haylock Jobson): There’s still some fluffiness (er, shelliness?) and it’s cranked up to 11, but also the forces of repression are growing ever-more-horrible and need dealt with.

Written: 105.

Went to the office, there were some coworkers there, we had some meetings, I ate a Reuben that wasn’t bad and did a little bit of work. Also, everything is fucked.

Read: A Line in the Stars (Sean Fenian): Conclusion of the trilogy about the thinly-disguised self-insert for the neurodivergent geek author who gets an alien space factory to serve as a decoy for alien jerks and builds Earth a space navy. Finally the catastrophe that the navy is for arrives, and things do not go as expected for anyone.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 6-8 (coolkyousinnjya): There are getting to be a lot of factions involved in this, and now Mikoto is going off after his own psychlims. Surely this will be fine.

Written: 194.

Fortunately I did not have to interact with anyone in person at work, and was able to refrain from typing, “So how about those local Nazi motherfuckers, eh?” into a corporate slack.

Read: Library System Reset: Damaged (KT Hanna): Further litRPG adventures of a college student in the magical library, and we finally find out why her, why the library is so messed up, etc. Now they just need to do something about it.

Read: Kaina of the Great Snow Sea vol 2-3 (Tsutomu Nihei, Itoe Takemoto): Too many male characters, the princess never does anything except get rescued.

Read: Lion on Loan (Zoe Chant): First of Kit’s new shapeshifters-in-Ireland series. Had too much oligarchy, alas.

Written: 175.

For the fourth decade running, no costume for me. I am not cool.

Went to the office, which was full of people, did some more customer meetings, ate a bowl of veggies and pork, spent a lot of time talking with coworkers which I rarely do. There were a few costumes, but not many.

I had one (1) trick-or-treater this year, which is a huge percentage increase over last year.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 4-5 (coolkyousinnjya): Ogre intrigue! Sus ogres professing good intentions! Frau’s backstory!

Written: 206.

Those would definitely have helped at the con!

Went to the office which only had coworker D, ate Bonchon chicken things (which are not significantly different from chicken tenders except in the sauce, but somehow okay anyway), did some customer call.

Read: Whoever Steals This Book vol 3 (Nowaki Fukamidori, Kakeru Sora): For a manga all about writing, this isn’t very well-written. All the exposition came in a lump at the end (which this was). Maybe I’m too picky.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 3 (coolkyousinnjya): Ogres don’t get along with each other any better than they get along with humans, apparently. Or than humans get along with beastfolk, etc. Sally has gone from “I bet we can come to a peaceable solution if we talk about this like fellow sophonts of goodwill” to “here is the peaceable solution, do it or I murder you all” and I can’t blame her.

Read: Jasmine is Haunted (Mark Oshiro): What it says on the tin! A Latina middle-school girl is haunted, it’s very upsetting, finally she makes friends who can help her figure it out and grownups stop being in denial. Also, plentiful gayness.

Written: 170.

That’s literally every day since at least 2016!

Went to the office, which had many people again, ate a doshirak (which seems to be Korean for bento) full of tofu and pot stickers, did a work even though I was sleepy. The train was late getting me home, but whatever.

Read: 7th Time Loop vol 1 (Touko Amekawa, Hinoki Kino, Wan*Hachipisu): Our protagonist has been through six iterations of a time loop from when she gets jilted by the crown prince, each one short but full of learning and independence in a different profession. Now the foreign prince whose bullshit war got her murdered six times even though they’ve never met, wants to carry her off to his country and marry her. Surely this will go splendidly.

Read: Whoever Steals This Book vol 2 (Nowaki Fukamidori, Kakeru Sora): Two book worlds this time, and we meet a thief, but are they the thief that’s causing all this trouble? Still not much closer to learning who dog-girl is or whether they’re going to kiss or why these books are magic or what’s up with the aunt or really anything.

Read: Azarinth Healer vol 4 (Rhaegar): Completely OP isekai litRPG protagonist returns to civilization for a bit, and completely pwns the n00bs, but then has to go back north to help with an extremely high-level dungeon, where she pwns creatures of much higher level and learns some stuff and makes some friends. Not level 400 yet, though.

Written: 202.

I told the pocket friends, so there could be a lizard gif party.

Went to the office, which was full of people including coworker A who is visiting from the UK, ate purple rice wrapped around pork and egg and veggies, went home early so I could do the evening work while Boss K is on vacation.

Read: Pandora Unchained vol 1 (Patrick Laplante): Extremely Westernized cultivation fantasy: mana instead of qi, D&D classes, dungeons are lost temples to the dead Greek gods, etc. Main character is a physician dying from having his cultivation destroyed in an intra-clan spat when he prays to what they have instead of gods now and gets an OP poison-based cultivation path. Intrigue and resource-gathering and assholes and a dungeon labyrinth ensue.

Read: Me and My Beast Boss vol 2 (Shiroinu): Giant terrifying lion boss, human subordinate, corporate intrigue, feelings.

Read: Gokurakugai vol 1 (Yuto Sano): She’s a stoic chain-smoking gunslinger, he’s a young punk with superpowers, they fight anthropophagous undead in a seedy vaguely-Chinese city. The monsters are called “maga”, which pleases me.

Read: Livesuit (James SA Corey): The alien war from The Mercy of Gods seen from the perspective of the main(?) human civilization. Their method of interstellar travel is very unclear except for the time dilation, and in fact a lot of their technology is unclear, but it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a very sensible job of fighting the aliens, or of making supersoldiers. In fact, it seems kind of like their military strategy is to maximize bleakness and futility. Is there an in-world reason for what they’re doing? Shrug emoji.

Written: 183.

I mean, from a biochemical point of view…

Went to the office, ate Indian-style mustard fish and quinoa, did a work.

Read: A Cat From Our World and the Forgotten Witch vol 3 (Hiro Kashiwaba): Have we found the person who most needs to be eaten by a cat the size of a dragon? Maybe we have!

Written: 260.

If only!

I went into the office, but I was the only one in our closet, so I was able to eat my orange chicken and pot-stickers and do a bit of work in peace.

Read: Chasing Spica vol 1 (Chihiro Orihi): More high-school yuri, academic rivals-to-enemies-to-having-unexpectedly-hot-dreams. Slightly sexier than many examples of the genre, and neither of the leads seems to be an idiot or a monster or a lunatic.

Read: I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 1 (Yutaka): He’s a high-school villain (at the level of secretly draining the pool because he hates swim class), she’s a meek mousy girl with well-hidden strength and curves and a secret taste for evil, together they do crimes. Obviously there’s no point to male protagonists, but he’s kind of Miles-like in his shortness and health problems and cunning, so I guess that’s okay, and she’s super-hot when she stands up straight and ties her hair back, which always amuses me.

Read: ShipCore 2.0 (Erios909): The wider universe comes to impinge on our heroines’ little corner, showing how much of a backwater it really is and how being impressive to the hicks there is not that impressive. Also, von Neumann capabilities are a go, which cannot possibly lead to any problems.

Written: 160.