Tag: tv

I presume that’s for the US, and every day in Germany is Bratwurst Tag, but maybe they don’t eat bratwursts anymore and it’s a weird historical holdover for Americans. Anyway, I ate all the bratwursts I had a while ago and haven’t bought any more, but they sound really good right now.

Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1.6-7: I guess when an escape from literal Hell is placed on the mantelpiece in the first episode…

Read: Cosmoknights vol 1 (Hannah Templer): Powered-armor knights “joust” (it’s a melee) to win the hands of space princesses for their sponsors, because patriarchy and classism. A young mechanic who lost her princess years ago runs into some queer ladies who recognize this system as bullshit and adventure ensues. If only they all had the same idea of what to do about the problem…

Read: Fight Me (Austin Grossman): Not directly related to Soon I Will Be Invincible, but a similar superhero universe. A superhero team is assembled from teenagers who got powers and did crimes, drama happens, many years after they have fallen apart and separately retired/gone into hiding/moved to another continent and changed their names, events pull them back together and further drama ensues. It is very much about how being a superhero doesn’t help you get your life together, entirely the opposite.

Read: I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl vol 1 (Kashikaze): A good student is extorted into getting an absentee student to come to school, the absentee student agrees to attend and study in exchange for kisses and possibly other wishes to be granted later, good student doesn’t know what to make of this. It is not a ground-breaking concept even in the smaller world of yuri manga, I’m sure, but I like it anyway.

Written: 205.

But do ebooks count? Iconoclasm and heresy!

Marith got us Chinese food.

Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1.5: Poor Jenny. Poor Niko. Poor Charles. No new boy for Edwin, but a cliffhanger about boys.

Read: The Mercy of Gods (James SA Corey): A human colony so lost they don’t even really know they’re a colony is conquered and octomated by surprise aliens and their best and brightest carried off to slavery among alien creatures and alien worldviews. The aliens are pretty alien, as well as extremely inhumane, but the second-rate academic who is the main viewpoint character is starting to figure them out by the end of the first book. Presumably the second book will turn everything upside down, although I’m pretty sure the great enemy will turn out to be [SPOILER].

Read: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins (P Djeli Clark): Deranged cult assassins, missing memories, mysterious girls, undead monstrosities, serial killers, a city-wide party, and [SPOILER]. And snark.

Written: 134.

Dinosaurs are the best. Even ones I am not currently eating.

Read: Let’s Do It Already! vol 1 (Aki Kusaka): Not nearly as raunchy as it sounds. She’s a normal modern girl who wants to smooch her boyfriend, he’s the scion of an extremely old-fashioned and rule-bound political family and possibly on the spectrum, their story is not that interesting.

Read: Exes & Foes (Amanda Woody): They used to be best friends until they had a falling-out, they both have terrible parent problems (although hers are definitely worse), now they’re in high school and have both fallen for the new girl. Drama ensues. So much drama. Their friends are very long-suffering.

Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 4: Even-numbered episode, no new boys for Edwin. And sadly, although killing a psychopomp may be gratifying in the moment, it’s not likely to stick.

Written: Exactly 100 of poking at individual sentences, but I think I need to throw all this away and go off in a different direction.

Wow, it’s been a long time. It’s also National Intern Day, so obviously I need an intern to make me a hot fudge sundae!

Did go into the office today, ate a spicy burger, did hardly any work, did remain masked around humans and their virus-filled faceholes.

Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 3: Edwin’s closet full of milkshakes brings approximately 2/3 of a boy to the yard per episode.

Read: Kaina of the Great Snow Sea vol 1 (Tsutomu Nihei, Itoe Takemoto): Tsutomo Nihei far-future megastructures, this time an atmosphere canopy anchored by giant tentacle-trees. Young man in the last village atop the canopy is surprised to discover there are people on the surface, etc. Not sure what the snow sea is made of that doesn’t automatically solve a water shortage, but I’m sure all will be revealed in due course.

Read: No Man Left Behind (WR Gingell): The actual conclusion, in which many surprising events occur. Some of them are perhaps more surprising to the characters than the reader, being heartwarming when Athelas has given up on his heart.

Read: The Moon on a Rainy Night vol 4 (Kuzushiro): This volume is more about deafness than romance, but they are still adorable.

Read: “The Year Without Sunshine” (Naomi Kritzer): Ordinary working-class people coming together during a near-future climate disaster. It’s the wealthy professionals that go all Mad Max.

Read: “One Man’s Treasure” (Sarah Pinsker): Even when there’s actual magic, rich people abuse it and leave huge messes for poor people to clean up.

Written: 305, some fiction and some adventure notes. After reading an actual Perils & Princesses adventure, I realized I need a doom counter and some wrinkle tables.

I am so bad at this. Have I ever made a friend in my life? How?

Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1-2: The dead boys are very dumb, but at least their living sidekick is a little better. Also the exposition is clunky, but whatever. It’s a cute show.

Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Wizard’s Blue vol 5-6 (Makoto Sanda, Isuo Tsukumo): The war is kicking off, excellent time for a multi-chapter flashback to Ao’s past, which I don’t think we were previously very aware was mysterious. But it is!

Written: 256.

An important day for all water-soluble organisms!

I did not do anything even slightly useful today, but I was mostly conscious, just not energetic.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.9: That was a pretty terrible day for Blitz, but he both deserved it and asked for it. It was also a terrible day for Stolas, who really didn’t.

Read: The Splendid Work of a Monster Maid vol 4-5 (Yugata Tanabe): I thought the undercover maid jobs would go on forever, but no, the story is actually complete in five volumes, everything wrapped up!

Written: Covid.

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.

Yes, it’s the day after Daylight Savings Day, and I wanted to nap, but did not manage to do so. Or maybe I napped very lightly for the whole day.

Watched: Hilda and the Mountain King: Movie between the second and third seasons, following directly from the cliffhanger at the end of the second season which I had completely forgotten until now. Like so much Hilda, appears scary but is wholesome. Kind of.

Written: 114. What am I even doing with this?

I actually did eat banana bread today, since I still had some left over from the gaming feast on Sunday.

Fortunately the presentation that got cancelled yesterday was repeated today for the other side of the globe and I only had to skip the team meeting to attend. It was even a little useful, although more sales-oriented than I wished.

Watched: Hilda 3.4-6: A new friend! An old acquaintance! An extremely scary monster, possibly from another genre!

Written: 243.

It’s a day for Marith!

Did not go to the office today, did some work, I guess?

Watched: Hilda 3.1-3: Looks like we know what this season’s mystery is! Also, the return of Wood Man. This is such a good weird show.

Read: The Stick Princess (Delia Marshall Turner): Finally, after like thirty years, I get to read the last book of the trilogy! Unsurprisingly, it is also about a young woman with an unusual relationship to magic, although she is even more at the center of what’s going on, and it crosses over with the big even at the end of the other two books. It also has an epilogue, establishing that it really is the end. I am surprised by how low in the text, if not actually subtextual, the F/F relationship is, compared to the open M/M relationships in the first book.

Read: Crawljammer vol 1-3 (Tim Callahan, et al): A regular zine for DCC, expanding it into a habitable solar system without being any less gonzo. Want to be a Red Martian Psychic Knight and steal from the Pirate Kings of Pluto? Now you can do that! But you can also be a dwarf or a thief or whatever. In spaaaaaace!

Written: 137. This is still all wrong again.

Still not feeling great. Tried to do some work, with mixed results.

The cats were still not eating any of the food I had, so I went and bought some different food, and apparently that is somewhat acceptable. I hope it’s not just that it’s new, because there are a limited number of brands I can buy.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1.7-8: Season finale! The power of friendship prevails! But there is lots left for the next season, because even if Charlie saved Hell, it’s still Hell.

Read: Blade of the Moon Princess vol 2 (Tatsuya Endo): More running around in enemy bases and learning to use the sword and also some backstory on the rival princess.

Written: 174.

I think I like the concept of Lego more than the actuality, but I’m still pretty glad it’s a thing that exists. One of the better uses of plastics.

Today was a lot of nothing. I felt a lot better, though.

Watched: The Imperfects 1: Three teenagers find out they have superpowers completely paid for by the accompanying disads, and the mad scientist who did this to them has skipped town. Despite the line about “a banshee, a chupacabra, and a succubus” there is not so far any indication of supernatural elements, just improbable biotechnology.

Written: 471. Admire how I am not feeling (very) bad about not doing this every day!

Where would we be without them?

Spent most of the workday on a customer call where I contributed little, but not quite nothing.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 3-4: Okay, it’s better, especially since we got both Angel Dust and Husk doing things.

Read: Call the Name of the Night vol 2 (Tama Mitsuboshi): This volume reminded me a lot of Witch Hat Atelier, with the magic medicine lessons.

Written: 189.

I’m RIGHT HERE! But bald enough I probably don’t count any more.

I had to quote the lines of output to a customer that said exactly what he wanted to know and clearly labeled it, and then I had to repeat that those lines meant what they said. Yes, okay, ESL, but he was completely fluent otherwise, just not willing to read. Customers, ugh.

Watched: Hazbin Hotel 1-2. I feel like they put it into too many focus groups and everything interesting got scraped off. None of the characters are nearly as interesting as the ones in Helluva Boss, possibly because all their problems are external (except maybe Angel Dust). I hope it does well anyway, but I was definitely hoping for more.

Written: 199.

 

I think there needs to be more burning of Trump (in effigy, with votes, whatever).

Read: Hell Followed With Us (Andrew Joseph White): Gay trans bioapocalyptic body horror turned up to 12. This is absolutely not a book for the faint of heart.

Watched: I Am Not Okay With This 1-3: A teenage girl in some decade suffers the usual teenage problems of family, friends, peers, sex, romance, poverty, etc, while strange things start happening. Reviews say “superpowers” but I think she might just be haunted.

Written: 102, which is still more than 99.

Hurray for birbs!

I did manage to have a functional metabolism all night, although I still didn’t like getting up in the morning and doing some work.

Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 7-8: Yep, that’s a Scott Pilgrim plan, all right. I can’t help but think that Ramona could do better, but of course that will be a different timeline. Anyway, musical theater, massive battle, the end!

Read: Frogkisser! (Garth Nix): A young princess goes on a Quest to defeat the evil sorcerer who is trying to take over her kingdom, which involves a lot of transformation spells. The Quest gets pretty complicated and also smelly, but she has an assortment of friends and allies and it’s not like she can go home until she’s done.

Written: 252, although half of it was terrible and half was just notes. Actually maybe all of it was terrible.

Look, it’s 2024! Insert meme here.

I had to get up at 7 to be on call, which I was late for, and then I had a thing that needed attention right away so there was no going back to sleep. Eventually I got to stop being on call, which I was also late for. Not an auspicious start to the year!

In between, I at least got to play a little Minecraft with Ayse and Nonny. I haven’t played in a long time, it turns out.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.9-10: Pretty sure listening to Five is always more sensible than listening to any of the others, and this was no exception. Now the season is over and everything is ???WTF??? yet again, but next season allegedly will wrap it all up. I doubt it will resolve the discrepancies in scale, but all visual SF has to suffer from those, because all people with enough money to make a theatrical movie or Netflix show are complete morons.

Read: Strange Machines (ed Marissa Van Uden): I actually read this a while back but forgot to note it, so here it is. Subtitled An Anthology of Dark User Manuals, it is what it says on the tin. Stories include “A Brief Guide to Surviving a Human-Forced Reset”, “How to Install Organic Prostheses”, “Implementation of Eusocial Technologies in the Office”, and “How to Talk to Your Luvvbot-3000 about WWIV”. None of them are very long, so it’s more like the instructional blurbs from the backs of the boxes than actual manuals, but a lot of them are quite dark.

Written: 212 words. This actually is auspicious!

Marith could not come because she doesn’t want to be sick and still have to go work in our third-world hellhole, but I fear no germs so I went to have New Year’s Eve sushi and games and movies and companionship. (There was also Korean fried chicken, but we had so ridiculously much sushi that we didn’t get to it.) There were hugs and chonky cats and eventually toasts and fireworks. Bizarrely, transit did not have after-midnight runs for partiers, so I had to beg a ride home from Ken, but that was the only flaw in an otherwise lovely evening.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.8: I guess that’s one thing to do while destroying the universe.

Watched: Mystery Science Theater 3000 4.21: Circus on Ice and Monster-a-Go-Go. That movie definitely earned its place in the “Worst Movies of All Time” bucket! Apparently it was built on the bones of an incomplete previous movie, but that doesn’t come close to explaining the awfulness.

Played: Innovation. I’m still terrible at this game but at least Jus didn’t beat me. (We tied for last.)

Played: Uno. Ken kept catching me out on calling uno, hmph.

Played: Poetry for Neanderthals. Another of the “try to get your teammate to say the word” games. The schtick for this one is that the prompter can only use words of one syllable, and if they mess up, a member of the team gets to hit them with an inflatable club. It’s surprisingly fun even when nobody gets clobbered! Ayse and I beat Ken and Jus, based mostly on one round where I immediately picked up everything she laid down.

Written: Holiday. Tomorrow for sure!

Also another Bacon Day (it was meant to be Lentil Day, but right before the deadline…)

I did not want to get up and go grocery shopping this morning, but this afternoon I’m on-call, tomorrow is Retail Hell of NYE, the day after that is NYD and on-call, and then I’m back at work, so there was really not much choice.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.4-7: Well, that’s messed up.

Written: FAIL.

I feel like we’ve already seen this one, but I’m fine with extra chocolate.

Went back to work, which is good because otherwise Coworker T would have been the only one there for much of the day. He probably could have handled it, but it’s good that he didn’t have to.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 2.10, 3.1-3: Hey, look, it’s another disaster! With the only thing worse than the Umbrella Academy! But the main characters all get major points for being cool (if not chill) about Viktor.

Read: Daemons of the Shadow Realm vol 3 (Hiromu Arakawa): Not as many daemon battles this volume, but some politics and setup for a big fight next time. The daemons really do just have completely arbitrary powers, it seems like. However, based on FMA, I suspect we will eventually see some rhyme or reason.

Read: Timber Wolf (Murphy Lawless, Zoe Chant): The first Virtue Shifters story from Kit, and it shows. There’s an actual antagonist! Also the first appearance of Noah, whose control of the town only grows with each successive book.

Written: FAIL. I don’t know how to write. I never have. All is delusion and futility.

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.

 

I accomplished absolutely nothing useful today, because I am A Idiot. The cats did get three gooshy meals, though.

Read: Jangli (Ashvi Gupta): OSR set in pre-Hindu(?) Western India. It reminds me of Pendragon, with the PCs wanting to get glory but doing it through adventuring to protect their clan territory from monsters and witches, and going to battle against other clans, and not having magic of their own (so not like Runequest). Pretty standard OSR system, limited advancement, mass combat rules.

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 13-16: The end! Many things were wrapped up, some things were left mysterious. Plotwise there is plenty of room for more, although it would probably be okay if nothing more was ever explained.

Watched: BNA 1: I dunno, it was the next thing Netflix played, because their algorithm is trash. Something about beast-people being oppressed and getting stuffed into their own city and human terrorists and wolf superheroes.

Written: Nope, still FAIL.

 

(Comes before Christmas Eve, but is not that great.)

I failed to get produce at the farmers’ market, but did get some food to keep me going until Christmas, then went grocery shopping and got some more food to get me to Boxing Day, when I plan to go shopping again. Also finally tried the other chicken tenders place because it wasn’t raining, but meh.

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 8-12: Netflix doesn’t seem to have the 2013 series. I blame capitalism. Anyway, we get more about Puppycat’s backstory, and plot, and the weird people who live with Bee on her island. Puppycat did an actual nice thing! I think this series is Steven Universe + FLCL + pastel.

Read: “Zeta-Epsilon” (Isabel J Kim): So what’s it like having an AI stapled to your brain?

Read: “Day Ten Thousand” (Isabel J Kim): Very meta, about guys cloned from ten-thousand-year-old dead guys in the future or the past or alternate timelines or different drafts of the same story about suicide. Not my thing.

Written: FAIL. You’d think I’d be able to do something while on vacation, but no.

I know most cookies last a while, but it still seems like this should be closer to Bake Cookies Day.

Half the US team and our boss were on vacation today, but work was quite light. Good job having a holiday code freeze, customers! Now I’m off until next Wednesday.

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 2-7: The island is weird, Bee is weird, the aliens she does odd jobs for are weird, everyone on the island is weird, but Puppycat is actually less weird than in the first episode. But apparently this is actually the second season?! I need to figure that out so I can watch more effectively.

Written: FAIL.

 

It is now very unlikely to get any darker! Could still get a lot rainier, though.

I did make it into the office today, and it was not a lot less crowded than usual. I probably should have skipped the potato salad that came with my cow meat sandwich.

Read: The Girl I Want Is So Handsome! (Yuama): Complete fluff, a cute 1st-year meets a handsome and athletic and stacked 2nd-year and they fall head-over-heels for each other. The only real conflict is “she couldn’t like me that way, it must just be friendship” and even that doesn’t stand in the way very long. Complete in one omnibus of about two tankobon.

Read: Kiss the Scars of the Girls vol 1 (Aya Haruhana): When each vampire girl at Secret Vampire Girl School turns fourteen, she’s assigned an older vampire girl to mentor her in learning all kinds of important things, like how to feed on humans without getting murdered. They don’t seem to be very good at it, even when lesbian drama isn’t getting in the way.

Read: to ask about loyalty (tasara_bokka): Vorkosigan Saga fic, allegedly canon-compliant but a different perspective on Miles and Ekaterin’s wedding. I liked it fine, but probably would have appreciated it even more if I remembered all the books better.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 3.7-10: The triumphant conclusion, after struggling with principles and also with giant monsters. Random character: “Who would even come up with a plan like that?” Main cast, in unison, “Kipo.”

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 1: A young woman who has been fired from every job on her mysterious island encounters a strange creature that gets her temp jobs on Walkr planets. It is more surreal and has a chiller aesthetic than Steven Universe, but reminds me a little.

Written: FAIL, although I did scribble some notes of things that need to be revealed in one project. That’s not quite a plot, since the MC should also have personal development or something, but it’s stuff that would go in an outline.

Crap, they’re ganging up on us!

I meant to go to the office today, but slept poorly and when I woke up it was just not happening. I hope somebody ate my lunch and it didn’t go to waste. Apparently yesterday the office was pretty deserted as people go on holiday, and I can’t imagine today would have been any better, but it would have showed willing or something.

Read: Jack of Hearts (and other parts) (LC Rosen): A high-school boy who sleeps around a lot gets talked into writing a sex advice column for the totally-not-a-student-newspaper and also gets stalked and blackmailed. Definitely the sluttiest and probably the least romantic YA protagonist I have seen, but also one of the more stressed and traumatized ones.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 3.4-6: Humans kind of ruin everything, don’t they?

Written: Caught up on journal, which is still FAIL.

Unfortunately I am incapable of doing any cooking, but I hope people who don’t suck have many delicious cookies today!

The power went out in the afternoon, taking local cellular with it. I walked up the street a kilometer or so and found a gas station that had both power and open wifi so I could tell work what happened, but it was raining so I went home and bibbled uselessly until the power came back. Fortunately there was not a lot of work.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 3.1-3: Human-level intelligence apparently includes human inability to cooperate even in the face of extreme danger.

Written: Even more FAIL. Are you maybe getting the idea that I suck?

I like maple syrup, but pretty sure the arm widget doesn’t.

Today’s major event: I thought about going to the other chicken tenders place before grocery shopping, but it was rainy and I remembered their outdoor seating as being uncovered, so I went to the regular place and ended up not sitting outside anyway. So excitement. Much decision. Wow.

I got packages, but they were mostly boring household stuff. Some of them might be presents. Or not.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 2.5-10: Just because they found another problem doesn’t mean the first problem didn’t need resolving. I’m pretty sure that’s not how that death trap works, though.

Written: Continued , unending FAIL.