I like Lego, but I always feel like I should like it more.
Played (Changeling): 90s Berkeley. Nicole and Longfingers find a tiny door in the back of the auto body shop the crew is crashing in, which somehow lets changelings pass through into a secret realm of hostile tree-roots. Nicole befriends a mysterious squirrel-guy with sign language, and trades him left-over Chinese food for making a space in the Hedge (which is what this surely must be) where the crew can sleep safely. During the night, Longfingers hears strange noises, climbs around, and finds an exit into library somewhere, but does not make use of it. In the morning, the crew experiments with having Everett swear an oath to take Longfingers’s money from working at the club and use it to get supplies to make a sign for setting up Nicole with a While-U-Wait Mending business at the sketchy swap meet. He is successful in his quest and reaps the rewards of his vow. They also find a copy of the changeling zine by Simple John that they heard about before, which the players receive as an actual, semi-legible, amazing PDF.
Read (manga): Outbride vol 1 (Tohko Tsukinaga): A modern Japanese girl with no romantic experience meets Truck-kun and is awakened in a distant future by four gorgeous men who want her, as the only remaining human, to bear their hybrid super-children. She is not down for this for a variety of reasons, but she does have to make out with them to survive in the alien atmosphere of Earth’s cross-dimensional future and also they are obviously not going to take no for an answer. Not exactly my kink, alas.
Read (manga): Monster Cats vol 2 (Pandania): More of the same cats, some new monster types, still cute.
Written (game design): 105.