Month: February 2025

I ward off the Tooth Fairy with floss and fluoride!

Watched (animation): The Dragon Prince 3.5-7: Humans are the worst, and yet Viren is taking that as a challenge.

Read (novel): Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind (Misa Sugiura): A bullied Japanese-American middle-schooler discovers that she is actually special and goes on an adventure through Japanese mythology. It’s legitimately hard being Momo, some minor anger issues are perfectly understandable.

Read (manga): I read enough that I’m keeping up with my inches-per-week, but it’s part of a huge thick omnibus so I haven’t finished and logged the title yet.

Written (catgirl): 153.

Is it only 23 hours long?

Also No-Brainer Day. Look, it me!

Went to the office without a jacket for the first time this year (I think), there were people there, ate some popcorn chicken that seemed good in theory but was awfully fried in practice, hated being in the office because people talk and talk and there aren’t enough conference rooms for everybody who needs to do a customer call. Return-to-office continues to be a pointless waste of everybody’s time, as it has been since the beginning.

I tried to think about game design more, but you know how when you crossword too much, and a perfectly ordinary sequence of letters stops looking like language? I think I’m at that point. Magic? Fight? Treasure? Elf? Experience? Monster? Is that all supposed to add up to something?

Read (manga): My Cute Little Kitten vol 2 (Milk Morinaga): Insecurity, sex, life changes, medical emergencies (the cat is fine), it’s hard being a hot lesbian couple!

Written (catgirl): 110.

Another failure on my part.

Went to the office, had the room to myself, sat on customer calls all day, ate a short-rib-between-grilled-rice-cakes burger thing. May or may not have done any actual work.

Read (short story): Peacock on Parade (CE Murphy): Every time Kit writes about a bird shifter, it’s more alarming. I’m pretty sure that after Colorado Shifters and Irish Zoo Shifters, the next spinoff series is going to be Reign of the Dinosaurs II: Theropod Boogaloo. Also the female lead from this book is someone from TooMUSH.

Read (game): Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes (Michael Addison): Wandering heroes against the post-apocalyptic oppressors! The GM is also the voice on the radio that provides mysterious information. Pick your apocalypse and wasteland and oppressors, or make up your own, pick a playbook (ex-oppressor, robot, mutant, whatever), and have wild adventures. The system is fairly basic larger-dice-for-higher-skill, spend successes to get additional benefits, with the twist that if you accomplish enough with a skill you get a sticker to put on your character sheet. The book comes with a complete set of stickers, but I guess after that you need to draw them yourself.

Written (game design): 173. Still not sure that my initial ideas weren’t all wrong.

I was quiet because although I was on a lot of customer meeting today, I mostly didn’t have to take the lead.

No gaming due to a general lack of energy.

Read (graphic novel): It Took Luke (Mark Bouchard, Bayleigh Underwood, Micah Myers, Jasmine Walls): I’m not sure the monsters are even a metaphor for capitalism at this point.

Written (catgirl): 175. This character’s relationship with her dad is too wholesome and not dramatic enough. Should I make him a worse person?

I am ahead of my time! (I ate tortilla chips yesterday, along with way too much cheese.)

Did not manage to get up for the optional early meeting, even though I probably really should have. Too many customers, not enough brains.

Cleaners came in the afternoon and rearranged everything.

Read (manga): My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today vol 2 (Kiyoko Iwami): Like the author says, this is a manga about cheating! None of these girls is a particularly great person, not even the one being cheated on, but that’s how you get the mega-drama.

Written (catgirl): 161.

Another one more honor’d in the breach etc.

Did some shopping, but the store failed me. Did some more shopping for cats, which worked better, then tried another shopping with a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health, which got me what I was looking for but the bus failed me so I had to carry bags of heavy stuff until my shoulders were sore.

Watched (live action): The Bureau of Magical Things 1-2: An otherwise normal Australian teenager accidentally gets magical powers and has to interact with the magical creatures she can now see, some of whom are extremely obnoxious. A return to the days of less polished special effects, with a female-dominated cast.

Read (manga): My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today vol 1 (Kiyoko Iwami): Girl A is frustrated because her secret (because homophobia) girlfriend B isn’t paying her enough attention and now Girl C has found A’s secret social media account and is stalking her and it’s a huge mess but C is hot and paying attention to A, so I don’t think this love triangle is going to be resolved in a way that is both healthy and satisfactory to all concerned.

Written (catgirl): 198.

Well, that’s easy. Also National California Day and World Thinking Day, one of which is easier than the other.

Tried to get up and do the errands in a timely fashion, but instead let myself be trapped in bed by the cats until forever o’clock and did the errands in a much more dilatory fashion.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 3.12 (37): Season finale, the day is saved, more fic about Black Tentacles Boy x Weretiger Boy is sparked, etc.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 1: I think it’s getting off to a faster start than the manga, because they only have 24 episodes to cover 14 volumes. Falin is eaten, Senshi is met, monsters are cooked.

Read (manga): Cats and Sugar Bowls (YUKIKO): A bunch of short yuri pieces, some of them pretty fetishy (by my lame standards). Medium-spicy.

Written (catgirl): 247.

Sounds boring, is probably absolutely vital to a functional Internet/computer-based society.

A work I was doing suddenly became Extremely Critical in somebody’s eyes so we had to have meetings and stuff. Ugh.

Read (manga): See You Tomorrow at the Food Court (Shinichiro Nariie): Two apparently dissimilar girls meet after school at the food court every day to talk about stuff and live slices of their lives and sometimes fight and make up. Not yuri, they really are just friends. I don’t think it’s even subtextually or codedly yuri.

Read (novel): Opium and Absinthe (Lydia Kang): A young rich lady’s sister turns up dead of apparent vampirism in 1899 New York and she has to investigate despite the constraints of propriety and family, broken bones, period medical care, semi-functional opium addiction, the terrible behavior of men, family secrets, truly terrible plans, etc. She makes friends, uncovers mysteries, and does maybe a little good in the world, though.

Written (catgirl): 172.

Also Clean Out Your Bookcase Day. I am better at one of these things than the other, possibly.

Went to the office, there were people there, ate a brisket sandwich and potato salad, did a work or two.

Read (game): The Lost and the Jammed (Tom Mecredy): It’s like a cross between D&D and Wild West and WWI, or D&D where the iconic weapon is the gun rather than the sword. Ruins with remnants of advanced technology, cyclopean shell craters, diabolists summoning demons to make infernal guns, wandering sages with blueprints for divine weapons tattooed on their skins, dragons causing trouble for the lesser species, etc. The system is a pretty standard increasing/decreasing die size, Gear is a stat, negative conditions instead of hit points.

Read (novel): Emberstone Farm (L Meili): Isekai heroine in a world that seems to be an Asian-themed cross between Stardew Valley and Minecraft, with only minor elements of monster-slaying and dungeon-delving. She also has stacks of MAXINT of every worthwhile item, thanks to her friend who hooked her up when it was just a game, so she has nothing to do except farm, romance the locals, terraform the blighted wastelands, and induct her minions into the ways of the System. And occasionally get kidnapped, but whatever.

Read (manga): Skygrazer (Masakazu Ishiguro): Linked series of shorts around a future housing development, with murder mysteries, normal teenagers, robots, bioroids, rape, tragedy, everyone coming to a bad end.

Written (catgirl): 184.

I had some chocolate mints, but I eated them. I guess I also have Thin Mints in the freezer, but those are for Marith.

Went to the office, ate chicken guys that were nicely crunchy but too spicy, did a few works, probably should have done more.

Read (graphic novel): The Pirate Princess (Luca Frigerio, Lorenza Pigliamosche, Simon Bowland): Daughter of the pirate is raised on an idyllic island, finally gets dragged back into pirate intrigue, finds out about her family, adventure, betrayal, but all on such fast forward it wasn’t very interesting.

Written (catgirl): 140 new words.

But… only one per hand?!

Played (Changeling the Lost): Ken’s 90s game. Our n00bs finally find a good squat, an abandoned Japanese import warehouse with a bunch of leftover Hello Kitty dolls and a room that Siddy can fill with cozy furniture and cats at only a small secret cost in blood. The next day, finally well-rested (except Thessaly, who has been bed-surfing all along), they go down to Telegraph to meet Troll (yes) and swap him some copper wire looted from the warehouse while Siddy set up her mending-while-u-wait business. Theophania has no useful skills and is still hung up on cash money, so I think we see where part of her personal journey has to go. (Outside the box, although she’d rather go– anyway.)

Read (manga): Pulse vol 1 (Ratana Satis): She’s a heart surgeon who sleeps around and scorns romance, she’s a romantic young heart patient who scorns a transplant, together they make an obvious bet.

Written (catgirl): 122 of fixing minor issues. Soon I will be able to start adding new stuff.

 

As long as it doesn’t need any public funding, I guess.

Had to work half a day, but nothing actually happened until it was already time to hand off to the next region.

Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 8: Another Lockwood plan that should have gotten them all killed, some light betrayal, but everything somehow turns out okay in the end. So much setup for a next season, which I presume will never happen because Netflix.

Read (comic): Rainbow vol 1 (Sunny & Gloomy): A reread from Webtoons, this first volume about a girl with a vivid imagination(?) and a terrible mother goes about as far as I read before. It is very cute, although also kind of dark.

Written (catgirl): Reread from the beginning of the current iteration and made 113 of quick typo fixes and notes on inconsistencies

Gaming was cancelled because Jeremy feels poorly, so I went grocery shopping instead. It was not as fun.

Today’s thought about gaming is that any mechanic requiring a number that isn’t already specifically written out in front of the person who needs it is a bad mechanic because it won’t get used. Not sure whether this means I should use a roll-under mechanic and have a roll-off when there’s specific opposition (my current path), or have target numbers and put one or more default TNs in all stat blocks and area descriptions.

Read (manga): Does It Count If You Lose Your Virginity To An Android? vol 3 (Yakinikuteishoku): Main character’s childhood friend who always loved her has shown up, and the sexaroid is exercising her advanced sapience functions by being jealous. Also lots and lots of lesbian sex and sex play. Little, if any, redeeming social value.

Written (game design): 349.

Go hippos! Eat the humans!

Coworker A who normally covers weekend days is out, so I had to be on call this PM. Only one case, which is a problem for Future Me (or maybe even Future Somebody Else) anyway.

Apparently Jus has dumped her girlfriend and gotten a boyfriend (who sounds very nice). I had to tease her about not being a very good lesbian.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 3.10-11 (35-36): Of course the solution they settle on is to go somewhere and murder each other. Good thing their subordinates are smarter, even if only slightly.

Read (manga): The Evil Secret Society of Cats vol 1 (Pandania): Four-panel comics about sentai supervillain cats plotting to distract and/or charm humans.

Written (game design): 268 somehow.

Books for all!

Except me, I don’t think I have enough brain for book.

Read (manga): The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses vol 2 (Koume Fujichika): It’s romance, so I guess appropriate for today, and the leads are cute, but I feel like boys should never be allowed to try to engage in romance, their brains are just not up to the task. Girls should just pick out who they want.

Written (game design): 153 numbers in a table.

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.

Thank you, internationals, for showing it’s possible to not be complete fascists, even if it will take the US another 250 years to figure it out.

Played (Changeling the Lost): Ken’s 90s game. We got a new player, who seems pretty cool, even if her character unfairly knows more about what’s going on than my character does. We got distracted from finding a squat by SHOWER at the place Thessaly had been couch-surfing, but next time for sure!

Read (manga): Me and My Beast Boss vol 3 (Shiroinu): More corporate intrigue, more anti-human racism, but also more of the other characters shipping the female lead and her lion boss.

Written (game design): 105.

Maybe that means I should switch back to writing Kitten Words, but apparently I’m not.

Had to get up early for an all-hands meeting, which I definitely paid attention to but now remember nothing of, because Monday morning.

Read (novel): Rival.EXE (Macronomicon): As predicted in the first volume, our magic-gadgeteer’s power is increasing exponentially, but there is another magic-gadgeteer to get in the way of taking over the world (besides all the other problems). The female characters of the polycule are being written out, though, so bah.

Read (manga): Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie vol 6 (Keigo Maki): More slice of life with the main couple being adorable. Cliffhanger: how will Shikimori introduce her boyfriend to her parents?

Read (novel): Cataclysm.EXE (Macronomicon): Final book, the main character’s power is plenty to destroy the world, but is it enough to save it? As usual with vast power, the character becomes less interesting and more of the story is technobabble.

Written (game design): 113.

But I ran out of pizza yesterday. Also it is Superb Owl Sunday, which meant the stores were not too crowded when I went shopping for cat supplies, so yay.

Read (manga): Versus vol 2 (ONE, Kyoutarou Azuma, bose): The plan of getting the unstoppable extinction-level threats from the combined to fight each other instead of humanity is sort of working, but there might not be enough humans left.

Read (novel): Sequel.EXE (Macronomicon): Yes, the love triangle was solved correctly! Also, extra-dimensional entities and historic doom. Now we know more about how the world got to be the way it is, and it’s pretty much what you would expect from supervillains.

Written (game design): 119.

I thought it was March that stereotypically had wind, but I haven’t flown a kite in decades.

No anime, Marith is feeling poorly.

Watched (live action TV): Lockwood & Co 6: The fancy party episode, now with more mysterious conspirators!

Read (novel): Industrial Strength Magic (Macronomicon): The teenage son of a gadgeteer supervillain and wizard superheroine combines the gifts he got from his parents to get exponentially-increasing magic-gadgeteering power in a post-apocalyptic  (or maybe just apocalyptic) world of supervillains and kaiju and sanity-destroying astronomy. There is a potential love triangle, but I think it may be resolved properly (ie, poly).

Read (manga): Dandadan vol 11 (Yukinobu Tatsu): Fallout from everybody getting mugged by aliens in the last volume. Time for training montages!

Written (game design): 115.

Also Working Naked Day, which I did not celebrate. I did eat pizza, however.

Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 5: Ugh, Lucy, did they not teach you situational awareness at ghost-hunter vocational school?

Read (novel): When Gracie Met the Grump (Mariana Zapata): A young woman who is keeping a very low profile has one of the world’s only three superheroes fall out of the sky into her yard. Adventure ensues, but it’s just an excuse for (normal girl-alpha alpha male) romance. There is a terrifying grandmother.

Read (manga): A Sinner of the Deep Sea vol 2 (Akihito Tomi): Punk mermaid meets love-struck mermaid’s boy, and then mermaid politics gets in the way of the jailbreak. I’m rooting for the punk mermaid and the boy’s badass sister, but it’s probably too heteronormative.

Read (manga): When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine vol 1 (Kasai Fujii): Standard opening of the crown prince accusing his fiancee of assorted villainy and dumping her for a different girl, but this time the ex asks the new girl if she really wants to stay with somebody so fickle and so disappointing in bed. She doesn’t, so the two women shack up together and enjoy life (and each other) despite the attempted interference of titled assholes. Not smut with graphic sex scenes, but lots of sex nevertheless.

Written (game design): 127.

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?

Sure, why not? Nature already abhors me, I’m sure!

Management wanted everyone in the area to go into the office for the two-hour all-hands, but I did not go. I am pretty sure I got the same +0 to morale over zoom.

Played (Changeling the Lost): 90s Berkeley. Our changelings make it to the flea market, meet fellow changelings Badger and Melanie and hear about how money is used by the fae to track runaways, immediately use all the cash they get from Nicole’s mending business to buy supplies instead of hoarding it– Cheese it! The fuzz!

Read (manga): This Monster Wants to Eat Me vol 1-2 (Sai Naekawa): A high-school girl with pronounced suicidal ideation ever since her tragic past gets accosted by a girl who claims to be a monster who wants to devour her when she’s spiritually ripe, but will keep her safe until then. Based on something that passes without comment in vol 1, I’m guessing every named character in this series is actually a monster, but we’ll see. No sign of yuri yet.

Written (game design): 138.

Huh, didn’t expect that.

Read (manga): Yakuza Reincarnation vol 10-11 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): Intrigue around the princess, who might be more present than assumed, which might be normal human corruption, and then back to dark kin infiltration with the hot springs episode.

Read (short story): “Stitched to Skin Like Family Is” (Nghi Vo): Magic and racism in Depression-era midwest. White people, manne.

Read (short story): “Three Faces of a Beheading” (Arkady Martine): Near-future SF and scholarship I am pretty sure I would have appreciated this more if I were a historian.

Read (short story): “Happily Ever After Comes Round” (Sarah Rees Brennan): Circular fairy tale yikes!

Written (game design): 193, but at least it’s blathering and not just rearranging. I might be going astray from the genericness of D&D.

 

Also National Pork Rind Appreciation Day, which sadly has more relevance to my life. Where did I go wrong?

Played (D&D5E): Librarians Errant: The room that Grim and Thaïs disappeared into seems dark and quiet… too quiet. When the other reshelvers venture in, they find that the entire sanctuary has been covered by Mordenkainen’s nose exclusion zone to hide the extremely loud and obvious fight going on. Their teammates and Glady’s three henchmen are facing off against a horde of cymbal-banging clockwork crocomonkeys and a giant steam-powered robot crocodile, with the aid of a summoned water elemental! Things immediately get even worse as the Mechacroc blasts Mesoluna with a gout of steam and he loses control of the elemental, but somehow, despite steam and cymbal-banging and gigantic metal teeth and more steam, so much steam, the robots are put down and the contents of the secret temple library can be loaded into the extradimensional bookmobile and taken away for Martin and Gladys to haggle over. The wreckage of the nave and sanctuary are even cleaned up, so hopefully it will be some time before the hypothesized body-swapper figures out exactly what happened and who to come after.

Read (manga): Yakuza Reincarnation vol 9 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): Huh, looks like the isekai protagonist really is there to save the world!

Written (game design): 339, but mostly questions and not answers.

Also Abolition of Slavery Day, ahahahahaha.

Did my usual shopping, and also went to the hardware store because I had clever idea after the GM approved reskinning cloudkill to do cold damage.

Read (manga): Yakuza Reincarnation vol 8 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): Another corrupt enterprise unraveled by punching the people who deserve it, and also OP isekai magic.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 3.8-9: Another cunning plan to pit the Port Mafia and Armed Detective Agency against each other, but they have a cunning plan to thwart it! Maybe.

Written (game design): 186, still not making any actual progress. Maybe I should swap back to one of the other projects.