Author: Trip the Space Parasite

More of a weekend thing for me.

No gaming, Kelsey is trapped by life again.

Read (manga): Marriage Toxin vol 1 (Joumyaku, Mizuki Yoda): An assassin from the poison ninja clan decides to get married so that his sister doesn’t have to break up with her girlfriend to produce the next generation. Unfortunately, he has no idea how to romance, or even how to social (actually, humaning might be a bit of a stretch), so he rescues a marriage scammer to give him advice. Terrible lines and weird modern ninja battles ensue.

Written: 197.

But it’s Monday the 13th, so apparently stickers are cursed now.

I guess I did a work today. Kind of.

Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 10-13: Of course she had to go into Diyu to resolve things, but resolved they did get, although not to everybody’s satisfaction. Lots of work for building contractors, though. The End!

Read (manga): We Can’t Do Just Plain Love vol 1 (Mafuyu Fukita): He has a complex about women, but also he smells delicious and she has a scent fetish, so she suggests helping with exposure therapy, by which she means banging. Am I too old for smut?

Read (novel): Something Fabulous (Alexis Hall): A dutiful duke, a runaway fiancee, an extremely fabulous twin brother, and a whole lot of other queer characters on a chase across Regency England and through the duke’s feelings. (Everybody else is pretty clear on what they do or don’t want.) No one is shot who doesn’t kind of deserve it, and there is a HEA. Also butt stuff.

Written: 147.

Even if I still counted, seems like a terrible idea.

Did some shopping, got one hair cut, went on a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health, was otherwise completely useless. Did go to bed (slightly) before midnight for the first time this year, though.

Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 7-9: Wow, that character just keeps getting more and more untrustworthy. But the truth is coming out, along with more Underworld lore and more boy trouble.

Read (manga): Peach Boy Riverside vol 11-12 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Those guys are everywhere! Also, what is up that one guy? Oh, not what I thought, but still good. Or bad.

Written: 287. Does any of this make any sense? Probably not.

Ew, who wants to hug boys? They have boy germs!

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 3.1-2: How Dazai and Chuuya originally teamed up. (Pretty sure it’s because Dazai’s boss ships them.) Also, shantytown in giant crater caused by superpower disaster, sure, whatever, but what is that thing next to it? They’ve mentioned foreigners, but is that a mistranslation?

Read: Katalepsis vol 1 (Hazel Young): This almost certainly deserved many many entries, since it’s allegedly 2.5 megawords, but I was not smart enough to record it earlier, and now it’s done. With this plot arc, anyway. Our heroine did the thing! It wasn’t easy! But it was amazing and non-Euclidian! The thing itself was not gay, but basically everything along the way was.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 10 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Surely there is no way this can turn out poorly.

Written: 123.

I like to think I’m peculiar, but I may actually be just mid and sus.

Read: This Inevitable Ruin (Matt Dinniman): The big conflict on the ninth floor that was established as being crucial for Princess Donut finally arrives, and it’s nuts. Also the the outside world of alien Internet randos and megacorps and fascists is breaking in to the dungeon more and more. I don’t know how many more books there can be before the whole thing explodes, but they haven’t been written yet, so I can stop staying up so late.

Read: Monologue Woven For You vol 2 (Syu Yasaka): The one girl’s backstory is still being danced around.

Written: 382 of terrible game design.

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.

Somebody once said something nice about a program I wrote, so I’ll take it.

Played: Changeling. Our dazed and confused escapees from Faerie make it back to Oakland and meet a nice gay satyr who trades them some lunch and some information for a promise from Nicole to fix something.

Read: The Butcher’s Masquerade (Matt Dinniman): In which a bunch of alien assholes get severely murdered, and serves them right. A lot of other people get murdered too, though. Also, Princess Donut’s dinosaur gets lucky.

Read: FAIL. I did not manage to make a dent in my oversupply of manga, because I suck.

Written: 127.

I cuddled up with cats. 10/10, would recommend. But then I had to log in to work.

Read: Chainsaw Man vol 8-10 (Tatsuki Fujimoto): Well, that was a lot of extremely horrifying stuff. Now we know what Makima’s deal is, and it’s even worse than I expected.

Read: Gate of the Feral Gods (Matt Dinniman): Another weird puzzle level, more dead human dungeon crawlers and hapless NPCs, some divine intervention (because there’s a whole mythology that gets carried over from season to season or something), a very strange new party member, and a lot more PTSD.

Written: 182. I’m still mostly rewriting what I wrote before, though.

Librarians Errant, shrunk, amnesia volume 3, silverfish, mice, roomba banishment

Wait, are birds real after all? I wish the Internet would make up its mind!

Played: Librarians Errant. Reshelving Squad Upsilon find themselves in a mysterious, probably artificial landscape of cyclopean edifices. Why are they there? No time to figure out, exceptionally loathsome arthropods are attacking! From the way the squished bugs flutter down lightly, Thaïs deduces that the squad is very small, rather than the silverfish being very large, but trying to remember why and how results in visions of ink and origami, and San loss. Lili divines that they are there for the third volume of The Magical Education, and also that they have letters folded into(?) their heads. Rearranging themselves to spell out words does produce magical effects, but doesn’t get them any closer to the book, so they explore the regular way. They are in a library off a crocodile-themed temple, so probably in the temple of Sobek, where the possession issue is centered. At 1/60th scale, they can’t easily check the books on the shelves, but a magical tome wouldn’t be in the accessible library anyway. Checking around the baseboards, they find mice, but also a magically-warded secret door, and beyond it, a much smaller library guarded by an automatic dust-sucker that wouldn’t even come up to their ankles if they were full size, but now can swallow Grumman whole and carry him to another plane when banished, Fortunately its insides are not constructed to stand up to a determined engineer with a steam armor maintenance kit, and it returns inoperable. And, on an upper shelf, the third volume! The squad manages to knock it to the floor by spelling LEVER, but LARGE only breaks the spell and returns them to their bodies in the library. Still, now they know where the final volume is.

Read: The Summer You Were There vol 2 (Yuama): More feelings, and also popular girl knows depressed girl’s dark distressing history. Can she overcome it?

Read: The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook (Matt Dinniman): Turns out Carl isn’t the first to think, “fuck this entire system”, and they probably didn’t even have an evil subway system to figure out at the same time.

Written: 117. Writing a second draft was like pulling teeth, so I switched to writing in a summary mode, about one paragraph per scene. Not sure if this is better or worse, in either the long or short term.

Hi Rachel!

Went shopping, had a pretty good chicken sandwich at Shake Shack, but they don’t have Diet Dr Pepperr.

Read: The Summer You Were There vol 1 (Yuama): More high-school yuri. A depressed girl’s writes a story to get some feelings out, never planning to write any more, but a popular girl ends up reading it and wants her to write more. Emotional arguments ensue and now they’re dating to get the writer more inspiration.

No anime, Marith is not up to visiting people.

Written: 395

Celebrated by being myself. Did not celebrate Festival of Sleep Day.

Read: Heart Gear vol 2-3 (Tsuyoshi Takaki): The military robots left over after the extinction of humanity are continuing to do what they do best, but there are obviously machinations that our questing duo know nothing of. There are some asides on robot design, but it’s never justified why all female-presenting robots are like that.

Read: Shards of Oblivion (CR Dryad): The sequel to Momo the Ripper, in which Momo confuses and is confused by many more strange fantasy people, takes over a city, saves the universe, and almost kinda gets a girlfriend.

Read: Carl’s Doomsday Scenario (Matt Dinniman): Carl and Princess Donut make it deeper into the dungeon without actually dying, and also have to appear on interstellar talk shows. Fortunately Donut is a show cat and knows how to work both the interviewers and the audience.

Written: 155.

Another day that’s really every day. Also Mew Year for Cats Day.

Back to work (boo!)  but failed to go in to the office, too sleepy.

Read: Magical Girl Incident vol 3 (Zero Akabane): Unfortunately I read the first two volumes too long ago to properly appreciate the drama and revelations. Anyway, drama and revelations, the end!

Read: Momo the Ripper (CR Dryad): A college student who does nothing with her life except sleep and draw fanart of hot fictional girls gets isekai’d into LitRPG World and turned into some kind of necromancer. She meets a lot of highly sus women, but they’re beautiful, so she goes along with what they say, and ends up in all sorts of trouble that bothers her less than it should because she doesn’t share anyone’s priorities. Very silly.

Read: Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman): A random guy happens to be outside chasing his ex-girlfriend’s cat when aliens appear, kill everyone indoors, and throw the survivors (including the cat, who can talk now) into a dungeon reality TV show. It’s LitRPG but the system is explicitly artificial in-world, which makes the copious violence even more upsetting for the participants. Also the system seems to have a foot fetish.

Written: 111.

Yes, a World Day of Peace would be a great idea! Not going to get one in the next four years, though.

Slept in until 12:30, flopped around, went for another walk and considered whether D&D is actually moribund because 5th ed was mostly a regression to 3rd, and there isn’t a 6th. I should probably inform myself on the changes in 5.24 or whatever it’s called before making any declarations, though.

Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 4-6: Field trips to set more of Texas on fire! Skullduggery! Smooches! Social pressure! Fire!

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! vol 10 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): New characters and new doom from the sequel game, but how is she getting this information?

Written: 172. Starting a new year!

To celebrate, I ordered two hats. One is more outdoorsy, one is more fashiony.

Went for a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health, thought dumb things about D&D.

New Year’s fondue was very nice. We didn’t have Vivian, but we did have Earl and Cat, and Marith for a while. We ate cheese fondue, more cheese fondue, and chocolate fondue, searched for the lost art of conversation, and at midnight went out to admire the fireworks. Then we dispersed to our various beds. Friends are nice.

Read: Gamma Draconis (Benoist Simmat, Eldo Yoshimizu): Occult conspiracies across France and Japan, reaching to the highest levels of corporate power. Proper occult, too: it starts with stealing the shewstone of John Dee, so the hermetic secret society can contact intelligences from higher dimensions, etc.

Written: 185.

 

I’m not really celebrating this one today, although I certainly expect to do so at various times during the coming year.

Since I had no work to do today, I let the cleaners in, went shopping for cat supplies, made a big order from Target, waffled about what hat(s) to get, and was generally useless. When I tried to be useful by downloading the past year’s books from Kobo, I blew up my ADE installation and to reinstall from scratch. I did get about a quarter of the backlog into calibre, though.

Read: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You vol 3 (Jinushi): Nope, he still doesn’t know.

Written: 164.

One of several, which seems fair. Chocolate is important.

Did my shopping today, it was not any more or less exciting than usual. Tried a Shake Shake chicken sandwich, and it was good, but they still don’t have Diet Dr Pepper, so are unsuited to be my regular lunch place.

Read: Catalog of Wonders vol 1 (Chizutokouro, Kei Mochizuki): A girl finds a book with horrible vignettes of various cursed objects.

Read: Fair Princess (Macronomicon): A lost princess, an illusion wizard, circus intrigue, palace intrigue, kidnapping, murders, various other crimes.

Written: 170.

That now seems like National Turn On The Lights Day. Which may be a thing, I guess.

Was on call all afternoon, but the customers were also on vacation. (Obviously there are customers for whom this is not a holiday time, but they mostly in other time zones.)

Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 1-3: A animated Chinese-American girl has to return to small-town Texas, the site of her traumatic past with mysterious fire powers. Chinese mythology and Daoist magic ensue.

Read: The Executioner and Her Way of Life vol 2-3 (Mato Sato, Ryo Mitsuya, nilitsu): Oh, that’s why everybody is scared of the isekai girls. Too bad the power structure created to deal with them doesn’t work any better than other power structures.

Written: 219.

Hopefully panettone counts.

We actually managed to gather to play boardgames during the holidays! No Kelsey, but we had Brooks and Vivian (who is less imposing than I expected, but very cyberpunk) and delicious posole, and played Terraforming Mars and Poetry For Neanderthals and a new game called Inhuman Conditions about trying to figure out whether someone is a replicant. I am not a robot, or at least Professor Herman T Schnitzelweiner isn’t. It was fun!

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 9 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Mikoto backstory.

Written: 135.

It’s a holiday for our colleagues in the UK, but a normal (quiet) work day here.

Even though it’s not a holiday, it’s still The Holidays, so I got pizza. Pizza is festive, right?

Watched: Ranma 1/2 (2024) 1.10-12: Mostly this has been moving faster than the original, I think, but the end of the skating fight seemed drawn-out. I don’t like Shampoo as much in this version: her character design is different and she doesn’t have much personality.

Read: Daily Report About My Witch Senpai vol 2 (Maka Machida): Apparently love makes witches’ magic go weird. Meh.

Read: I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl vol 5 (Kashikaze): Actual romance is happening!

Read: Guardian of Ruses (Kate Stradling): We finally get to see what the mysterious country with its made-up prince looks like to outsiders. Also, more het romance.

Read: Beyond Promised Neverland (Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu): One short epilogue piece for PN, and assorted unrelated pieces by the same team.

Read: Assistant to the Villain (Hannah Nicole Maehrer): Comic fantasy with anachronistic office culture. Or maybe it’s romantasy. Anyway, it’s ridiculous, the villains are more honorable than the good guys, etc.

Written: 112.

And Hanukkah and some other celebrations, I guess.

Went over to Monkeycat Towers for a delightful Christmas dinner and general friendshipness.It was delightful.

Read: Sirius (Ana C Sánchez): She’s a burned-out tennis star, she’s a rich girl who likes astronomy, together they commit crimes on each other. Well, not exactly, but they meet when Astronomy Girl mugs Tennis Girl. Lots of teen drama, etc.

Written: 212.

But what do they drink in other countries on this day?

Had to work the first half of the day, because someone has to. It was dead.

Went for a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health. Tried to also do some shopping, but failed.

I tried to get Chinese takeout for Marith and myself, but OMG it was so crowded! I did eventually get the food, but it took over an hour. I have definitely made better plans in my life, but also worse ones.

Watched: Ranma 1/2 (2024) 1.7-9: The rhythmic gymnastics fight with Kodachi with the famous line “Use of brother: valid” and then the skater pair and “I can win anything if it has martial arts in the name”.

Read: My Clueless First Friend omnibus 1 (Taku Kawamura): It’s not chunibyo if you’re in 5th grade! Declarations of eternal friendship are not romance if you’re in 5th grade either, at least if you’re as clueless as this boy.

Read: How to Survive at the End of the World vol 4 (RC Joshua): Now everything that was accomplished in book 3 is in danger, because the universe is just like that. I’m not sure about how the System is depicted in this one.

Read: Heart Gear vol 1 (Tsuyoshi Takaki): Centuries after WWIII wipes out humanity, an inexplicably surviving young girl activates an ancient robot and ends up going on a quest through the dangerous world of leftover robots to save a friend.

Written: 121.

 

 

I think the metric conversion of today is 1734912000.

I could have taken today off, but I didn’t, so I had work. It wasn’t very busy.

Read: The Moon on a Rainy Night vol 6 (Kuzushiro): Gay panic at the deaf girl’s house! (Okay, not exactly.)

Read: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc vol 5 (Sekka Iwata, Yu Aoki): There’s always a government conspiracy, isn’t there?

Read: Don’t Be a Drag (Skye Quinlan): A girl with significant mental health issues goes to NYC to stay with her brother the drag queen and gets mixed up in drama and drag kinging and frenemies and episodes and stuff.

Watched: Ranma 1/2 (2024) 1.4-6: Still seems to be following the same story, although faster. We already have Ryoga and Kodachi. Kodachi is pretty creepy too.

Written: 133.

Actually I want to get rid of essentialist ability scores and only have skills, because “I’m good at X” is better than “I am X” especially when you get racial modifiers involved.

Went on a long (for me) walk on streets I had not walked on before, realized that the ability to cast spells should definitely take up inventory slots (not an original idea by any means, but I like the idea of one mage festooned with birdcages holding spirits, another lugging a huge ceremonial staff with trailing banner, etc.)

Got Pakistani-Indian Fusion food from the new place, and OMG it was spicy. Also bone-in, which is not my favorite, but it was good anyway. I will have to try again and see if they have anything that is better suited to my pasty whiteness. Or I could just order triple naan to smother the spiciness in layers of delicious carbs.

Read: Blend-S vol 1 (Miyuki Nakayama): A scary-face girl gets hired at a maid cafe that caters to cliches, as the Sadistic One. Hijinks ensue, I guess.

Watched: Ranma 1/2 (2024) 1.1-3: They remade Ranma! The story seems the same so far, although the translation is different and it’s all new animation with not as much fanservice. Kunou seems creepier, but I don’t know if that’s the remake or just it being 2024.

Written: 207.

 

Or summer solstice for people in the southern hemisphere.

Did some regular shopping, did not go to anime because Dave is out of town, was completely useless all day.

Read: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You vol 2 (Jinushi): Nope, the salaryman still hasn’t caught on, and everyone else at the supermarket is too entertained to tip him off now, even if they becoming smoking buddies.

Read: “CORDELIA’S LIST OF THINGS NOT TO ASK/SAY AROUND BEA ON OUR BIRTHDAY” (FE Choe): Yes, every item on the list is more horrifying than the one before. There are 51 of them.

Written: 180. You’d think I’d be able to do more on a day when I did nothing else, but nope.

I’d be more worried if there were any human solidarity to be turned against others.

Did some work. Coworkers are starting to disappear for the holidays, so I have to do some more work next week, but whatever.

Read: 5 Seconds Before a Witch Falls in Love (Zeniko Sumiya): Yuri anthology, two shorts about a witch and witch hunter having to admit they have the hots for each other, one about a schoolgirl who attracts angels and demons that only she can see.

Read: The Country Without Humans vol 1-2 (Iwatobineko): A small girl among robots who are maintaining the form of civilization despite humans having been extinct for four hundred years. Some robots help her, some robots hunt her, some robots play out their programming, some robots transcend their programming to some degree, the girl has no idea what is going on because she’s like eight.

Written: 168.

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.

Obviously the ultimate is chocolate-covered chocolate. Which I guess is a truffle?

Had some fillings put into my teeth, which was slightly annoying but not painful, due to having the good dentist.

Read: The Haunted Bookstore vol 1 (Medamayaki, Shinobumaru, Munashichi): A human girl lives in a bookstore in the spirit realm, not bothered by the anthropophagous yōkai and generally getting along just fine, and then an exorcist from the human world wanders in, bringing a potential plot with him. The first volume is mostly just introducing the spirit realm and its inhabitants, though.

Read: Hell Phone vol 1 (Benji Nate): Two twenty-something women find a phone that receives calls from ghosts, or maybe just that one ghost, and there’s a lot of mystery that needs resolving about her death. The art is weird in a specific kind of style that I don’t know the name of, maybe just “modern comics” but not too bad.

Read: How to Survive at the End of the World vol 2 (RC Joshua): Somehow, possibly by not being a jerk, or maybe by being really good at improvising bizarre weapons, our hero survives asshole aliens, ever-increasing difficulty levels, and system glitches to escape the end of Earth.

Written: 236.