Author: Trip the Space Parasite

Busy morning, but then it tapered off and my brain dissolved into sludge.

Read: Her Name in the Sky (Kelly Quindlen): High school senior lesbians with the bad luck to be in extremely Catholic heteronormative Louisiana. Lots of angst, religious imagery, suicidal ideation, assorted drama.

Read: Late to the Party (Kelly Quindlen): High school (almost) senior lesbian finds love, but mostly it’s about her learning to make new friends and tension with her old friends, the romance is not that rocky.

Words: Check.

I only did one thing today, and the travel was much easier than in times past, but apparently that still used up my entire brain. I got hard-boiled eggs from Marith, though.

Played: Lancer. Leveling up worked a lot better with the other players. Apparently I’m support and spotter for the sniper, but also leader, and getting licenses for the SSC Swallowtail. New mission, which requires us to get out of our mechs (clutch pearls). No combat so far, but next session should be exciting.

Read: The Falling In Love Montage (Ciara Smyth): High school senior (equivalent) lesbians, genetic doom, “it’s just a summer fling”, family drama, surprisingly awesome stepparentage, rom-coms are a highly dubious guide to life.

Read: The Case Study of Vanitas vol 2 (Jun Mochizuki): Noé’s tragic history flashback and Vanitas’s tryst in the middle of the Masked Ball Attack.

Words: Check.

The cleaners were at 10 instead of at 8, which threw my whole morning off, but I managed to go shopping and eat a lunch and stuff. Not prepare for gaming tomorrow, though. Also I was on call all afternoon, but nothing happened. Good work, customers!

Played: Zoomwarts. That was a pretty good session. Bella and co saved the missing rats and only Bella got double-grounded (for cheating in a duel against her romantic rival at lunch).

Read: “The Tomato Thief” (Ursula Vernon): A scary old lady and the monster that’s stealing her perfect tomatoes.

Read: Amissio ch 1-5 (Paroro): Lost humans in a mysterious realm of lost things and tentacle monsters and other weirdness. Creepy cute.

Words: Surprisingly, check.

Team meeting, multi-hour customer call, internal call, another extended customer call.

Sharks are older than trees.

Read: Balanced On The Blade’s Edge (Lindsay Buroker): Wizard in suspended animation since the days when magic was part of society is revived in a time when wizards are hated and feared, hijinx and het romance ensue.

Read: Only Ashes Remain and When Villains Rise (Rebecca Schaeffer): Rest of the trilogy that started with Not Even Bones, containing more murder, betrayal, cannibalism, torture, media manipulation, and torture, most of it perpetrated by the main character and her partner. These are extremely dark and brutal books, I can’t believe they’re even technically YA! (I came up with a fanfic explanation for the existence of all the unnaturals, but it’s not that interesting, so never mind.)

Words: check, finally.

Got up early for medical stabbing again, but actually the stabbing has been referred to a more specialized specialist. I did get explained to, however, and apparently even if the special stabbing determines the worst, it’s totally treatable. Probably. Mostly.

More customer calls. No end of customer calls. Only doom.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Lots of investigation, most of it virtual. If I were converting Eclipse Phase to a better system, I probably wouldn’t make infosec a niche. It’s too useful all of the time, it needs to be divided up so everybody can do different parts of it. Maybe like the domains in Spire?

Read: Inhibitor Phase (Alastair Reynolds): Feels like the conclusion to the “Revelation Space” series, even though it’s not the last story chronologically, maybe because it’s after almost everything is wrecked, or maybe because it has some tour-of-the-setting feel, or maybe because even more is wrecked after the PCs visit it. Also lots about identity to go with the alien mysteries.

Read: Tell Me How You Really Feel (Aminah Mae Safi): High school senior lesbians, cheerleader vs film student at fancy private school, mortal-enemies-to-mandatory-group-project, feminist film-making, LA landmarks, the burden of ancestral expectations.

Words: FAIL.

Got up much earlier than I wanted to so I could go get blood drawn, then had to come back home and do more customer calls.

Read: She Drives Me Crazy (Kelly Quindlen): High school senior lesbians, coming out, basketball vs cheerleader, nemeses to fake dating, terrible exes.

Read: Not My Problem (Ciara Smyth): Irish school (transition year? what even?) lesbians, hostile acquaintances to oh-no-she’s-hot, a tangled web of favors, poverty, strange Indian guys, midnight hijinx, Irish cussing.

Words: FAIL.

HAPPY HAPPY MARITHLIZARD-DAY!!

I left the apartment three times today, so that was something, I guess, even if one of the times was to invite a bookstore accident by browsing manga at B&N and then ordering it from bookshop.org.

Read: Shibuya Goldfish vol 1 (Hiroumi Aoi): survival horror in Tokyo, but instead of zombies it’s giant, levitating, anthropophagous goldfish.

Words: Check.

Moved some books onto the one bookcase I have managed to move into my bedroom. It is large enough to hold all the unread manga and comics I have so far unearthed, but I bet there’s more, and that’s not even counting the games. Also my apartment does not have any good place to sit and read, nor to sit and spread out new games.

I had run out of Diet Snapple, but once again BevMo saved me. They seem to be the only store that ever has it in stock, and even they acknowledged that it is hard to come by these days.

I was on call from 13:30 to 19:30, and there was no customer activity until the very minute before the next guy came on shift and it stopped being my problem. Good work, clock!

Marith asked where the page of previously watched anime was, and I realized I had not created it on the new site, so I did that. It was like being productive, right? Not sure what to do with the reading list, though. I’m sure I could figure out how to create a fixed-width document and important it as-is, but should I be doing something better? Should I even bother? Is there any point to anything on the Internet?

Played: Nothing! Jus is back from vacation, but Marith is dead, so no Zoomwarts. Since there’s now only a week until the next Lancer session, I went through the book for a couple of hours, but there are so many options, and it’s so unclear which, if any, could be the right one. Blugh.

Read: Blood of the Chosen (Django Wexler): Second in the series I think of as “fantasy Star Wars” because knights with energy swords uphold civilization and the elite army wear faceless white armor, carry blasters, and get mown down by the PCs. The siblings divided between the two factions which have been blaming each other for the collapse of the golden age centuries ago just found the next boss and are obviously going to have to work together in the next book despite all their allies thinking each other are anathema.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 15 (Tomohito Oda): Komi makes another friend during the student president election, a bunch of her and her brother’s friends get exposed to her mother, and [SPOILER] finally acknowledges her crush on [SPOILER].

Words: Check. I need grit my teeth and just make a very plain blog site by hand to publish stuff, I guess.

The customer is on the right track, but they aren’t going to be out of their self-inflicted woods for a while yet. The epitome of “never time to do it right, always time to complain about having to do it over”.

Read: Paladin’s Hope (T Kingfisher): Because I am subscribed to the author’s Patreon, I got the ebook today instead of next Tuesday and read it immediately. Gay romance, gnoles, fantasy coroner, murders, death traps, and smut! And that last line!

Words: Check.

Spent a long time on customer calls, because a customer leapt into things without talking to us about planning and ended up in an unnecessary mess that has to be resolved ASAP. Bah.

Played: Nothing! Ken is still on beach vacation with his family, or something ridiculous like that.

Read: Gothel and the Maiden Prince (WR Gingell): A retelling of Rapunzel where the princess has a good reason for being in the tower and the prince thinks the witch is much hotter anyway.

Words: Check.

Today’s major lifestyle change: added a different kind of packaged protein to my packaged salad lunch. Not a better kind, at least not environmentally, just different.

Read: Sunreach (Brandon Sanderson, Janci Patterson): Novella between the second and (upcoming) third books of the “Skyward” space opera series, following other characters as they try to make progress on their problems while the main character is off doing the thing.

Watched: My Hero Academia 99-102: End of the class A vs class B competition, on to next round of internships!

Words: Check

Will I manage to do anything different this week than I did last week? Signs point to NO.

Read: Secrets of the Sword 1-3 (Lindsay Buroker): Continuation of the “Death Before Dragons” series, combining investigation into the provenance of the heroine’s magic sword, foiling of additional villainous plots on various levels, and wedding planning. The wedding planning may be the most harrowing.

Read: “Into the Gray” (Margaret Killjoy): Mermaids, magic, murder, and gender nonconformity.

Read: “Everything That Isn’t Winter” (Margaret Killjoy): Post-apocalyptic anarchism, the assholes who try to wreck it, and those who defend it.

Words: Check.

Played: Lancer. Since we missed last session, we had to have twice the usual amount of non-gaming socialization, including complaining about Kids These Days, but there was time for some skill challenges and a fight against an overwhelming opponent. Kappa lasted slightly longer against them than the other two, and with a couple of better rolls could have forced the opponent to make a roll that could have taken them out if they rolled badly enough, so I claim a moral victory. The PCs had already won by that point, though, so defeating the final boss was just for style points. Now we get to level up and pick mecha to work toward while Dave tries to come up with another adventure.

Read: Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers vol 1 (Chorisuke Natsumi): The scary-faced-looming-guy-who’s-secretly-nice trope, but this time it’s a busty high-school girl, and the friend who understands her niceness is her head-shorter sempai.

Words: Check.

I think it’s LIRALEN-DAY!!

For some reason, Jus continues to be twelve. Weird.

I have now been sleeping on my new bed for a whole week. It is definitely fulfilling its role, inasmuch as I wish I were in it whenever I’m not, rather than vice versa, but it has not revolutionized my life. I think this is more likely to be a deficiency in my life, rather than in the bed.

Played: Zoomwarts. As someone who had a boyfriend for five whole days, Bella was eagerly sought after for romantic advice by the Hufflepuff first-years during her stakeout. Next session: party!

Read: The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion and The Barrow Will Send What It May (Margaret Killjoy): Anarchists and serious punks vs really quite creepy magic and those who get mixed up in it. There are always consequences. Sadly there don’t seem to be any more in this series.

Words: Check.

HAPPY HAPPY JUS-DAY!!

Wait, how is she TWELVE? I remember when she wasn’t even 12 grams! :scream emoji:

New regularly scheduled meeting, but it’s with the manager I like best.

Read: Some Girls Do (Jennifer Dugan): High school romance between a very out athlete girl who got kicked out of private Catholic school and a not-at-all-out beauty pageant girl who really just wants to fix cars. Drama and confusion ensue because they’re seventeen, they can barely tell what they want, never mind what other people want.

Read: Gunboat Diplomacy (Terry Mixon): Apparently the series about saving humanity from the tyranny of the AIs didn’t end with the victory, because of course humanity has to be reconqueredunified in the name of the Empire.

Words: Check, surprisingly.

Work meetings, some regularly scheduled and some with customers. At least the customers don’t demand to gaze upon my grotesque visage.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. There is some fear that Kelsey and Vivian may want completely disjoint things from games, but Ken hasn’t interviewed Kelsey yet, so we just don’t know. The remaining PCs got sent to deal with another thing that turns out to in fact be another tentacle of the same thing, but now those forks have an actual goal.

Words: FAIL.

Early morning meeting with boss3, explaining how things will be Different and Better as we become more of a real company and every business on the planet has to buy our product to properly surveil their customers. Unfortunately my skill set is pretty much only valued by big tech, and big tech is pretty much all morally dubious, so here I am.

Read: Storm Forged (Linday Buroker): Book 6 wraps up all the plotlines that have so far been introduced with pretty much a HEA. Books 7+ will go into backstory or something.

Read: The Last Graduate (Naomi Novik): Sequel to A Deadly Education, equally awesome. El is still such an El, Orion is still such an absolute spanner, but somehow she likes him anyway? The entire order of the Scholomance is upended, privileged characters are jerks but not irredeemable, plans are laid and executed, and then CLIFFHANGER! Apparently it will take at least one more book for El to [SPOILER].

Read: The Case Study of Vanitas vol 1 (Jun Mochizuki): Pretty much the same as the first few episodes of anime (or vice versa, I guess), ending about where Vanitas decides what to do about Jeanne.

Words: Check, but after reading The Last Graduate, it doesn’t seem like there’s much point.

Sleeping on a different mattress, in a different room, is weird. Hopefully it will be more successful when I have done it more than once. Perhaps I will even manage to move some stuff into my new room to make space for turning my old room into an office thing. It could happen!

Read: Sinister Magic, Battle Bond, and Tangled Truths (Lindsay Buroker): First three of the “Death Before Dragons” series, about an urban fantasy bounty hunter who gets almost murdered deputized by an extremely arrogant yet distressingly hot dragon and slowly warms up to him while fighting assorted monsters with assorted horrible plans and accumulating a bunch of pretty charming side characters.

Words: unending FAIL.

Got my new mattress today! Now it’s set up in the other room, so I can start emptying out my erstwhile bedroom to put desks and stuff in to turn it into an office thing, and I will find out whether I like sleeping on it better than the futon which has been hauled away.

Apparently that fifteen minutes of activity used up all my energy for the day, though because I haven’t done anything else except read webcomics and listen to KPop. (I like Dreamcatcher, they are more rockful.)

Read: Hell High archives (Chris Hazelton): A Misfile spinoff, high school students literally in Hell (though only the first circle) because they were born there, or fished out of the Styx, or whatever. More slice of life and existential angst than theological adventure, although there is some kind of plot going on. Lots of fanservice.

Read: [un]Divine archives (Ayme Sotuyo): On a fictional Spanish-speaking island, an unhappy high-school student fools around with an old book and ends up summoning a helpful demon. This doesn’t make him any happier, but things go okay until the angels start showing up. Sadly on hiatus now.

Words: FAIL.

I bought a new mattress! It will be delivered tomorrow. Hopefully I will not regret spending $800 instead of $4000 (or instead of $0).

Played: Zoomwarts. Apparently I have forgotten how to GM.

Read: Not Even Bones (Rebecca Shaeffer): Another recommendation from Iron Widow, but this one is even darker. The main character has spent most of her life dissecting dead supernatural creatures her mom brings home into parts for sale on the black market, but then her mom brings home a live one and everything goes to hell. Cannibalism, torture, murder, slavery, difficult moral decisions, monsters both human and otherwise. Not recommended for anyone prone to nightmares.

Read: Mage-Commander (Glynn Stewart): 11(?)th of the missiles-in-space-but-with-magic series. Not a lot of interesting new material, and the major threat is still completely offscreen and unknown to most of the characters while they deal with threats on their own level.

Words: Check.

Now it’s Friday again and I haven’t accomplished anything all week. I mean, I did some capitalisms, and sustained my pointless life, but whatever.

Read: Shatter the Sky (Rebecca Kim Wells): Recommended in the acknowledgments of Iron Widow. A girl from the mountain that dragons used to come from has her girlfriend stolen by the Bureau of Creepiness from the empire that stole all the dragons and makes a terrible plan to get her back. Dragons and ghosts and perfumery are also involved, but not much questioning of the social order. Much more standard YA than Iron Widow.

Watched: My Hero Academia 95-98: Mostly shōnen combat, but we did get some One for All plot. Also Bakugo was somehow not 100% awful

Words: FAIL. I have no excuse, I’m just very dumb.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. We ran out of pictionary, so finally it was time for Meathab and the cultists and the second-order cultists and a lot of whiskey and also hall lizards. The other instance of my character seems to be handling the memetic virus responsibly, but is there actually any way to be responsible with such a thing? A question for next session. Kelsey has abandoned us, though, because Eclipse Phase isn’t doing it for her. Which is sad, but it is kind of niche, at least the way we play it. I’m sure other tables have spaceship chases and laser fights every session.

Words: FAIL.

Read: Cazadora (Romina Garber): Sequel to Lobizona, in which our heroine and her friends have many adventures in the magical realm but do not overcome the weight of culture, leaving them in an even worse position but ready for a third book. Also, smooches.

Read: Iron Widow (Xiran Jay Zhao): Inspired by the history of China’s only female emperor, apparently, but recast in the form of a mecha war story against alien hordes and also against her own society, government, and oligarchs. The main character kills a lot of people, who mostly deserves it, manipulates people who probably deserve to be killed instead, and finds out very upsetting things. A fine book, but not for the squeamish.

Words: Check.

Read: Lobizona (Romina Garber): I tried to read this last year but got stuck halfway through because pandemic brain. Now that I finally got around to finishing it, it’s pretty good. An undocumented Argentinian girl in Miami finds out that the reason she and her mom are hiding from everybody is not what she thought, and there is a whole world of magic waiting for if only she can get documented and also overcome their entire culture of sexism and humanophobia. The world of magic is actually pretty fantastic.

Words: Check.

I have determined that I should get a new bed, with an actual mattress! But it seems like a lot of work. I guess I’ll go to the mattress store on Saturday, since it’s nearish to grocery shopping? I probably shouldn’t order any mattresses off the Internet without at least trying various soft and firm ones in person.

Read: Broken by Magic (Lindsay Buroker): Third in the series, after Art of the Hunt. The artifact opens the door to even more trouble, while the original trouble continues to explode around it. The universe seems to be full of pretty unpleasant people. Also various romantic pairings inch toward

Read: Reborn As A Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting The Strongest Starship vol 1 (Shunichi Matsui, Ryuto, Tetsuhiro Nabeshima): Isekai but Eve Online instead of WoW.

Words: Check.