Tag: gaming

Skipped looking for new manga to rush through grocery shopping, so I could get to Ayse and Ken’s in time for Eurovision! It’s finally streaming legitimately in the US, so it has a real start time and everything, and we had a very nice afternoon. Even Marith showed up, although Eurovision is not her thing, and we ate frittata and something involving garlic anchovy olive oil to dip veggies in,

It is no surprise that Ukraine won, but their entry was actually good, so that’s fine. Much more surprising, the UK came in second, getting possibly more points than in every previous Eurovision combined! No one knows what to make of that. There were too many ballads, but also bangers like Moldova. Norway was the Maximum Eurovision this year with the masked banana wolves, but Australia and Serbia were also up there, albeit in completely different genres. France was totally robbed, their entry was a banger. Spain was okay, but did better than they would otherwise due to the butt floss visuals. The American presenter was very fabulous and had angel wings.

Nonny showed me a bunch of Splatoon stuff, and eventually I played a little Zoomwarts with Jus and Marith, and then Dave kindly fetched us burgers from down the street and we ate and played three-square until it was time to disperse.

Played: Zoomwarts! Bella and Rosamund and the lizards seem determined to find out what happens when you blow off Bellatrix Lestrange-Riddle’s explicit instructions. I’m sure that will go well for them, especially if I manage to prepare for their expedition into the land of the dead.

Read: “Min Zemerin’s Plan” (Katherine Addison): Short story set around Witness for the Dead.

Written: FAIL. I did not accomplish anything after I got home.

Teeth cleaning, wheee. At least I have apparently been doing a good job with the flossing and the brushing.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. As was foretold by the decahedral oracles, my first character was eaten by a bush robot. Then Brooks’s character, the last remaining of the original set, went mad and ran off into the depths of the TITAN to protect his team. My new character and Vivian’s second character, like Dave’s second character, all turned out to be transhuman infiltrators not particularly concerned with the Jovian project, so now we just have to get out of there and all will be well.

Read: Yakuza Reincarnation vol 1 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): An old and old-fashioned yakuza is done in by scuzzy modern gangsters and reincarnates into the body of a princess in a fantasy world beset by the kind of problems that need yakuza honor (and punching) to solve.

Written: FAIL.

The morning training meeting ran more than an hour over, but except for the last bit where even the presenter was losing focus, it was all really good information, so I’m not mad.

When I went to get tacos to eat before gaming, I was reminded of the date. I can’t object in principle to… Modern Mesamerican? drumming and dancing, but it was very loud.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. For some unfathomable reason, the Jovian Marines went looking for trouble, and definitely found some. They also found a spaceship that is probably not at all a trap. Next session, my character gets to die heroically to save the squad. It’ll be great.

Read: FAIL.

Written: FAIL.

I had no brain at any point today.

Something I read on the Internet suggested that opening links in new tabs is usually not the right path, especially when thinking about accessibility, so I guess I’ll change how I do things.

Played: Lancer, at long last. I leveled up my invisibility, but sadly, we had to make Unity look good, so the whole session was diplomacy and investigation, and we only got to the pre-fight cliffhanger. Next fortnight for sure! Probably.

Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 6-7: Yep, still ridiculous. I want to see Star’s next instar.

Written: 520 kitten words.

I was stupid in the training meeting too.

Played: Nothing, but when Ken canceled at the last moment due to a family emergency, the rest of us tried making Lancer characters. Our group origin is a special ops team that ended up being lost after a light-speed jump caused them to miss the end of the war. We have an engineer, a weirdo who listens to NHPs, and a pilot.

Read: FAIL.

Words: FAIL.

Finally, a day with a normal start time!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. After missing a couple of weeks, we are back to Jovian doom. Somehow, understanding the eye-spiders doesn’t make them less horrible.

Read: The Furthest Station (Ben Aaronovitch): Ghosts and more ghosts, and also gods! I feel like everything was not wrapped up neatly, though.

Read: The October Man (Ben Aaronovitch): Germany’s answer to Peter Grant, who isn’t nearly as geeky or as popular with river spirits, but gets the job done.

Words: FAIL.

Yesterday’s normal early meeting was moved to today, and then I went right into the meeting that was moved from tomorrow (because tomorrow is a holiday in the UK and my boss’s boss plans to actually take off work). Then I was useless and dumb for the rest of the day.

Played: Ken is still in Portland, so Vivian ran her 189X horror game that she had prepared. Creepy backwoods villages in the Black Forest, close-mouthed locals, mysterious health problems, and DOOOOM. Also a homebrew system which a few years ago would have seemed generic and now seems like too many numbers.

Read: Amongst Our Weapons (Ben Aaronovitch): Further adventures of Peter Grant, Magic Cop, in both law enforcement and impending fatherhood. This feels like it could be the last book with Peter as a main character.

Words: FAIL.

Had to get up early so I could commute and wear a mask all day and watch people booze it up and not be able to properly collaborate with my teammates. If I were still a useless post-college git, maybe I’d be impressed by free food, but apparently I’m a grownup now.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. I did not contribute much, but at least a Navy Puke got fragged.

Read: Rare Swords Are Only Good Until You Lose Them (August): Third in the series, MC is still OP, although he’s burning through his reserves. Also, we finally find out what Elsa’s deal is.

Read: Stars and Steam (Anthea Sharp): Five short stories, not much more than vignettes, in a universe where aliens give humans advanced technology on the condition they can make their society stable, by which they mean Queen Victoria always rules (and apparently mores never change).

Read: The Field Guide To The North American Teenager (Ben Phillipe): A black French Canadian teenager moves to Austin, where he hates everything at first, which understandably makes him kind of a jerk. Sadly, he both stays kind of a jerk even after making friends, and leaves written evidence, so then he gets a comeuppance.

Read: Catch These Hands vol 1 (murata): Years after they were high-school delinquent rivals, two women meet again, and it turns out the one that had a crush on the other still does, so they start dating. It seems very Japanese in that dating is purely a social status, almost no visible affection. Also hardly anything happens.

Words: FAIL.

Cleaners came at 7:00 this morning, so I had to get up, but then I took a nap thing, or maybe was just a huge useless lump for a while. I managed to shop for a grocery and then visit friends to get hugs, though.

Played: Zoomwarts. Bella isn’t dead, nobody is a vampire (although Emily is also not alive), the ministry is taking credit for saving the day, the surviving eight and a half students are going on winter break early, everyone else has been sucked into a pit to the underworld. Maybe we’ll stop here and let Ken run D&D so Nonny can fight monsters, or maybe Bella and Rosamund and the lizards will have to go get everyone’s soul back.

Eaten: Tasty kebabs, tasty feta-cucumber salad, tasty chocolate splenda cream pie. But we do also love Ken for himself! Really!

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.9: No parasol will protect Rikka from Nibutani talking about feelings!

Watched: Azumanga Daioh 1: Still ridiculous! Also, the fluffy temptation of wheat.

Watched: RWBY 1.4: Sproing!

Played: Zombie ball tag. If a zombie catches a human, they turn into a zombie, but if a zombie gets hit by the ball three times, they turn into a human. Seemed to be reasonably well-balanced in that sometimes the humans won and sometimes the zombies. Also not nearly as contentious as Sneaky Statues.

Words: 554 kitten words about nothing in particular.

Not very clever today, but did some stuff anyway.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. We had to stop early because Nonny was exploding, but there was time for Nom’s eyeball to grow legs and scuttle for freedom. Also the LT has bottomed out on SAN, but how do you even tell with an officer?

Read: Aposimz vol 5-6 (Tsutomu Nihei): I guess it’s always important to have a nihilist faction as well as the evil empire and an increasing rag-tag band of rebels.

Words: Finally finished that one paragraph of revision. Getting close to being able to show it to people?

I can get up on time when people expect me to be at the place to do the thing.

Played: Lancer. We defeated the Engineering Mutants and their pet abomination, by the simple expedient of barbecuing them all when they wouldn’t communicate, and some of the things that came through the malfunctioning Blinkgate. The other things we managed to delay in their incomprehensible purpose until we could unplug the console they were trying to use to reset the Blinkgate, and then get xenolinguists who have spent their entire careers waiting for this opportunity to talk to them. I’m sure there will be no consequences.

Watched: The Owl House 1-2. It was not what I was expecting, which I guess means I was expecting the wrong thing.

Read: Aposimz vol 3 (Tsutomu Nihei): Ugh, allies! Also, apparently there are no animals on this artificial world, only robots with edible parts. That’s very on-brand.

Words: 508 kitten words.

I got up two hours early (which is actually three hours early because it’s still Spring Forward Week) to go to the office, and it was worse in every way than working from home. I’m sure there are some jobs where being together in one place isn’t worse, but mine is not one of them. Home is more comfortable, has better food, has fewer interruptions, and doesn’t pointlessly waste four hours of my day on commuting. If I want to communicate with my coworkers, I will ping them on Slack like someone who lives in the 21st century.

My boss, who is from India, asked what St Patrick’s is about. I told her it was just white people nonsense, which is not an answer I’m sure she was happy enough, but “beer” was enough of an explanation.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. More of Nom’s ghosts (she will never live that down, ever), more shooting of zombies, and now the people we left safe at the base camp are freaking out. Yet, somehow, all the Marines are still alive and nominally sane.

Read: “The Backbone of the World” (Stephen Graham Jones): Mysterious prairie dog issues, uncanny strangers, impending doom on various levels, a clever plan.

Read: The Kaiju Preservation Society (John Scalzi): Just what it says on the tin. There are kaiju, somewhere, and they need preserving. It’s a little implausible that the secret is kept so well, but that’s fine. It’s a good romp and terrible people get their comeuppance.

Read: Ogres (Adrian Tchaikovsky): Sadly, the setting twist was obvious from the very beginning, although there is also a plot twist that I did not see coming.

Read: I Can’t Belive I Slept With You vol 1 (Miyako Miahara): A (hot, young) out-of-work game developer gets offered forgiveness of her back rent if she’ll sleep with her (pretty, even younger) landlady, and free rent if she lets her move in and rent out her old apartment. Super-problematic, obviously, but the leads get along and honestly seem to like each other. The twist I thought was going to be there seems to not be, but maybe it’s just unreliable narrator?

Words: FAIL.

I didn’t really get up earlier than usual for grocery shopping, but I did it with less whining, so that’s good, right?

On-call in the afternoon, but the customers were blessedly quiet.

Read: Rackham Vale (Brian Saliba, Craig Schaffer): An OSR sandbox based on (and including many examples of) the art of Arthur Rackham, featuring many faeries of various scales, mutant alligators, curses, ambitious witches, and party trees, among other fey goings-on.

Played: Zoomwarts. Surprisingly, trying the same plan again worked better. Everybody got killed, but some of them got over it, so that’s good, right? Possibly we’re going to start alternating Zoomwarts with D&D run by Ken, so that Nonny can fight monsters.

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.7-8: Beach episode! But more importantly, we find out what Rikka’s deal is. Also, both positive and negative examples of romantic behavior which may be of use to Jus now that she is a middle-schooler and practically a teenager.

Eaten: Ribs! (Also brisket, burnt ends, collard greens, etc.) Apparently Jus took a break from wanting sushi 24/7 to demand ribs, and nobody was going to object.

Played: Laser tag.

Watched: RWBY 1.1 for Jus. She liked it, and we aren’t even to the trauma part yet!

Words: FAIL. I did a little revising because I figured out what one of the slang terms should be, but not very much.

Double gaming weekend! There was some doubt, but Jeremy’s dad seems to be doing well so the Gollubs and their unending gaming food were available.

Played: Lancer. No combat this session, but we saved the world anyway. I think Kappa has to buy up her Charm trigger next level, since she did so much diplomacy this mission. Not that the mission is over yet, since Dave accepted our suggestion of mutants inhabiting the engineering spaces of the blink gate we need to repair. It was a pretty satisfying session.

Words: Only 294 words, but I finally implemented the fancier (kinda) calendar for kitten words, and made a link in Writing. Then I thought about revising and didn’t.

I should have gotten up much earlier, but was too useless. I guess it worked out in the end, though.

Sought: The lost art of conversation.

Eaten: Fried chicken, shaved fennel, salad with home-made ranch.

Played: Underhand dodgeball and sneaky statues.

Played: Zoomwarts, at long last! We played late into the night because Marith doesn’t have to work tomorrow. In fact, she is on vacation! But that did not help Rosamund, Bella, or the lizards, because their plan to destroy the magic circle was foiled by a simple forgetfulness potion! Muahahahaha!

Words: 406 kitten words.

I was less useless at work today than yesterday, so that’s something, I guess. Maybe.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. More wounds, more trauma, but then the marines got to do real marine stuff instead of bored marine screwing around and were triumphant. Not that it really helped anything.

Read: “Bhatia, PI” (Shiv Ramdas): Incompetent wannabe PI with competent sidekick, modern Indian supernatural version, by the author of that hilarious rice guy twitter thread.

Read: I’m A Wolf, But My Boss Is A Sheep vol 1 (Shino Shimizu): Gender roles and unrequited lovein Japanese corporate culture. The carnivore(-descended otherwise perfectly normal human)/herbivore(ditto) divide is not used to particularly illuminating effect, alas.

Words: FAIL.

Surprise, we were the studio audience for a training video. No one told us to laugh, though.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Oh no, is this the part where we have to be clever? We’re not clever, we’re meatheads by design! How about we give Nom more shit about ghosts instead of being clever?

Read: FAIL. (Hey, if not writing is a failure, how can not reading be better?)

Words: FAIL.

On call, but nothing happened, so that’s good.

Played: Zoomwarts. Bella is probably not a vampire yet! Less clear about Baby Lizard.

Eaten: Assorted tacos from the taqueria that the burger place turned into for lunch, and then carne asada burritos for dinner.

Played: About 5000 steps of assorted roughhousing.

Read: The OP Lich Is A Returnee vol 2-4 (Stuart Grosse): Mostly infodumps about the magic system, interrupted by the OP Lich steamrollering anyone who puts themselves in her way.

Words: FAIL. I’d say I used up all my creativity on Zoomwarts, but that’s making an assumption that’s probably not borne out by evidence.

More customer calling, but we got The Expert (former boss M) to explain things to the customer. Now they have action items, instead of just waiting for us to come down from the mountain with stone tablets.

I went on another walk to get gaming food, but when I got home with my satay and eggplant (and finally, brown rice), I wasn’t hungry. I don’t think that’s how that is supposed to work!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Release the duckling-bot! Also, what is with Nom and all these ghosts? Maybe ghosts like cigars too.

Read: Bad Moon On The Rise (Annie Bellet): A weretiger hitwoman kills a bunch of people, most of whom probably deserve it, rescues the girl, somehow keeps her not-very-elite team alive, etc. I think this is a spinoff of another series, or maybe the furniture of urban fantasy is considered sufficiently well-understood at this point that settings don’t need to be explained.

Words: FAIL.

Played: Lancer. We got bonus licenses so we could put up an overwhelming show of force against some scrubs that thought they could mess with Unity, and it went really well for about three rounds (yay gravity cannon!) until we found that the enemy was also bait, and we all got sucked through blinkspace to an unknown planet that is having some kind of military conflict. Apparently we’re going to have to pick whichever side is most aligned with fully automated luxury queer space communism, or failing that, whichever side is most likely to be able to produce exotic matter, and use our mechs to assure their victory. Also, at the gaming table, I was thoroughly encroached upon by a dog.

Words: 432 kitten words. Does anyone care? Probably not.

Surprisingly, I’m not on call for any part of today! Not that it had any impact on my complete uselessness.

Played: Zoomwarts. Bella, Rosamund (now conscious), and the lizards are making progress, but nothing is ever easy. Now they’re all in the vampire room (aka morning solarium), although only Baby Lizard and Bella are actually chained to the wall.

Eaten: Instant coq au vin, romanesco (not tesco fresco), goat brie, etc.

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.3: Rikka has a minion!

Played: Murder Mystery until Nonny got frustrated, then Sneaky Statues.

Words: FAIL.

HAPPY HAPPY VIVIAN-DAY!!

I, sadly, had dental cleaning, but it was pretty quick, which I think is a good sign. Still don’t like the fluoride gunk all over my teeth for the rest of the day, though.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. We finally got a PC fatality, mangled internally by a strong magnetic field(TM) yanking around and heating up his highly sus cyberware. Also an intimate view of Nom’s surgically-installed cigar-smuggling organ, replicated dead commanding officers, and late-night ghosts hallucinations. So far my character is mostly fine (thanks to drugs) but I should probably have a replacement character ready.

Words: FAIL.

Both the cleaners and I were off a week, so I told them to go ahead and show up this morning. I had to get up for all-day on-call anyway, so it worked out okay. Marith was dead from having to come in on her “day off”, though, so I could not travel to Monkeycat Towers. It turned out that some customers were breaking things working this weekend, too, so it wasn’t just a theoretical tether to my work computer.

Played: Zoomwarts! There was another big fight against the evil vampiric teacher and her minions, but at the point where we left off, Bella and Baby Lizard seemed to have the upper talon. Surely there is no factor they have not considered.

Eaten: Not Ken food, and also not a final burger from the burger place which is turning into a taco truck. There are many other restaurants on my street (which is not actually mine) but none of them are quite as portable as burgers. And they were even Impossible burgers!

Words: 453 assorted words.

Played: Lancer. After holidays and plague, we finally reconvened to continue showing the mad scientist in his cockroach lab that his abominations aren’t all that. Not even if they are being piloted by quick-grow clones of my characters. As a player, I like the Horus stuff, but I don’t have any trouble playing a character who is “thanks, I hate it” about every single thing we learned.

Read: My Dragon Girlfriend p1-525 (Fawnduu): Cute slice-of-life-with-secret-magical creatures. Simple art, extremely gay, no, gayer than that. (I think there is a total of one male character in the first 500 episodes, and he doesn’t last long). The pictures are not particularly risqué but those ladies are definitely making the cryptid with two backs in some scenes. So are those ladies.

Read: Admiral’s Oath (Glynn Stewart): Spin-off from another series that ends with the protagonists smashing the antagonists’ military-industrial complex, focusing on the fallout of that smashing and how honorable soldiers (in space, with missiles and also massive charge imbalances that should vaporize their ships) try to protect their nation.

Words: FAIL.

I have finally taken a rapid test. It came up negative, so there’s a distinct possibility that I don’t currently have COVID!

Played: Zoomwarts, in person. I oppressed Bella and the lizards a lot, but they did make progress toward their goal of everybody not being dead. Except the vampires, who were definitely dead.

Eaten: Leeks! Romanesco! Lemony chicken potatoes!

Played: Steal the ball, by any means necessary!

Read: Between Kings (WR Gingell): Everything was very confusing in the first book, but now, in book 10, everything is actually wrapped up, even the things that we only discovered in the middle books. Victory: Pet!

Words: 331 words about kittens.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Somehow, all the Jovian Marines are still alive, possibly because they dragooned the guy who’s been there for ages into leading the day trip into hell. Also because my character can curl a pickup truck.

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom vol 5 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): More ridiculousness, but then kidnapping! Oh no! Will Katarina be okay?

Words: FAIL.

Why is getting out of bed so hard? I must be doing something wrong. On the other tentacle, chewing and swallowing both work better than yesterday.

Played: Zoomwarts, over zoom. Bella and the lizards did save some people, but now they’re facing down an irritated vampire in a hallway full of black pudding. This will definitely go well.

Read: Equilibrium and Fortitude (Glynn Stewart): 3rd and 4th in the series, and apparently the end? Not that the main characters won’t have more adventures, but maybe they can be slightly less outclassed and existential, thus less bookworthy.

Words: 503 kitten words.

Although I had no meetings scheduled for the afternoon, that did not actually make it a good time to take off work because I had meetings all morning which made it hard to find time to get ready to go. But, somehow, I did it and made it to the dentist for crown replacement. Apparently now crowns are while-U-wait instead of just taking measurements for a later appointment, but I made it back in time to pretend to do some work and even get a soft dinner of chicken tenders. Which I then chewed on the side of my mouth I have rarely used this millennium, to protect the (abused flesh around the) new crown, probably hurting myself more than if I had just chewed on the crown side. You’d think I’d know how to eat by now, but no.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Apparently this station is even creepier than the marines originally thought. Also, daily survival rolls to go with the daily SAN rolls! Dave’s character failed, but we managed to keep him from being dissolved by acid. This time.

Words: FAIL. Did I mention I have to get up two hours early tomorrow?

For some reason, my body did not want to get up early today. Maybe because I got up early almost every day the past week? Nah, can’t be connected.

Played: Zoomwarts! Virtually, because Jus’s entire household is isolating due to plague, but the game is called that for a reason. Everything is just getting worse and worse for Bella, and probably for the lizards as well. They’re unpetrified, but makes the tastier to werewolves. Muahahahaha.

Words: 421, but I should stop writing kitten words now because I’m already almost two weeks ahead, and the revision needs work.