Trip's Life (Recent episodes)
15 August 2018 - Wednesday
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14 August 2018 - Tuesday
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13 August 2018 - Monday
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12 August 2018 - Sunday
This week, we have everyone for PAD&D5!
Although they barely escaped with their lives, and are now majority
slug-mutants, the Heroines of Red Larch must go back in to retrieve the
quest object so that they can continue on their way to retrieve the other
quest object so they can get help getting back where they belong. Despite
their foes having gotten more slimy, scaly, and generally loathsome
reinforcements, things go much better this time (especially when Rimardo
puts up a damage shield and lets the enemy berserkers all have a shot at him).
The enemy leader wriggles away, but the Heroines recover everything that was
stolen as well as the quest item and return triumphantly up the quest stack
to Walter (who has extra tentacles of suspicion but eventually accepts that
the Heroines have not been suborned).
Now they can continue with the quest to retrieve [SPOILER] for [SPOILER],
which they do in the most ham-handed heroic way. Although
Akrá is swallowed by a giant lobster, for the most part the slimy,
scaly, loathsome (yet different) opposition is no match for the Heroines,
and they make off with [SPOILER] (reified as a giant pearl).
Alas, victory is not yet in sight, as it turns out [SPOILER] was their
enemy [SPOILER] all along! [SPOILER] is apparently not committed to the
great conflict, though, having found out too much about their place in the
planned endgame, so a deal is struck. Surely there will be no betrayal
later.
To no one's surprise, the Heroine's way home is in another
castle [SPOILER].
Next session in 4 weeks, it looks like. :(
My flatmate has not died of cat dander (yet), so we watched some more
Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Today: Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Words:
122.
Weekly total: 1696. Better than last week, I guess?
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11 August 2018 - Saturday
I have finally finished Paradise Residence (Kosuke Fujishima),
which is only three volumes long (unlike Oh! My Goddess). It is
cute and all, but not that interesting.
- Sailor Moon S 26-27: Haruka, people might listen to you more
if you ever stopped to explain things instead of just giving orders.
- Nirvana in Fire 48-50: Everything is spiraling inwards as
more people find out more things that had previously been secret
(whether or not they believe them), and there are only four episodes
left for the horrifying collision.
Words:
176. Ugh, up so late.
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10 August 2018 - Friday
Yay, it's Friday.
Words:
284.
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9 August 2018 - Thursday
Words:
233.
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8 August 2018 - Wednesday
No 13th
Age, too many people are sick or busy.
Look, Avalon is still alive! She texted me!
The third "Murderbot" story, Rogue Protocol (Martha Wells)
is out! Murderbot is still adorable, and other people are still not quite
as hellish as it believes. It looks like the plot will actually come back
around to the beginning in the next story.
Then I had to go back and reread All Systems Red and
Artificial Condition, because Murderbot is adorable.
Words:
220.
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7 August 2018 - Tuesday
I skipped out early from work and dashed home, because Avalon is not
dead! But she was afflicted with many irritating humans who sapped her will
to live. I'm glad that's over!
We tried watching Netflix together, which worked pretty well. Dark
Tourism is morbid and probably exploitational in some fashion, but
perfect for a death lord, and at least the guy seems properly appalled by
what he finds.
Bridging Infinity (ed Jonathan Strahan) is an anthology
with the themes of engineering and sensawunda. The world being what it is,
the near-future stories are mostly about terraforming Earth, but there are
ones about various sorts of large-scale engineering (Dyson spheres, sun
drills, etc). None of the stories was horrible, but none of them grabbed me
really strongly.
Words:
377.
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6 August 2018 - Monday
Blaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh.
Children of Time is by Adrian Tchaikovsky, so it is not
surprising that one of the two intersecting plots is very chitinous. The
other is full of doom, so it's good when they bounce off each other, but
mostly I like the chitinous one better. It has biology.
Words:
284.
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5 August 2018 - Sunday
HAPPY HAPPY RACHELDAY (observed)!!
Instead of being in Rachel and Jeremy's house like previous years, the
party was at the San Jose Museum
of Quilts & Textiles (which Rachel is on the board of). It was much the
same party, only more conveniently located for me and with more space. Also
there was some art on the walls, but the current exhibit was mostly kind of
meh. That's fine, there were people to talk to there. (There were also
people to look at, I think I'll die in a pit.)
After hanging out for a while, I went home watched a little
Brooklyn Nine-Nine with Marith.
Words:
124.
Weekly total: 1403. Not as bad as last week, anyway.
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4 August 2018 - Saturday
- Steven Universe 5.25: Just what it says on the tin, but
does anything good ever come of going there?
- Sailor Moon S 25: I hope Jus isn't learning to stalk
celebraties from watching the Mimet episodes.
- Laid-Back Camp 6: Secret lake camping!
- Love, Chunibyo, & Other Delusions 2.2: My comment on the
the previous episode turns out to be what this episode is all about! So
adorable!
- My Hero Academia 31: Superhero battles have consequences?!
- My Hero Academia 32: Yay, almost a whole episode of Froppy!
Words:
169.
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3 August 2018 - Friday
Words:
287.
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2 August 2018 - Thursday
Marith was home at a compatible hour, so we watched episodes 5-7 of
B99. That was pretty entertaining.
Dreadful Company (Vivian Shaw) is the second "Greta Helsing"
book. This time, our unwillingly intrepid monster doctor takes a vacation in
Paris, which turns out to be full of unregulated vampirism and other
supernatural issues for her to get mixed up in. Like the previous book, this
one is... humane? Sometimes violence is called for, after wrongdoers have
failed to knock it off, but it's not portrayed as anything other than awful
and terrifying, and many of the problems arise from people not being taken
care of emotionally. The protagonists don't want glory, or to save the world
(unless it really needs saving, but even then, there are probably people
whose job that actually is), they want friends and home and lives.
I guess the genre is emotionally realistic urban fantasy.
Words:
215.
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1 August 2018 - Wednesday
For once, we started
13th Age before
20:30, because Ken ate his
Indian food expediently
and also Kelsey was not excessively late! We are back in the Stone Thief,
finally, and a Koru behemoth is coming to frolic on it. Sadly, our way to
the lower (less frolicked-upon) levels is being blocked by a giant lake of
lava and flaming bile. Also orcs. I hate those guys. (Really, it's on my
character sheet!)
Words:
163. Ugh. So late. So tired. So bad at writing.
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31 July 2018 - Tuesday
Since the Internet has been all abuzz about it for ages, I gave money to
Amazon for the first season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Marith
and I watched the first four episodes. It was pretty entertaining, and I
even didn't want to strangle Jake all the time after a few
episodes. (Also I see why the Internet has a crush on Diaz.) But I still
feel faintly dirty for watching cop-humanizing propaganda.
The Expert System's Brother (Adrian Tchaikovsky) is kind of a
retro story, of humans living in a strange environment and behaving
strangely and how they got to be that way, but with a slightly more modern
sensibility.
On the other hand, The Descent of Monsters (JY Yang) is
kind of cracktastic. It follows on from The Black Tides of
Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, with more Asian
fantasy intrigue and no explanation of the weird things going on.
That's a lot of doom, though.
Words:
260. No, this is all terrible. Even in the character's voice, infodumps are
still infodumps. I should die in this pit now.
Words:
FAIL.
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30 July 2018 - Monday
Words:
185. I still don't know what to write. I've tried starting this at a million
different points, but none of them seem right. Maybe it's because I don't
have a plot, and writing without knowing where you're going only works the
first time. Or maybe I'm just stupid and can't write. Yah, that seems pretty
likely.
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29 July 2018 - Sunday
No Deirdre, but we had everyone else for PAD&D5.
Having escaped [SPOILER] at the end of last session, the Heroines of Red
Larch find themselves in yet another labyrinth (without Hazelrae, who is
borrowed by a passing vatch), but a helpful surf [SPOILER] directs them to
the sort of hive of commerce they had been hoping to find at their last
stop. Hurray! An extended shopping sequence ensues, at the end of which the
Heroines have exchanged hundredweights of gold for several exciting magic
items (Lam has her shield of missile attraction!) and a conveyance
to get to where they hear they could get home if they can deal with...
Walter. They also have discovered a [SPOILER] in need of saving from an
arranged marriage, who tempts the Heroines with knowledge of a better way
home, if only they can retrieve [SPOILER] for her. The reward is enough for
the sidequest!
Before they get anywhere useful, their craft is attacked by Walter, a
[SPOILER] of extraordinary magnitude, who demands another side quest. At
least he hangs on to the [SPOILER] as a hostage, so it's only an item
retrieval quest, not an escort quest.
Unfortunately, the creepy ruins turn out to be inhabited by [SPOILER]s,
which can take people out of the fight with one bad roll (our speciality!),
and also [SPOILER], so although by the numbers it should have been quite
doable, the Heroines are ignominiously crushed, stripped of their
water-breathing items, and left to drown. Naturally they escape to their
vessel to plot revenge, but that escape seemed awfully easy. Something is
up!
I still don't know what I think about having another person in my
apartment, but at least instead of staring blankly into
empty space tumblr all evening, we got Marith
caught up on MHA.
Words:
152.
Weakest total ever: 1177.
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28 July 2018 - Saturday
No Marith for anime, she is dead from work. Jus is very distraught, and
also Marith is missing marshmallow toasting.
- Sailor Moon S 24: Outer Senshi, stop being such snobs!
- My Hero Academia 29: In case we forgot this is a shonen
show: two-episode-long fight scene! But, superheroes. And it's not like
the fight scenes aren't where the character development happens.
- Love, Chunibyo, & Other Delusions 2.1: They say
they're dating, but...
Words:
104. I had to trundle home at a million o'clock at night and also I don't
know what to write because everything is stupid and maybe I should have
stuck with what I had before.
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27 July 2018 - Friday
Black Helicopters (Caitlín Kiernan) follows from
Agents of Dreamland, I think, or at least one or more
characters seem the same. It is pretty hallucinatory, and mocks your notions
of linear time and personal identity, for obvious reasons.
Words:
124. I don't know how to write. I don't know what to write. I spent most of my
writing time reading through stuff I wrote before, and, well, it's mostly
spelled correctly. That's about the best I can say for it. Maybe I should die
in a pit.
(Okay, it's not quite that bad. Reading a page often makes me want to
read the next page, but reading something I wrote is such a different
experience from reading something someone else wrote that I don't know
whether it means anything.)
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26 July 2018 - Thursday
Record of a Spaceborn Few (Becky Chambers) has even less
derring-do than the previous books in the series. It's slice-of-lives set
in the Exodus Fleet, which we had heard about in the previous books but not
seen. The Fleet isn't fully-automated (increasing automation is one of the
social problems they have to deal with, in fact), and it's the opposite of
luxury, but it's definitely queer space capitalism. People still definitely
have problems (many related to being young), but it's an interesting
egalitarian and sustainable society.
Words:
148.
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25 July 2018 - Wednesday
No one complained about the Thai food I got for 13th Age, so yay
me.
This session, we managed to finish the rest of the fight from last
week, without getting exploded or losing what we came to steal, and met up
with an undead white dragon the size of a castle, who got someone to give us
a ride to where we now know the Devourer is rampaging. If we ever got to
start gaming before 20:30, maybe we'd be able to finish this campaign!
Reading things that are not by middle-class, middle-aged white guys is
always good, so once Prime Day (and presumably the Spanish strike, although
it's hard to tell from English-language sites) was over, I picked up Nnedi
Okorafor's "Binti" series (Binti, Binti: Home,
and Binti: The Night Masquerade). I liked them, but I'm really
not sure what genre they're in. They are ostensibly SF, but more like
fantasy in terms of individual power. But at least they don't explain
things! (The distinction between genres is probably a colonialist construct
anyway, and I'm not being entirely facetious there.) Seeing a different
perspective on family, war, higher education, and alien technology was
definitely worthwhile, even though humans don't necessarily come off
well.
Words:
165.
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24 July 2018 - Tuesday
Words:
239. What do I write?!
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23 July 2018 - Monday
Earl described Medusa Uploaded (Emily Devenport) as
"generation-ship Gothic" and that seems pretty accurate, although the main
character is the thing that comes in the night for depraved aristocrats,
rather than an aristocrat herself. But it's dark and lonely and everything
is layers of secrets, not just about what people are doing but about the
entire context of everything. Tentacles are definitely involved.
Words:
245. I need something interesting to happen!
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22 July 2018 - Sunday
Marith somehow missed ever seeing
Mulan, but Netflix was
willing to show it to us. Hm. Well, it was twenty years ago, people were not
as woke. But it would better if it were more like Nirvana in
Fire.
I think Competence (Gail Carriger) finishes off the
"Custard Protocol" series. At least, all the major characters are paired
off, except the one who's not that into it. I guess there was some plot
stuff, too, but really it was all about the werelion romance.
Words:
251.
Weekly total: 2473. Not too bad, considering I don't know what to write
next.
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21 July 2018 - Saturday
Being more organized and less stupid about shopping works better,
surprisingly.
Instead of the usual Chinese food, I had four flavors of diet Dr Pepper
(and also a chicken sandwich) and 80s music to go with my pad games.
Nirvana in Fire was so much fun last week that we decided to
do it again this week! But first we had to eat many tasty foods and let Jus
watch anime.
- Sailor Moon S 22-23: Yay Hotaru! Oh, and some plot stuff.
And Mimete, who Jus likes the most.
- Nirvana in Fire 46: There's the hook for Nirvana in
Fire II: Historic Boogaloo!
- Nirvana in Fire 47: Awww! But now many people know the Awful
Truth, and more suspect it. The last seven episodes should be very
exciting.
Volume 3 of
Astra (Kenta Shinohara) is the beach episode, but does finally
get back to the mysterious mystery and ends on a cliffhanger. (I understand
the market demands long manga, but I think there could be more cliffhangers.)
Words:
241.
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20 July 2018 - Friday
Yay, I avoided the work picnic. Now all my coworkers hate me. But at
least I'm not sunburned.
For lack of anything less productive to do, Marith and I watched episodes
4-7 of Galavant. It is very silly. Also, Galavant is a terrible
judge of character.
Words:
442.
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19 July 2018 - Thursday
In The Blood (Nancy A Collins), sequel to Sunglasses
After Dark, is just as 80s and just as violent. Also,
thinly-disguised Winchester Mystery House. There are two more books in
this collection, but I'm not going to bother to read them now. Maybe
later. Maybe not.
Words:
438.
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18 July 2018 - Wednesday
I think we've forgotten how to play 13th Age, or
maybe everyone was just too cranky (despite the ample supply of pizza). It is not the game where we
should be spending an hour and a half arguing about plans. We barely
managed to finish the E1 round, after lying our way in until we got spotted
and then charging resulted in a big fight.
A commenter on WHTM
recommended Sunglasses After Dark (Nancy A Collins), and I
vaguely remember Earl having read it approximately 1000 years ago, so I
snarfed the series from Amazon (this was before the Spanish strike). Much
80s. Very angst. Wow.
Words:
128.
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17 July 2018 - Tuesday
Words:
652.
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16 July 2018 - Monday
Deep Roots (Ruthanna Emrys) gets several indescribable
appendages up. Once again, Aphra talks to sophonts, and somehow does not
die. (There is not much fighting, although there is plenty of danger.) We
get to see more advanced sorcery, more of Audrey's family, more exotic
sophonts that are not as malevolent as Lovecraft might lead one to
believe, and Deep One smooches.
But then I was out of Emrys, so I read Agents of Dreamland
(Caitlín Kiernan), which is much shorter and more doomed Cthulhu
Mythos, in which everyone is much less sympathetic and there is more
mycology. Bad mycology.
Words:
321.
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