Trip's Life (Recent episodes)
22 May 2017 - Monday
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21 May 2017 - Sunday
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20 May 2017 - Saturday
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19 May 2017 - Friday
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17 May 2017 - Wednesday
Yummy
Indian food and more Dungeon
World! This time with green elves, ritual combat, a labyrinth of trees,
and at least one slug-monster. People claimed they had fun.
Volume 4 of In/Spectre (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase) is mostly
hitherto-unexplicated backstory about the likely villain and how the heroes are
connected to them. This is important information to have, but it doesn't
actually advance the plot.
Punks vs manifestations of the uncaring mechanistic universe!
The Unnoticeables and The Empty Ones (Robert Brockway)
are the first two books in (probably) a trilogy of secret cosmic horror and
those who have no choice but to fight it even if they'd rather be drinking and
getting into fistfights.
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14 May 2017 - Sunday
The theater by work has closed for renovationings, but it turns out
there is one just a half-hour walk from my lair (less if I wimp out and
take the bus, but it only runs every half-hour, so what's the point?), so I
went to see the new
Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It was pretty swell, at
least if you liked the first one, and there was some kind of character
development in addition to exploding. Baby Groot is the most adorable of
course, but Mantis is adorkable. I wonder if the repercussions on Earth
will show up in future MCU? I guess when you live in a universe with stupid
aliens, things like that just happen sometimes!
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13 May 2017 - Saturday
Once again, it's Eurovision!
This year it is hosted by the Ukraine, so Russia withdrew in a snit, but
who cares? It is sad that there were not as many flashy acts this year,
though.
Ken went to "the Slavic store" and asked for Ukrainian food, and they
gave him many breads and things to put on them and we also had whatever the
Ukranian variant of little dumpling things is and people who are not me or
Dave (such as Ken, Ayse, Marith, Cat, and Earl) may have become quite
merry.
None of us were happy about who won, so the voting segment was not as
merry, but a good time was still had by all.
(Azerbaijan was robbed! Cyprus was good too, and several of the others were
okay, but just not as awesome as last year. I blame a major non-European
power for trying to turn the world into a giant dumpster fire and sucking all the
fun out of it.)
I think All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries is Martha
Wells's first science fiction (as opposed to fantasy, as the terms are
commonly used, no genre border conflicts plz!) story. It turns out that
gaining free will does not make a murderbot even slightly socially ept,
which seems way more reasonable than most robots-gaining-free-will
storylines. Let's hear it for murderbots who just want to hide in their
recharge cubicles shipping popular video entertainments! Sadly, this is a
fairly short piece -- barely a novel, if that -- so I hope there will be
more.
The Gods of Saggitarius (Eric Flit, Mike Resnick) is wacky
SF adventure (no surprise given the authors) about some humans and aliens
who independently go looking for the mysterious elder beings who ruled the
galaxy before modern sophonts but are inexplicably no longer doing so. The
search starts on a planet that humans call Cthulhu, but the book is more
lightly Lovecraft-seasoned than anything. At the end, things look even
worse for the galaxy, so there will probably be a sequel. Hopefully the
incomprehensible alien artifact that makes snide comments will continue to
play a major role. (Remember, it's not a plot hole if none of the
characters have any idea what's going on!)
On the shoujo-ai manga front,
Bloom Into You (Nakatani Nio) is pretty cute. It has the "well,
I'm not into girls, but I guess it's okay if you like me" setup (is that a
trope? I just assume everything is by now) which I guess I approve of?
Questioning and becoming more open is good, right? I dunno, man.
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10 May 2017 - Wednesday
Burritos from La Victoria and Dungeon
World! Kelsey has abandoned us to do something productive for the next
month, by which time we'll probably be ready to return to 13th Age for the
climax of Eyes
of the Stone Thief.
After retconning much of last session, I finally did what I should have
done from the start and started with the PCs already busted for their
maguffin-stealing ways, and sent them off to find the Bishop of Ivory. Apparently
some fun was had, although there was not a lot of conflict. I think I need to do
more descriptions.
I like the "Doctor Dire" series by Andrew Seiple (at least the first
four books, Dire: Born, Dire: Seed, Dire:
Time, and Dire: Wars). They are not super-amazingly
written, but they do have an element of social justice to them, and pretty
much support my suspicion that (at least in the US) "superheroism" is
exactly equal to using superpowers to support the status quo. Of course,
that means everyone else gets lumped into "supervillainy", which
is not necessarily a pleasant bucket to be in. Plus, it's all Tesla's
fault!
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7 May 2017 - Sunday
Nonny's birthday is in November, but with one thing and another
(holidays, diseases, scheduling...), he did not get a party until today.
But now he and a dozen of his school friends (kids these days don't have
friends outside of school or other scheduled activities) have been to Pump It Up and had a
great time with foam and inflatables and sugar.
Much children. Very screaming. Wow.
No
PAD&D5,
we are missing two players out of six. I am sad to not have gaming, but
happy to not have to do anything with humans.
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6 May 2017 - Saturday
Naturally, the cleaners were scheduled for the day after my mom left, so she
saw my apartment in its grungiest state.
Somehow I was into seeing people again by evening time, so I went to anime!
- My Little Pony 10: I understand the importance of the lesson
that you should listen to everyone's perspective, but if Pinkie Pie had
just explained what she was doing, the episode could have been a lot
shorter. Metalesson: use your words!
- Durarara!!x2 10: Oh no! Dotachin!
- Vision of Escaflowne 16: Mystic Valley backstory!
- Koimonogatari 1-2: Senjyogahara vs Kaiki! For some definition
of "versus".
- Steven Universe 2.12: Finally, more Stevonnie! And Rose
Quartz/Greg backstory! (Awww!)
- Steven Universe 2.13: What is this strange flesh-being
activity you call "sleep"?
This One Summer (Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki) is one
volume of slice-of-life comic about two young girls on vacation (with their
families) at the beach. I guess I can see why it got banned in some places;
in the imaginations of fundies, 13-year-old girls would never think about
puberty or be aware that older teenagers are having sex and/or getting
pregnant. Shock! Horror!
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5 May 2017 - Friday
There was a lot of sleeping, since my mom has been staying on the couch
at her sister's, where apparently some people stay up until all hours and
other people get up at the crack of dawn, but that's okay. Eventually we went to
Bill's. Then
we arranged to meet Marith later and went to SJMA,
where I have never been because I have no culture.
We saw beautiful monochrome photos of water! We made oscillation draw spiragraphs! We looked at a strange object of mixed materials! The Marith showed up, so we looked at some of it again with her, and also looked at some pretty depressing stuff.
But there is no time for depression, there is a
rose garden
to look at! (Apparently a municipal rose garden is just one of those things cities
have, like a water treatment plant or a traffic court.) Much roses! Very color!
Wow!
When we were too dehydrated to admire roses any more, we had
expensive sushi because my mom lives
too far inland to get sushi very often. It was successful! But then we had to
take her back to the train station so she could catch the bus to Fresno.
Anyway, that all was a thing that happened. I'm not sure how I feel about
it, except that I should have done better or been better or not failed so much
at humaning.
Momvisit by marithlizard (Sun May 21 23:38:00 2017)
I don't think you failed at humaning at all! You housed and fed and entertained your mom and were nice to her and didn't sell even one of her organs on the black market (right?), and you didn't make her wash dishes to pay for the expensive sushi. She even seemed to be having fun.
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4 May 2017 - Thursday
Strangely enough, my mom is here! She is visiting her siblings and their
descendents in the Fresno area, but that is close enough that she could pop over
for a couple of days.
It is strange because I haven't seen her in... twenty years? Some of my faded
memories match, but she is almost a stranger now. Once again, I fail at basic
humaning.
Anyway, I took her to
Taiwan Restaurant
for lunch, and then we went to visit Ayse & Ken & Jus & Nonny & Dave. Everything
went well, I guess?
My couch is actually quite comfortable!
Make a comment!
3 May 2017 - Wednesday
Dungeon
World! Also Chinese
food!
After Brooks made a gray elf storm mage (there are gray elves! they have
weather magic! they sail!), the PCs immediately leapt into a wacky caper
involving a complete lack of teamwork, which left Dave's character
bewildered and unengaged. It also left me somewhat confused, and I did not
manage to brain well enough to destroy everyone as they deserved. But, the
woodblock print was stolen and hardly anything was on fire afterwards, so I
guess it was a win for the PCs?
I am really dreadfully bad at this.
Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat! vol 1-22 (Kate Leth, Brittney L
Williams, Natasha Allegri, Megan Wilson, Rachelle Rosenberg) seems more
cartoony and more self-consciously modern than what I remember of 4-color
comics (from times that were, um, less modern), but is pretty cute even
though I'm not entirely fond of the art style.
Make a comment!
30 April 2017 - Sunday
Last week's
PAD&D5
is this week!
After finishing last sessions's escort quest, the Heroines of Red Larch
try to get back to exploring the underground part of [SPOILER], but need some
speciality gear. In the big city, they report to the authorities about all the
good work they've been doing against [SPOILER], so have to cough up slightly
less gold for the gear. Then Mika's not-at-all-shadowy and not-at-all-sinister
masters send her a crowgram to go down to [SPOILER] for another escort quest.
It's not exactly what everyone else wants to do, but it's a good deed and in
the right direction, so the whole team sets out for [SPOILER], stopping to let
[SPOILER] know what's up with Rimardo's glowing [SPOILER]. The escort quest
goes pretty well up until almost Red Larch, when they attract the attention of
[SPOILER] who very unfairly use tactics. The enemy can't hurt the
Heroines, but the Heroines can't do a lot to protect the civilians and their
draft animals from hit-and-run despite Lam's new paladin steed Honk-Sneeze the
Very Large Elk and his high movement. Finally, they manage to get set up to
receive the next attack, and despite some [SPOILER] showing up to help the bad
guys, beat them down and get their leader's surrender.
No Avalon, she has more kid sickness. :(
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29 April 2017 - Saturday
Jus's school had a festivity and a walk-a-thon today, so I went and mostly
hung out with Nonny because I have most-favored-uncle status. While I was doing
that, Jus walked five miles for donations!
Everyone was wiped out after all day in the hot sun, even people who did
not walk five miles, so eventually we ordered yummy Thai food to eat with our anime.
- My Little Pony 9: Xenophobia is bad. I'm not sure that
depiction of the outsider would really pass muster these days, though.
- Durarara!!x2 2.9: Wow, Izaya backstory! Everything really is
his fault.
- Vision of Escaflowne 15: Mecha catgirls and PTSD!
- Onimonogatari 3-4: MEEP! :(
- Steven Universe 2.11: Body horror for nonhumans!
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28 April 2017 - Friday
Marith came over and we watched Cowboy Bebop up through 11.
Now we have the whole crew, and also some kind of horrible thing! And
assorted tragic pasts.
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27 April 2017 - Thursday
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (David Wong) is not related to
John Dies at the End, being near-future supervillainy in a
libertarian topia, but it also has a protagonist from the lower end of society,
although Zoey is a better person than David and is faced with less cosmic doom.
Although, from a human perspective, mad science and billions of dollars are so
overwhelming there might not be a difference.
I am so far behind on this. I think I better quite babbling about game
design until I am caught up.
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26 April 2017 - Wednesday
We have no Brooks, so Mike took over his food slot. The
experimental barbecue was only mediocre,
though.
Since we finished the current plot arc in
13th Age, we are
going to play
Dungeon World
for a while! But it will be terrible, because I am running.
After some worldbuilding, we have a barbarian whose people were frozen in
time (and a glacier) long ago, a fire priest from the fallen dwarven
civilization, a tiefling warlock (because making deals is the most
merchant-class form of magic), and a swashbuckling pirate heroine. I have
determined that they will start in Owlbear Crossing, where the owlbears are
milked.
Maybe we should have left more blanks on the map? Eh, my brain has plenty of
blanks, it'll be good enough.
Apparently, PbtA
Eclipse Phase already exists. I am kind of afraid to read it, because
it will be either better than I could do, or WRONGWRONGWRONG (or possibly even
both). I should probably die in a pit preemptively.
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