Trismegistus

A short entry for today since I got home late from work and have to scramble to get to the next thing. Anyway, here's what I read over the last six days:

What I Finished Reading This Week

Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie
This is an excellent book (and I say this as someone who vastly prefers novels to short stories). Lake of Souls has three sections: stand-alone short stories, stories in the Imperial Radch universe, and stories in the Raven Tower universe, and they're all excellent. I enjoyed all but one of the stand-alone stories (and the sole story I didn't like, I didn't enjoy only because it's a bit of a downer. But it's also only 1.5 pages long, so hey). I'd read two of the three Imperial Radch stories prior to this anthology's publication and enjoyed them again here (I won't spoil "She Commands Me And I Obey" but IYKYK...and it's good.) The third, new-to-me story was my least favorite of the bunch, but only because it's so obviously a reskinned version of a standard folktale that didn't add much to the Radch universe or benefit from having Radch elements introduced to it. I was surprised by how much I liked the Raven Tower stories; in fact, I liked many of them more than the novel itself. The Raven Tower worldbuilding constraints just work so well in a short story format. And throughout all three sections, Leckie says a ton of incisive and so-sharp-you-won't-know-you're-cut-and-bleeding things to say about gender. This book was delightful and I will absolutely read it again.


What I Am Currently Reading

A Fate Inked in Blood – Danielle Jensen
I'm only about 50 pages into it but enjoying things so far.

The Laws of Brainjo – Josh Turknett
I'll have this one finished by next week.


What I’m Reading Next

I acquired no new books this week.


これで以上です。

...but instead I will just say that I am incredibly saddened to learn of spikedluv's passing. She was such a lovely presence on my reading page and like so many others, I will miss her.

これで以上です。

Today was one of those days I had no choice but to drive, because I had no choice but to go to a transit-inaccessible worksite.

Today the Peace Monks came to DC. Because the Peace Monks came to DC, the final 3 miles of my commute took two hours and 17 minutes to complete. I can walk 10 and a half miles in that same amount of time.

And I would have walked those three—or even 10.5—miles, except the city still has not bothered to remove the snow, meaning there was no shoulder to park on and had I parked in the street I would have screwed over every other car behind me, Everybody Hurts style. (I have, on more than one occasion in the past when traffic was stupid American, parked my car on the shoulder, walked home, and then walked back to retrieve it at some later time.) By the 60 minute mark, people were throwing on their left turn signals, pulling into the left turn only lane, and then "realizing" that they'd meant to go straight all along, fucking everyone else who'd been waiting over. By the 90 minute mark, people were pulling into oncoming lanes and gunning it as far forward as they could before forcing themselves back into the head of the lane they wanted to be in all along as soon as oncoming traffic showed up. And maybe I could have got home faster if I'd acted similarly, but I do not have the confidence? Shittiness? Confident shittiness? Shitty confidence? To try it myself.

At about an hour into this shitshow, when I still though I'd be home in under a quarter of a work day, I was like, "Huh. Never thought I would actually want try a BG3 Durge playthrough, but maybe I will."

Then I spent another 75 minutes in the car, during which time I traveled a whopping 1.4 miles.

And you know what? No. At that point I had moved welllllll beyond a mere Durge playthrough. I get the appeal now. I UNDERSTAND HOW BHAALISTS ARE MADE YOUR IDEAS ARE INTRIGUING TO ME AND I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER ALL HAIL THE LORD OF MURDER.

Eh-hem.

Anyway. I consumed some media last week, do you want to hear about it?

Games: More Fishy, Squishy, Crusty, Quirky, which has become our go-to game for those "Huh, we have 27 random minutes to kill, what will we do with them?" situations.

I came home from a long day at work Thursday to a message from the resident who'd gone incommunicado after proposing a game night some weeks back had messaged again to say, "7:30 tonight." This occasioned some angst (Oh god, I have to do a socializing) but it turned out the other resident who expressed interest couldn't make it, so I got my introvert evening after all.

Two Geek BBQers had us over for dinner and games Saturday night. We played Jaws, a new-to-all-of-us game. I have no particular feelings about the movie one way or another but still enjoyed the game, which is essentially a simplified version of Betrayal at the House in the Hill. Three players playing as Brody, Hooper, and Quint cooperate to defeat the fourth player (who is obviously playing as Jaws). The game has two acts: the first on Amity Island, where all four players need to use different combinations of skills and movement to save as many swimmers as possible and locate Jaws. Once located, the game moves into the second act on the Orca, where characters attempt to kill Jaws before it kills them. The game introduces a bunch of new mechanics and abilities for each player at this point along with a much more complicated round structure. We managed it well enough but it's not the smoothest transition, nor one you could wing without frequent guidebook consultation. TL;DR—it's a fun enough game but one fans of the movie will probably get the most out of, as the comparative lack of randomization would make it pretty repetitive after awhile.

Music: One of the Monday house session folks hosted me at their place last Friday for a mini-session. It was WONDERFUL. Just two players (one full melody, one melody + chords), both of whom belong in the "slower with ornaments and rhythmic variation" camp versus the "125 BPM ride or die" camp. Bonus benefit: we could both hear ourselves playing. Additional bonus benefit: you can't hide when there are only two people playing, so those tricky bits? We actually had to correct them.

We wrapped up 30 minutes earlier than initially planned (important because the original finish time was when the GC and I had planned to meet at favorite Chinese takeout place for dinner). I considered calling to see if he could head down early, but this beautiful, twinkling snow was falling, like fairytale 3D snowflakes, so I spent the 30 minutes walking around the neighborhood, almost the only person out, enjoying the sights and the stillness, and the crackly, tinkling sound of the snow falling all around me.

Podcasts/Articles: I read a bunch of articles this week, but nothing that I'd consider longform. Still no podcasts.

Roleplaying: Still nothing.

Television: Does binging cute parrot, cat, or bunny videos count?

Video Games: Nothing this week, as I spent my gaming time reading books, and then drafting reviews of the same.

これで以上です。

On Tuesday, February 3, because sometimes it's like that.

Games: More Witchcraft. ( My thoughts as I continue playing. )

We also obtained Fishy, Squishy, Crusty, Quirky, another "kawaii [insert category here] card game" offering from Unstable Games. It is, as hoped, turning out to be an ideal Geek BBQ game: lightweight and small with minimal set up, simple/intuitive/derivative (take your pick) enough to learn quickly, possible to keep playing even if the environment gets loud or distracting, over in an appropriate amount of time for a big social setting, and with enough interesting mechanics to keep it, well, interesting. (In this case, reversed cards that other players can see but you cannot, among others.) I'm also a sucker for kawaii octo and squid pictures, so, yeah. It works.

Music: Well, the gubmint is shut down again, and once again in such a fashion that no one aside from the gubmint employees who have to work without being paid will notice that the gubmint is shut down. Predictably, this put me into a funk. I skipped the pub session and considered not going to the house session but ultimately dragged myself out to do it, knowing that future me would benefit from being jolted out of my doldrums. And future me did. The start was admittedly rocky (which it would be given that the session starts past my bedtime and I was bummed and distracted) but got progressively better as I was able to focus more on just playing music. I left in a pacific state. It's also a 6 mile roundtrip walk, and there's still plenty of snow around, so I was in my element both on my way out and on the trip back.

Podcasts/Articles: Two longform articles Exploiting Meta's Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election, which angered me for all the reasons it says on the tin + did nothing to allay my suspicion that meta outsources the discovery and reporting of such content to investigative journalists instead of "wasting" money doing it themselves; and Extropia's Children, which is a series of not particularly well-written substack posts about a topical and ostensibly fascinating topic. Unfortunately, the author's thesis? argument? basically amounted to "Look! The same group of people who were theorizing about AI in the 90s are still doing AI things today!" And, yeah. That makes sense. I don't understand the author's conspiratorial "Get out the red string!" framing.

Roleplaying: Nothing this week, again. Gah.

Television: We're an episode away from finishing Max Headroom Season 2, and with it, the entire show. We watched Neurostim, one of the series' weakest episodes, both because it basically repeats the plot of the previous episode, and for its wealth of "You Can Do That On Television!" 80s-isms that...have not aged well, to be very polite about it. Japanese people are a conniving cultural and economic threat! (And for some reason speak with Chinese accents?) South Asian people are slimy used car and suit salesmen! (And for some reason sitar music is always playing while they're around?) The next episode, Lessons, is a return to freaking form, and one that anticipated: social media mogul-led censorship, oligarchs war against educating the non-wealthy, and how both news media and entertainment television are willing to bend the knee to both.

Online, I watched the first episode of The Remarkable Life of Margaret Barry. I primarily know Barry as the composer of The Strayaway Child, an absolute hypnotic banger of a double jig. I was also aware that she was famous as a banjoist and ballad singer, and for her collaborations with Michael Gorman, but this was first time I'd actually heard any of this work. Barry had a powerful freaking voice, and the stuff she accomplished, despite being both a woman and a Traveller, is impressive. That said, I am just not a fan of Irish ballads or pub songs in English. Give me the tunes.

Video Games: Machinarium, which I've lost a bit of steam on as I've hit a particularly tricky puzzle (I know I can just look up the solution in a walkthrough but I won't, dammit! I have standards!) and Baldur's Gate 3 and omg I don't remember what I was doing on this playthrough at all 😭)

これで以上です。

Challenge #15

How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go? Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

I managed to complete 2/3 of this year's challenges within a few days of posting, which is actually pretty good for me overall given that mid-January through April are always an IRL whirlwind, and especially so this year given that so much about this 2026 timeline seems TAILOR MADE TO DECIMATE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING. So while I didn't manage to complete as many of the challenge as quickly as I'd hoped, I doubly appreciated the experience of participating this year for the opportunity it afforded to take my mind off of anxiety-producing-to-straight-up-horrific things at the macro-level and turn my attention to fun and imaginative things and community at the micro-level. The latter is something I definitely want to keep focusing on as the year progresses, because it's a much better way to spend my energy.



これで以上です。

WE FINALLY GOT SNOW YESTERDAY! The initial "2 feet starting at 7 pm Saturday night" became "3-5 inches starting after midnight Sunday morning" but seeing as we haven't had a real snowfall in ten-freaking-years I WILL TAKE IT. (Seriously, I hate "sunny blue skies and cold with no snow" winters. There are few things I find more depressing.) I tried my absolute best to stay up for the snowfall as the estimated start times ticked further and further back into the night but alas, tapped out around 11:30 pm. There was a good 4" (Only four? *sob*) on the ground when we got up yesterday morning, but we went out for a lovely multi-mile walk through the streets and Park in the virgin snow, seeing absolutely nobody aside from a few other couples and a group of seven armed national guardpuppets walking single file up the street in the opposite direction, doing absolutely fuckall of use to the city.

Wintry mix and an increasing number of fishtailing and/or marooned cars on the unplowed roads ultimately got us to head back home. We made hot coffees, and then hot cocoas, and then mulled cider. I settled in to read my Asian news sites, and then my European news sites, and then realized it was Burns Night. And then I got a little sad.( Read more... )

Games: A main gaming group member's beloved-by-everyone pet passed away last week, so gaming has been preempted by other distractions, hugs, and really, whatever else they need from us for the foreseeable future.

Witchcraft has proved super challenging and great fun. This is a solo player tabletop game where you command a coven of witches trying to protect your fantasy medieval European village from fairytale monsters in the face of a skeptical jury. The game's mechanics are complex and challenging, with enough variability in their components to create a lot of replay value. Would I enjoy them as much if the setting were "medical researchers trying to save their chronically ill patients from certain death in the face of a skeptical ethics review board" or "rogue military alpha males trying to save their kidnapped ladyfolk from 'terrorists' in the face of a skeptical JAG?" Absolutely fucking not. But this game knows the sort of player it wants to appeal to with its chosen scenario, I am exactly the sort of player it appeals to with its chosen scenario, and it plays to my/those preferences brilliantly.

Otherwise, a fellow resident is in the early stages of setting up a gaming night, with Azul, Carcassone, Catan (*sigh*), or Wingspan as potential options, so I'm (no pun intended) on board and excited about that.

Music: I skipped last week's house session as my socializing meter was at 0. Both yesterday's pub session and today's house session have been cancelled due to Weather (ruling out group playing), and seeing as I can't get the humidity in my unit above 19 percent even with both humidifiers going full blast for the past 72 hours, I won't be doing any solo playing at home. (PS: Houseplants, I am so, so sorry. Please don't all of you die on me I swear I am doing the best I can.)

Podcasts/Articles: Nothing this week.

Roleplaying: Nothing this week.

Television: An unsung hero uploaded a 40 minute interview with one of the Stars in My Personal Firmament of Irish Fluteplaying to yt this week, and I inhaled it like oxygen.

Video Games: Machinarium, Pentiment, and Ghost of Yotei continue apace. The GC has been replaying Knights of the Old Republic on the tower, so my Ultima IV replay has not progressed at all in the last seven days.


これで以上です。

I managed to finish two books this week despite the competing pressures of work, gaming, and other socializing, and aim to have a few more honkers wrapped up within the next few days.


What I Finished Reading This Week

Internet Security Fundamentals - Nick Ioannou
This self-published freemium book covers exactly what the title suggests it will. Because it's free and frequently updated, the editing is atrocious: typos, omitted words, garbled sentences, and occasionally mistakes that utterly change the meaning of what Ioannou surely meant to say (e.g., the equivalent of accidentally omitting the word "never" from the following sentence: "The absolute most important thing you can do is to never leave your doors unlocked when you go out.") That said, this book is free, it's frequently updated, and the information is solid and presented in a fashion that won't overwhelm readers who need an introductory explanation of these concepts and practices; if you're looking for a book that does just that, you could do far worse than this one.

After the Forest – Kell Woods
This book was excellent and I will eagerly read anything else Woods writes. Set in 16th century Germany against a backdrop of interstate conflict, witch trials, and religious intolerance, it tells the story of the folktale Hansel and Gretel's titular characters (Greta and Hans here) after the woods; that is, as adults, post-witch and -oven, and -gingerbread house. The setting is fantastic, the descriptive language is fantastic. The blend of historical fact and fairy tale elements is fantastic. The pacing is fantastic. The characterizations are wonderful and strike the difficult balance of depicting characters with believable strengths and weaknesses without slipping into caricature or melodrama, and desires and agency without relying on anachronism or unrealistic motivations or capabilities. This is a definite winner, and I will read it again.


What I Am Currently Reading

Mannaz – Malene Sølvsten
I've got just about 100 pages to go and can't wait to see how the trilogy concludes.

Freya the Deer – Meg Richman
There I was, calmly reading the prologue, when Richman casually dropped a sentence that came out of nowhere like a blow to the face. "Gripped me from the very first page" is a cliche in book reviews, but the first page of this volume delivers a mean jolt, and so far Richman has the chops to keep the momentum going.

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 – Xue Shan Fei Hu
Mannaz, After the Woods, and Freya the Deer were all affecting my nightmares, so this has become my bedtime reading, a job to which its unapologetically, gleefully over-the-top premise is perfectly suited.


What I’m Reading Next

I acquired no new books this week.


これで以上です。

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

I don't know if there's already a trope and/or term for this, but I'm a huge sucker for what I'm going to call ( house voyeurism. )





これで以上です。

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

( Here are mine. )



これで以上です。

Games: I played a bunch of Hive.

Miscellaneous: No podcasts, one longform article:

Why I Wrote Dirty Linen

Music: I didn't go to yesterday's pub session because Newest D&D Homebrew Campaign had a D&D session scheduled, which was cancelled at the last minute. Alas.

Roleplaying: See above. :-/

Television: We watched the first two episodes of Max Headroom S2, which predicted AI-generated avatars of deceased loved ones and parodied certain aspects of religion in ways that ::cough:: would not make it onto TV in 2026.

I also watched the final three episodes of Heated Rivalry. ( Thoughts, in no particular order. )

Video Games: I finished Samorost 2, which is a mechanically simpler game than Botanicula and thus tricky to play after it, as I had to rethink the way I approached the puzzles. It's still a super fun game; I love everything Amanita Design puts out.

I wanted to play Downwell next for a change of pace, but fucking windows insists on rendering it in a tiny 3" x 4" box in the center of the screen, making it all but unplayable. I've thus settled on a Pentiment replay (in which I am once again on a collision course with the church from the get-go) and am also toying with the idea of a Darklands replay as well, given the clear debt the former owes this game...provided windows cooperates.

これで以上です。