• 7:00 PM - 3 boys (oldest in full riot gear)
• 7:10 PM - 5 boys (dressed as teenage boys)
• 7:35 PM - 2 girls (matching one-piece hooded reindeer pajamas)
• 7:45 PM - 1 very little princess, escorted by mom

I’m actually impressed I got that many, on a cul-de-sac without streetlights. With a sidewalk that ends just past my house. Which has a steep 75-foot driveway. And it was 38°F and quite windy.

I’m glad I bought some candy. Even gladder that I didn’t buy the 60+ pounds I used to buy for my house in California. I’d have been giving away multiple pounds per kid, which would have set unrealistic expectations for next year. 😁

(the first group explained that they always go to my street, since it’s full of well-off people of grandparent age. fair)

(Pete, I kind of miss the main feed that started returning 401 errors recently. It’s more fun than trying to track you through multiple feeds. 😁)

(Saturday update: ...and back, for now; and yes, there's RSS at /users/anime/feed/, but not for the top-level /main/public, so I visit that one by hand every few days to catch up. As for signing up for an account somewhere, I'd need to have more than one person to follow before I bother to figure out how... 😁)

S-Rank Daddy’s Girl, episode 6

In which overconfidence is bad, whether you’re a retainer with an obvious crush on your mistresses or a top-rank adventurer who’s never had to deal with mind games. On the bright side, Our Best Catgirl is happy to go wild against a bunch of generic mooks, which works for me.

It takes a while to get to the action, but Chubby Snidely Whiplash’s plot is now clear, as is the way he’s being used by Our Abused Child Prodigy (who is herself being used by Our True Villain, who made a brief tragic-backstory appearance). It still doesn’t feel like they’re really committing to a big fight, even though everyone knows that The Maltese Doughball is traitorous scum who wants everyone dead.

Verdict: Our Noble Sisters deserve the loyalty of their people. But if Helvetica ever finds out that Sasha got picked up…

(and, yes, there’s a touch of foreshadowing in that mind-game scene, but it will take some time to unpack)

Frieren, episode 9

In which much is explained and the JV goes to war, with more success than they expected. Frieren’s fight comes next week.

Verdict: take your time, we’ll still be here.

Related, fast woman fan-art

There’s a lot of nice story-compatible fan-art out there for Frieren, as well as the usual crude porn, but Fern has attracted attention not so much for her talent, intelligence, spellcasting speed, and quiet humor, but for “boooooooooobs!”. For instance:

Not Safe For Stark

Starfield break, playing modded Baldurs Gate 3 for a while

Karlach is Best Girl, for looks, voice, and story; how can you not love a cheerful demonic berserker who keeps a teddy bear in her tent? And, yes, I turned on mods right before they released a massive patch, so I’ve disabled downloads until the basic dependencies get updated for the new release. I didn’t go crazy with mods, I just wanted to go back and get Karlath into my party early, unfuck some quests that I could no longer complete in my first run, and do a bit of min-maxing and power-leveling to reduce the annoyance of the do-it-again-stupid quests.

Playing as a half-orc monk, by the way, with a hireling halfling bard in the party; I haven’t ditched Shadowheart yet, but I’ve been thinking about trading her in on a warlock. Or at least pulling out the Gith-ho to do the crèche before passing through the next Door Of Warning; I’ve scoured the surface and the Underdark pretty thoroughly, and that seems to be the last thing left, now that my party is at level 6.

(unrelated little hellions did not deliver their trick-or-treats to my house for Halloween)

Tearmoon, episode 5

In which horses are freedom, but the road to lunch is lined with traps.

Verdict: four girls who’ve never cooked? What could possibly go wrong?

Potion Loli, episode 5

At this point, I think Our Potion Loli’s surprisingly-effective Office Lady Logic is as likely to lead to long-term positive outcomes as the phrase “at last C-ko will be mine”.

Verdict: …and next week she’s setting forth to destroy an army. I think I’m about done here.

(Coffee Loli beats Potion Loli)

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 5

Eunuchs, you say? With muscles like that? If they hadn’t already made it obvious that there was something fishy about Our Harem Manager and His Number One Man, the opening scene of this episode would have done it.

Then again, the OP animation has Our Painted-Lady Medicinal Heroine looking glamorous while dancing sexy in a very non-period dress, so it’s not like they’ve really been hiding things.

Verdict: slow-burn romance, eh? I can go with that direction.

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 5

The Tale Of The Purloined Rapier went pretty much as expected, with Our Hero-Worshipping Bunnyboy learning the true worth of his legacy and getting a chance to show off his sword-bunny skills. Meanwhile, Our Obnoxious Twintail has trained herself into a better person, and Our Beefcake Asshole Noble reveals the trauma that made him that way (the asshole part, that is).

On that note, it appears the school fears the power of Gainax, which is the only reason I can think of that Romantica’s formerly-bouncy bust is so much smaller and well-restrained than in her initial appearance.

Verdict: one more, but if the tournament turns into a tournament arc, I’m outta here. Hopefully they’ll spend some time on Our Giant Blonde With Weird Eyebrows, who’s been hanging out in the credits without much screen time.

Shy, episode 6

For Those Who Came In Late… our first several minutes will be a recap, accompanied by a brief villainous monologue.

Following that, Our Shy Heroine Shy will be pulled away from a chat with Our Best Friend to become one of Santa’s helpers, without a chance to find a winter wardrobe or learn to use her fire powers to stay warm in the arctic cold. Also featuring Our Drunken Russian Heroine, and introducing Our Chinese Femboy Kung-Fu Hero, who’s kind of sensitive about that.

Verdict: the silliness is starting to clash with the dead-serious villainy, but I’m still rooting for our gal.

S-Rank Daddy’s Girl, episode 7

In which Our Stalwart Daughter plays a bullet-hell game to win, Our Vengeful Loli is defeated by Deus Ex Elf-Juice and Dad Power, The Maltese Doughball gets what he deserves, and Our Daddy-Hungry Countess rises to the occasion.

Verdict: Helvetica is dangerously close to overtaking Miriam for Best Girl status.

(cute dragonette foodie is unrelated, as usual)

Frieren, episode 10

Do not meddle in the affairs of Frieren, for she is subtle and quick to anger plays the long game. As she was taught.

Verdict: I am now officially Hot For Teacher.

Why I don’t really like Baldur’s Gate 3

So I made it to Act 3, started to accumulate side quests so that I could finally get into the titular city, and… went off to read a book instead. I just didn’t want to do the things they wanted me to do, and there was nowhere else to go. It’s made very clear that you’re in a Race Against Time to Stop The Bad Guys and Save The City, but you have to run around talking to pretty much every named NPC in each region to make sure that you stumble across half a dozen plot coupons to get the thing to do the thing that unlocks the thing that opens the door to start the fight to see the guy to get the other thing, and half of it isn’t actually necessary but you won’t know that until you finally trip the flag that lets you progress the plot.

Meanwhile, most of the people I helped in Act 1 died horribly in Act 2, and the ones who didn’t are worse off, and most decisions I got to make ranged from Kinda Evil to Mostly Evil. And for all the apparent freedom in experiencing the content, you’re welded to the rails of this story, unable to even revisit the earlier areas if there was something that you missed.

For instance, in Act 1, you have the opportunity to rescue a young tiefling girl who stole something (for a pretty good reason). If you do so, you reunite her with her loving parents. If you stumble across her in Act 2, she’s been separated from her parents and asks you to find them. If you don’t find them before moving to Act 3 (and they’re hard to find even if you know what building they’re in), that quest gets auto-closed with a poor outcome, because you can never reenter the region and locate their tortured-to-death corpses. But you want to find them and shatter her hopes, because then you can recruit her for a plot fight later.

Honestly, the most positive thing I was able to do recently was tame a flesh-eating monster so that I could pet it at my camp. It still goes out and eats anything and anyone it can find, but who am I to make moral judgements, some kind of hero?

The most annoying thing that happened in Act 2 was that I didn’t talk to everyone on the first floor of the inn before going upstairs to see the Very Important NPC that I was specifically directed to speak to right away. As a result, one significant quest chain was closed off by the ensuing massacre, but I didn’t find out until several hours later when I groveled over the map searching for things that would be closed off by advancing to Act 3. There’s even a special cutscene where you lament the fact that you couldn’t make the world a better place.

Oh, and when I met the little girl, well after the massacre, I could tell her to wait for me at the inn with a friendly NPC. Who was dead, along with most of the people she knew from Act 1.

I’d like to play a game that used their D&D engine but had completely different writers and less grimdark epic railroading.

(true story: I gave up on the original Baldur’s Gate for a long time because I missed one tiny little corner of the map that contained a flag I needed to trip in order to enter the titular city; there was literally nothing left for me to do until I found it, and it was boring)

(that’s “Houkyou No Fern-chan”, for the kanji-allergic)

Fern’s full breasts are two of the most popular characters for fan-art this season, to the point that they can easily fill a full cheesecake post. Honestly, you’d think they were the leads, when they barely get any screen time at all.

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Tearmoon, episode 6

Our Rival Princes are very lucky that Our Outstanding Retainer came equipped with a spider-sense, as well as the ability to politely strong-arm Our Over-Ambitious Young Ladies into making food that’s edible and at the proper scale. Special points to Our Adorkable Maid for managing to out-clueless her mistress about what was wrong with the giant horse bread.

On that note, while it was nice to see Mia accidentally get Abel to conquer his insecurities, I really wish Yoshitsugu Matsuoka was able to vary his performances at least a little, so that he didn’t sound like every other boy hero he’s voiced. Every time he opens his mouth, I wonder why Bell is cheating on Hestia, Kirito is cheating on Asuna, and Masamune is cheating on Eromanga-sensei.

While I’m whining, I’d like to say that “desu wa” makes a terrible catchphrase, especially when embedded into a major earworm of an OP song.

Verdict: …and yet I keep watching the OP rather than hitting the skip button…

Potion Loli, episode 6

Fun fact: an army of 20,000 men only needs about six wagons worth of supplies for an extended march through enemy territory. It also looks remarkably like an army of 20 men. With no sentries or scouts. Things go downhill from there.

Verdict: everything that happened in this episode killed brain cells by the dozen. Bye now!

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 6

Thank heaven for little girls… who like poison. And recognize allergic reactions and the type of people who deliberately trigger them.

Verdict: “did you like the soup?”

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 6

Perhaps the Blue Moon Party should stop recruiting members based on their unique hairstyles. Just sayin’. Meanwhile, Our Reformed Twintail is gaily gleeful about Our Gay Bunnyboy’s gay crush, while forgetting entirely about her desire to figure out Our Foreknowing Hero’s smug secret. Our Bushy-Eyebrowed Valkyrie throws down the thigh-high stockings gauntlet and announces that she will not underestimate the rival she’s still underestimating.

Verdict: it looks like they’re restricting the tournament to two episodes, the first of which is nearly all setup. Good.

Next season possibles?

Frieren and The Apothecary Diaries are both carrying over, which will automatically make it one of the best seasons we’ve had for a while. Other than those, I’m not too excited about most of what’s been announced so far.

• Solo Leveling - the promos are currently focusing on the unleveled version of Our Hero, so I have no idea how they’re going to pace this, or how many episodes they’re making.

• McPharmacist and Waifu 2 - Red and Rit return, but after the first season chopped the story to bits to race to a stopping point, can they paste it back together? There should be decent eye candy, but the only reason I’ll give it a chance is for Best Assassin Tisse and Best Spider Mr. Crawly-Wawly.

• Dungeon Meshi (“Delicious In Dungeon”) - dungeon-delving food porn, which is a fairly lightweight premise, but not only have they committed to 24 episodes, they’re serious enough to hire Bump Of Chicken for the OP song. Of the core cast, the one with the highest recent profile is probably blonde elf Marcille, whose voice will be familiar to anyone fond of a certain overpowered slime’s favorite shrine maiden, but the most naggingly familiar voice will be the dwarf Senshi, who’s been in basically everything since The Legend Of The Galactic Heroes in 1988.

Book cover FAIL

A common problem on Amazon is Kindle books whose covers are incoherent at thumbnail size. Choices in fonts, color, and pictures often lead to the elements getting mushed together in ways that make them difficult to distinguish. This one, however, surprised me in a new way:

At full size, the title is easy to read, but as a thumbnail, at first I thought it was called “The Villainess ASS-Rank Adventurer”, which made perfect sense for the genre.

In which Our Wounded Sober Russian Heroine looks really good in civvies while acting her age, and Our Shouty Healing Heroine and Our Always-Relevant Best Friend deliver enough boob shots to make all the exposition go down easier. Meanwhile, Our Shy Heroine Shy’s reward for holding up through all that is to confront her worst nightmare: a public appearance. Fortunately she’s grown enough over the past few weeks that even Pretty Cure cosplay can’t defeat her.

Verdict: Ponytail Pepesha is best Pepesha.

Shy:

Not Shy:

NSFW

Dear Amazon,

This recent Tim Powers novella should not be linked to the author page for Aldous Huxley. That is all.

S-Rank Daddy’s Girl, episode 8

Enter The Elves. First another naggingly familiar voice joins the cast as Our Legendary Warrior (using something very similar to his Zelada voice from the glorious train-wreck Cop Craft), soon to be followed by Our Tomboy Princess (whose previous elven princess was much curvier). Meanwhile, a chance remark sets Our Dutiful Daughter off on a quest that could change her world!

Verdict: Oh, Miri, what have you done? 😁

(Leafa-chan is unrelated, but I couldn’t find any decent fan-art of previous-elf-princess Arianne that I haven’t already used)

Frieren, episode 11

There’s a fair amount of fan-porn for Aura The Guillotine. To no great surprise, all of it requires ignoring every aspect of the character except her cleavage. Clearly some people are going to miss her.

But not the town they just saved, which honors both their dead and Our Heroes, before the Graf gives them a grateful sendoff. And a warning that Frieren needs to renew her driver’s license mage certification in order to progress much further.

Speaking of new elves, we get yet another naggingly familiar voice as Koyasu himself turns up. It should come as no surprise that an elf is a touch eccentric, but they quickly warm up to him, literally in Stark’s case.

Verdict: lots of fun little character moments this week.

(only decent fan-art I’ve found of Flamme so far)

Tearmoon, episode 7

I am shocked, shocked, to learn that a random selfish action by Our Vacationing Princess has world-shaking consequences. Which will continue next week as Our Sickly Orphan’s gift keeps on giving. Meanwhile, a blast from future-past has Mia passing out in terror, but fortunately Our Ex-Executioner’s already starting to convert to The Church Of The Accidental Genius.

Verdict: this is not the most contrived set of coincidences in Mia’s redemption, just the most contrived set so far. Bonus points for the real-life reference to the popularity of horse shampoo.

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 7

Laziest. CG Rat Swarm. Ever.

In other news, Our Former Tsuntail can barely manage to keep up her non-dere cover personality. Pity she’s also stuck in her non-dairy school uniform. And if Our Gay Bunnyboy gets any more over-the-top, he’s going to bottom. Lastly, Our Bushy-Browed Valkyrie makes a brief cameo as this tournament heads into a third episode. The credits promise she’s a major character, but with only five episodes left, she’s going to have to harem up Real Soon Now.

Verdict: Our Cute Little Redheaded Senpai is never coming back, is she? By the way, what kind of dice game is the helium-snorting ED singer on about?

(Princess Stompyboots is about as unrelated as Our Cute Little Redheaded Senpai, sigh)

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 7

The way to a man’s heart is through high-end prostitutes. The way to Maomao’s stomach is through dangerous poisons. It was refreshing that her use of fingerprints didn’t turn into a completely anachronistic great-detective moment, and simply supported fairly straightforward deductions. In other news, Our Motherly Concubine really enjoyed setting up Our Pretty-Boy Not-Eunuch; it’s not often that the harem gets to poke the manager.

Verdict: I enjoy the cultural explanations that most of the reviewers skip over completely in order to misread the show through the lens of 21st-century wokeist feminism.

Unrelated,

The latest Pixiv jargon I’ve come across is 胸膝位 (kyoushitsu-i, no relation to the “classroom” kyoushitsu), which is not in any of my dictionaries. It breaks down into breast + knees + position, but most of the time, 位 as a suffix is more of a rank than a position-position (“first place”, “social status”, etc). However,体位 (tai-i) is the generic “sexual position”, leading to:

• 側位 soku-i, “side position” = spooning
• 屈曲位 kukkyoku-i, “bending position” = “Viennese Oyster”
• 後背位 kouhai-i, “behind-back position” = doggy style (no relation to "junior" kouhai)
• 正常位 seijou-i, “normal position” = missionary
• 騎乗位 kijou-i, “horse-riding position” = cowgirl
• etc.

So the Pixiv-supplied translation of 胸膝位 is “face down ass up”, which will probably not make it into JMdict any time soon. And, no, I didn’t have much luck finding a work-safe fan-art of that one…

NSFW

(cowgirl gets ~75K hits on Pixiv, doggy gets ~30K, and the rest are rarely used)

Completely unrelated, a Starfield fridge thought

There’s an early conversation between Walter Stroud and his partner-wife where he gets insecure about their relationship and says maybe she should have married a Hope or a Taiyo, owners of two of the major ship-building companies, since she’s a powerhouse in the industry herself.

But there is no Hope family to marry into, it’s just Ron himself, a former freighter captain and throughly unpleasant person who wouldn’t survive an hour with Issa. And if you happen to kill him as part of a certain quest, the employees panic about the future of the company, because there’s no one to inherit the business.

(well, it’s likely Walter is the little spoon in their relationship, so it’s not completely unrelated…)

Well, that was… talky.

Fortunately, Our Drunken Russian Heroine (who’s healed up enough to fall off the wagon again) sports another hairstyle that’s more flattering than her usual look, likely because Our Left-Behind Best Friend stole the ponytail (which looks good on her, too). This week we’re in Russia investigating Our Mysterious Look-Alike Villainess, who conveniently shows up just as Our Heroines find An Important Clue to Her True Identity. Our Shy Heroine Shy is there mostly just to react to the goings-on, so I guess this qualifies as character development for Pepesha, although it’s pretty thin.

Verdict: Eye-catching new looks for Pepesha and Iko are welcome, but this is the second exposition-heavy episode in a row, and even after they suit up, it just leads to more exposition. This is a bit odd, given the series composition, script, and director credits; oh, wait, the director was also responsible for the talk-to-death ending of Astra Lost In Space.

“Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational Best Dad.” This week, Bel-Daddy deftly handles two problem children, while Our Vengeful Daughter calms down enough to ask herself WWDD and adopts the Junior Villains instead of punishing them. Fortunately this non-traditional family can handle the oddness.

Verdict: the character animators should really get together and agree to draw Our Tomboy Elf Princess at a consistent level of hotness. Other than that, no complaints.

(tomboy elf princess is unrelated)

Frieren, episode 12

In which it’s Stark’s birthday, but Frieren ends up in the birthday suit. Fern-fan fan-artists hardest hit.

Verdict: some nice character-building for Stark and Himmel, and even Eisen and Heiter get rounded out a bit.

Tearmoon, episode 8

In which Our Shotacon Princess gives two little boys a happy ending, finishing off the book. Not “light novel volume one”, that book, so she has officially changed her fate. Along the way, she acquires more converts to The Church Of The Accidental Genius, while narrowly avoiding losing the first one due to a sudden attack of common sense.

Verdict: the first appearance of Our Royal Daddy explains a lot about how Mia got into this mess in the first place.

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 8

I will not comment on the quality of the swordplay, because there wasn’t any. Quality, that is. And I truly “enjoyed” the way the guy who was so enraged that his eyes were popping repeatedly stood still and waited for conversations to finish. As one does when confronted with enemies one’s vowed to murder to death. Never mind that one’s in a sim where people can’t actually, y’know, die, making the dramatic moment kinda pointless.

Verdict: utter crap, and they’re convinced it tastes so good that we need another helping next week.

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 8

The return of Great Detective Maomao, The Holmes Of The Whorehouse. Also of the poorhouse, since the price she paid for the escort home will leave her indentured again, one way or another. In addition to escort service, we get a bit of fan-service, not so much from Maomao herself as from her big-big-sister Meimei.

Verdict: plausible deniability. And a heart attack for poor Shinji.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving dinner was at my house, with my parents and my brother’s family, for seven total. Mom brought turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, corn salad, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, etc, so I could have gotten away with just setting the table, but I made mashed potatoes, tangzhong dinner rolls, and a less-spicy version of Those Potatoes (replacing our usual mix of powdered chiles with slightly less of the original Chef Paul spice mix).

Given how rich and filling Those Potatoes are, it’s a recipe I hadn’t made since before Covid, and I had managed to forget that while I can chop onions all day long, grating them really fills the air with tear gas.

Random MacOS Sonoma incompatibility

A while back I finally worked out the correct incantation to restore the long-since-removed window-cascade feature to MacOS (at least for Terminal.app, which is the one I most cared about).

Upgrading to MacOS 14.x broke it in a non-obvious way. TL/DR: Terminal.app now has a mystery invisible window that has to be excluded by changing every window to every window whose visible is true. I updated the script in the original post, since it’s backward-compatible.

Random M2 Mac performance note

Tinkering with an M2 Mac, the supplied Rosetta2 transcoder is pretty awful. Transcoded x86_64 binaries range from “twice as slow as a 3-year-old Macbook Air” to “completely unusable”. Sadly, Homebrew’s decision to move from /usr/local to /opt/homebrew makes it difficult to build things that don’t look there, and MacOS has no real support for alternate lib-dirs. Looks like there’s also a fair amount of software out there that has hard-coded ifdefs for MacOS that assume Intel, and won’t build without hackery.

NSFW

(perlbrew’s giving me grief about installing anything less than the bleeding-edge dev release, and that one can’t install XS modules, so I’m stuck with the version installed by Homebrew)

(oh, and the asshole who wrote PDF::Cairo needs to fix his tests so it installs cleanly in recent Perl/Cairo/Pango releases; oh wait, that’s me (SVG import lost its transparency, and rotated text is mis-kerned, so technically the tests work and the underlying libraries are broken))

Shy, episode 9

Well, that was a steaming pile of Kufufu, mixing lumpy exposition with constantly-interrupted fight scenes, ending in Yet Another Cliffhanger, while Our Shy Heroine Shy is pretty much left watching from the sidelines.

Verdict: one more like this and I’m out. I don’t care how many times they frame the shot with boobs; it’s not working.

(fun with upgrades: my Pixiv-blogging Python script ran successfully in both Python 2 and 3, but produced different output due to a feature that was removed in Py3 but is still syntactically valid for no good reason)

How bad is the new-new-new-Who special?

This bad:

Last time we saw Donna, the Doctor handed her a winning lottery ticket as a gift to celebrate her marriage to Shaun. But beyond paying for the house they live in, she gave the rest of her £160 million windfall to good causes, leaving them on the poverty line. Rose, her daughter, has set up a sewing business selling handmade toys to rich people in Dubai, to help earn some extra money. And as they walk home Rose, who is trans, is deadnamed by a bunch of kids from her school, much to Donna’s ire.

Dear Amazon, how much were you paid to recommend this?

(classical reference)

My working theory is that Japanese glamour photographers use wide-angle lenses because it’s the only time they get to stand so close to women. Well, that and it compensates for the flat asses.

(okay, so a lot of indoor shoots are done in hotel rooms that are tight on space, but they do it outdoors, too; I think I’m a lot more sensitive to perspective distortion than most, because clearly their audience doesn’t mind)

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