[not sure why this disappeared for a while; some sort of glitch in the Hugo run when I added a sidebar link]

This takes a while to show up, because torrents.

“They say it’s better the second time,
they say you get to do the weird stuff.”

Chorus: “We do the weird stuff!”
(classical reference)

First, we meet a female classmate who likes to draw Boy’s Love porn. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of her, if not all of her. Then Our Socially-Inept Sexbot attempts to bully Our Socially-Inept Otaku into mounting her, before revealing that she doesn’t know any more about sex than he does. Not only are the details not covered in her programming, she’s got a built-in obscenity filter on her eyeballs, so the best she can do is talk about it… with the girl who’s into BL. This has led to some confusion.

Frustrated in her attempts to fill in the gaps in her knowledge as well as the ones in her fleshlike covering, she bullies him into keeping her secret, letting her move in, and accepting the position as her “owner”. She doesn’t have a place of her own any more because of the mysterious explosion that damaged her last week, which is also the reason she doesn’t have any clothes. Pretty sure there will be a lingerie-and-school-uniform delivery service showing up next week, accompanied by long, lingering shots of her body. Admittedly, most of the show is already long, lingering shots of her body.

The credits show that her bullying is just the tip of the iceberg, with BL-Loving Gal going after him with a stun-gun and Loli roughly going after her. Science Gal And Her Amazing Friends had a brief appearance last week as someone who might end up hiring Our Hero for his tech-nerd potential, but for some reason she’s dressed up like a cosplay merc in the credits.

Verdict: I have no idea where this is going to end up, but at only 12 minutes per episode (minus standard-length credits), it’s at least not wearing out its welcome. Boy Wonder needs to adjust to his new life soon, though, so the freakouts can be replaced by more fan-service and wacky hijinks. There have been too many shows where the freakouts never end, and I’ve been deeply scarred.

Side note: the Japanese title is “Kakushite! Makina-san!!”, in kana with no kanji. There are two possible interpretations of the first word: “thus” or “hide (something)”. The episode titles so far are of the form “Kakushite, Makina-san wa …”, suggesting the “thus” usage, but the plot, such as it is, is about keeping her non-organic nature hidden.

(I don’t expect any competent fan-art for this one, so here’s some Mina)

“Please don’t tell my fans I have a Patreon”

Author Richard Roberts, whose Young Adult novels are quite entertaining, abandoned his Twitter account, stopped updating his blog, rarely updates his Tumblr, and left the dead-site links on his Amazon author page. However, he turns out to be mildly active on Bluesky, and recently mentioned the Patreon account he set up in February, which he’s posting story updates on (including his horny new sf/magic barely-legal space cadets novel).

I’m currently the only patron.

Related, I just opened Apple Books for the first time

Accidentally, since I clicked on a .epub file expecting Calibre to open, but now that I’ve seen it, I’ll never open it again. Holy jumping trouser frogs, what a terrible reading experience. First it insists on two-column mode (hiding single-column view under “accessibility”), then it dynamically reflows lines based on window width with no regard for sensible line length or spacing, and it doesn’t support a flowing, non-paginated mode. Not that Calibre’s built-in viewer is anything to read home about, but Apple actually sells books through this crap.

I haven’t found a good epub reader for Mac yet, but I’ve found a number of bad ones!

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