The Three Behemoths, episode 10

Let’s see what positive things I can say about this episode:

1. The character art did not disintegrate, even though most of the battles were barely animated and Our Catsexual Heroine’s first fight didn’t even show her moves hitting any monsters.

2. The trivially-defeated Cocky Demon Lady was stacked, naked, and bathing, until she transformed, anyway. Since it was the only bath scene this week, at least they put some effort into it.

3. Our Catsexual Party all got to do something in the big battle, mostly because the enemy stood around and politely waited for them to finish their conversations. Neither the Big Bad nor His Mighty Minions seemed to be particularly motivated.

4. They were joined by Those Two Bikini Adventurers again, and probably the guys from that party as well. Shame they didn’t make it into a bath scene.

5. No homo. It’s sad that I have to call that out.

Other than that, it was just the usual coincidence and catsexuality. Our Hidden Behemoth transformed in front of everyone, but of course he was mistaken for something else, and got to turn back into a kitten at the end.

Verdict: this is past where the light novels ran out, so I have no idea what they’ll do in the remaining two episodes. But I have lowered my expectations again.

(Demon Queen Leafa-chan is unrelated, overdressed, and understacked, but the only character I’d want to generate for this week is Nekkid Demon Lady, who’s not in a LoRA yet; sorry, Stella, but your Big Moment was long-winded, obvious, and completely devoid of drama)

Solo Leveling 2, episode 9

Okay, in Esil’s final scene, right before she attempts to confess her obvious crush, she’s in the same light as Jinwoo, and their skin tones match the shot I used in last week’s comments, so canon is that she’s got an olive cast to her skin. Not inhuman or orc-like, just a tint.

With Our Best Girl abandoned, it’s time to save Mom, which they give a proper emotional payoff, showing Our Leveling Hero’s core humanity contrasting with what he’s made himself to get there. Also showing off Hot Little Sister nicely (and what was Our Sidekick doing hanging out with Schoolgirl Hunter?). Then it’s time to bathe the camera in testosterone and plot coupons, as The Sinister Japanese Hunters show up to taunt and train against Our Korean All-Stars. Big fight next week.

Verdict: four more episodes, which should wrap up the ant arc and drop some teasers for what comes next. And I kinda want to know how they’re handling this in the domestic release, where all the Korean characters are Japanese; are they simply reversing it?

(hey, actual fan-art of anime Esil, and she isn’t pulling a train!)

And one from an updated-last-week LoRA (with the tag line “the best girl is here!”), with decent ears:

Sample image from the LoRA:

A-Rank Dungeon Harem, episode 8

Four important things happened this week:

1. Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch survived with nothing more than some almost-fatal sword wounds, which is a lot better than her fate the last time we saw her. Turning State’s Evidence also led to her getting off fairly lightly, although I wonder what sort of work she’ll be performing for the next year to afford her little brother’s expensive medicine…

2. The rest of The Dick Party is dead (Rapey Muscle Guy and Queen Bitch offscreen with no details), and Fat Bastard Merchant is never coming near Our Harem Gals again.

3. Our Legal-Loli Healer is so far in the lead for Head Waifu that all the others are left stunned.

4. Wait, this show is going to run another cour? Without any asshole antagonists? Honestly, this week felt like a season ender, but apparently this was just the first major arc.

(the translated light novels are way behind what’s been released in Japan, so I have no idea what comes next; book five came out in the US ~9 months ago, and it ended before Jamie’s rescue mission)

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 8

Our Foodie Dragon Mama has now been promoted to Mighty Morphin’ Dragon MILF, with the catchphrase “Buy the Bluray!”. Anyway, this is a hot springs episode, so the focus is on food, booze, blushing, steam, and inconvenient light rays.

Verdict: no complaints, although it’s surprising that Marie actually thought Kazuhiho was not interested in her as a woman. Seriously, does she think that’s a dagger in his pocket every time she rubs against him?

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 8

Encyclopedia Maomao is on the case, and it’s the sort of Imperial Entanglement that she’s been working very hard to stay out of. Worse, it ties into Jinshi’s recent dream about his early childhood.

Verdict: Shisui is such a lovable goofball, getting up to things that would make Maomao blush.

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 8

Who knew that all you needed to do was just try harder? And have Our Overpowered Heroine flip a switch and go into Double Secret God Mode, of course. Next week promises to be a relaxing interlude, so there will probably be a huge body count.

Verdict: they’re the ones setting these whiplashing contradictions, not me…

Diffusion Junction, How’s That Function?

(classical reference)

I’ve been using SwarmUI for all my AI-picture-making needs, but I wanted to experiment with some of the other frontends and backends without duplicating model directories, so I installed the Stability Matrix multitool/manager on the drive that’s not filled with a terabyte of models and LoRAs, and pointed it to the existing SwarmUI directory. This mostly worked, except that it expected base models to be located in models/StableDiffusion, while SwarmUI used models/Stable-Diffusion. I renamed it for testing things, but then of course SwarmUI couldn’t find anything. Shortcuts created from the Windows GUI are not the same thing as symlinks, so I had to dredge up the appropriate PowerShell syntax:

New-Item -Path Stable-Diffusion -ItemType Junction -Value StableDiffusion

From the GUI, this looks like a shortcut, but it actually works from applications. And now I can keep using my existing GUI install while I play with all the ones supported by SM. So far, the most interesting feature it has is the model browser that detects updated versions, although SwarmUI still gets a thumbs-up for allowing you to paste in URLs for downloads rather than restricting you to searching CivitAI and HuggingFace via API calls. Oddly, it insists on installing in a completely different directory when it upgrades a model or LoRA.

Note that SM can install SwarmUI, but still has some references to the old, abandoned version called StableSwarmUI.

Dear ChatGPT, quit your day job

Someone asked it for an image with a transparent background, and it returned an image with Photoshop’s UI embedded:

(it apparently doesn’t support transparency at all, but it was eager to learn!)

This episode would have been a lot better if the C-team hadn’t done the character art.

Anyway, after frantically dealing with the surprisingly-minor results of Our Firestarting Loli’s first adventure in spellcasting, we quickly work our way through a few weeks of Slow Life With Two Wives, and finally add Our Orange Furry-Big-Boobed Catgirl to the cast, which does not please Our Blue Furry-Boobed Catgirl at all.

Our Shopping Hero pretends not to understand when Myaley is relieved that he hadn’t picked up yet another girlfriend, although Orange rapidly grows more affectionate, confirming her fears. Meanwhile, Blondie is over the moon at being referred to as “his wife” (especially the part where he doesn’t contradict the person who said it), and deeply annoyed when he gets called “her father”.

Speaking of finally, the Busty Blonde Mama and Her Blonde Loli Daughter from the credits finally show up and make ambiguous comments that are sure to matter next week.

Verdict: no whiplashing darkness here!

(C-grade character art will make it harder for the LoRA creators to get good shots of Orange)

Unrelated

There are now 15 Esil LoRAs on Civitai. One of them’s gotta have decent ears. Also, anime canon is that she has pretty much the same skin color as Jinwoo, but I kind of liked the light purple.

(apparently the diffusion engine does much of its work in “latent space” at 1/4 the resolution before upscaling to fill in details, so small things that require unique details, like distant faces or elf ears (or fingers…), don’t have enough pixels to start with, so you get “weird shit” that has to be fixed with inpainting, etc)

Our Underwater Heroes reunite (mostly), with Our Half-Clad Birdman taking out a giant monster along the way. Then they deal with the most awful and terrible aspect of questing: figuring out when everyone can be online for the next week. One of those conflicts is Our Original Trio teaming up for the promised tournament in another game, which will probably take up the rest of the season.

Verdict: IIRC, we’ll get a little advancement in the kraken arc, but the rest is going to be a mix of real-life hijinks and exposition-heavy tournamenting.

The Three Behemoths, episode 9

Let’s not speak about the scene at the adventurers guild. Ever. Actually, that applies to most scenes at the adventurers guild.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody who’s been paying attention, Our Braless Cat-Blacksmith-nya is secretly a much more powerful smith than she’s been admitting to, as well as a member of the Hero Party that saved the world. She just wanted to live a Slow Life instead of cranking out artifacts for the kingdom.

Anyway, in a completely unnecessary escalation of the plot, Our Catsexual Heroines have been recruited to join the new Hero Party and save the frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada. Which they’re not currently capable of, but will receive intense training for, with A Fresh Prince tanking Our Dragonette, A Demon Queen drilling magic into Our Dryad and Our Pixie, and Our One True Heroine reuniting with Her Savior And Idol for weapons drill. This is much less interesting than the bath scene, which is too short.

The legendary sword saintess is wearing a revealing maid costume when we meet her, which is part of her complicated relationship to the “grand mage” who led the earlier Hero Party. Because of course she’s a slave wife who loves her owner; had to work that trope in here somewhere, right? The flat-elf from the ED is revealed to be a reformed Demon Queen and also his wife. And he was isekai’d from Japan, so we’ve got all the bases covered. At least they left out the part about him being an effeminate cross-dresser.

Verdict: I was really hoping they wouldn’t get this far into the story this season.

(busty wet elf maidens are unrelated but busty, wet)

Solo Leveling 2, episode 8

“I’m gonna borrow your daughter.”

Finally. Also sadly, since this is the last time we’ll see Esil until the spinoff series about Jinwoo’s son. Still, she got some decent screen time, split up with advances in the ant-raid arc.

Oh, yeah, and Our Solo Hero beat the Big Bad and got the final piece of the Elixir Of Mom-Saving. With some timely help from Our Best Girl.

(someone’s working on updating their LoRA with today’s episode, but for now I’ll have to rely on an older one that has a hard time with the ears)

A-Rank Dungeon Harem, episode 7

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not only do we fill the dungeon with exposition, The Bozo Party is back, and every word out of their mouths is dripping with stupid. This completely erases the fun of Our Redheaded Swordsgal teasingly advancing her position in the harem and Our Legal Loli Healer going for a ride.

It’s nice to see Little Blonde Titty Witch finally step up and do good, but this is not the redemption I had in mind for her. I cry foul.

Verdict: well, that was whiplashing garbage. I wouldn’t mind the show having antagonists if they weren’t so stupid and boring and shallow; they’re just a collection of Evil Checkboxes without a hint of personality or motivation. The big doofus suddenly wanting to rape Silk and Rain in front of Yuke (and his own female party members) is a perfect example; it wasn’t a clever psychological ploy to coerce Yuke into signing the contract, it was just another evil checkbox.

(just in case we never see her again; pity the LoRA can’t figure out how to reproduce her distinctive stockings)

Coming soon…

Would you believe there are multiple shows in the next few seasons where the main character was kicked out of the hero’s party? What are the chances?

I think it’s time to see if I can beat the market:

Kicked Out Of The Hero’s Party For Being Just That Awesome, I Was Hit By A Truck And Woke Up In Bed With A Reincarnation Goddess Who Gave Me A Magical Cock Ring That Enslaves Any Female Who Touches It, And Then She Touched It, So Now I Rule A Private Universe Where I Intercept All The Reincarnating Hot Chicks And Add Them To My Harem

For amusement, I fed that to various Stable Diffusion models as a prompt. It’s not a good prompt, but I thought it might be interesting to see which tokenized words they ended up focusing on…

Harem Goddesses

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Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 7

“Thank you for your service, Miss Elf”

As part of preparing for The Big Dungeon Crawl, Our Sleepy-Eyed Hero talks Our Overheated Elf Maiden into trying the local fashions, which cool her off by exposing a lot more skin. Other than that, the most important thing that happens is that witnessing a postpartum tantrum leads him to accidentally invite Our Stressed-Out Dragon Mama to come to Japan for their cozy couple’s hot-springs trip. There’s some random drama involving a villainous sorcerer wearing anachronistic sunglasses (sigh), but it’s unlikely to disrupt the mood for long.

(plot note: Dragon Mama laments the fact that her husband isn’t there to take care of her and the kids, but later events reveal that their relationship was never what you’d call healthy)

Verdict: some fun LoL moments to break up an otherwise exposition-heavy episode.

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 7

This week, a self-contained mystery interlude which drops hints the size of boulders about Jinshi’s true identity. Which Maomao very carefully ignores the implications of. Also some LoLs, showing off the emperor’s playful side.

Verdict: I loved the precision with which the emperor judged Maomao’s figure.

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 7

Aw, hell, they switched the credits around again, which means they’re using the cuteness to apologize in advance for an episode full of tonal whiplash.

And sure enough, that’s exactly what they do, mixing Sad Loli Healer’s backstory with Triumphant Receptionist’s Festival Date with Expository Asshole’s unexpected discovery of Another Dark God Plot Coupon. We even get to see someone blow themselves up to further darken the plot.

Verdict: sigh, this show is a complete mess, and we don’t even get any bath scenes as compensation.

(very little fan-art for this show, so this half-baked LoRA will have to do; it’s got a lot of issues, but will occasionally generate just one girl, optionally with just one magic staff)

I’ve decided that the goofy transforming-robot boss-fight bit in the OP is meant to be symbolic conquest of the stress that led to his death, with the gals fighting for his slow-life happiness.

Setting that aside, last week’s crisis is resolved quickly, making room for Our Besotted Busty Blonde to show up and give Our Shopping Hero the stick for running off, followed by the carrot cherry. Once they’ve sealed the deal, she moves in, despite some friction with the catgirl, the loli, and the cat. Nice to have two hot gals fighting to get into your bed and your tub, but the cock-blocking loli is a problem.

Verdict: time to expand the house with another bedroom and some soundproofing. Maybe some nice asbestos and a sprinkler system.

Fun with emergency dentistry…

The fix for my post-op gum infection was to drill a hole in the back of the temporary bridge, clean it out without anesthesia, and then send me home with antibiotics and a syringe to flush out the hole three times a day until my next appointment in two weeks. Shame the bridge only lasted one week before breaking into tiny pieces thanks to the hole, sending me back in on Wednesday to get another one. Everything was healed up enough for them to make a 3D scan for the permanent bridge, but not enough to install it until the end of March, so I have a new temporary. Without a hole in it. For now.

Naturally while the doc was fixing me up again, it snowed enough to make it difficult to get up my driveway.

…and another batch of snow overnight, sigh.

Apple Intelygenz

The only device I am currently capable of running the alpha-test “Apple Intelligence” feature (ApplAI? iAI? I’ll just call it Applint) on is my iPad Air. I could upgrade the OS on my Mac to get it, but I like my main computer to be reliable, and Apple’s shoddy QA the last N years has led me to stay at least one major release behind for as long as possible.

Anyway, Applint shares a feature toggle with Siri, a feature I turned off 14 years ago and don’t want back, so the first thing I had to do was manually disable all the methods of activating Siri. Then I had to manually toggle off “allow Siri/Applint to learn from” for each and every app installed on the device, one by one.

It’s opt-in by default, y’see, so I’ll have to manually disable it for any new apps I install after today. If I had it on more than one device, I’d have to repeat the same remarkably tedious process there as well.

With that out of the way, I was left with one new piece of functionality: the Playground image-generation app. TL/DR: it’s toy garbage.

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“This isn’t a boss fight, it’s an escort quest!” Yeah, I feel ya, Hero; we’ve all been there. It sucks.

Mid-fight, Our Crushing Crusher finishes changing into her mismatched spare gear just in time to protect the squishy NPC, and they manage to trigger the next stage of the questline. Which splits them up and drops them into an exposition-heavy underwater city. Next week, will the PoV switch to other players, or will we stick with Our Half-Naked Birdman for a while?

Verdict: not sure why they didn’t call the sirens sirens, but whatever. Hopefully things pick up as the party reunites. But they can’t finish the entire sub-sea arc this season, so will they switch over to the other-game tournament soon?

(definitely not Rei’s spare armor…)

A Wild Cybertruck Appears!

I’ve seen a few at a distance, but I finally got to see one close up. Unfortunately it was in front of me in the drive-through at Rally’s, in the middle of the night, so all I can really say is that it must have been a bitch to get a decent paint job on all those sharp corners, something that will stand up to heavily-salted winter roads.

Which reminds me that when I moved to Silicon Valley, I was amazed how good ten-year-old cars looked compared to Ohio…

(Truck-kun meets his nemesis)

Speaking of which, 3-4 inches of snow

…which isn’t going to clear itself off my driveway in the next week.