In which Our Killer Kitten pouts adorably when Our Sword-Dad accidentally steals her kill, and big bugs are no big deal, but a greater demon is a real… handful. Next week: the boss fight continues.

Futoku no Guild 1 & 2

Proof that there really isn’t much “fansubbing” going on any more (as opposed to just copying the work of paid streaming services), I finally found the first two episodes of this show over the weekend, each from a different group.

It’s terrible, by the way. Badly drawn, poorly written, and yet still more entertaining than some things that got licensed this season (I’m looking at you, Renai Flops).

Apps!

Post-reopening, there are two apps used for getting into Japan. One to prove your Covid status (mandatory), and one to pre-clear immigration (optional).

No, wait, they changed it again on November 1st. Now there's an all-in-one site that generates the QR codes to get you through.

Unrelated, no kids came to my door for Halloween. Something to do with the combination of rain, a dead-end sidewalk, and a 75-foot walk uphill, no doubt.

In which a teeny-tiny bit of plot leaks into the daily adventures of Our Unstoppable Alchemist, but is quickly smothered under bats, hats, and gloves.

(official art again, because there’s no fan-art to speak of)

After banishing coherent plotting and pacing, we’re going to make a second season of McPharmacist & Waifu anyway

Yeah, whatever. How they’ll put the pieces back together after throwing so much story away, I have no idea.

Fuck you, Homebrew devs

They just added this lengthy message to their software when you run brew upgrade:

Warning: You are using macOS 10.15.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.
It is expected behaviour that some formulae will fail to build in this old version.
It is expected behaviour that Homebrew will be buggy and slow.
Do not create any issues about this on Homebrew’s GitHub repositories.
Do not create any issues even if you think this message is unrelated.
Any opened issues will be immediately closed without response.
Do not ask for help from MacHomebrew on Twitter.
You may ask for help in Homebrew’s discussions but are unlikely to receive a response.
Try to figure out the problem yourself and submit a fix as a pull request.
We will review it but may or may not accept it.

On the bright side, I’m now saving $10/month on Patreon!

Hoe Harem 5

In which Our Wannabe Heroine Ruri instantly claims the coveted Best Girl position. Also Breast Girl, because the camera just can’t stop panning up from her impressive chest to her lively face. More, please.

Our Overpowered Overprotective Mom, on the other hand, is a real pain (literally and figuratively). Sadly, I think the writers believe her severe physical abuse of husband and son is funny. Less, please.

Next week looks to uncover The Mystery Of Ruri, while hopefully also uncovering The Body Of Ruri. Fingers crossed, but likely broken in three places by Mom, whose secret was almost revealed, and which is almost certainly the reason Our Hoe Master accidentally became OP.

(unrelated swordswoman is unrelated; I swear there’s even less fan-art for this show than there was last week, and the only picture of Ruri is recognizable only due to her costume)

Beast Tamer 5

In which Our Pricktastic Hero Party really, really needs to learn to read the room… as soon as they recover from the savage beatdown inflicted by Our Tamer And His Amazing Waifus. Seriously, I think they all need clean panties now; especially the two guys.

Next week: into the woods! Which will probably involve a cameo by the chastened hero party, and some tag-team waifu-taming action.

Clean Sweep

As in, I did a lot of sweeping and mopping, after staring in awe at just how much vegetation they cleaned out of my yard. They left the healthy trees and took out pretty much everything else, and the new plants will start going into the ground in a few days.

They should be starting on the new drainage and the privacy hedge this week, as well as ripping out the grass down by the street.

(sadly, none of the slashing crew looked like this…)

In which a mountain of exposition is bookended by some good old-fashioned goblin-slaughtering. In the middle, some very mild cheesecake, as safety bubbles protect Our Maiden Adventurer from exploitation, and even Our Bountiful Receptionist doesn’t show the goods in the bath; not that kind of show.

(Fran-art continues to be in short supply, despite the apparent popularity of the show)

Home = Depot

Yesterday, I had furniture being delivered, plants being removed, flooring being finished, the landscape designer showing up to suggest some changes, the contractor showing up to figure out how to fix the entry to one of the showers (the old piece was damaged by heavy wheelchair use), three different package-delivery companies dropping things off, “my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it”.

Sadly, they ran out of flooring and shoe molding, and while the sales rep managed to find more from the same lot, it has to be trucked in from a warehouse in California.

The shoe molding was the contractor’s late ordering, the shortage of flooring was the sales rep’s miscalculation. Despite measuring the interior and having the original blueprints in hand, instead of ordering at least 104%, we ended up with about 98%. Sigh.

Today, I’ve got a plumber coming to re-seat the last toilet (new floor is significantly lower than the old one in that room), two guys coming to help me move furniture back into place, my sister coming for the weekend, and the Dread Pirate Roberts is here for your souls. There will be no survivors.

This week, Our Flash Heroine makes a quick recovery from the effort of slaughtering the raging mob of giant flaming bears last week, enough so that she decides to visit the nearest big town and makes a three-day trip in half a day. There she meets a bad alchemist and a good alchemist, turns a profit on gooey bits, and heads home in time to invite Our Gatherer Girls to move in, get her house repaired, and make magic induction ranges for both herself and the local inn.

That sounds like a lot, but the pacing still feels like casual slice-of-life, mostly due to the time spent on Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.

(spooky cute girl doing spooky cute things is unrelated but seasonal)

Late Floor Mold

Mold-ing, that is. The flooring was ordered back in July, and arrived at the warehouse well over a month ago. So it came as a surprise to me that the shoe molding wasn’t even ordered until Friday. The guy installing the floors was equally surprised, when he asked the contractor last Tuesday when it would be on-site so he could finish the front half of the house.

So when it came time to move everything from the back of the house onto the finished sections, we had to leave 2-3 feet for access to the walls, so now everything has to get moved an additional time to put it all back where it belongs on Thursday. sigh

On the bright side, my new custom bedroom set from the local Amish furniture store is ready, and will be delivered Thursday. By English truck, of course.

(pretty sure Kiki doesn’t do furniture deliveries…)

Hoe Harem 4

In which Our Feckless Farmer faces a legendary dragon, armed only with the power of… another legendary dragon. And his farmer’s soul, which is equally important. So, basically, just being insanely OP isn’t enough, and he gets even-more-powerful help for no good reason.

Does he manage to save Our Busty Guild Receptionist? Well, yeah, obviously, since she’s in the credits as a haremette. The experience not only cures her depression and survivor’s guilt, it makes her a little bonkers, as well as a suitably equipped Companion In Arms (and legs, and quite likely wings and a tail).

She doesn’t yet know that her new romantic rival is Our Besotted Princess, but I’m sure it will come up soon. Meanwhile, Our Hapless Hoe-master is inexplicably weak to being molested by orcs of both sexes, despite his ability to one-shot a dragon with a carrot.

Next week, Ruri!

(unrelated swordswoman is not Ruri, and, seriously, enough with the orc-rape running gag, please)

Beast Tamer 4

In which Our Thoroughly-tamed Dragon-Waifu learns important lessons about friendship, loyalty, and not wandering around in Condition White. Also, the underwhelming secret origin of Our Taming Hero!

Next week, Our Asshole Adventurers come back to mess with his peace of mind.

(and, yes, he gained super-fire-magic from last week’s taming)

Question of the day…

Has anyone written a “Reincarnated As Truck-kun” meta-isekai story yet?

Glorious typo!

In P.C. Hodgell’s latest Kencyr novel, Deathless Gods, a character is described as having a “scowling continence”. 😁

I had to stop and reread the line just in case, because in the previous book, there was an incident where a pair of abused twins used their powers to inflict explosive diarrhea on their tormenters. As one does.

(picture is definitely unrelated; you’re welcome)

In which Our Flat-Affect Flatcat lights up after acquiring Our Visionary Blacksmith’s conveniently cute armor, and Random Lingerie Shopkeep saves us from the perilous possibility of no-pantsu shots. The animators have so far expressed no interest in upskirting Our Underage Heroine, but best to avoid temptation.

Exposition and status screens are kept relatively low-key this week, continuing the trend of avoiding the stat-overdose present in the light novels. Other things are also nicely streamlined, with Garrus just handwaving away how he happened to have some cute armor on the ready-to-wear rack.

And cute is indeed the theme of this show, despite the jarring tone shift in the OP. Fran is an adorable engine of destruction, who’s happy just to have good food, a soft bed, and unlimited monsters to kill.

(I hope the show is successful enough to show her reaching her goal in a future season, and that it’s handled better than in the light novels, which spring it on the reader and then reveal the details in a flashback)

“Squeak, I tell you, squeak!”

Flooring guy hadn’t been told that some of the squeaks are not the usual sort of thing where the boards have come loose from the joists over the years, but are the result of metal cross-braces in the basement having worked themselves loose. Those aren’t something he’s equipped to fix, so he called the main contractor, who was already planning to handle them himself.

(classical reference)

Photoshop-be-gone!

The latest updates to the Adobe Creative Cloud suite are not compatible with macOS Catalina, although it looks like they’ll continue to do security updates and bug-fixes for a while. One more reason to finish migrating things to my Windows 11 laptop!

In which Our Glowing Alchemigal saves one life for money, and then saves everyone’s life for free, although she’s sure to make a tidy profit by harvesting gooey bits from the raging mob of giant flaming bears that she pretty much kills without any help and at no risk to herself. Clearly this is the same sort of “alchemy” that Edward Elric practiced…

Floor up, floor down

The front half of the house gets covered back up Wednesday. By the way, I don’t think I mentioned it earlier, but this is the stuff we’re using. Today was spent smoothing, leveling, and de-squeaking, so the flooring guy is going to, um, “hit the ground running” in the morning. I won’t be hanging around and getting in the way; I’ve been in a hotel since Sunday, and I just show up in the morning and evening.

“Do you have a floor preference?”

    “Yeah, I would like a floor.”

“No, what level?”

    “How about… ‘Beginner’?”

(and if you find that quote naggingly familiar, as I did, it’s from an early Paula Poundstone concert)