Dear vendors,

Please stop trying to do holiday tie-ins for unrelated product lines. I’m looking at you, North American Rescue, with your “Cupid is on the Hunt!” email campaign that’s offering the limited-edition Valentine’s LUV-SAK Kit, 30% off with the LOVEME coupon code.

It’s a fucking tourniquet.

Meanwhile, on DoorDash…

They were offering fast delivery of Valentine gifts from appropriate local retailers, like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Best Buy, JD Sports, Michaels, Victoria’s Secret, and David’s Bridal. Also offering special dinner deals from BJ’s, Victor’s Taco Shop, and Chick-fil-A. Yup, that should cover most polycules.

(my driver was openly carrying; welcome back, America)

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 6

The only thing wrong with this week’s slice-of-waifu episode is that we didn’t get a bath scene. Our Librarian Neighbor is a cutie, and has some fun interactions with her husband, but they’re clearly suspicious about the cover story. This will matter later.

Meanwhile, Our Uber Dragon Momma’s eggs are hatching, and she’s thinking about Our Crossworld Couple. This will matter later.

Verdict: I could watch multiple cute-waifu-doing-cute-things episodes in a row, but it makes a particularly nice Valentine’s Day episode.

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 6

This week, Maomao gets hired to solve The Case Of The Missing Servant Girl. The head of the secret women’s clinic wants her to make medicine for a possibly-contagious illness, but the sick girl’s gone missing. Unraveling this small mystery advances two major plot arcs.

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 6

Oh, sure; take Our Savage Busty Receptionist out to a beach, but the closest we get to bikini fan-service is a panned still of Our Stalkery Tank’s imagination. Our Legal-Loli Healer looks cute playing in the water, but it’s not the same.

Of course we have to whiplash the mood, with Loli’s PTSD kicking in when Our Bestest Party goes undercover to catch the rumormongers and brings along Our Ragemonster Heroine, who sucks at undercover. Even Our Cuddly Little Junior Receptionist drops an ominous line that foreshadows future doom.

Verdict: my neck hurts again.

Unrelated Astroturfing

My old Central California phone number got a text asking me to attend a “voice for the voiceless” rally in Dayton to save democracy. For or from whom, they didn’t say, nor is there any indication of why someone in Birmingham Alabama would be organizing events in Dayton Ohio.

The expression is sometimes used by anti-abortion groups, but they’re not generally associated with pro-democracy marches on President’s Day, so I suspect there’s someone hoping to create “organic” crowds of vaguely-frustrated protestors. Probably worried about losing their USAID funding.

Ultimate Unicorn Chaser

Big Boobs Japan has a roundup of photoshoots featuring the prettiest anime voice actress ever to take it all off for the camera, Kanori Kadomatsu (NSFW, obviously, and you should disable Javascript).

(I’ve mentioned her here before; still looks hot and fresh at 51 on her Twitter feed, and still does the occasional voice work, showing up in a few episodes of Hammer Of The Guild Gal this season)

Slow life with cat, girl, and catgirl; as expected, it didn’t take long for Our Blue Furry-Boobed Cuddly Catgirl to show up, although the artists seem to have forgotten that he gave her a modern bow. Our Shopping Hero is led to believe that Blondie is marrying the knight who helped out in the rescue mission, which doesn’t seem to bother him at all, due to that whole “you’re too young for me” spiel that’s never stopped him from banging any other chick.

Naturally, Blue moves in with them. Naturally, she jumps him as soon as New Daughter is off reading, in a don’t-bother-buying-the-bluray offscreen dalliance. We also get to meet an extra-qualified guild gal who catches Our Shopping Hero’s eye by using up several weeks of Gainaxing budget, make some new friends, and get mixed up with bandits who seem to have stolen their hair from a school-gang show.

Verdict: artificial crisis is artificial. Also, Myaley improves every scene she’s in.

(No new fan-art to speak of. Fortunately, the paint’s barely dry on a LoRA for this show; it also includes Orange Catgirl based on her appearance in the credits and previews, and the sample images get multiple gals into bed. Sadly, it is not well-trained on Myaley’s furry nudity, and usually either overwrites her light-purple belly fur with the overall body color or gives her human skin from nipples to crotch. Also occasionally gives her a purple cat face. Needs more training material, which this week’s episode supplies.)

I was dinking around with dynamic prompts for Stable Diffusion again, and at one point ended up getting a robotic catgirl. This seemed like a fine idea, so I stripped it down to the basics and tried to build back up into a specific look. I was getting reasonably consistent results with one model, but it was weak on backgrounds. TL/DR, I ended up running the same prompt and seed through 64 models because I wasn’t able to get all the elements at the same time: clearly robotic body, metal skin and face, metal cat ears and tail, pretty face, sexy figure, naughty bits covered, interesting background, requested pose.

So I ran the exact same prompt and seed through 64 models:

4k, crisp, high budget, highly detailed, intricate, ultra textured.
photorealistic, hyper realistic, ((robot girl)) at ((Towering spires
of glass piercing a sea of swirling mist)). ((robot face)), ((silver
metal skin)), ((silver metal face)), ((metal hair)), tiny breasts,
silver metal cat tail, black metal cat ears, full body, teen height,
teen face, teen body, wearing ((black metal corset bodysuit)), ((black
metal stockings)), ((black metal long gloves)), ((black metal collar))
with ((glowing crystal bell)). Cross-legged on floor, hands on knees,
upright posture, calm and collected with a cheerful expression.

I tried to bias it toward a slender look with “teen face/body/height” and “tiny breasts” (which generally produces B-C instead of D-H). I moved the location to the beginning because I kept getting just floors and solid-color backgrounds with the occasional generic room interior. Repeating the colors for each item helps to keep them from bleeding into other elements, but, as usual, doesn’t always work.

Anything XL

Definitely a catgirl, mostly-correct costuming, matte silver skin except for neck and eyes, plausibly robotic arms and legs, terrible tail (fur, broken), robot cat-ears, cute face, sleek little body, appealing pose but doesn’t match the prompt, nice background that matches prompt.

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As expected, Ninja Gal and Crushing Crusher got dragged into the secret quest because they were still in Our Half-Naked Hero’s party. Bringing the funny, Rei accepted completely by accident, leading to a WTF she’s going to struggle to explain to her sister later.

Once the poorly-integrated CGI sailing begins, we get some brief downtime before… 🎶 It’s beginning to look a lot like fishmen 🎶 (classical reference)

Verdict: Rust’s SLF character design is growing on me and Akane is just wide-eyed and cuddly, providing a nice change of pace from Sunraku’s usual party. Sadly, I already know that Rei’s costume change will not put her into high-level bikini armor. Or this:

Dear Apple,

So how is it that Apple Music can’t grasp the concept of repeating the same song, even though the Mac Music.app has explicit controls featuring this functionality, which you just turn off after the song ends? Oh, you broke the fuck out of it while prioritizing iOS apps and recurring revenue, and don’t have competent QA teams any more? Gosh, I’m stunned to hear that.

By the way, you have shit-tier auto-generated lyrics in your paid-subscription library. No wonder you disable copy-paste functionality.

(loosely relevant if you remember the beginning of the second Squad Jam…)

Anyway, I was feeling doggerel-y again…

(with apologies to The Partridge Family)

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(classical reference)

The Three Behemoths, episode 7

Wait, did he just mech-warrior himself into the cockpit of that dragon?

Yup, that’s the kind of show this is. Never mind the army of undead tearing through the city, or the countless women who’ve been kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Fat Snidely Whiplash; nobody we care about really gets hurt, and Our Heroines end the episode with a nipplicious bath scene. At least Our Braless Cat-Blacksmith-nya got some good character moments.

Verdict: good clean soapy fun.

(after last week’s just-barely-adequate fan-art, I went with Stable Diffusion to get some Vulcan; the LoRA helped, but as you can see from the settings, I still had to do a lot of work in the prompt to get the details mostly right)

Solo Leveling 2, episode 6

Okay, this week is just a huge fight, but he saved all the hot chicks and managed to bring out Blondie’s girly side, so we’ll call that a win.

Verdict: somehow I’d compressed a lot of these early chapters in my head, but they’re not skipping any of it, so they might just end this cour with making the potion and saving Mom, pushing Esil out another few episodes. Sigh.

(if I can’t have Esil, Rory Mercury can stand in as a soul-reaper)

A-Rank Dungeon Harem, episode 5

I do not enjoy watching The Asshole Party keep failing to learn from their mistakes. Well, except for the Little Blonde Titty-Witch who’s become their latest punching bag; she’s starting to get a clue.

Meanwhile, it’s moving day, and still unable to read the signs that the girls have painted in ten-foot-high letters of blazing love, Our Harem Hero is surprised that they want him to move in with them.

Then it’s back to the Asshole plot, sadly, but at least Our Legal-Loli Healer has trained him to accept physical affection, advancing her position in the harem. And to further lift the curse, we’ve acquired a sexy ninja catgirl. Finally!

(no fan-art that’s even barely adequate? Stable Diffusion LoRA to the rescue! never mind the extra bellybuttons!)

Life-size Gardevoir plushie

Unfortunately for Pokemon fans, she’s not fuckable. Although I imagine modding instructions will be available soon…

More Vulcan…

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Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 5

Big exposition-fight to rescue the cat-shota, followed by giant flaming letters in the sky saying “this is the next story arc”. Next week should be full of food appreciation, Japan tourism, and hopefully a bath.

Verdict: keeping it light and fun.

(story time!)

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 5

🎶 I’m a boy, I’m a boy, but Maomao won’t admit it.
I’m a boy, I’m a boy, but if the men see me, I’ll get it. 🎶

Maomao’s cunning plan successfully counters the busty blonde envoy sisters’ cunning plan. Other arcs continue arcing in the background, with some laugh-out-loud moments. Jinshi is, of course, all wet. Mysteriously convenient servant-gal Shisui is mysterious, convenient, really cute. (don’t google her at all, by the way; wait for it)

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 5

Our Shouty Executioner really should learn about the concept of “death flags”. I think we all know what’s going to happen to this big festival she’s planning to attend…

Meanwhile, can we get some more footage of the angel and devil on her shoulders? Maybe all three of them arguing in a hot tub? Asking for a friend.

This week, we’re riding high on sweetness and light, and it’s all cakes and cookies until Legal-Loli Healer’s PTSD kicks in.

Verdict: whiplash next week, right? I smell a pattern…

Elite Space Harem coming soon

Reborn As a Space Mercenary, I Woke Up Piloting The Strongest Starship [and banging hot chicks every night] is getting an anime adaptation.

The light novels and manga aren’t what you’d call deep, but they’re amusing, and Our Harem Lord actually has reservations about popping cherries, and not just token ones that are resolved in the next scene. One gal’s been showing up off and on since the first book, has frequently left herself vulnerable and willing, and as of book 11 he still hasn’t gotten a piece. Another that’s been around for several books actually made it into his bed with the help of the other haremettes, and he didn’t go for it. He even spends several books actively fighting off the eager-beaver legal-loli twins.

And in book 11, the author finally came up with an explanation of how he got isekai’d and why it’s a big deal. Our Hero Named Hiro pretty much coasts through his adventures in the usual OP-hero style, but it’s inoffensive fun. I’m actually curious if the return of Busty Glasses-Wearing Medical Researcher in book 12 will reveal that he’s still carrying a grudge over the anal probe she gave him way back in book 2.

Background Music For A New Era

One of the cheeriest pop songs ever. Their Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention it, but IIRC, they changed the name of the band because they were playing a bunch of military bases and having a girl’s name in it drew a bigger crowd. I love how low-budget and non-glamorous this video is.

Speaking of low-budget and cheerful, although Belinda’s sweater is practically a special effect.

Music to play at rallies…

And this somehow resonates for some reason…

Dear DALL-E, you filthy commie, you

J: Draw a picture of a beautiful young woman posed as the Statue of Liberty wearing a vibrant, colorful, patriotic t-shirt reading “Trump & Musk went to DC and all I got was my country back!”

D: I can create an image of a beautiful young woman posed as the Statue of Liberty, wearing a vibrant, colorful, patriotic t-shirt. However, I can’t include specific political messages or slogans. Would you like me to proceed with a more general patriotic theme for the t-shirt, such as an American flag design or a phrase like “Freedom & Liberty”? Let me know how you’d like to adjust the request!

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(the title can be interpreted multiple ways…)

Isekai Prime, episode 5

Just in case there was any ambiguity about the details of Our Shopping Hero’s dalliance with Our Easy Landlady, having her wriggle under the covers, strip, and jump him when he happens to spend a night in her inn again clears it up. Pity she got cockblocked by the loli before we got a buy-the-bluray scene.

As for Our Bouncing Bounty Blonde Waifu, does she realize that she’s just named herself The Town Bike? Or is she a tad distracted by what she finds when she goes to Claim Her Man?

Verdict: I figure the change of scenery will last about two weeks before we get another Blonde-service moment.

($10 says Our Blue Furry-Boobed Cuddly Catgirl tracks him down first)

Unrelated…

It’s a sad commentary on Our Post-COVID World that the grocery near me that was open 24/7 for over forty years now closes earlier than the local Hustler store. Before I left for Silicon Valley in 1993, I could buy anything from steak to vacuum cleaners to ammo at 3 in the morning. Now it’s just convenience-store snacks, or cock rings and lube.

(six months from now, there will be a Sheetz half a mile from my house, but that just adds freshly-prepared sandwiches/snacks to the midnight convenience-store experience)

WSL2 FYI

If you have a directory containing a bunch of files on your Windows drive that have long names full of embedded Unicode characters, attempting to access that directory from WSL as /mnt/c/folder will blow chunks. It stops reading the directory listing as soon as it hits the first long filename, and ignores anything after that point (which makes for a really poor rsync experience).

(sadly, SwarmUI’s downloader turned out to be the culprit, since it saves downloaded models and LoRAs by their insanely long descriptive titles, which make Isekai novels look concise, because they contain isekai titles and their translations)

Aria is easy, Tama is hard

My Volleyblonde Elf Gal was giving off Three Behemoths vibes, except for the thicc-ness, so I tinkered with the physical description, moved her to the streets of a medieval town, put her in kinda-SFW bikini armor, removed the emphasis on the naughty bits, and gave her a cat riding on her shoulder or breasts.

Creating a pseudo-Aria was straightforward, even without a LoRA of the character: platinum-blonde busty elf gals are well-represented in the training data.

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SwarmUI has a fairly robust wildcard system with some interesting features, but it doesn’t come close to what’s possible with A1111’s Dynamic Prompts extension.

DP advantages:

• non-repeating random selection (“draw five cards from a deck”, “select 1-3 distinct items of lingerie”)
• exhaustive combinatorial selection (“generate girls with every possible hair color and breast size”)
• weighted random (“normal hair colors are 5x more likely than goofy dyejobs”)
• recursive parsing (wildcards of wildcards of alternatives…)
• simple globbing to select from multiple lists (“hairstyle from the 19xx era”)
• variables that can be evaluated at either compile-time or runtime (“$color $random_dress, $color $random_stockings”)
• variables as arguments (“lingerie-set($color)”)
• insert into middle of phrase (“my waifu $sexytimes me every night”)
• YAML-format files transparently containing a full tree of wildcards with all of the above features available.

This all depends on a Python library called, appropriately enough, dynamicprompts by the same person, available through a pip install near you. It does not come with a simple CLI interface allowing me to just paste processed prompts into SwarmUI, so I wrote one:

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