“I’ll trust one of our developers to be able to accurately correlate cause and effect when water buffalo fly over my house dropping SweeTarts and Special Dark chocolate bars.”
— Jeff KirkUrakata 3.4
I was bouncing around on Santa’s lap, reading off my list of demands. I was willing to compromise on the razor wire and machine-gun nests, but I insisted on at least one sniper on Sally’s roof and a troop of ninjas guarding the route to school.
“Focus, Virginia.”
“Sorry, Santa, it’s the espresso. I am buzzed like you wouldn’t believe right now, and I am not letting that witch get her hands on my friend Kit again, who probably only wants her daddy back for Christmas but deserves a lot more, and…”
He wrapped his huge, black-gloved hands around my head and pulled my face up to his. Damn, Santa, buy a girl a drink first!
<Focus, Virginia Vesta White>
Owwwwwwww. He took his hands away and I looked into the Old Man’s eyes from way too close. They twinkled. He’s always liked that trick.
I scrambled down off his lap like it was on fire and snapped to attention. Then I remembered that I was technically retired, and then I remembered a recent promise I’d made to myself and kicked him in the shin as hard as I could.
“Ow, you little… well, perhaps I deserved that. But just the once. Don’t be childish.”
I thought about kicking him again, but decided not to push my luck. “If you didn’t want me acting childish, you shouldn’t have turned me into a child. Sir.”
“You’re a child because your Retirement Gift was a life. A complete life. I skipped the diapers and the baby food because you’d have gone mad before you learned to walk, but…”
I interrupted, because, hey, I could interrupt now. “I saw you palm that card! Being a baby would only suck if I remembered being me, and that’s not supposed to happen. Not only do I know too much, I’ve already said too much, to someone capable of understanding it. You set this up. You set us up. What’s your game?”
“Life, yours and theirs. A true reincarnation wouldn’t be a reward, because there’d be no you to deserve it, but turning you loose on the universe as you were would have been tossing a live grenade into a fireworks factory.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment. Meanwhile, Sally’s people aren’t the first to break out and start exploring other worlds, but they might be the smartest, and they’re definitely the nicest. What do you think happens to mortals who stick their noses into Our business?”
Chills down your spine were something else I didn’t know was literally a thing until just now. “They’ll be unmade. You’ll send someone like me to go back and change their history, and they’ll never break out. Sally won’t… there might not even be a Sally.”
He actually grinned at me. “Don’t worry, her existence is surprisingly resilient. This isn’t the first time her people have done this, it’s just the first time they’ve had a friend on the inside. I’ve hidden their latest efforts from the other Powers, and that’s all you need to know.”
Oh, this was way above my former job description. “So what do I do? How do I help them? And how does Kit’s wicked stepmother fit in?”
“In order, nothing, you just did, and she doesn’t. There’s no job, no mission, no quest. You are here to be here, and your life and its problems are yours. This was a courtesy call, unofficial and off the books, and we won’t speak again.”
“Wait, that’s not…”
I woke with the first light of dawn, oddly refreshed and thoroughly tangled up with blankets and Kit. Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus, and he was a bit of a dick. No quest? I had a princess to rescue and a dragon to slay, armed with nothing but my wits and a witch who’d never ridden a man into battle.
No, I had one more thing: three centuries of experience deceiving, intimidating, outwitting, undermining, cat-fighting, back-stabbing, and fucking. Okay, that last one wasn’t going to be useful, but it still counted. Maybe I could write a book after Princess Kit was saved.
The point is, I wasn’t just a little girl, I was the meanest little Mean Girl this world had ever seen, and while first grade was terrifying, bitch-fights were right up my alley.
Anticipating the season
New promo videos for Magilumiere 2 and Isekai Ass-Guardian. The first shows off the new underrim-glasses-wearing magical engineer gal, and the second shows off the platonic-as-far-as-he-knows harem.
Apple Watch accessibility is infuriating
The crown button on my watch stopped working, and the FAQs suggest
that the most likely cause was poor tolerances dirt in the gap,
which could be fixed by holding it under running water and slowly
rotating and pressing the crown button.
This worked. However, it also somehow turned on audio announcements of each on-screen action, which prevented any actual, y’know, actions. I could type in my passcode, and it would cheerfully recite the digits, but would not pass them through to the watch to unlock it. And this behavior survived a reboot.
The only way to regain control of the device was from the “accessibility” menu on the phone app. There was literally nothing I could do from the watch itself to disable what I had accidentally enabled; it was completely useless.
Apart from the witches, not a great start to the week
Today I was consumed with the desire to bitch-slap an emergency-room doctor into the next county. Fortunately, he wasn’t in the room at the time.
Farm Harem Never 2, episode 11
Seems like an odd time to be introducing an entirely new race of subjects, but they did include a crew of scantily-clad busty succubi, so I can’t complain. And then we got a standalone piece with all the subtlety and complexity of a four-panel gag comic.
Verdict: would have been significantly improved by having the succubi use their powers to get the haremettes a-hareming. One more week to go.
Witch Hat Atelier, episode 12
This week, Our Problem Children help Our New Problem Child deal with his crippling insecurity and history of abuse, and Sexy Witch Gal demonstrates that she is both A) an excellent teacher, and B) a damsel in distress.
Verdict: as part of next week’s season-ender, I demand the announcement of season 2. With a firm date attached.
(this week we got to see a new Bad Witch in action)
God's Shouty Appraiser, fin
Of course the final battle against the Big Bad Evil Ivell had to be extra-shouty, with a side order of Button Elf. No reunion with his isekai’d friends, though, who at least got as far as meeting Our Best Guild Catgirl right before the credits rolled. No announcement of a second season, but they made no particular effort to tie off dangling plot threads, and in fact padded out the ending, so they may be hopeful.
Verdict: forgettable shouty fluff with not nearly enough catgirl. The divine revelations open up all sorts of questions about what’s really going on, but answers are unlikely to be animated any time soon. If ever.
(Little Witch catgirl is unrelated)
Where's Freddy?
(Answer: currently in New Orleans)
The best part of the World Cup (well, only part, really) is watching Europeans gaze in awe at the America we take for granted.
From shouty Appraiser to shouty Maid
The trailer for Isekai Saint Maid, from the same original author as Shouty Appraiser, is quite shouty.
There’s a lot of experienced voice talent in the cast, which is promising. Our Mighty Magical Maid was recently indoors-y rock-jock Imari, for instance. First-time director, though, and the series composition is by the person responsible for both Log Horizon and Metallic Rouge, which means it could go either way.
“What is it now?”
Homebrew just switched the behavior of “brew upgrade” to include:
Do you want to proceed with the upgrade? [y/n]
Yes, you fucking dolt, that’s why I typed “brew upgrade” after typing “brew update”. Given that they added a bunch of emoji to the output a while back, I suspect they’re into vibe-coding, which is not what I want to see in my package manager, especially given all the recent high-profile supply-chain attacks.
(turning this off requires setting a new HOMEBREW_NO_ASK environment
variable)
Apple invents legibility
[given the fog of war, all I’ll say about Belfast is that my team there went home early yesterday and are all working from home today]
…two years after utterly destroying the concept. They’re also insisting that McPhonePadOS 27 will be focused on stability and bug-fixes, but also on vigorously thrusting GenAI into every hole, so it’s going to be a real crap-shoot. Anyway, I’m slightly more likely to upgrade my Macs to the third 27.x release than to any 26.x release.
Oh, and apparently any software built with the new version of Xcode will be forced to use the Liquid Ass graphical theme. Because the people who don’t understand accessible UI design want to make sure nobody shows them how it’s done.
Two more weeks
(12 episodes for Not-Harem, 13 for Witch Hat)
Farm Harem Never 2, episode 10
Well, if we’re never going to get a proper harem, at least we got a swimsuit episode. Part two is an over-narrated explanation of how they finally got some new human villagers, which Our Hoe-Holding Mayor somehow thinks will resolve the gender imbalance despite all of them being young married couples. And New Female Villager #7 somehow triggers a cliffhanger, sigh.
(unrelated, of course, except for the animal ears and the swimsuit)
Witch Hat Atelier, episode 11
Looks like it’s problem children all the way down, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Also, the return of Sexy Witch Gal, with a disguise that sends Our Heroine to the moon.
Verdict: two episodes left, and they’re clearly trying to create a satisfying season-ender. But true satisfaction comes from announcing a second season…
On Stargate
Some thoughts, now that Amazon has chickened out and shitcanned the previously announced new series…
I remember the magazine hype before the original Stargate was released in theaters. It… wasn’t as cool as they’d made it out to be, but was still a lot of fun. I rewatch it every few years.
SG-1‘s debut on Showtime blew me away. I was sad that we only got bare titties in the pilot episode (because Showtime demanded them), but it’s not like they needed cheesecake to sell the story. What I still love after all these years is that they hit the ground running, with all the characters well-developed and working well together, not just the core cast. About the only real clunker was the poor guy who got stuck with the job of summarizing the movie relationship between Jack and Ska’ra.
Anyway, I loaded it up on Prime over the weekend, and it started at the season 1 episode Bloodlines, in which Teal’c has to deal with the family he left behind when he defected. This was followed by Fire & Water, in which Daniel is declared dead. And neither of these stories could be told by today’s Hollywood. A father balancing duty against family and making difficult choices? A mother who vigorously disagrees with those choices and their impact on her and their son, but behaves like a grown-up about it? A cranky-but-wise father-figure mentor, training the son as he trained the father? And in the second one, a full military funeral executed with precision and respect for the service, without a hint of irony or eye-rolling?
And of course, Good Ol’ Doc Frasier, as usual carrying every scene she was in, standing up for the health of the team while still respecting the chain of command, instead of being used as a writers’ mouthpiece. (and she even got to kick a bit of ass in the next episode, Hathor)
(it did often feel like she was running the medical center alone…)
God's Shouty Appraiser, episode 11
She has awakened! And she seems to be the only person in the cast who doesn’t shout, which explains why God was trying to keep her napping. Anyway, Evil Ivell attempts another cunning plan that should have worked if Our Shouty Shota hadn’t gotten divine help at just the right moment (a very prolonged moment, when the Big Bad Wolf should have torn him to pieces in the first five seconds of the fight), but even in failing, she managed to get Our Hero’s cheat powers revoked and teleport him right into a cliffhanger.
Verdict: will there be time for Our Dusky Best Catgirl to arrive and save the day? And will she drag along Button Elf and Our Isekai’d School Pals, or will all of that be saved for another season that may not happen? Next week, it ends.
(random unrelated catgirl from the archives)
