Christmas visits: survived!

Merry winter festivities everyone! I hope that if you were doing a family holiday it went well, and if you were avoiding any family or christmas stuff that your evasion was successful! Mine was... Mixed bag?

• Lex and I went to my mum's on Christmas Eve! I remembered my mum's presents but forgot the present that I bought for my oldest sister in 2016 and found while I was tidying. Whoops.


• As a christmas eve gift, the RWA set itself on fire, dug to rock bottom, and then cracked out the pickaxe so it could keep going. I've been following it in real time because I literally can't stop myself, and this summary doesn't have sources but is accurate to all of the sources and reports that I'VE seen. I can't look away, this is bananas. This has been going on for FIVE DAYS at this point, and it just keeps getting worse!


• My christmas haul was SO GOOD!
  
  • I got nail varnish that changes colour depending on the temperature, which I've been after for multiple years, and a bunch of temporary tattoos to see if I like them as a concept before captainraz and I pay probably extortionate postage for Geometric Beasts.
  
  
  • My book haul was SO GOOD! Lex got me Yotsuba&! volume 14 (and a Jund MtG Brawl deck, because my dreams of a Devour commander deck have never died, and a Pokéball with a Rowlett in it!), and Mum got me Because Internet, Not For Use In Navigation, Women With ADD, The Luminous Dead, and A BOX SET OF THE RERELEASED ALANNA BOOKS OMG! Yotsuba is as heart-warming as ever, and Not For Use in Navigation manages to be occasionally gutting and incredibly warm and hopeful with it. The rest I've not read yet!
  
  
  • I've not watched the BOX SET OF CARDCAPTORS THAT MY MUM GOT ME LIKE AN ABSOLUTE LEGEND, but hi I have a box set of the original run of Cardcaptors and the movies, and I'm terrified to find out whether the subtitles are going to be horribly unreadable or not.


• Saw Second Oldest Sister On Mum's Side and her family, and we were all remarkably polite! She didn't try to make me put jilliferium in contact with her, I didn't start a fight, youngest niece on that side got to show off her glittery slime-making prowess and oldest niece on that side got to show off how amazing she is at choosing presents. ... Real talk, that girl is GOOD AT PRESENTS, I am so jealous of her skills. Middle niece on that side is off doing a law degree, and apparently as part of that she's doing consulting days in a prison? Which is excellent.


• I HAVE MET MY NEICE'S HUSBAND NOW. Two factual inaccuraces on my part: he's 36 and they got married on an island just off the coast of Georgia, not mid-forties and married in Florida. But that said... He does come across as exactly the sort of guy who would marry a twenty-one year old he'd know for less than six months!
  
  • Like. Maybe I don't understand how setting up a business works, but what he was describing sounded like money-laundering to me and visa fraud to Lex? And Hayley would mention things like "Oh, we were reading the bible together last night..." and that's... Not very her? Or at least she was saying stuff about it that was very obviously not HER WORDS and it was weird to see. The nice things I will say about him is that Hayley has apparently been doing the same "Hey, this funny story about my family is actually FUCKED UP" realisations that I was doing, and she feels supported in that because of him? And him and Lex got to bond over what I described as "Wow, our wives are way more fucked up than advertised" and Lex described as "Our wives are amazing despite their families."
  
  
  • Yeah, as the only person in the room who hadn't been drinking, I was NOT prepared for the unexpected therapy session Hayley dropped on us after Christmas dinner.
  
  
  • On the plus side, Hayley was not prepared for how much I was like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T FUCKING VOTE?!" at her. I want full points for quickness though! She was talking about how she'd visited Germany a lot, but "People died so I didn't have to learn German!" and my immediate response was "People died so you could vote as well!"
  
  
  • Best part of this conversation:
    Hayley: I can't believe my mum got married at sixteen to someone who was FIFTEEN YEARS OLDER THAN HER.
    Me: *GESTURES AT HAYLEY'S FIFTEEN-YEARS-OLDER-THAN-HER HUSBAND LIKE I'M WILL SMITH*
  
  
  • Second best part of this conversation:
    Me: Your nan told me! And then let me tell your Auntie Jill.
    Hayley: What did she say?
    Me: Same thing as me: "But she's like TWELVE."
  
  
  • Other low-lights included her and her husband talking about how harmful and awful it is that her nephew (my great-nephew) has been LABELLED with autism and ADHD while I'm there like "Motherfucker if someone had caught my ADHD when I was five my life would have been IMMEASURABLY EASIER." Also how being pregnant for two (2) days really taught her how to look at the world as a parent would and gave her a really different perspective on life, while I'm there like "Bitch PLEASE."


• Current gossip: my Tory-voting brother (did I tell y'all that I blocked him on FB?) has broken up with his girlfriend! It was inevitable because she was way cooler than he deserved, but she was so cool and now I don't have an excuse to see her! And my oldest niece still doesn't have custody of her two oldest children, but is still with the father of her youngest, despite (from what I understand) her custody of that one hinging on her telling social services that she WASN'T with him anymore. YEAH. THIS TRIP WAS KIND OF A LOT.


• I want full points for not going "Brown-haired niece. You continue to exist," at any point.


• I liked seeing my mum! (Except for the point where she was being really catty about everything, so I just turned round to Oldest Sister like "I don't know where you two went while you were out, but you can take her back.") I fixed Steam on her computer and put some more books on her kindle for her, good work us. And I liked seeing the cat, despite her STILL a vicious little shit who hunts humans for sport. And I liked raiding the manga collection that me and Jill left at mum's, by which I mean Jill banned me from running away with any of the manga she bought, but said nothing about me reading it while I was there. So I've binged the first six volumes of Red River, which has given me a craving for nineties shoujo manga despite it being super full of attempted rape. But it's cool, because it feels like I can draw a straight line between it and some shoujo manga that are currently running, like The Water Dragon's Bride or Yona of the Dawn. Also it gives me decent grounds for anyone who starts trying to tell me that isekai is a New! Radical! Never-Before-Seen! thing, because a) portal fantasies have existed FOREVER, and b) everything I hear about Super Dark And Edgy Isekai sounds boring as fuck and less dark than the shoujo manga that was doing this shit twenty-odd years ago. Yes I am bored of harem anime and yes I can disect them on a critical level, do not test me.


• APPARENTLY we did well by presents for Jill! Her housemates did a whip round to collect money for a Switch for her with Pokémon Shield! (Usually Jill and I manage to co-ordinate not getting the same Pokémon game, but eh, fuck it.) Please admire the fact that we talked about how nice it would be if she had a Switch and could play the Horrible Goose game, and my poker face was flawless. But the one I keep getting excited messages from her about is that I bought her this Archer & Olive dot-grid notebook that captainraz recommended, because I knew that Jill liked to use watercolours in her bullet journal and I wanted to buy her something that could keep up with that. Turns out that 160gsm dot grid paper is pretty good? Maybe? Apparently?


• I mostly finished the rabbit that I was making for the kid Jill looks after (I gave Jill the pieces, she assembled it), and apparently he instantly recognised what character it was supposed to be AND liked it! PHEW.


• We hung out with Lex's dad on Boxing Day and it was genuinely nice? Usually I have to field most of the small talk, which stresses me out because I AM NOT MIDDLE-CLASS ENOUGH FOR THIS, but Lex took on a bunch and it was so kind because he doesn't have the class shenaniganry that I do but DOES hate talking to people with the fire of a thousand suns. ... And bless their hearts, talking to his dad and his dad's girlfriend always makes me feel like I'm not doing enough, because they're very nice but so BUSY. Like, their holiday this year was walking a two-week long trail across Portugal? And the fact that I don't actually want to go walking across Portugal doesn't make me feel less bad for not having the time, money, or inclination to do something as adventerous and class-marking as that.


• But yeah, overall this christmas was A Lot but generally positive? I feel a little bad that I'm now a person that my mum has to schedule around for Christmas, because she doesn't want me and Tory-voting brother in the same room, but I'm glad I got to see her.

For Nothing Days, a lot is happening!

I usually refer to the days between Christmas and New Year as The Nothing Days, because nothing really HAPPENS this week and nothing feels like it really counts, but I've actually been BUSY AS HELL.

• Came back to Nottingham, and Lex and I have spent the last two days hanging out with JosephTansley and madebyjenni!
  
  • They accidentally ended up with enough turkey to feed the five thousand, so we've nobly been helping them with that. I am not joking. There was A LOT OF TURKEY.
  
  
  • We've been playing Ticket To Ride expansions! We played Old West, France, and Pennsylvania, and... Well.
    
    • Old West suited my playstyle the most, because I will build one incredibly long route that everything's connected to in any form of Ticket to Ride, because THAT'S HOW YOU WIN. But it introduces towns that you can build, which means that if ANYONE builds a train line going into or out of that town, you get the points instead of them. And then Joe and Jenni accidentally locked down every route in and out of Denver except the ones that would give them both fifteen points. And ALL FOUR OF US needed to go to Denver. I swear there was nearly bloodshed.
    
    
    • We played Pennsylvania as a warm-down, because it's way more straightforward. Plays like regular Ticket to Ride, but most of the routes now offer shares? Like "stocks and"? So unless you're good at cardcounting, which sithe is and the rest of us are NOT, it means that the winner is way less obvious than in other expansions! Because it's not just who completes the most tickets, but also who actually scores what off the shares. That said, first time we played it, I accidentally went round the board twice and won with something ridiculous like 230 points, and the second time all but one of my five routes started in Buffalo so I was contractually OBLIGED to make them all one track.
    
    
    • France was the one that we were expecting to be the most cut-throat, because it has TWO weird new mechanics. One is that most of the tracks don't have pre-defined colours on them; whenever you take cards, you get to put down tracks of whatever colour you want. The other is that some of the tracks overlap, so if one person builds a route that overlaps other potential tracks, those can't be used anymore. And did I mention that there aren't enough coloured track segments to actually fill the entire map? So yes, we all expected that to end in tears and actually we were all very civil! No blood was shed, there was minimal name-calling, and no one stole anyone else's tracks irrevocably. It could have gone so much worse!
  
  
  • We played Colt Express! Which is a train robbery game, and I'm here for it. As far as I can tell, it's like Robo Rally in that you all set your cards before anyone's actions resolve, but better because everyone sets their actions sequentially and no one has to know their lefts from their rights. It does still end with you trying to fight someone who isn't there anymore, but the most fun bit for me was tactically deploying the Marshall (who throws you off the train) to either get rid of people or as a free way to escape to the train roof. I didn't win, but I DID have fun. (And accidentally ended up shooting Joe's character a lot, and getting Jenni shot by the Marshall or the train passengers. WHOOPS.)
  
  
  • Jenni got the expansion for Port Royal that gives it a story mode! ... Which is only printed in German. Which only Lex speaks. So Jenni, bless her, has been scavenging translations from Imgur and Boardgame Geek, and actually writing out what the cards are supposed to say on stickers that she's sticking to the cards, and between Lex and Google Translate, they've managed to puzzle out most of it I think? We played the first chapter of it today and it's FUCKING NAILS though! Like, you have to complete a bunch of objectives AND get a certain amount of points AND you're on a timer, which is... Pretty much the opposite of how regular Port Royal plays. We're pretty sure we've missed something really obvious about how we're supposed to play, because it has crushed us each time.


• Discovered that if I want to play Mario Kart/trade Pokémon with people who don't live in my house, I have to pay for a Nintendo subscription. DAMMIT CAPITALISM, JUST LET ME LIVE MY LIFE AND CRUSH JILL WITH MY ADORABLE POKÉMON.


• I want to start my planning for the New Year, but also I'm caught up in how much stuff I've left undone that I meant to get done during the Nothing Days and blatantly haven't. I'm doing a quick shuffle around to see what I CAN get wrapped up before Wednesday, but I'm not hopeful. On the plus side, I'm doing sensible things like "reducing my Goodreads goal by 20" and "trying to triage what is actually important to me to get done," so maybe this is what character growth feels like?


• I promise that next year I'm going to try to take on FEWER PROJECTS. Like, I'm not going to remove the "NO, FEWER THAN THAT, PUT SOME BACK" reaction image from its hotlist place on my phone, but I'm going to try to make everything a little more achievable. It helps that at the start of December I actually made a list of all of the bits and pieces that I've already committed to in 2020, so I've got sort of a sense of scale? Not sure how to apply it, but definitely smaller reading goals and fewer weekly/fortnightly commitments, because it turns out that that DOESN'T WORK FOR ME. ... Levelling up is hard and I'm doing my best is basically what I'm saying here.


• Tune in tomorrow for me screeching about Past!Susan leaving all of this work for me and hoping that Future!Susan will be a mensch and take some of it off my hands!

Reaction Shot: Fate/Apocrypha episode 18 (or, maybe the loli is political commentary?)

I'm not gonna lie to you, this is the only episode of Fate across the
entire macro fandom where I can actually remember the episode title. In my
defence, "From Hell" is pretty memorable, that was the whole point.

[CAUTION WARNING FOR THIS EPISODE: death of children, assault of a child.]

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(Fate/Apocrypha
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