November is gone already!? I have to say having US Thanksgiving fall so late in the month has really thrown me off. For the past couple of years we’ve had nearly a week between Thanksgiving and the end of the month, but that won’t happen again for a while. Anyway point is the end of the month caught me completely unprepared, AND I haven’t been taking any notes to speak of. Good thing I don’t have much to report.
Playing
My Time At Portia — I mentioned last month that I had started playing this on PS5 and this month I really leaned into it. Last time I checked I had 120 hours played on PS5. Just this weekend I got the Trophy for finishing the “main story” but the game just keeps rolling on with more story-quests. That said, I think I may be done for a few reasons. First is that this game is terribly optimized for console. On Playstation (and from what I’ve read, on Xbox) it’s just terribly laggy, particularly in combat. I mean the frame rate drops into probably single digits when you start fighting in a dungeon. For most of the game fighting is pretty limited so it wasn’t a big deal, but now there is some dungeon I’m supposed to work through which is all combat and that’s not something I’m looking forward to. Second is that My Time At Sandrock exists and everyone says it’s a better game so I just feel like if I want more “My Time At..” action I should move on to that.
Also I’m sort of out of new things. My workshop (that’s it at the top of the post) has fully upgraded buildings, a factory, a farm with automated irrigation and it’s been a long while since I got new plans to build. So now it all kind of feels repetitive. I could buy more land and there are still house upgrades I could get, but the house decorating is pretty bad. (For instance you can place a table but you can’t put anything on the table.) I never got into the romance aspects because ‘dates’ are not much fun and involve a lot of running around. Plus I had stuff to build!
And y’know, I have SO many other games waiting in the wings, including a replay of Dragon Age Inquisition I was toying with, before jumping into Veilguard. But that’s another 100 hour game so not sure I’m up for it.
Also it’s delightfully ironic that I bought a PS5 Pro and then spent the month playing a low-poly, poorly optimized PS4 game on it!
But really Portia is the only thing I spent much time on. I logged into World of Warcraft a few times then my sub ran out and it seemed silly to renew it given how rarely I play right now. I may circle back at some time. I never even got to The War Within after buying it!
Watching
Interview With The Vampire (Netflix) — We watched the movie, then the series. The movie was kind of bad in my opinion, but the series was actually pretty good. I’ve never read the books so can’t compare them but it all just felt darker to me.
Silo (Apple+) — With the new season here we decided to go back and re-watch S1 before jumping into the new stuff and I’m glad we did. There was a lot of texture to the show I’d kind of forgotten, plus it somewhat rewards a 2nd viewing because you catch foreshadowing details once you know where the story is going.
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (Crunchyroll) — Weird title, but a rather sweet anime. There is something called “Puberty Syndrome” impacting students where they feel so unseen that they start to vanish, among other strange things. The title comes from an early scene when protagonist Sakuta, the titular Rascal, notices an attractive young woman in a bunny suit cavorting around in a library. This is Mai, the other main character, and she is trying to get a reaction out of anyone. Turns out no one can see her other than Sakuta. Thus a friendship is born. From there the story goes all over the place as Sakuta and Mai become a couple and try to help out others with Puberty Syndrome.
Reading
Kahayatle by Elle Casey — This was in our Kindle library; I guess PartPurple bought it at some point. It’s kind of “Lord of the Flies” on a grand scale. A plague has killed off all the young children and adults, leaving the world nothing but teenagers, and you can imagine how well that goes. For reasons never made clear a bunch of them decide to become cannibals rather than scavenging for food or hunting animals. The protagonist is a young woman who solves all her problems by beating the shit out of people, after which they become her friends for some reason. I started reading this before Halloween and thought it was poorly written but it suited the season. That said it has over 4 stars at Goodreads so maybe I’m just a grump.
Warpaint by Elle Casey — The next book in the same series as Kayayatle. Now the protagonist is living in the Everglades with some Native American kids, bludgeoning her way to leadership. When I realized there were 4 books in this series and it just felt like the same thing happening over and over, I bailed on it. Maybe I’ll come back to it next year in Spooky Season but for now, this is a Did Not Finish title.
Running With The Demon by Terry Brooks — I learned recently that Brooks has written something like 30 books in the Shannara series; I had no idea. Then I saw that this was the first one chronologically and it is urban fantasy that takes place in our world. I was fascinated by that. I assume, but do not know for sure (don’t spoil me!) that the world of Shannara is actually some far future earth. Or maybe there’s a portal or some kind of inter-dimensional thing going on? Who knows? But I mean to find out!
So far this is about a small town in the midwest where a demon, in the guise of a human, is sowing discontent while a young girl who can see magical creatures, both good and evil, tries to stop him. I don’t want to go too far into it because I don’t want to spoil things too much, but there’ve been some fun twists and turns and the writing is generally pretty good. I’m enjoying this one so far but 30 books is a daunting task to read. I can’t imagine having written that many. The first Shannara book was published in 1977 so I guess it HAS taken him almost 50 years. Terry Brooks is 80 now but apparently still writing!
And that’s November, such that it was. Overall it was a mixed month. Early on we were still dealing with COVID fatigue and work was an absolute horror show. But there was feasting the Thanksgiving, the weather finally turned cool and dry, I got a new console and I did a LOT of gaming, even if it was mostly just one game. And I’m starting December with a week off, so that’s nice! Maybe I’ll manage to write a blog post or two this month, you never know!