ELSEWHERE

Oh wow, my birthday's in a month

It's already getting too hot in my room by the afternoon and into the evening, so I've ordered a cheap-ish sun shade to install in front of the sliding glass door, to hopefully keep it a little cooler in here

Stole the thermostat briefly to check how warm it is in my room. It is 78

It's 72 in the hall

That kind of temperature difference, plus the AC not really working in my room ever, is about what I was dealing with all summer

I don't really know how I'm going to handle it this year, it was legit affecting my health

Update: it's 7:00, it's 75 in the hall, 75 outside, high of 79, and 80 in my room

Oof ouch owie me legs

Legs are very sore today, in part because still recovering, and also because I got half of the sun shade equipment installed. The rest is going to have to wait for the weekend because I'll need ash's help with it -- getting this half was a nightmare in and of itself, and the other half needs to go in an awkward location that I shouldn't try to solo.

I started reading Dungeon Meshi (also known as Delicious in Dungeon) today, I hear good things about it as it goes on and so far it's very charming. A group of dungeon-raiders explore a dungeon, killing monsters and then -- here is the hook -- cooking and eating them. Within universe this is extremely weird and taboo, but the characters are on a time limit to get to their goal and can't return to the surface for supplies, so they have to eat things available to them within the dungeon. Features a lot of different kinds of food, and explanations on how the food is being prepared &c. Pairs well with Made in Abyss, has a similar vibe, but takes itself a little less seriously (and (so far, at least) has less of the stuff that would caveat my recommending it to people)

An anime adaptation is in development and I'm excited to get to shove it at ash, eventually

I'm also slooowwwly approaching the end of The Stone Sky, the fifth Broken Earth book. This one has a lot of retroactive exposition, and it's not grabbing me as well as the first two, but it's still enjoyable. I'll have more to say about it when I'm finished with it, probably

Okay! Here is the game I am actually going to work on, because it's made up almost exclusively of things I already know how to do.

I did it! I've finished the Broken Earth trilogy.

The last book spends the majority of itself setting up pieces -- putting characters in the right place, with the right mindset; explaining things so that events will have the right impact -- and then the last fifty pages is just everything crashing into each other in a great climax. It makes it a little bit harder of a read than the first two, it's just more dense and slower-paced, but it's still good and the ending is worth getting to. I will say this one does a little bit too much kicking-the-protagonist-while-she's-down -- like, I get it, her life sucks and she loses everything but she goes on anyway -- but for me it very specifically does it one time too many. So, not a huge issue, but still very 'oh come on'.

The series has a rugged hopefulness that I love, and that you don't get enough of. It's kind of a love-letter to humanity's determined-ness -- the world is ending for us, we'll make it better for the people who come after us anyway. There's no 'fuck you, got mine' mentality, and that's just so god damn refreshing.

The plot in a nutshell: a continent-wide ecological disaster strikes, putting humanity into post-apocalypse mode. One of the viewpoint-characters' daughter goes missing, that character spends three books trying to track her down. Meanwhile, both mother and daughter are enlisted to be tools in someone else's grander plan -- one, to save the world, the other, to just fucking end it once and for all.

The worldbuilding is fantastic and expertly delivered; the characters are unique and fleshed-out and well written. Five stars, A+, no notes, except for the over-whumping near the end.

This also means I can go back to listening to one of my favourite podcasts -- I started reading the books because the podcast was doing a book club for them, and I didn't want to listen to the episodes talking about the books until I'd read them