Reading Week is supposed to be for studying. I did write my Russian essay and finish my Analysis take-home final, but most of the time I spent relaxing. We watched all of Hellsing and started on the second season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Oh, happy addictive anime.

Peaches introduced me to the Lovecraftian musical, A Shoggoth on the Roof. Now I’ve started reading some of H.P. Lovecraft’s macabre short stories, reveling in their risible verbosity and eldritch diegeses. Next time I see S.T., I’ll have more to talk to him about than just Call of Cthulhu. That is, if some horrible fate hasn’t befallen him as the Shoggoth on the Roof documentary would have me believe… I mean, it’s not like he could have melted into a pile of flesh on a couch somewhere in Moravia, right? …Right?

Um… anyway, Saturday we had a barbecue. It was a lot of fun, listening to good music, eating burgers, playing or at least attempting to play Ultimate Frisbee, and watching friends launch firecrackers off the roof. Yes. Good, wholesome fun. :)

Yesterday we finished our Shadowrun campaign. It was short and sweet. Jacob ran this campaign before, so ours was a parallel storyline taking place several years later. A man named Etsu tried to take over Shiawasi with HOLY, his army of engineered metahumans. His goal was to create a new body, but his first attempt, Slade, was not subservient enough and escaped. He went underground and tried again, this time creating a super-spirit called Fenris (after discovering this dual identity we affectionately called him Fetsu). Fetsu and HOLY did some nasty things to us and our families, including massacring my (Tiva’s) entire tribe and building a compound over their graves. Our dramatic conclusion took place at this compound, so I finally got my sweet, sweet revenge.

“O Gaming Gods, please let this giant troll woman kill mine enemies.” — Max Hallock gets religion

Actually, first Tiva got to take Clay out back and shoot him (and I got to run upstairs and tell Nick that his backstabbing ways were over!). Then Tiva enacted Slade’s brilliant plan of driving a car full of explosives into the compound and jump out at the last moment. And finally, after Thud (Dan Pachico) crushed one of the HOLY’s with his “helichopter” by crashing it through two floors of the compound, with Fetsu fighting Slade, Nym, and Kyuzo (Ben) on the middle floor, and the rest of the team kicking ass and avenging their families on the basement level, Tiva jumped 34 feet straight up through the hole Thud made, firing one shot at Fetsu, and landing on the roof. That one shot killed Fetsu. Man… that was satisfying.

In the epilogue we blew up the compound. Tiva came back later with Nym (who turned out to be her uncle) and his girlfriend, turning the crater into a pool and building houses at the edge. We started taking in street orphans and training them to be ninja orphans. Who knows, maybe one day one of these little kids will grow up to be a character in their own Shadowrun campaign! Now I just need to get some t-shirts printed for our group, with chibis of the whole party on the back.

And I just finished my Hum final. Rock!