Christmas loot! Today’s the first time in four years that my family has celebrated Christmas proper. In 2008, we celebrated Festivus, a popular alt-Christmas that sprung from an episode of Seinfeld. In 2009, we did The Feast of Winter’s Veil, named after the winter holiday time in World of Warcraft, and I created a bunch of games themed around the quests done in the game version. For 2010, I invented my own holiday, Agarwood Day, named after the band Agalloch, with the idea that each year I’d structure the day’s activities around the lyrics to one of their songs. That year, I did the song In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion, which included such things as a bonfire into which we through papers with the things we didn’t want to carry into 2011 written on them.

This year, my dad decided he wanted to do Christmas because he wanted a tree. But my brothers and I weren’t content to leave it without some kind of twist. The way it went with us buying presents is that all three of us went out and got the stuff, essentially for ourselves (it was a complicated plan that fell apart), so due to the lack of surprise, we decided to surprise our presents. We did this by putting the wrong names on presents, putting presents inside of larger boxes, or putting them in boxes of something else and pretending it was the real present. I let them think I’d gotten a Bose stereo system for two minutes before opening it and showing it was full of manga. This was a lot of fun.

As for the loot, I thought it would be interesting to just complete one of the manga I collect in one go. I have a tendency to buy a lot of Volume Ones without continuing the series, and as such have very few complete series. I got volumes 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 of Shugo Chara!, seeing as volume 6 was unavailable at the store, and also the first volume of 4-koma spin-off Shugo Chara-chan. I also got the second Gunslinger Girl omnibus from Seven Seas (I already have the first and third). 

The rest is four Shin Megami Tensei games. I didn’t think I’d find myself getting video games for Christmas, but Persona 2 has changed all of that. The games are Persona 3 FES, Persona 4, Digital Devil Saga 2, and Nocturne. This many games could potentially last me till my birthday in August LOL.

Not pictured is the most amazing gift that my mom bought, the “I Am T. Pain” microphone. You sing into it, and it vaguely makes your voice sound auto-tuned. I haven’t been able to put it down all morning. Apparently it was difficult to get her hands on so I’m very thankful.