#b&k

It was about time I brought my VN reviews in again, and I'm glad to re-start off with a really cute one.

B&K is a bite-sized visual novel about two friends, Bruce and Kip, spending an evening at a fast food place playing in one of those indoor playgrounds.

It might not sound all that exciting, and yet I assure you I enjoyed every second playing it.

The character interactions are charming, and made me audibly laugh out loud. The pacing is really well measured, never brushing past things too quickly and letting the core moments linger just as long as they need to -- and the writing is super-tight! Not a single word is wasted. I may genuinely study this for my own writing.

It's a nice breather. It's short, cute, gives you a fuzzy feeling, and has a very appealing artstyle.

This doesn't make it just comfort food. Within the simple premise there is a genuine reflection on childhood and adulthood that got me to pause and think. In the visual novel space, shorter projects like this one get overshadowed, and don't get the love they deserve. In part, this is why I go out of my way to look for them, and I'm glad I did.

This VN may not be your Echo, or Adastra, but it gave me a good time. And if you have ~20 minutes to spare, I think you should play it. It may give you a good time too.

word count: 16.1k

kit/olaf, kit&beatrice, set between atwq and asoue

the way this tracks kit and olaf’s relationship and what they mean to each other and all of their friends (but especially beatrice) and how it changes over time is absolutely brilliant. this is a long one but it’s fast paced and covers to much ground. totally worth it!!

excerpt:

Beatrice is so perturbed that it seems like she is finally — perhaps for the first time ever — lost for words. 

“He can do quite a lot of things, actually,” Kit adds innocently after a moment. “When properly motivated.”

Beatrice has never been slow on the uptake and it’s only a second before she catches her meaning. She makes a very unladylike gagging sound and looks very much like she is being tortured. “You disgust me.”

“Now you know how I feel when I hear you gossiping about my baby brother,” Kit chuckles. “That’s all your surprises for today. You can eat your stew now.”

“Finally,” Beatrice huffs, but she is smiling so much that Kit can tell there is no genuine impatience. After a few moments though, staring contemplatively at her food, she speaks again. “You do know I’m only joking?”

“Hmm?”

“About you two.” She’s speaking a little softer now, and smiling much more genuinely. This is the reason everyone they know is in love with Beatrice. She’s looking at Kit with her big amber eyes like she has never cared about anything in the entire world more than she does in this very moment about her wellbeing. “You know I think it’s lovely, don’t you?”

It’s Kit’s turn to pull a face. 

Spent yesterday working on some minor projects.

I have a Knight tube tester that I got at an antique radio swap meet a few years ago. It was working fine, but since I’d never opened it up, I thought I’d do so and just see what it was like inside.

Turns out it was pretty clean. There were a few minor issues though. Someone had used electrical tape in a bunch of places to cover soldering iron burns on wires, or hold wires together, and the adhesive had started to degrade, leaving a sticky mess. I replaced the damaged wire and cleaned off the sticky goo as best I could.

There was also an old wax capacitor in there which I replaced with a modern equivalent. Lastly, there were (plastic?) sleeves holding some of the wire bundles in place, but they had started to degrade, and were kindof slimy.. 

So I cut those out of there and used zip ties to hold the wire bundles in place.

I also worked on my Triplett tube tester and my B&K tube tester, but forgot to take pictures of those. It’s too bad because the B&K was an interesting restoration. It had spent most of its life on the coast, and much of the wiring inside was fuzzy with mold. Spent an hour with a respirator, gloves, and rubbing alcohol getting the fuzz off the wires (which were intact underneath) and cleaning up the case. 

Next step for that one will be replacing the 4 old electrolytic caps inside. Those are on the way, so maybe I’ll take pics of that next week when I do the work.