Every Every XX

Hi everyone! How’s it going?¹ You may have been wondering…

Recently I played a point-and-click called The Shiva. In it you play as a rabbi who is suddenly suspected of murder when a previous congregant dies, leaving the rabbi a large sum of money. The best thing about the game is that every time he is asked a question, you pick whether the rabbi:

• Dismisses the question

• Answers the question with a question

• Begrudgingly answers the question, with as much begrudging attitude as possible.

On today’s menu we have:

• Every day in January*

• Some friends

• Every Lego set ever*

Also, if you like jazz/prog/fusion you GOTTA be listening to Sungazer. Seriously. This is majorly the shit.

“Perihelion” literally stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it. So good!

Every Day in January*

After documenting so many of my drawings from last year, I set out to paint every day of 2025.

As Derrick said:

I didn’t draw literally every day, even if I came pretty close. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to up my watercolor game so I thought this would be a good way to do that. Did I succeed? Meh…? But I think by the end of the year I’ll have a pretty cool diary. Anyway, here’s a picture of something that happened to me every day in January*, including today.

*Except for Saturdays

This was New Year’s Eve/morning at Shan’s place. We tried to see the fireworks over the Queen Mary, but the fog was too thick. I also had a very sparkly outfit (not pictured).

Left: I had the idea for a computer virus that infects you in the real world. And maybe it pulls you into the Digiverse? Right: An Albertosaurus by William Stout. I’ll probably do a bigger version of this soon.

The original by William Stout.

These drawings happened at a cafe somewhere in OC. I somehow only brought one sketchbook with me (oh, the horror!) so I ended up drawing some nose guys on my blank Saturday page. Also on the left: lips, or no lips?

Left: A drawing of the entrance to the Burnette library featuring April and the Welcome E. Right: Some flowers I got for Alex to celebrate the beginning of her semester (I think?).

I played Ticket To Ride for the first time, which is a common “first real boardgame” for many people. We played it wrong. Right: A view of the central village in our DCC game.

I also drew this map, which as soon as I introduced it the group decided to evacuate the town. Go figure, lol.

Left: The bathroom above ours had a leak, so the maintenance guys cut a huge hole in the ceiling. And as you can see, I’m a little behind on my painting… Right: Saturday.

Left: Alex and Avery dancing to “Dance Monkey” in Just Dance. Right: “All rings are magical because they are portals to another world. And unlike doors, rings by definition are always open, meaning that other worlds are always free to seep through, little by little. This is why wizardz use circles to summon, and why the circle is the natural symbol of magic. Of course, some ringportals are stronger than others, usually as a function of size. However, small…”

Left: I made some really fire taquitos. And don’t worry Jack, I’m still gonna send you that recipe. Right: We played Cartoodle and it was really fun! Featuring Kander, Thomas, Shana, Andrew, and myself.

Left: The view from the Bay Shore library. Yes, that’s the beach. I’m not jealous I’m not jealous I’m not jealous… Right: Ebony’s funk band Psilo.

Left: Saturday. Right: We went bowling. And I opened with a strike and got three more in our last game!

Left: A wild Grandpasaurus watching football. Right: while chasing the Wicked Witch of the West, the Tin Woodman decapitates 40 wolves. Yup, this is a children’s story!

The original by W. W. Denslow.

Left: This is a combination of an idea I had for a tattoo wizard and a guy I saw at an airport who was shaved bald except for a bun on the back of his head and a giant beard. Right: The monsters from the finale of our DCC campaign, including a “bag of flesh with tentacles.” Yuck!

The original by Friedrich Haas.

Left: Linework for Yoshida Hiroshi’s “Bamboo Grove.” Someday I’m gonna cover a whole wall with his stuff. Right: Saturday.

The original by Yoshida Hiroshi. You can find many different color variations of most woodblock prints, including this one. I’m still not sure what I’ll pick for a bigger version.

Left: My taiko class is learning a song called “Gocha Gocha,” which means “all mixed up” in Japanese. Mr. Yada’s story was that the group who wrote it taught the members a “horse beat” (swing beat) and then told them to all go write a line at home. There was some disagreement on how the song should be written out so I sat down and counted the whole thing. Crossing the barline with syncopated swing—pretty complex for fifth grade band! Right: a scene from Tokyo Godfathers where the character Hana says a haiku.

The original. It gives my chills every time. This movie is a must-watch in my opinion, and this viewing totally reversed my view on haikus in English.

Left: I passed by a big fucking snail walking home from work the other day. Right: There were lion dancers sponsored by AUTO CARE DETAILING for the Lunar New Year at the Wicked Wolf. We also played a really cool game based on Lupin III in Italian.

(insert picture from shmuel)

Left: Lego Hello Kitty Gundam from our Legoland game (see below). Right: Me frantically finishing these drawings before the end of the month.

And that’s a wrap on January! I’ll get around to painting all of these… some time.

Liquefold and Friends

Recently a couple of my friends have started newsletters, so I wanted to shout them out here!

My roommate James posts about his art.

woah hello

My friend Shan writes about a variety of things.

Welcome to my Substack

Joel wrote about some turtles.

Turtle who make Art

And Kelsey prayed for the end of fellowship. Nice!

On friendships (kelC)

Every Lego set ever*

Almost since making it, I’ve been wondering how Cartoodle can be translated to a longer format where consecutive sessions connect to build a larger story. My first go at this was with MIGHTY MICE TACTICS, but it was limited by the length of my Columbia visit. But online, we can play every week.

So we have two problems to solve: how to give the game some longevity, and how to play a drawing game without being able to draw on a piece of paper. I think I came up with a pretty good solution to both of these problems: every Lego set ever!*

First, I went through the Wikipedia page of every Lego set² ever and grouped the 148 sets by genre:

1. Adventureland³

   1. Adventures

   2. Aqua Raiders

   3. Aquazone

   4. Castle

   5. Goonies

   6. Indiana Jones

   7. Lone Ranger

   8. Ninja

   9. Phaoroah’s Quest

   10. Pirates

   11. Power Miners

   12. Rock Raiders

   13. Vikings

   14. Wild West

2. Babyland

   1. 4+

   2. Baby

   3. Bluey

   4. Cars 3

   5. Dacta

   6. Disney

   7. Disney Princesses

   8. Duplo

   9. Education

   10. Fabuland

   11. Gremlins

   12. Mixels

   13. Quatro

   14. SpongeBob Squarepants

   15. Thomas the Tank Engine

   16. Toy Story

   17. Trolls World Tour

   18. Unikitty

   19. Winnie the Pooh

3. Buildyland

   1. Creator

   2. Ideas

   3. Master Builder Academy

   4. Minifigures

   5. Powered Up

   6. Power Functions

   7. Technic

   8. All fan creations

   9. All off-brand stuff

4. Carland

   1. Formula One

   2. Icons

   3. Model Teams

   4. Racers

   5. Speed Champions

   6. Speed Racer

   7. World Racers

5. Cityland

   1. Back to the Future

   2. City

   3. Fusion

   4. Ghostbusters

   5. Island Xtreme Stunts

   6. Lego Movie

   7. Powerpuff Girls

   8. Simpsons

   9. Sports

   10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

   11. Town

   12. World City

6. Dinoland

   1. Dino

   2. Dino Attack

   3. Dinosaurs

   4. Horizon Forbidden West

   5. Jurassic Park

   6. Jurassic World

7. Fantasyland

   1. Adventure Time

   2. Avatar: The Last Airbender

   3. Dreamzzz

   4. Dungeons & Dragons

   5. Elves

   6. Legend of Zelda

   7. Legends of Chima

   8. Lord of the Rings

   9. Neco Knights

   10. Ninjago

   11. Pirates of the Caribbean

   12. Prince of Persia

   13. Wicked & The Wizard of Oz

8. Girlyland⁴

   1. Belville

   2. Clikits

   3. Friends

   4. Gabby’s Dollhouse

   5. Scala

9. Heroland

   1. Lego Batman

   2. DC Heroes

   3. Super Hero Girls

   4. Teen Titans Go!

   5. Avengers

   6. Superheroes

   7. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man

10. Nintendoland

    1. Atlantis Treasure

    2. Angry Birds

    3. Animal Crossing

    4. Heroica

    5. Fortnite

    6. Mario

    7. Minecraft

    8. Minotaurus

    9. Ramses Pyramid

    10. Sonic the Hedgehog

11. Roboland

    1. Bionicle

    2. Boost

    3. Eco-Force

    4. Hero Factory

    5. Little Robots

    6. Mindstorms

    7. Monkie Kid

    8. Robo Riders

    9. Spybotics

    10. Transformers

12. Seriousland

    1. Architecture

    2. Art

    3. Braille

    4. Botanical Collection

    5. Discovery

    6. Forma

    7. Muji

    8. Serious Play

13. Spookyland

    1. Beetlejuice

    2. Hidden Side

    3. Monster Fighters

    4. Scooby Doo

    5. Stranger Things

14. Spyland

    1. Agents

    2. Alpha Team

    3. A-Team

    4. City

    5. City Undercover

    6. Despicable Me

    7. Incredibles

    8. Jack Stone

    9. Mission: Impossible

    10. Ultra Agents

15. SciFiLand

    1. Avatar (blue people)

    2. Ben 10

    3. Doctor Who

    4. Dune

    5. E.T. the Extraterrestrial

    6. Galidor

    7. Midway Games

    8. Overwatch

    9. Portal 2

    10. Space

    11. Star Wars

    12. Time Cruisers

16. The Shadow Bin

    1. Anything I forgot or that wasn’t on the Wikipedia page

Then I put each world on a map, and connected them based on their relation to the other worlds.

How does travel between worlds work? What about immigration? All excellent questions we answered as a group.

I’ve talked before about my love of Google Slides, but I really popped off on this one. Check me out:

Each world has a comment with a list of the sets currently in it. Clicking on each world also takes you to its dedicated slide. Let’s go to Girlyland.

Each world is… an empty Cartoodle board! All relevant sets are listed, plus there’s a button to go to any of the adjacent worlds. More locations and characters will be added here next week when we visit Girlyland.

And here’s Babyland after our game last night ↑. I’ll walk you through a couple of features:

1. If you have a drawing tablet, playing Cartoodle digitally is no big deal. But what if you only have a mouse? How can you play a drawing game without the drawing? This is where the Lego theming came in handy: basically anything you can think of already exists in Lego (Lego Hello Kitty Car)! And if it doesn’t, someone has probably built it and posted it online (Lego Mater from Cars 3 Mech)! And if they haven’t, there are programs where you can make it yourself digitally! Or you can build it with Legos yourself and take a picture! Or you can just draw it with your mouse! Be my guest!

2. We used comments to track each character’s name and goal as in the base game. Having these float means we only had to worry about 1/3 of the potential clickable items on screen. This came in handy when the phony Lego insurance policies reproduced asexually. Many times.

3. All locations and deceased characters are at 50% opacity to help with visual clutter. Players can add locations at any time like in the base game.

Since two of the characters went to Girlyland at the end of the session, we’ll pick up there next week. And now we are officially in untested waters! I can’t wait to see what comes next!

BONUS MANGA

Gb!

Thanks for reading, everyone! I’ll see you next week!

1. I know for any of you who read the news the answer to this question is probably, “Extremely bad.” I don’t really have anything to say. I think it’s time to get politically active again.

2. Technically a Lego “set” is what comes in an individual box (like the Death Star) and a Lego “theme” is the category that the set falls under (Star Wars). However I will be using “set” to refer to what are actually Lego “themes” because that how most people talk about them.

3. Add “Lego” in front of all of these.

4. It’s worth noting that girls are in every Lego set, but Girlyland consists of the explicitly “girly” sets. According to Lego they are categorized as “girl-oriented designs.”