kalloway: (Xmas Ornaments 6 Golden)
The pile got too high again...

Gundam SEED Destiny (Original Version + Final Plus) - watched pretty much as canon review for war-gaming and there were a lot of things I kinda forgot or found more interesting this time around. Anyway, Freedom only makes sense with Final Plus and now I'm wondering if they just edited it into the remaster. Actually, I think I started with the Remaster but switched to the original because I like the old English dub (and British!Arthur) a lot.

Char's Counterattack - again, canon review for war-gaming, I swear. It's been some time and I both love and hate everyone and Gyunei is such a jealous boyfriend, lol.

Natsume's Book of Friends (Season 1 & 2) - delightful, though it seems like only a couple more seasons are on disc and the rest streaming-only.

A Magical Girl Retires (Park Seolyeon) - enough people talked about this that I got curious and oh, it's an entire journey and then some in like 150 pages. At it's heart, it is very much a magical girl story and the route to the ending is never entirely obvious.

Jianghu (L Si X Xi Y) - baihe short story, interesting and delightful in weird ways. (More Info)

Broken Controller #4 - zine about retro-gaming. I wanted to like Broken Controller but it became very image-heavy with difficult to read layouts. I know the group doing it are still doing zines and I wish them success but they just weren't for me.

Samurai Pizza Cats - this was a stupid lot of fun; I can't say I paid close attention to every episode but this was great to have on in the background in general. Absolute kudos to the writing team. If you don't know the story, Kyatto Ninden Teyandee underperformed in Japan and a lot of the production materials weren't kept. When it was licensed for an English syndication, it arrived with partial scripts and audio. The writers literally just made everything up and dialed the ridiculous to 11. It does not 100% hold up, but it's very very good.

Twittering Birds Never Fly - a BL movie that kept catching my eye on Sentai's sale page. It was okay to watch but that's about it.

The Da Vinci Code - was given this, after being asked if I'd seen it. I promptly described what I think is actually the plot of American Treasure and then realized that. Anyway, nothing about this felt original but this was an entire genre for awhile, too.

American Graffiti - a loaner that shoot, I need to give back. Didn't get into at first, enjoyed it by the end. Nice cars, good music. I think I'm the wrong generation to really some of the nostalgia, though.

Bastard!! (S1, new anime) - a surprisingly good adaptation! Apparently quite a few of the voice actors went uncredited because it is a horny, mature show. But it's a different actor doing dub-Darsh which is a little disappointing because I still hear OVA!Darsh in my head from time to time. (dub!Darsh sounds a smidge young, which is kind of interesting all around) Spends the entire season telling a thorough version of the story that's raced through in the OVAs.

and then last quarter's JFF titles:

Ito - about an awkward introvert who goes to work at a maid cafe and everything that happens along the way.

A Handful of Salt, The Genealogy of Sake - two documentaries.

Three Sisters - family drama, where I never quite worked out how every single bit of the drama but there was a lot, but also a lot of good moments between the sisters.

Love & The Grand Tug of War - another family drama, also centered on a cultural festival that culminates with a city-wide tug of war.

Nabbie's Love - family drama, and all of these family dramas are set in specific parts of the country so also cultural dramas, with a wall-banger of an ending. This one had a lot of traditional musicians in various roles so there was a lot of music and song.

Of these, I probably liked Ito the best. I enjoyed watching all of them, as well as all the little cultural shorts explaining more about music and food and festivals and art, but none of them really hit the same spots as some previous JFF films.

Randoms

Sep. 6th, 2025 11:01 pm[personal profile] kalloway
kalloway: (FFVIIAC Hear Me Now)
[community profile] fandomgiftbasket has all the baskets posted now, so I'm skimming through to see what I might be able to fill.

The folks who made the mobile game Grimlight are about to launch a TCG, Echoes of Astra on Kickstarter. I don't need another TCG but I'll definitely watch and see how things go for them and probably end up with a starter.

Still deciding on Wares Blade (TTRPG) but there's time. I'll probably just get the basic hardcover.

I've possibly either finished Starfall, or finished him for now. He's on his shiny base and while I feel like I have a lot of leftover parts, some of them are because I cannot make him look as cool as some of the promo stuff and some are because of how runners work. I suppose I'll figure out where he's going to get displayed and go from there with packing the rest up. He does have a lot of decals but honestly, his stark darkness is a big part of his draw.

Visited a trio of cemeteries earlier, two on purpose and one on accident. The latter was very small, in extreme disrepair, and managed to be an absolutely overwhelming liminal space without feeling in any way creepy, scary, or upsetting. Of the other two, one was an old but active township cemetery and we darted out quickly when suddenly a couple dozen cars arrived for a service. The other was possibly also a township cemetery. It, too, was old but still active. And somehow surprisingly difficult to find, which was how we ended up at the small, liminal space cemetery. (Except getting back was very easy! Looking at the notes and book I was working from, the addresses were hysterically incorrect, maps drawn wrong, etc. So I wrote in some new notes but wtf. At least the farmers we kept encountering were all friendly.)

Semi-related, [personal profile] spook_me is open for sign-ups. No clue what I'm going to write, but something.

Life in the boonies

Sep. 6th, 2025 04:38 pm[personal profile] animama
animama: (Default)
 So our old rooster went to the great barnyard in the sky few weeks ago. While the hens do not seem to miss him, roosters are useful for keeping unwanted critters out of the chicken run. The problem is, everybody has extra roosters.  Most of our neighbors have chickens and treat them more like pets. Extra roosters are only good for using up feed, but nobody wants to kill them. If we let it be known that we are in search of a rooster, there could be any number of roosters dumped in our driveway in the middle of the night. 

One neighbor around the bend has a much more visible chicken operation.  They have a farm stand and a big covered run with 30 plus birds you can see from the road. The couple were out manning the farm stand today so we stopped by on the way home from the market.

"Do you have any extra roosters?"

"Sure! Somebody dumped a couple roosters just this morning. Take your pick."

We dropped off a cage, and will be picking up the new rooster later when they can catch him.

Days of What

Sep. 3rd, 2025 07:53 am[personal profile] kalloway
kalloway: (Panilla Saga 2 Mephisto)
I know I had something that I wanted to mention... Ah well.

It's honestly kinda nice that the work-week is half over already. Last night wasn't bad at all, either, just normal-busy with a few bits of bad timing. I ended up taking a few bits of a model kit (Starfall) in because while I don't mind gently reaming a single tight hole with my hobby knife now and then, fourteen of the same part is kind of pushing it for patience and safety. So I found an appropriate drill bit in the big box and just quietly took care of all of that between calls. ^^;;

I'm in a couple of gunpla discord servers and in one of them, a handful of people are basically playing tariff-chicken and reporting back. Current (and more research is needed) studies suggest that if a holy grail pops up on Suruga-ya in the $100-150 range, or an order around that amount is made, fees+tariffs pretty much negate the free shipping. Obnoxious but not horrific.

[community profile] bitesizedcleaning has their Annual September Stampede running right now. I haven't actually started on it, but I do want to give it a try. Flat surfaces... ^^;;

Oh, now I remember - I don't think I even mentioned this, but there was an anime convention last weekend a couple of towns away. I didn't go because it was a first year con, looked messy, and the single-day badges were something like $60. in this economy?! Anyway, some Youtuber guest of theirs was running a non-sanctioned predator sting and while a couple of people were arrested after being confronted, one of them was carrying a (completely legal) gun. I guess that while the police and con-ops were cooperative, they were also very much like 'uh, don't actually do this and we didn't think it'd be during con hours what the actual fuck'. So yeah I do not have words for how catastrophic that could have been and I am very glad I didn't go.

Clicky

Sep. 2nd, 2025 09:48 pm[personal profile] kalloway
kalloway: Tieria from Gundam 00 looking grumpy (Tieria)
The grocery store had a small rack of clicker-style Sakura Gelly Roll pens; I immediately bought a pack. (I will probably buy more.) Of course, being very used to normal Gelly Rolls, I keep trying to yank the 'cap' off them. ^^;; I'll get used to it... (I hope.)

I am not entirely sure, but last night might've been the first time in my years that we didn't even get close to finishing shop start-up. It was bad. It was not personally terrible for me; I was busy but never overwhelmed. But overall, yeah, machines hate long weekends. Or, perhaps, also do not want to go back to work after them. ^^;;

Of my international Kickstarters/Crowdfunding, one just went 'oh fuck US shipping dunno what I'm gonna do but I'll let you know', one said that a few weeks back, and I've not heard a peep from the last that I can think of. (That one is a ways out, though.) At least two other int'l projects are launching this month. I don't know what options will even be. (I wouldn't blame the one smaller one for just excluding US backers altogether.)

I picked up a September Bingo card on [community profile] lyricaltitles. Much like last year, I expect the fun will be picking songs and I won't actually manage to write anything.
raisedbymoogles: (Default)
I keep seeing art of Optimus sans mask with facial scars these days, implying that's why he wears it (because it can't be just That's His Face, how else are he and Megatron supposed to smooch! ;P). It's a fairly common headcanon, and I thiiink the resurgence is due to TF One? But it's not always One!OP in the art. Half the time it's G1 Op and of course that's what I gravitate to.

I've played with that headcanon myself but I honestly don't think it fits for G1 Optimus. Firstly, because I feel like for a species made of metal 'scarring' isn't really a thing so much? There's no reason you can't patch/paint over a cut or a dent so it looks like nothing ever happened, so if a visible scar persists it's probably the wearer's choice to keep it. Secondly, I don't think Optimus would be embarrassed about that kind of thing. If it's about hiding his connection to Orion Pax, it'd be easy to explain away like 'yeah I got this before the war' (technically true!); and Megatron just kinda blew Orion up and flew away so I doubt he'd recognize this one particular scar on this one particular face that isn't even the same face anymore. (Assuming Alpha Trion left the scar there on purpose I guess?)

My slowly-coming-together headcanon: it's a religious thing. Covering your face denotes "being set apart" in a sense, and Optimus is set apart from the other Cybertronians by Primacy as an explicitly religious role as well as by his leadership role. I don't think there are other masked Primes in Rodimus's big long 'history of Cybertron' vision but I'm handwaving that and saying that at some point Primes did the face-covering thing as a religious observance. Also, Optimus's mask in particular is a protective piece, literal armor; lots of rich symbolism there.

I kind of like the image of Optimus having sworn a vow to Primus, that he won't set aside his mask until Cybertron has peace and freedom again. ...and then the symbolism of him taking it off for smooching. :D (Or having it taken off for him, cough >_>)

Monthly Roundup Again

Sep. 1st, 2025 08:55 am[personal profile] kalloway
kalloway: Camilla from Fire Emblem Fates looking pleased/smug (FE:F Camilla)
Alas, August ended up being a huge pile of Too Hot, though I did get to go see the local Gunpla Builders World Cup event mid-month.

August Plans )

Seriously, there are a lot of days I got home from work, took a shower, ate something, and laid in bed looking at pictures of Gundams til it was time to sleep. (At least it wasn't all doomscrolling?)

Anyway, September...

September Plans )

Again, posting this before it gets lost...

What a Month This Week Was

Aug. 31st, 2025 08:52 am[personal profile] kalloway
kalloway: (Cemetery 2)
It is the weekend. Whew.

Fri - adulting. Follow up Dr's appt & updoot in meds but everything trending good, no other problems. Mailed stuff. Bundled insurance to save ~$200/yr. Farmer's market!

The weather has cooled into False Fall, which I will take, since even though Second Summer is surely waiting, it means we are off Hell's Front Porch.

Sat - adulting? Home improvement store with my father. Lunch with [personal profile] purplehellebore for one last bit of birthday. (I guess I am finally older?)

I want to set a goal for myself for [community profile] smallweb September, as far as archiving goes, but idk what yet. I would like to get things archived... (ETA: goal of 'archiving some stuff' set, lol)

Working on Starfall again, and I guess I'm ready to try painting my IIBB project. I know I'm running out of time there. ^^;; Humidity continues to thwart my ass but maybe I can start hand-painting some small bits and see how it goes.

And I'm going to post this before I decide not to bother. IDK why posting has gotten so something, but I suspect increasing General Universe Fatigue.

you'd think i'd learn

Aug. 29th, 2025 10:20 pm[personal profile] raisedbymoogles
raisedbymoogles: (Default)
there's a digital art courses humble bundle and I'm tempted to pick it up, dust off my old tablet and give "learn to do art that isn't shit" one last try.

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