Final Fantasy VII 100 Word Challenge

Many swords, again... worked on archiving and got a decent bit done. Close to a half-dozen new fandom pages? Felt pretty good. ^_^ I've refined my workflow and while I don't know if it's actually going any faster, it feels faster. Before, I would code up five or so pieces, put them on Neocities, and then put them on DW. Now I'm just doing one at a time, putting it on Neocities then immediately putting it on DW and logging it. Makes it a little easier to pause, if nothing else.

I do wish I'd put a little more forethought into how I'm logging what I've done, but I don't think there's any perfect solution there. After a point it'll be much easier, like when I'm just cruising through AO3 by fandom when there's only a few dense fandoms left. Right now I'm all over the place and logging things into composition books is getting kind of gnarly.

Worked a bit more on MG Tallgeese Flugel, but mostly worked on stuff for 30 Minute Label Day. Definitely not a prize-winning display, but a fun one. And that's honestly what I want - a fun display and one people can interact with. Like, I'll offer to let people touch, gently, and check out articulation and details and whatever. There's not much that can be broken beyond repair, if anything. Need to get back to my [Redacted] contest entry, too, as that's coming due very soon.

Goal for the week is getting my desk cleaned up. What even is going on here?!

Apparently last week was just a week of Doing Things, because along with setting up Saint All-fi (works most of the time well enough, thus far), I also made my first Suruga-ya order for the year. It arrived yesterday, and didn't get dinged for tariffs because it was all books. (One gunpla server is waiting to see how the tariffs are now and where the break-even point is for sales/fees, dollar-wise.) Two Gundam books, two Fire Emblem books. One replaces a weirdly damaged book from some years back, one I've never actually seen in stock before, two others just very good prices.

Premium Bandai did varying price points of Gundam Kit Fukubukuro this year, and just put up a few more sets. I snagged one earlier in the year and thought it okay and after some dithering, picked up another. They've all been very good deals, as far as MSRP goes. Since the one I just ordered is still a mystery to everyone, I'm going to try to keep it a surprise til I open it. This is difficult because plenty of people will receive theirs first and post to discords/reddit.

I am still mired in various projects, so my poll is still open for just a smidge longer.

Also, taichara and I had talked about Final Fantasy for weeks (months? years?) and what to play and I finally said 'roll for it' and we're playing Final Fantasy VII. I'm playing the Switch version, and trying out the various cheats for lulz. I am about to go into the Shinra building.

I also started playing Arknights again, kinda. I downloaded it onto a tablet so I could uninstall it from my phone (still there despite not playing in a year) and whoops, no guilt and a bunch of goodies, along with some nice QoL. Doubt I'll stick with it for more than a few weeks, but I did kinda miss everyone.

Ooof, I got incredibly off-course with these and it'll probably take a little while to catch up. ^^;; But here's a start!

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz: Glory of the Losers 1-5 (Katsuyuki Sumizawa, Tomofumi Ogasawara) - I have had all of Glory sitting around for ages and have tried to read it more than once only to repeatedly have Stuff happen. This time, I will grab my swords if Stuff gets in my way. While normally I'm fine with the Sunrise stance of "only animated is canon", this is a firmed up version of the story featuring a lot of amazing redesigns, extra info, etc. Looking forward to reading the rest.

My Love Story!! - anime, since I'd just watched the live action. Honestly, I liked the live action more. I thought the anime was only 12-13 episodes but it's 24 and it really drags in places. It's nice to have the setting and characters filled out, but it really drags in places. Can probably let it go since I can't imagine wanting to watch it again.

Tsukipro The Animation - S1, like with any idol anime, I'm here to listen to the songs as much as anything. One of the guys looks a bit like RS2's Noel so he's automatically my fave. I have S2 waiting in the queue.

Cyborg 009 vs Devilman - this is a lot of fun and a complete mess. Should you watch this if you don't know either franchise? No. Should you watch this if you do? Probably not. But you'll do it anyway, just like I have multiple times now.

The Omen 1-4 - ah, boycritter brought these over because I'd made a comment about never having seen the first one (or being aware of there being more than one, I guess). The first one was pretty good, 2 had me laughing uproariously at the bad special effects, 3 was decent, and 4 was atrocious. Good fun, but more ridiculous than scary and I also feel like 4 forgot half the plot of 3.

Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Ronin Warriors - technically the latter since I watched the dub. Absolute fun except for the middle part which I want to edit down with a knife. This is one of those "I have watched good chunks of this in the past but never made it all the way through" shows, and yay, now I have. (Except the OVAs which... I can continue skipping, lol.)

And now, I can't believe I'm watching these before even the halfway point of the viewing period - JFF Theater!

The Lines That Define Me - culture drama about a young man finding healing through sumi-e. Absolutely gorgeous and takes the time to explain sumi-e and demonstrate beautifully without feeling like it's taking away from the plot. Also very tropey, as far as culture dramas seem to go. Definitely recommended if you can watch JFF stuff.

Bonsai Warrior - a documentary about a guy traveling the world teaching and demonstrating bonsai. Interesting watch, worth it also for the information about bonsai practitioners around the world.

Thermae Romae - if you can watch any JFF film this quarter, watch this one. It's fucking hysterical in every way. The gist is that a Roman bathhouse architect is in a slump and ends up magically transported to a modern Japanese bathhouse. This happens again and again, and he experiences all sorts of interesting things (like a bidet, lol) but not really understanding what's happening. At one point, a group of old Japanese men end up in Rome.
(Roman slavery is a fairly prominent concept, however, if you would rather not.)