gaignun | Reading

What an incredibly busy week! The year end slide is absolutely in full force. But I have gotten things ordered, gotten things sent, etc.

Yesterday was a day of shoveling the 'rents out a bit, mailing packages, ordering a holiday pie, and picking up my first 3D printed request from the library. It will need some trimming (okay a lot of trimming!) before I even know if it'll work, but it's a conversion head for an HG GINN, to make it into Elijah's GINN. I did in fact tell boycritter that we needed to run to the bookie joint so I could get a little head. It was also their book sale weekend and I ended up with a couple of books, a few CDs, and a half-sized binder of clear-pages that will work great for model decal storage.

The weather was awful midweek. Just absolute snowpocalypse for a couple of days, and the worst was that it warmed up and then the temperature dropped like a rock, so everything is now frozen hell. It's supposed to warm up again next week but idk how much that'll help. I think I burned a lot of my ability to can just driving from place to place. (Also did some untoward things to my shoulders while working under the dash of an old Mustang.)

Really the only interesting thing from my week was a small brightly colored tank, lol. I did have a couple more of my Black Friday purchases finally roll in and I think I've officially crossed the space-to-store-stuff rubicon. ^^; Time to get building.

Also time to catch up on my inbox.

thawrecka

I'm skipping the question about food recommendations, because I'm going through a phase of disliking almost everything I eat.

littlerhymes asked: "Travel plans?"

These are all contingent on me ever having money again 🤣 which given how rapidly my home is disintegrating and I don't even have money to deal with that, feels unsure.

I have so many.

Can you believe that I've never been to Tasmania?? It seems like everyone I know has already gone there, so this will have to be solo travel (I solo travel so often but sometimes I long for company at the airport, you know?). Might be nice for a weekend trip. Of course I have to hit up museums and the markets and have some nice food. The natural beauty would probably be lost on me, and I'm unlikely to see that unless I go with a tour group, what with not driving and all. I'm thinking winter; the historical weather says it's not noticably cooler than Melbourne, though given the closer proximity to Antarctica the winds probably feel icier, but it's not exactly the frozen tundra and I do like to wear coats.

I mean, obviously I have to visit Sydney again.

The writing conference that I was meant to go to during the pandemic was on the Gold Coast... well, that didn't happen and I'm not going to the writing conferences anyway. But I really want to go to the Gold Coast again. My dad took me and my brother there after my mum died, so to me it's always felt like a place of healing. I haven't been back since a trip with friends in my 20s, which was lovely. But also it has tons of fried food and tacky crap AND I LOVE FRIED FOOD AND TACKY CRAP!!! Theme parks! I'm not overly into beaches, but it can feel ~exotic~ to visit them on holiday.

I also haven't been back to Darwin since the 80s, for that matter, so I should probably visit there, too...

...Yeah, I still haven't made it to Paris. I've wanted to go since I was a small child obsessed with sad French art films and ballet. It just costs so much money, though. The kind of holiday I could have for a week in Tokyo for $5k AU (still expensive!) would cost $10k AU in Paris, which is just prohibitively expensive for me right now. Maybe if I win the lottery??

I am slowly saving up for it, though. And Europe is so far that I will probably only ever go once, so I need to make the most of it when I do.

kalloway

It looks like I forgot to mention acquiring a pair of tanks from M at comic-con. They're 1/144 scale and were priced right (as in, I would have paid but didn't have to) and I finally got one built and painted with some paint markers I was trying out.

Because I am silly, and the best thing to do with German WWII tanks is be silly, here is Astray Blue Frame 2nd with a tank:

Blue white and orange model of Gundam Astray Blue Frame Second, a humanoid piloted robot, kneeling beside a matching model tank on a green cutting board.

Blue white and orange model of Gundam Astray Blue Frame Second holding the matching model tank in its hands as if she is offering it to the viewer.

The tank itself needs a bit of glue at some point to not fall apart at the tiniest of movements or drafts, along with a tiny hand-painted snake-mark, but overall it passes the two-foot test and I am pleased. (Blue Frame also needs a bit more work but I misplaced her decals and have gotten varying degrees of annoyed at her color-correction. I'll get there.)

kalloway

From Far Away 1-14 (Kyoko Hikawa) - for a beautifully-drawn shoujo manga with an interesting plot, this was such a slog that I am absolutely baffled. Like, I have bounced off this multiple times and basically made it through this attempt by skimming towards the end. Absolutely should have been my thing, absolutely was not. Base plot is isekai/portal fantasy, schoolgirl in a world with a bit of magic with a strong romance and good supporting cast.

"Gaiking" - the Force Five version of the series, presented on five DVD-Rs that I picked up many years ago. Despite this being an incomplete version of an already-shaved series, it wasn't difficult to follow and was pretty enjoyable. Had a 'movie version' added at the end.

RahXephon - complete series + movie. This is one of those "I will need to watch this again to fully follow wtf just happened" pseudo-mecha anime from the earlier part of the century. I liked it, and I liked the cast for the most part, though every now and then it felt like it was trying to go the harem route for no reason. I have a full DVD set with all the beautiful liner notes but I apparently also picked up a thin Blu-ray set at some point...

So, From Far Away can go, Gaiking and the thin RahXephon set can stay. Technically I guess this is a 50/50?

Anyway, even though we're into Actual Advent territory, I'm just gonna keep going and probably all through next year?

thawrecka

littlerhymes asked: "Standout books/comics/manga you read this year"

I was like, what did I even read this year? I feel like I've had more trouble this year than ever remembering what I actually experienced within the calendar year.

Goodreads to the rescue! I gave up on my reading spreadsheet early but I did dutifully log books on GR.

My favourites of the year:

Colette Decides to Die, volumes 1 to 3 by Alto Yukimura - the title makes it sound very grim, but this is a charming shoujo series about an overworked apothecary suffering burnout who decides to jump in the well when she's particularly exhausted, and instead of dying she meets Hades who is also overworked and suffering burnout and needs medical help. Through the relationship they develop, they learn the importance of delegating! And they have adventures! There's also a bit of a romantic element, but that hasn't progressed far in the volumes I've read.

It's a particularly soft & kawaii version of the Greek gods, but why not after all. I'm charmed by it. (I see a lot of discourse on the tumbles about how Greek gods are terrible and shitty in the ancient texts and therefore should only be terrible and shitty in modern fiction, but like, when I want terrible and shitty iterations of the Greek gods those ancient plays and poems already exist for me to enjoy...)

I did catch up on the last three volumes of Natsume's Book of Friends and it's still excellent and amazing and heartwarming & etc.

The more I think about A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon after the fact, the more I appreciate it. Such neat and tidy plotting, a nice spot of social commentary, and a fun story with cute illustrations, all in a slim 176 pages.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is the best book about a female serial killer I read all year. I like how messy and textured it is, how atmospheric, how rounded the characterisation feels, the insights it has into Japanese culture and the way it treats women, bodies and food. It doesn't come to any comfortable conclusions, and yet the ending still feels optimistic, and I appreciate how much space it allowed for ambiguity.

kalloway

I've done another bit of security-pruning and circle adjustment. Occasionally I just unfollow/un-access accounts that haven't posted for a rather long time. And I saw a few folks that are active again, so re-followed. ^_^ This is also a reminder that you can unfollow/etc. me for any reason and I won't take it personally.

I posted up a

holiday_wishes post over here. The most important bits are to tell me what to work on with my website and also send me Gundams, lol. I'm still granting all the wishes I can. This is such a fun time of year.

If you're in the USA (sorry, int'l shipping sucks), you can have some of my stuff over here. I really should make these posts more often as I spelunk.

I need to go through my communities and make/add some sort of No AI guideline to each. I just pulled a drabble from a community because they're allowing AI slop to be posted. It's now crossposted to my spaces and deleted from theirs. I'd always meant to create more for that community but that sure isn't happening now.

kalloway

Back to work... I expect the robots to be revolting tonight, for sure...

The one shop that I buy Gundam kits from started a massive Black Friday sale a few weeks back and there felt like there was something a little off about it... Yeah, they just announced they're sunsetting over the next few months because a billion reasons including tariff hell, but mostly peronsal-want-to-spend-more-time-with-family stuff. Better than being completely underwater, at least.

I'm going to try to get holiday cards out over the next week. If you're not on my usual mailing list but would like one, please PM me an address.

denise posting in

dw_news

Hello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means

karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )

Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.

On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.

thawrecka

I won't do a more formal version of the December talking meme, but if you leave prompts in the replies to this post about topics you'd like me to talk about I'll try to get through them during the month.

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Tara

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Travel hopes and dreams

Tanks A Lot

Media Roundup, Accidental Advent All-in-One Again

Best books & manga I read this year

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Look! I remembered to post before December started this year!

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