i did it!! my first gunpla, aerial, has been completed.

it took me about 8 hours roughly. the most tedious session was the first, where i was learning how to follow the directions and where the pieces commonly snap together, those basic things. i did 2 more sessions after that, one where i just did the arms, and then the last session was legs, waist, and weapons, which took about 3 hours. i imagine as i get more accustomed to building i can shave off an hour or two.

i've never built anything this intricate before. i feel accomplished, although a little perturbed at my inability to hold the tiny pieces, lol. i've always been a little clumsy, but i feel like this sort of hobby really exacerbates that trait in me. i imagine getting better at holding the pieces comes with time, or you learn how to hold them in a good pair of tweezers if you don't trust your fingers, lol. it also probably didn't help that my nails are currently done, so they're longer than i'm used to!

overall though, my experience was positive! i'd love to go straight into building the next one, but my back needs a bit of a break. damn you chronic pain!! i'm interested in trying panel lining in the future, which seems like the easiest "extra step" to add in. waterslides and airbrushing painting is super cool to watch, but i unfortunately don't have enough space to accommodate all the tools you need for that. i should take it a step at a time anyways! not that i'll stop watching airbrushing videos on youtube tho...

ty for reading~

Mobile Suit Gundam - The Witch From Mercury!

I bought it on ototoy.jp and it's available in 24-bit 96kHz FLAC. Other than being available in the best format, I can confirm it is WELL produced and great for anyone with a good speaker and/or headphone setup (Currently listening to it with a FiiO K5 Pro + Grado SR80X.)

It remains my top anime of the year and at this point the best soundtrack of the year as well~

I'm really happy for all the japanese gwitch fans, it seems that for the first time in any official capacity Suletta and Miorine's marriage was acknowledged!!! Kana Ichinose referred to them as a married couple in an article on Gundam Ace from what I can gather by browsing twitter, we're having a second wave of fan arts talking about スレミオ結婚 (suremio marriage) and celebrating it again! Folks are congratulating them on their marriage and it's all absolutely adorable.

I've also seen people just saying they're super happy about it finally being confirmed over there, before this folks had to look to the official english gundam twitter, I saw them screenshotting "wife" and celebrating and wondering why it hadn't been confirmed in japan. It's been a while since the show's ended over there, and to have to wait for this long until anyone says "yes they're gay married"... I'm glad it happened, I think that's a good sign. Maybe they avoided talking about it because Gundam is a massive media property and there's still some taboo on taking the most basic stance for LGBTQ people. It was already big that they had a show all about a female protagonist for the first time and on top of that queer relationships, but it's like.. even when they're both wearing wedding rings they had to be hush-hush about it, I know now why they never had a wedding scene, same sex marriage isn't legal in Japan, I can imagine a lot of discussions were had about what to depict and how to depict it in the show during production, like what's acceptable, what'll still satisfy the fans and not leave them disappointed, etc.

It's complicated, but I'm glad people can celebrate their favorite lesbians marriage again, they knew in their hearts it was real before, now they really know it's real <3