I saw some photos of her (as opposed to the prototype) and I was worried she was going to be fugly, but she actually turned out quite nice. My biggest complaint is that...if you look at her from views other than front/back and 3/4...her clothes totally make her look fat. But she is nice. Maybe not 7800 yen nice, but nice. Also the box was way plain.

You know what I think a neat figure would be, though? Luke at the end with the Key of Lorelei pressed down into the ground. The base could be Eldrant-style tiles and he could have his jacket tails flying out behind him. It'd be awesome. Also suddenly -- final form Van would look way cool with that pattern on his arm and the feathers. And Asch...maybe doing that sword-close-to-face pose from the OP sequence, or kinda like when he's casting artes... Yeah. Forget it. Onward!

(This figure is not a toy. Ages 15 & up. >:/ !!!)

( Cut for large images. )

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PLUM!

(aka: thumbs, I'm an hour early but I want to be close-to-first. Ffff! D: )

I guess I owe a real life post.

WORK:
Work went through an evil phase of me doing a bunch of involved things that I really shouldn't have to do (it's not really my job to do them, and it's the customer/sales reps jobs to get us what we need to make ads look satisfactory, IMHO, but they don't). The sales reps keep giving me the "oh, but you do it so well~" cop-out and I have realized the short answer: I'm the one that will go above and beyond the call of duty. I'm the perfectionist. I'm the one who will struggle through an ad, rebuild from scratch if necessary, etc, etc... when everyone else puts a foot down and goes "Heck no, I ain't doing that!". Last week I rebuilt three jewelry wrappers (large pages separate from the rest of the paper that are bundled around the paper). This week I rebuilt a car ad with SIXTY-FREAKING-FIVE cars in it. And they had to be in price order on each row. And the boxes switch between black and white, so I had to change the colors back around on quite a few of the objects. I also had to open up all sixty-or-so pictures and convert them all to .tif, CMYK, 300dpi. WHAT. FUN~! [/sarcasm]. So, yeah. Basically I am the little "sweet" (not!) perfectionist who will get your ad done as nicely as humanly possible. Do I get thanks for it? No, not really... [sigh] But on the bright side, larger ads cost like THOUSANDS of dollars, and lots of people see them, so even though nobody knows I made them, I at least have an audience and at least the customers are pleased sometimes. And occasionally I hear about how pleased they were. I guess my employers can't complain too much.

STORMS:
The storm last night? It was actually pretty severe. Rain dumped on us in torrents from like 10-something for the next hour straight. It lightning/thundered pretty bad and didn't end until 1 or 2 AM at which point my dad sawing logs in his sleep woke me up. Seriously it got really bad as soon as I logged off. But no, I didn't hide in a closet like Haruhi. Although I did lay down on my floor with a book until it calmed down a bit.

BOOKS:
So, book talk. I finished the Jane Lindskold book I was reading which turned out to be pretty good, if still feeling too much like a summary of a book. Interesting plot twists near the end. One was obvious, the other not-so-much, but it's pretty common as far as plot twists go.

The book I'm starting now I've had for a while and got as a Bargain Book at Books-a-Million. It's part of a series (one of the later/last books and completely readable on its own, although now I'm kinda interesting in reading the others). Anyway, the interesting thing about "Singer in the Snow" is that it has a lot of things that coincidentally remind me of Tales of the Abyss. Pfft! I'm not kidding, okay?

So they have these people called Singers/Cantors/Cantrixes who sing/use an instrument (filla/filhata) to create music. This music then creates light/heat and can be used to perform magic (healing/calming/light stuff mostly). I don't know, but this reminded me a lot of Abyss' Melodists (for the uninitiated: Tear Grants is one) and the whole fonon/fonic hymns thing. The Oracle Knights in Abyss also have ranks that are ranks in the system in this book (which are music terms)... ie. Maestro/Maestra and Cantor. The other coincidence? There's a character named Luke. XDD Only this one is a stable hand and basically a normal person whereas the Abyss one is a noble. Maybe I'm just easily amused, but either way, I find the music/magic relationship cool, and the book is quite good so far.

TALES OF THE ABYSS/ROLEPLAYING:
Before I get off the Abyss topic, I know some people on my Flist here follow the Abyss manga... Do any of you know if there have been chapters with Tear flashbacks yet? I'm still looking for a few more younger!Tear images for a roleplaying event over on memento_eden, although I broke down and got a paid account/extension for her and have like 93 icons. Well, I kept switching icons out and realized I had made about 50 out of anime caps, so I went ahead and got paid for the next two months.

VACATION/MORE TALES:
Well, one week until my Niagara Falls trip! I'm really excited! Although I think it's a shame that most of the time will be spent riding in a bus to Canada. Only one day actually there. (I'll be gone next Saturday thru Monday.) I went by Gamestop last weekend and was going to get the first Star Ocean game for my PSP, but then I decided to ask if they had a used copy of Tales of Phantasia... and they did! So I got it for like $8. =D Only thing is it's hard going back to piddly little Gameboy games and a really sloooow battle system. But I love what I've seen of the characters so far, so I think it'll be all right. I still plan to get that Arche figure eventually, but not until after I get back. I also need to finish off the Abyss trading figures... >_>;; Poor Guy's surrounded by women.

ROLEPLAYING:
Still roleplay-related. I have decided I should research the other canons of characters I roleplay with that I don't know (and luckily I know some of them already). Like today I watched a fan anime project for Touhou Project to get a better feel for Aya and Reimu (since I have interacted with both of them), and my mind's vision was completely off. I had watched an episode of Soul Eater like a month ago and I realized I was a little misguided there, too. So I'd like to experiment with watching some of the other canons so I can read everyone's posts correctly and with a little extra insight. You know when you read a book and you get a vision of a character that's completely different from a movie version of the character, and sometimes completely different even from the book's description of the character? It's like that. Like in Firekeeper I never imagined Sir Jared ("Doc") looking as he is described. In my brain his hair is not black (I believe I read a few books ago that it was black anyway x-x). And I don't like beards, so I imagine characters without beards even when they supposedly have them. Stuff like that. Seriously. Give me a canon to check out if you want.

Still roleplay-related. Five-year-old Tear and three-year-old Lloyd at once... I still say I'm crazy for that one. But at least I'll be crazy all at once and not have to go back and forth between serious and moe!/kiddie. I'm... I'm looking forward to playing the moeblob. OMG. You have no idea.

So yeah, I'll end this essay...
....
....

MEME:
And I'll steal this from regalblaze while I'm at it.

Ask me a question about my roleplaying characters in context of the game. It can be any question, about relationships, history, plans, what they're doing right now, romance, what they want to do, their favorite comfort foods, anything. It just has to be about the character in game context. I will do my best to answer the question in as much detail as possible.

(Tear Grants, Lloyd Irving and Ren Tsuruga in Memento Eden; Anyone I have played in Kokoro; Yuan, Martel, Lloyd and Tear in Ad Libitum.)