Starlight Mansion

Been a bit of a weird week at work. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday!

I mean, I'm always glad when Friday rolls around. But I'm especially glad this time around, lol.

No particular weekend plans coming up but I do have a few things I'm hoping to get done. Gonna try something different this time and pull tasks out of a hat. Or something like that, anyway. Might roll dice instead or spin a wheel. The point is that I'm introducing an element of chance. Can't get decision paralysis if I'm not the one making the decisions, right?

I need to reconsider the way I structure my evenings, I think. I keep realizing right as I'm ready to go to bed that I've forgotten one thing that can't or at least shouldn't wait. Idk, it's just annoying. I feel like every time I think I've found a workaround for my unreliable executive function, I lose track and slip back into bad habits. Which, I mean. I guess that's just what having unreliable executive function entail. Still frustrating.

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Mine was very quiet and low-key, as suits a rainy day. Had some tea, did some chores, worked on my "class" schedule, etc. The "etc" obviously did not include remembering to updates yesterday's post but I'll get to it.

Neighbors have been yelling at each other for like an hour. I freaked out a bit a bit ago, too, because I thought they were getting physical. Then I realized someone was just stomping and something got knocked over.

I could make out the lady of the house scream, "liar," and, "is it a woman," earlier so. Easy guess as to what the argument is, I suppose.

Guys, Idk. All the racket is making me nervous but I don't think anyone has laid hands on anyone. They're finally quieting down as I type this too... I don't like the idea that it could get dangerous for someone up there and I blew it off but I don't like the idea of calling the cops and potentially getting someone shot over a shouting match either. I almost wish that one cop still lived here, I might've considered asking him to go check on them.

Whoops, nearly forgot about Wip Wednesday! No prompts last week, so here's just a small clip of something I'm working on:

Thunderblast spent an extra few minutes fussing unnecessarily with the fabrics. Partly just to enjoy the way they flowed like fluid between her fingers, catching the light in appealing ways-- but partly, too, so she could enjoy the way Megaempress stood back and watched indulgently. Thunderblast deserved to be indulged, after the whole hostage crisis. Especially since Megaempress had sent a lackey to liberate her from the room where she'd been held.

Once she'd had her fill, Thunderblast fluffed up the last of the cushions and stood back to examine her work with her hands on her hips and a smile on her lips. She smiled over at Megaempress, eager for her praise. Megaempress smiled back-- still looking indulgent but not especially impressed. Thunderblast caught herself from frowning but did pout.

"Don't you like it?" she asked, a careful balance of whining and warning that she was quite proud of.

"Well, they are pretty," Megaempress admitted, stepping forward to skim her hand down Thunderblast's back, between her wing-like kibble. "I just don't understand the point. They're covering all the plugs and connectors, for one thing."

Thunderblast huffed, pressing back into that touch before moving back towards the slab with a sway in her step. She said, "You know how to appreciate a little luxury, don't you? You've got enough spas spread throughout this place." Acutely aware of every line of her body, she turned and lowered herself gracefully to the edge of the slab. "Well--"

Her aim had been to recline into an alluring pose. Despite how much she'd handled the fabrics, however, she hadn't thought to account for the difference in texture between them and the bare slab she was used to. No sooner had she settled her weight than her freshly polished plating slid right off the edge made slippery by the sheets. She flailed as she fell, catching one of the cushions, which did nothing to stop her from clattering to the floor in an undignified heap. Her kibble flared behind her, throwing the rest of the cushions into disarray and upsetting the lay of the sheets she'd spend so much time perfecting.

So, today officially ends the first quarter of my personal curriculum. And this is gonna be a bit of a lackluster post because I'm ending the quarter with almost nothing completed to my satisfaction :,)

For one thing, miscommunication and forgetfulness led to my clarinet recital for my sister and niblings not happening. We're still going to do it but it'll have to wait for this coming Saturday instead. Since that was literally my only "win condition" for this class, I'm technically not done.

My Korean course is getting finished after I post this but you guys already know I'm not happy about the way this one went.

I also was not able to finish my coding course as expected. Partly due to connectivity issues, mostly due to me misreading the sections and not realizing how much was actually left.

Aaand finding an algebra exam to suit my needs turned out not to be as easy as I anticipated and so that's another "win condition" as yet left unfulfilled.

Why do I say "as yet"? Because this is fake school that I'm doing for fun and personal enrichment. It's also my first attempt. Flexibility is the name of the game, babes! Especially since there are another four full or six-sevenths-full weeks of April after this first one, I'm making the executive decision to allow myself to make up my work. I am officially giving myself until Saturday, so I can start cleaner on the following Sunday. I mean, hey, I was still getting stuff figured out during the first short week of this quarter, right? Might as well!

I will still technically be kicking off my second quarter starting tomorrow, to be clear. The new "classes"/courses will just be running alongside my makeup work. Which sounds like a lot, I know, but I genuinely don't have that much left to do to finalize this first quarter. T'is both a relief and a frustration-- I was so close! So much of it came down to timing. Not only in the sense that I never fully recovered my stride after my vacation but in the way I scheduled things. I severely underestimated how much material there was in the coding course and didn't really dedicate the right amount of time to Korean practice either, looking back. The algebra was probably the second best-scheduled but I fell out of the habit of giving myself homework or going over my notes during the week. That's something I'll need to keep in mind going forward, depending on the subjects. Clarinet was the best scheduled until I got to the one-hour practice schedule and turned it into something I was dreading. Tbf, I think it could've worked if my weekdays were a little more uniform and I could more easily fix my sleep cycle. That's a thought I'll have to put a pin in for when I've got my license and have more control over my schedule, though, because it's not something I can do much about just now. Suffice to say, I'll not be keeping that practice schedule going forward.

As for my second quarter, I'll talk a little more in-depth about that tomorrow!

It's kinda funny to look at my collection and think how much of it I wouldn't have now if I'd had my goals and preferences figured out earlier. And yet a lot of things I wouldn't have bought have found a home on my shelves now and I have no intentions (as of yet) to move them along.

What's got me thinking about this is that Hasbro has announced the first box set to be released in celebration of the Beast Wars 35th anniversary-- the entire S1 Predacon team .

Here's the thing. The molds used in the box set are all from the Kingdom and Legacy lines, put out a few years ago. It's hardly unheard of for old toys in new, premium decos to be released for celebratory purposes, of course. But here's another thing. This is actually just a collection of the Beast Wars Again two-pack releases put out by Takara. Which, okay, it's actually pretty cool to get them in the US since they were an Asian market exclusive and, well. We all know what importing has been like these last couple years, yeah? There are always going to be people who are new to collecting; people who didn't want something when it came out but have developed an appreciation for it later; people who didn't have the means when they needed it.

This isn't really about people, though, it's about me and my collection and my collecting. I managed to get a few of the Takara two-packs for a good price not very long ago, so I know how impressive these things look in-hand. I also have plenty of gaps to fill, so a box set wouldn't be too egregious of a double-dip. But one of the reasons I haven't yet gotten the rest of those Takara sets is that I decided to reconsider and reprioritize after getting the handful I have now. Those molds are generally good and the updated decos elevate even the weakest of them. But even so, they're a touch... off. Whether or not they're too off is a question I've been able to avoid having to think too much about since I've not yet found comparable deals on the figures I still need to finish out the lot.

My main rule for myself these days, at least as far as modern toys go, is that I give a pass to anything I can't imagine as The Definitive [Character] in my collection. No picking something up just because I think it's cool or even because it's a favorite character. Even if it means having gaps in the lineup, some things are best appreciated from a distance. There are exceptions to this rule, don't get me wrong-- gimmick lines that I want as their own display group (Missing Link), small things that made for good desk toys (Blokees, Yolopark, Auldey), anything I need to make a "shrine" display (proto-Arcee, WheelRatch), toys that do better to represent different versions of characters (Animated). None of those exceptions really apply here, though. These toys have a theme, sure, but they're bereft of gimmicks. They're not desk toys. I don't have any shrine plans (Dinobot and Blackarachnia would be contenders here but I don't like enough of their toys, lol). And they don't do a great job of representing the version of the characters that I care about, even if the redecos do make a stronger showing, because their alt modes are molded to look more like the "realistic" animals seen in WfC: Kingdom than like the original cartoon models Takara's retooling is minimal. Not to mention some of them are egregiously out of scale, though, surprisingly enough, that's not something I've ever paid much attention to with them.

On the other hand... I really, really want the show cast in my collection with modern articulation. And I could just hold out for a full lineup of MPs to scratch that itch, I guess. But do I want to? A CHUG lineup already stands out from my vintage BW but that's in a way that I find visally appealing. For the whole lot of them to be wildly too big, Idk. The Beasts are important to me and I have to admit that the show cast is one lineup I'd prefer to have in every scale. But then again, that's a preference. It's a thing I want, not a necessity. And having a lineup of toys that represent buyer's remorse as much as they represent my favorite characters isn't better, imo, than leaving that want unfulfilled.

This is a really good box set, something Hasbro can't usually boast. The corresponding Maximal set, not yet formally announced but known to be coming, will be too. The prices are even decent. And if they doesn't sell well, Hasbro could take entirely the wrong idea from that and we just don't get another shot. We might not get another shot anyway, since Hasbro has only fairly recently paid attention to the love there still is for this series and have mostly capitalized on it by homogenizing the Beasts with the more standard mechformers in whatever G1-adjacent thing is new. So, I find myself pinging between "are these the toys I want representing these characters in my collection?" and "do I think we're getting anything better?" And, I mean. It's hard to guess about these things even at the best of times but let's be real. New toys of these characters could be off the table for a slew of reasons unrelated to whatever direction Hasbro decides it wants to take the property. And their being off the table will be among the least of the concerns related to those reasons. There's an element of escapism vs reality here and once I make myself be a grown-up and confront that, admittedly, it hardly feels worth even worrying about.

So, uh. I wasn't sure where I was going with this when I started, really, and I wasn't expecting to Get Real about it. But I guess this was a lot of words to eventually say, "maybe if they go on sale."

Idk what's going on tonight but it took forever to get a ride under forty bucks. Completely threw off my plans, as if my brain doesn't sabotage me enough on that front, lol. Ah, well. Some goals weren't totally met but at least I'll be getting to bed soon, so I can get up at a reasonable time in the morning. I've got all sorts of stuff I need to get done and I'm going to be very cross with myself if I don't hit at least a seventy-five-percent finish ratio.