Journey into Mystery

First of all, saying hi to people from fandomsecrets! I hope you don't get bored. I tend to forget to check my DW flist, but I'll try my best to fix that.

α About the 100 post challenge and Marvelesque feels

I was gonna do a follow-up of last time's graphic by explaining myth!Thor, but it might be too advanced for my chronic laziness. It always happens when my Marvel/Marvel!movies feels get in the way. Maybe I should pour that shit on Tumblr and spam any Loki tag like the HiddLoki fanbrats spam the ones I follow.

Speaking of which, I watched the Captain America film and enjoyed it. I also rewatched Thor. Couldn't find the Iron Man ones on my stepdad's drives.

Anyway, will try to post something else soon.

β Welcome to the 21st century, idiot

We got ourselves a cheap tablet (when I say cheap, I mean "bought with newspaper coupons and will likely break and become paperweight soon" cheap) about a month ago. I could upgrade it to Android 4.0.ish when the maker released the update. So yeah, now I'm familiar with Ice Cream Sandwich! :D

I also bought a new cellphone, it's a white Samsung Galaxy Ace which is pretty much an iPhone cosplay. But it's neat to have a smartphone anyway, as the tablet is family's and I can't really customize it that much. This one is on Gingerbread IIRC. But for extensive reading and multimedia, yeah, let's go with Mrs. Tablet. I need a nickname for the phone...

γ Conventions and local nerds

Last weekend, there was an anime con in our city, probably the last one this year. My brothers went as Gintoki and Kondo from Gintama. It wasn't as fun and well organized as last year's, but there was a really kickass Star Wars area with adult people cosplaying stormtroopers and jedis and other stuff (it's an association from Santiago de Compostela). Same overload of Shounen Jump fandoms as usual, when it comes to merchandising, but I saw some elusive fandoms. Let me tell you how surreal it is to see plushies of Kyuubey next to Kero-chan! There were also these huge Nyanko-sensei plushies but I didn't even ask the price as they were likely not cheap.

Here is the booty:
→ Strap for said phone (turtle plushie ;A;)
→ Mandatory geeky pins (Doctor Who logo, Finn from Adventure Time, comic!Thor)
→ Manga (all of Ribon no Kishi, Saint Young Men #1)
→ T-shirt of Okami
→ Baseball cap of Pokémon
→ Plushie of Dragonite! ;3;
→ All of Twelve Kingdoms anime on DVD. It was really cheap.
→ Also won a poster of the golden saints from Saint Seiya drawn chibi in a lottery (...lol)

So yeah, this was my past two weeks.

Hey, back from Madrid! Did anyone miss me?!

.......oh, I guess not.

I have yet to pick pictures because I'm a lazy bastard, and all the showing them to the family has left me as bored as they were. Let's make a short post of our adventures and misadventures.

DAY ONE: Lots of ducks

We arrived around noon. The zone we stayed in was near Gran Vía, but it was more like an informal Chinatown than a normal downtown to me. We went to El Retiro park, which seemed very relaxing at the time and then it wasn't because it's huge and it was a very hot day. But it was pretty and cheerful and full of all kinds of people from all kind of places! I'm not sure how Central Park is like, but it was like a less hobo-thug version of it. Really, really charming! Also, I fucking love Madrid's subway like you wouldn't believe.

DAY TWO: Pandamonium and dolphin pools

We left the big ride for that day, and it was less exhausting than expected but still draining. Of course, that was the Zoo. They have TWO baby pandas in exhibition and they're not staying in Spain forever, so it was a now-or-never kind of thing. THE CUUUUUUUUUUUTE! Of course, there were a lot of cute animals around, but pandas are pandas. The parents were also lazy cute fuckers. The red panda in front hated me and I couldn't take a good shot of it. But another great things was the dolphins looking at us through the glass and following our hands' movements. We also went to a mall with a sort-of-friend of mom afterwards.

DAY THREE: Adventure time

At the last day, we didn't want to go anywhere big. In the morning I rushed to the geek shops to see what rare merchandising I could squeeze from my fandoms (answer: NONE, to my chagrin; manly tears would be dropped if it wasn't for the maternal unit stalking my endeavors/distracting clerks/buying WoW T-shirts for brothers.) Still, my loot:

→ Edward Elric keychain that doesn't suck! I can't find a picture of it online, but he looks angry and violent in a cute way. Now you have your brother, plushie!keychain!Al!
→ FMA #26
→ Rurouni Kenshin Kanzenban #09
→ Blue Beetle #1-25 (hueg compilation volume)
→ The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (novel 1)
→ The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya (novel 5)

It wasn't that spectacular, if you ask me. Except for the SuzuHaru light novels, I could've bought that other shit back at home. Oh, and American comics are fucking expensive here unless you get the enormous volumes they almost never release. Sorry, sticking to manga here for that reason; I'm not paying 5€ per thin issue, assholes. Also, I suspect I must suffer from TWS to be about to read Texan-Mexican people using Spaniard slang (...WTF)

Okay, back to the trip and skipping every pair of shoes my mom got. We walked around a little and then took the double decker tour bus, to save time and see as many cool (and old) parts of the city as possible in the shortest time. The pictures are terrible, but we didn't regret it because everything looked so damn cool~

~*~*~

Aaaaand that's about it, give or take. No time to go to museums or shows (no mom, I don't like musicals beyond animated movies anyway.) But I had a great time at the few places I did visit and see. Who knows when will be the next time I can go out of town, so I enjoyed myself as much as I could.

Today sucked balls, though.

Okay, so... my stepfather is getting fired again, so we're going to be sorta poor from next year on until any of us gets a job. (Technically I'm still finishing my degree out of spite, but I've had a coder's block for months now and I'm too shitty to finish my thesis. Curse the day I came up with such an elaborate project! I want to get a job, but they want me to graduate first, except I'm too depressed to work on the thesis and their attitude won't help, and so on. It's a vicious circle, I swear.)

THE POINT IS... I kind of want to spend the money my grandma is giving me in something cool, as mom's present was already clothes and a pair of boots. Grandma still sends me 70€ as allowance every month, but besides putting some bucks away for the March/April 2011 NDS gaming clusterfuck I've decided to save up. Maybe I can convince my family to use that shit on, you know, food or bills. You know, guys, I'd be less useless if you let me give you my money or get a part-time job, just saying! I'm sheltered because you force me to be such! You idiots!!

I keep going OT because I'm bitter these days, sorry. So anyway, yeah. One last cool buy. Is it worth it, though? Or should I spend it in tinier things?

[Poll #1658892]

To be honest, the one I'd use the most is the e-reader since I have a lot of, ahem, legally dubious e-books in hand -which I can never read because reading on PC is tiresome. I can also read manga and comics, technically (no idea if it's legible, granted). The downside is that it's pricier than the other presents: the one I want to buy is 169€. But yeah, I think it's a good idea overall, and that model already brings a collection of classic books built-in as bonus. But if I'm going to get it I should be fast, because right now the shipping in FNAC is free for the holidays.

External hard drives are always a necessity. OTOH, I've developed a bit of a phobia to HDDs in general after so many times of them dying on me. I'm so unlucky, sob.

My DVD player isn't working anymore, so I might as well get a Blu-ray one so I'm not behind with the ages. I don't actually HAVE blu-ray discs or plan to buy any, but it's pretty cool to have the option open. Of course, from the expensive presents, it would be the one I'd use the least in comparative. I would use it, but mostly for normal DVDs and DivX avis.

Well. Derp.

After a huuuuuge mess at home, we went to a small Japanese-oriented convention in my city. It wasn't really impressive and there were even less stands than in the comic fair on the summer; I can't say it's because of lack of space, since they had spare room in the building they didn't use. They had a ramen stand (I didn't try it since I wasn't hungry), a video game zone with retro consoles, and some people were watching Summer Wars in the back.

I got a T-shirt of Tony Tony Chopper I hope it won't shrink in a first wash, the final volume of Aria, and something quite awesome: the first two volumes of Rose of Versailles! That series is ridiculously out of print here, so it's such a good finding. My brothers bought World of Warcraft beanies plus a Kirby miniplush for which Ale is getting teased.

There wasn't much variety as usual, especially for my fandoms. I still was drooling over a huge, pretty figure of Natalia (OMG TALES MERCH! AND IT'S NATALIA! *_*). The price was reasonable, but it was way too large and where would I put her. I wanted to buy something FMA-related, but they had either expensive jewelry or lame stuff (the only exception being a Brotherhood Trading Arts vol. 1, but I wasn't spending 40 bucks and I'm not interested in the Bradley one). I almost bought a Super Mario mushroom plushie. I thought about beginning the Lupin III manga but... I think I'm better off hunting the anime, yeaaaaah.

I'll finish the icon meme another day.

Hey, I'm on the verge of yet another compulsive online shopping over here? Second one this year! These would be the contenders to get my money:

On eBay:
Oh hi, remember that Okami storybook? THEY JUST RELEASED ANOTHER ONE. This one is in Kamui and seems to be Okikurmi-centric. Waka pops in, as usual. Either way, there's a seller with a few copies and the price is much better than in my usual place. US$23 total if I choose airmail.

On YesAsia:
→ Tales of the Abyss: Tsuioku no Jade #1-2. DO WANT SO MUCH. US$10 each.
→ Revoltech Mini Danboard (Amazon Japan edition). US$26.

NOW, this is 34€ total because I get the free shipping discount. The manga is self explanatory, it's fucking Jade. I finally found a shop with it that isn't painfully harsh on S&H. The Danbo... it's kind of expensive, but that's the cheapest I've seen one. I'm not one to buy toys, but the internet is FULL of cutesy photographs of Danbos and well, I want one now ;; A part of me thinks it's stupid and that I could buy a couple of good books with that money. So I'm still deciding on this one. It's on preorder here, meaning it might be out of stock afterwards. This might be the only chance to get one at all so...

Sooooo, I want all this shit and the prices are all fair for them all. Do I go for it? They might be gone if I blink.

Guess who just found that infamous Okami storybook on sale and JUMPED at it.

...:D!

A bit pricey, but I so don't fucking care. It's my Christmas self-present. Now I'll proceed to drag my ass out of eBay for the next five years.

I can't believe it!

What a pretty, sunny, warm day! ^_^ *is happy*

I even walked around the city after class. To be precise, I went to the FNAC to see if they finally had the manga I was looking for on January. They had Mushishi #9, but not XXXHOLiC #13. So I got that one plus the third Percy Jackson book. I've been in the mood for mythology recently, so it's fitting. I got a discount since it's Father's Day this week in Spain. Then I went to the Gamespot in the same street; didn't buy anything there (not that I could! I'm broke!) but I saw some interesting things on second hand. Then I remembered I can now download PS2 games instead, so I just made a mental note and moved on. Afterwards, I walked to the bus station, which I NEVER do. Yet even though I was carrying my jackets and it was uncomfortable, I was still in a good mood and wanting to do exercise.

So that's it. Now I'm going to have pizza for lunch, yay.

BTW, give me more characters for the headcanon meme.

Stuff bought online and to be arriving in the next couple of weeks:
- Kino no Tabi DVD boxset
- Okami Garyou Tensei (unless it gets eaten by the mail AGAIN!)

The latter means that my PayPal apparently works just fine. Hurray!

Oh, and I've learned that a part of my problems with the PS2 comes from one of the Magic Keys not having enough glue. Then again, it can be more or less solved thanks to another one of my problems: since I have to leave the tray open, I can push it every five minutes or so to make sure it doesn't move. Amazingly so, I've managed to play up to Engeve with this method! Now to find a tube of superglue...

My thoughts on playing Abyss like this: actually, I'm quite fond of the gameplay so far. True, so far I've only fought warthogs, bees, birds, and Oddish-like beings, but... I like my button-smashing in my Tales, what can I say.

Like I said, I arrived to Engeve, in which I managed to find:
- spaghetti recipe, om nom nom
- poultry and rappigs (BTW, there's a difference between pork and rappig meat. But since I have yet to see normal pigs, does that mean the pork is the warthog bastards?! eww)
- Jade ♥
- Ion
- Anise
- the valuable lesson of not buying food ingredients before upgrading weapons. DUMBASS

In other news, I think I never mentioned I'm replaying Symphonia, did I? Well, I am. I'm about to get to the Meltokio sewers. Incidentally, I went through the "hard path" on Sylvarant this time, to see the differences. And in this playthrough, I'm consciously not avoiding battles to level up well.

And the other challenge: I'm set to get Zelos as my BFF this time. It makes the hard path look easy in comparison.

Important ETA: We're in alert for storm again for this weekend. So if I never appear on the chan tonight, that means my Internet and/or electric power is dead. *recharges her DS just in case*

Because it was two days after Día de Reyes, meaning everything was sold out. I saw some 8GB models, but I wanted the 16MB one. And either in blue or purple. I reckon I'll wait one week or something till they're back in stock.

[Poll #1328101]

I think blue looks the coolest of the lot in person, to be honest, but I really wanted the purple one for my own geeky reasons.

Anyway, since I wanted to get me something nice for passing that exam, I got:
- FMA #18
- Mushishi #8
- Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Speaking of which, I'm starting to gather my info for the Mushishi fansite. My first problem, however, comes with the stories' titles. For instance, in the Spanish translations of both anime and manga, the titles are translated with different words as they were translated by different companies. And of course, they're in Spanish, and translating a translation is ridiculous. So I go online to hunt for the English titles, only to find that there's the same issue with Wikipedia and ANN. I might probably also have different names from the official releases (FUNimation and Del Rey), unless one of those is actually FUNi's.

So as weeaboo as it is, I'll use the Japanese titles with a translation next to it. I'll probably just either pick the nicest one from the two options or use the official FUNi one. The second problem is with the manga-only stories (which are the last five volumes), as I don't have the Japanese chapter titles at hand, plus waiting for Del Rey releases to get an official English title would be ENDLESS. The first part can be solved by downloading raws. Besides, I could recruit someone's collaboration to romanize (and perhaps translate) the titles.

Now I must check what can I do about the mushi's names. I bet that'll be the largest problem.

Total for this Order: $34.37

Delivery estimate: June 10, 2008 - June 20, 2008
Shipping estimate for these items: May 29, 2008
1 "Okami Official Complete Works"
Capcom; Paperback; $26.39

*flais*

And 25€ total for a +200 pages artbook is a pretty good deal. God bless the preorder discount.

now, for the love of the Brush Gods, release it ON TIME this time.