Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Y'know, sometimes people do things and I just can't find any appropriate response... Maybe it's talk about a diet, or self-help system - generally someone expressing a belief that sounds either outlandish or needlessly overcomplicating something simple to me. Years ago, I ran into this with a friend of a friend at a convention who was talking about dragons like she had one. Or had one watching over her. Or something - I don't even recall now other than how all I could really do to respond was smile and nod. Today, we went to borrow something from a friend who was at the train station with some sort of amateur ghost hunting group. That's "bad" enough, but one of the guys there sees the X-Files shirt I'm wearing (came from a Loot Crate, I think the show was fine, but it isn't meant as any embodiment of my beliefs or anything) and introduces himself, following up with inviting me to a... UFO support group? UFO enthusiast support group? Something l

After a veritech scene came up in our Lords of Gossamer and Shadow game, I was bitten by a bug to skim through possible mecha anime to watch, centering in on Macross series. I've only seen the origin via Robotech rewrites. I watched Macross Plus. Frontier seemed decently recommended, so I started in on that, a little bit surprised to find the series have actually been created with intentional continuity, referencing earlier series (even making an in-universe movie that seems to be a retelling of Macross Zero). In a Macross series, you're getting into a few things. At the very least, there's variable-form mecha, pilots, and music that has in-world effects. I haven't seen enough of the series to generalize too much beyond that, but I'm thinking relationships, especially a central love triangle, seem to be a commonality as well. Overall, I liked Frontier. Sadly, watching without audio, I miss out on the major music aspects, but still. The series manages to include

Hopes that I would be spraying primer before the weekend was out were optimistic, it seems. I do have torso armor places in a reasonably final shape with edges sanded and such. I may need to mold the back plate a little more. I did invest in a soldering iron with hot knife attachment, and that made cutting the sintra easier, though still an error. Sunday blew by. I already had a rough form together of sintra for the helmet I got up and started final assembly of it, then filled out a few areas with foam. Then comes the oft-referenced "bondo," an epoxy filler. This adds some rigidity and structure and gives you something to smooth the shape with. Then it dries and you have to sand it down. And repeat. A lot. The bondo sets reasonably quickly, but getting smooth contours takes work. A lot of work. I think I somehow put in over eight hours of filling, drying, and sanding in yesterday and while I sense progress, I'm not done. I'm a little shocked by the amount of time it

... no tears yet. Though I think having a finished suit of Mandalorian armor by the end of the month may not be a reasonable goal. I accepted that when I decided to actually go forward with it. That would be a better deadline if I'd gotten on board when the idea first sparked, but it took later events to make me say "fuck it, it might not really be worth it, but I want to do it anyway." I've learned the basic principles of using a sewing machine. How the thread is tangled and pulled still seems a bit like sorcery for me. And, well, my stitching is not good by any means, but I cut cloth and stitched it together into a vest shape. It may not be the prettiest work by any means, but I think it'll hold armor pieces well enough. Cutting 6mm-thick sintra is a chore with hand tools. An Exacto knife is fine for scoring/marking lines by a few cuts in it feels like any misplaced pressure is going to snap the blade. A Dremel has trouble getting through that thickness and

I am, perhaps thankfully, missing out on a lot of the baggage that's been associated with this movie. I don't pin hopes for gender equality on it, since that be a given regardless. I never really followed the character and comics, picking up general info tangentially. I have memories of watching the old TV show, but no real opinion or connection to it. If there's anything that might cause me to prejudge the movie, it's how the last handful of DC-based movies simply haven't appealed to me. Everything I've heard second-hand (which is a fair bit) makes me feel DC missed the mark with those. Wonder Woman is good. Some of the CGI is a little "meh," but not so bad. The movie feels a little long to me, but I can't think of much I would choose to cut. I've heard it said that the WW1 setting makes it harder to connect for a modern audience, but I didn't feel much of that. Really, it works. There are some solid action pieces. I wouldn't give

A situation came up in last night's Lords of Gossamer and Shadows game that is, to me, interesting to consider. And from a GM who seems to dislike drama in all forms even. Oooo! ;) The player group was faced with a trading group of a slave-holding society. The reactions of PCs who are more hero than not was reasonably predictable as the situation became apparent, with what is actually a nice range to watch. I'm a bit disappointed a few players weren't very present/involved, as I find the reactions fairly telling of characters. We had one character willing to create and throw a whole bunch of gold at the problem to buy the slaves present with the intent to murder the others (well, sink the ship, which is probably the same). We had one who instigated some confrontation, but turned the follow-through over to another who supernaturally caused the slave-owners to feel compassion for their slaves and let them go. Frankly, I think those would be a bit more fun to play than t

Ah "summer." Less traffic going to work and warmer temperatures. Not a bad weekend, even if I'm going through spiraling issues in some minor ways. I'm actually trying this cosplay thing. I'm not sure having an outfit finished by the end of the month is practical. We'll see. So I went to print out some helmet templates using the printer my parents left when moving. Setting it up wasn't too hard. Black ink was fine, the colors were all low, but when I printed monochrome, I got a blank sheet. I ran the cleaning, and then some black showed up, so... have to clean more, right? Well, magenta ran out. I had to replace the color ink to run the black cleaning process in order to print black decently. Sheesh. I also had to replace yellow before it was done, but got those printed. Then I get confirmation that I have a big head - larger than the default templated helmet would fit comfortably on, at least. But I'm a few steps closer to getting things figure