037: Giant Guns for Everyone
Work on the novel continues apace, in little 15 minute spurts. I’m juggling an early sequence where multiple characters’ trajectories are converging, and it is bad news for everyone. Fun stuff.
Plot wise…it’s about a teenage runaway who falls in with a rough and tumble crew of space crooks. There’s more to it than that, I think, but that’s the kernel. She hasn’t even fallen in with the space crooks yet in my draft, there’s time to figure out the themes.
Reading Pile
I just finished The Last Garrison by Matthew Beard, off the strength of Matt Bell’s (one half of the pseudonymous author) Baldur’s Gate II Boss Fight Book. It’s a D&D Seven Samurai riff, a story frame I’m always, always a sucker for.
(I think my first exposure to that kind of story was the Mighty Max ep “The Maxnificent Seven”, which was jarring as hell for a Saturday morning cartoon.)
Now I’m onto an old copy of The Best of Don Marquis (I’ve only ever read archy and mehitabel, but man, I love archy and mehitabel; weirdly enough, my first exposure to THAT was Daffyd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver’s DooM novels) and Mike Davis’ City of Quartz (which I either came to from Where the Money Is or A Burglar’s Guide to the City, I forget).
And, getting back to my little Sunday comics-and-donuts habit, I knocked out the latest two volumes of Dandadan (still amazing).
Sources close to the author have gently suggested this missice should be about maybe more than toys and games, and they’re not wrong.
That said: now we’re onto the toys and games sections.
The GI Joe Bazooka Guy Before the GI Joe Bazooka Guy
Continuing on with my little project to fill out the ranks of the original 13 Joes in the Classified line: hey, here’s Zap! Zap was their bazooka trooper, before they decided that was too subtle, and just hired a guy named “Bazooka”.
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Zap is a Classified Grunt body with the body armor from the 60th Anniversary Infantry figure to break up the green monotony, the head and backpack of Tiger Force Bazooka, and a bazooka from a Star Wars Rocket Trooper; 80s Zap came with a longer green bazooka than Bazooka himself.
The fun of these things is always trying to strike a design balance between the standard green duds of ‘82, and giving everyone a little bit of visual interest and individuality.
And a Gunpla
I’m slowly working my way through the giant stacks of Gundam models I have, building up from less-to-more complex…still on the less side with one of these cheap-o pre-HG 1/144 Vayette kits.
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And…honestly, I botched it. Messy gluing, especially on the breast section, and the damp outside meant the sealcoating over everything came out pretty cloudy in person. But I do like the acrylic marker work, to some extent; Hope had picked up some acrylic markers ages ago on Temu, and they’re a lot better than I remember even Gundam markers being from when I was a kid.
Final Fantasy Corner
That’s a wrap on FFIV; the first one of these games I’ve gotten everyone maxed out, I think, mostly because I grinded hard on Flan Princesses for the Pink Tails (does that sound weird? I dunno)
Anyway: definitely my favorite since FFII, if not my new favorite in this runthrough of the series. This was the one that most felt like a “Final Fantasy” to me: Summons! Airships! Optional side quests! Individually skilled party members! Romance! Sacrifice! Space!? etc.
Now, onto FFIV Interlude and The After Years, the first direct sequels in this runthrough.