Month: October 2020

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Knives Out

It’s a shame I didn’t see this movie when it was out in the theaters. I can’t remember why as I am a big fan of Agatha Christie’s Poirot and the murder mystery genre. I’ll just throw it with being busy with video games ;).

This movie has quite a few big names like Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Frank Oz and Don Johnson. Written, produced and directed by Rian Johnson known from Looper and Star Wars: the Last Jedi.

Mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey invites his family to his 85st birthday. The next day the housekeeper finds him dead with his throat slit. The police believes it’s suicide but a private detective is hired by an anonymous party as there is a suspicion for murder.

It’s the old Who dun it premise that made Poirot so much fun to watch as most of the people involved all had a pretty good motive to commit the murder. What I find awesome is that the detective in Knives out is called Benoit Blanc a reference to Hercule Poirot a fictional character created by Agatha Christie.

Almost all the people present on the day of his birthday had something to gain with the demise of Harlan Thrombey except his nurse and the family are in for a shock when the content of his will is revealed.

The movie was awesome and it’s such a shame I didn’t see it on the big screen. I’m hoping the remake of Murder on the Orient Express is just as good.

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Doukyusei – Classmates

I’m a sucker for good love stories. It really doesn’t matter is it straight, gay or lesbian love stories. And with good love stories I do not mean Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey, that shit is trash.

Doukyusei or Classmates is such a love story focusing on the budding love of two male students. As characters they are completely the opposite with Sajo being the diligent studious type and Kusakabe who is an airhead and has a streak of a rebel in him. They have been in each others class for a while but haven’t noticed each other until the class is setting up a choir. Sajo is only mouthing the lyrics but no sound is coming out which makes Kusakabe wonder why he does this. After school he rushes back to the classroom to retrieve his items and hears Sajo practicing by himself all out of tune. Spurred on by the moment he offers to help Sajo master the song for the school recital. Over the weeks they grow closer and Kusakabe assumes that Sajo is only doing this for their teacher, jealousy growing inside. On the day of the recital Kusakabe suddenly realizes their connection is gone and tears roll over his face. He flees mid performance only to be chased by Sajo.

I read a lot of BL (Boys love) but sometimes struggle with how the relationship develops. There are some books out there that didn’t start innocently, the main character is sometimes even harassed into the relationship. Just with real relationships I don’t think it’s possible to have a happy relationship if started with forms of harassment or even abuse. But Doukyusei starts off as a teenage love and develops into a long lasting relationship going through the trials and tribulations.

Another thing that I like about this series is the art style. It’s not like most manga’s out there with more of a fluid art style. I know that there’s 6 volumes published in Japan and just 3 volumes translated to English so I hope the other 3 will be picked up soon.

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BJD’s and scalpers

Sometimes I check certain Facebook groups while waiting for my lottery win Dollfie Dream Kizuna Ai to be shipped. I am not really an active participant in discussions on FB, just a lurker. I did post that I won the lottery bid just because, no real reason too but I wanted to be a bit more active. FB has grown to become a massive pain in the rear for me, lots of negative energy which is not good for a person like me. So I just lurk but I wanted to be a bit more active in the doll hobby since Covid-19 has hit us globally.

My plan this year would be visiting the Volks store in either Tokyo or Osaka and build my own custom doll but pandemic hit and travelling to Japan is not an option anymore (even if I could, I just didn’t want to travel with this shit still running free in the world). That was the main point for joining the lottery. First ever and I won, weeeeee. I had to wait a week for the results to come out and waiting with others was quite fun. We kept discussing our plans with our new girl.

Her face is what attracted me to her, don’t really care for her full set outfit.

After the results came in, some were really disappointed but if you lived in the USA, you could still join the Volks USA lottery. So Americans and Canadians got a second shot at her. Some people were already putting out threads to buy Kizuna Ai if you changed your mind while you wait for her to be shipped. It took a month between the announcement of the results and the shipping of the actual doll.

In one of the threads the discussion about scalpers came up. Scalpers are people who buy up much wanted items to resell them at a higher price. You have these fuckers in any consumer field: tickets for concerts & festivals, sports events and products. You wonder how they do it in the doll hobby as some items are limited to 1 per person. Well here is how: on a live event at one of the stores the scalpers pays others to stand in line to claim the doll. I’ve seen a video of a guy passing out a wad of cash to around 8 girls waiting in line. Infuriating. Online lotteries is the same practice, he has others set up accounts and uses them as mules for the transaction and shipping.

The main problem with this is as long as suckers keep paying the scalpers for overpriced stuff, they keep doing it. Back to the discussion because some of the members said they really need to have this girl. I mean I am lucky but I have missed out on preorders before and I’m just a stubborn bastard because over my dead body I will pay double or even triple the price. But discussions like these make me retreat again from FB-communities. You can’t change their minds if they want something at all costs and just leaves me annoyed.