rearranged my resident evil shelf a bit. i just moved my re2 leon onto the shelf with re4 leon but it looks cute and now i can see them both more easily. im gonna have to redo it again when my other figs arrive but for now this is cute and fun. i also took some pics of re4 leon because i love the figure so much

i have a lot of plans for this wall and i'm itching to rearrange the room entirely. hoping i can thrift some good pieces but for now i'm happy enough with it to the point i'm not pulling my hair out about it. instead, something else is making me do that and i have no idea what it even is.

i don't know what it is about the weekends that makes me spiral but every friday and sunday im just hit with this horrible wave of misery that just pisses me off lol. i dont know if it's because i feel compelled to do something "fun" or what. i try to do chores/household stuff throughout the week so that my weekend will be free and i dont have to stress about it. but then the weekend comes and i'm so indecisive i just frustrate myself into a bad mood about it and end up doing nothing.

i've also been struggling with feeling like i haven't earned my fun or there is something i could be doing that's more productive. idk its a fairly new feeling that i'm struggling against. i don't like it.

i'm also going through another "you need to delete everything! you're embarrassing!" phase so i'm trying to avoid that by just heavily editing previous diary entries. not sure if it worked but. we'll see. not sure what to do to distract myself/appease that impulse without actually deleting everything and then crying about it later.

ohmst well!

well, i was mostly correct in dreading going back home, even if it was for a week. the trip was mostly awful, had some good moments sprinkled in, but i am so thankful i am home now and i hope i never ever have to move back home ever or i fear it may be over for me if i do. lol. anyway. onto the trip.

friday:
when i landed i was nervous about seeing my family again, it's been around 10 years since i've seen them but mom has never shied away from making comments about my weight and my brother has no filter to speak of so i was just expecting a lot of "wow, you've gained weight!" comments. thankfully, they didn't happen just then.

We got in the car and got dinner together. it was at a place called culver's and it was pretty good. afterward, my brother fought with the GPS the whole drive home and turned an hour-long drive into two hours. needless to say, i went to bed almost immediately when we got home. my old room had been turned into a workout/cat litter box room, so it smelled strange and looked like a storage room with a bed shoved in it. mom had thankfully moved the litter boxes for my trip and put a little air freshener in there to try and mask the odor lol, which i appreciated. i was nosy and peeked into my younger sister's room before going to bed and discovered that it had remained unchanged and almost weirdly preserved, like they were waiting for her to come home any minute. i tried not to let that get to me because, after all, she did have the bigger room. i also have no intention of ever moving back here so i shouldn't be upset that my room has been repurposed.

aside from being a baby about that, everything had gone fine so far. i was excited to see the cat again, mom rescued him as a stray around the time i graduated. he's definitely much sweeter and cuddlier in his old age.

mello... named after mello from deathnote. courtesy of my sister and i lol

saturday:
my dad was driving up today and would be staying with us so that he could also see me. I love my mom for letting him stay, it's probably not easy to hang out with your ex-husband for a week. at least they're on decent terms and can be friendly. i was still stressed about it because they are divorced and who knows what hanging out for a week could bring back up.

while we were waiting for him, mom and i decided to go shopping. she wanted to go to bath and body works and i wanted to see just how dead our mall had become.

spoiler alert: very dead.

the drive to the mall was strange. everything had changed and somehow stayed the same. I could barely remember my way around town anymore and it was just a strange feeling. this had been home once, even though i had hated it.

forgot how many cornfields there were...

they'd tried to reface the mall, which as mom said, was almost entirely empty. it seems pointless to try and make it trendy while its on the verge of death. i think they had less than 15 stores left in a mall that once had nearly 40. the old hot topic had somehow survived, complete with the original brick-facing they had on the stores back in the 2000s.

spent way too much money here as a kid

we went to thrift stores after and i've been super lucky finding really old toys/video games out here in the past but it seems like the thrifting resell trend also caught on here bc prices were a bit whacky. after the thrift stores we went to an antique mall that mom loves and i found some stuff i wanted but was a bit too pricey for my taste.

really wanted this portrait of someone's grandma but mom was creeped out by it lol

dad finally got to the house around dinner time. when he got there he pulled me into a hug so big i thought my back was gonna break lol. we all hung out on my mom's back porch and i was really hoping to find and bring back cicada shells so i went on the hunt for them. we don't have them where i currently live and i missed hearing them in the summer. their shells are also really cool and i want to put them in little jars. i managed to find four of them!!

so cool... they look like they've been painted in this photo i have no idea why LOL.

we played a card game called spades later in the evening. I'll spare you the details my dad was horrible at explaining the rules LOL. i lost tho <3

sunday:

Mom's job gives out tickets to the fair every year so we went! i haven't been to a fair in ages. we ate first bc mom's job also provided a lunch. after we ate we walked around. mom and i wanted to look at the animals . mom was so funny she was literally jogging to see the horses. she looked like she was 5 years old again.

my brother didn't want to ride any rides which kinda bummed me out bc i didn't want to ride them alone. we didn't stay very long because of that so before we left we grabbed some food to take home and i bought my dad a funnel cake(that he ended up saying was gross lol).

later in the day my aunt and cousin came to visit and this was the beginning of the end lol. mom, dad, my brother, and i were all playing cards while they watched. we were talking normally, my cousin made it weird because she ALWAYS does, we try to change the subject and she doesn't get the hint. This woman is in her 50s btw.

i left for the bathroom to try and escape it for a bit and when i came back they were all talking about some "ugly woman" they knew. that they apparently considered a friend.

turns out this woman was a butch lesbian. can you guess how quickly the night dissolved after i discovered this? :)

they go on and on and on and i'm trying so hard not to tell my cousin/my entire family to eat shit and die LOL. the ONLY reason i'm trying so hard to keep my mouth shut is that mom bought the tickets, it was her money that i was even there. i didn't want to blow up on people and then be called a spoilsport that ruined the evening over some "jokes". it'd happened too often when i was younger and spoke out, i knew it would happen now. i wish i had blown up on them, in hindsight. it's what they would've deserved.

i'll spare you the lesbophobic drivel that was pouring out of my cousin's mouth and the fact that my entire family was agreeing to it.

i just get up and leave the table at one point. I think they all went out for smoke break i can't really remember. i went upstairs to my room and cried like a baby. it was weird crying in my old room again over something a stupid family member had said to me. it felt like i was a kid again in the worst possible way.

mom texted me and asked if was going to be rejoining them and i told her no and explained why. she told me she understood and didn't know why my cousin had even spoken like that to begin with. this only pissed me off more because my mom didn't utter a word in defense of me. or tell her to shut up. my mom will defend my brother's horrific sense of humor but she can't defend her lesbian daughter when her cousin is repeatedly looking at me and saying i don't get lesbians. like yes, thank you that was abundantly clear.

i went snooping around my old room after that to try and calm down. i found my old cd case that i had throughout high school. all my old CDs were still in there! i brought them home. i also found old sketchbooks and some of my old art. i brought some of them home too.

monday:

my brother and i went to some local game shops!

i hit the motherload and found silent hill 2, resident evil 3: nemesis, resident evil 6(complete with stickers), and three resident evil mags. i was so excited and i found them all for really good prices. couldn't ever hope to find them for what i did where i live now. the shop i found sh2 in also had sh3 for only 50 dollars but it was the european version. i was devastated i had to leave it behind.

wednesday:

we went to the zoo! it was one we went to as kids a lot so it was neat seeing it again. it's changed so much. i got lots of compliments on my outfit that i was scared of wearing. afterward, we got lunch at this place called portillo's. it was soo fucking good.

it was a good day!

thursday:

my brother and i spent some time together and drove to a nearby city to check out the gameshops.

it was a miserable ride. my brother has this annoying thing he does where he puts on this super masculine macho personality in an attempt to look more adult/cool than he really is i think. either way he had it on the whole ride up and i was stuck with it for an hour and a half.

i didn't really find anything at these shops. this was a bigger city than my hometown so i think they were a little more heavy-handed with the pricing because its a large college town and people are more willing to shell out. but who knows. my brother found a few pokemon games he was looking for. i realized when i was back home and looking through my photos that the first shop we went to had the silent hill HD collection for $20 and i was so bummed LOL. i know that the HD collection is a joke but i really wanna play sh3 without having to pay $200 for it. thankfully it doesnt go for much online but i was still bummed.

one of the game shops we went to smelled horribly of gasoline and the staff there was SO fucking rude it was crazy. they had a few games i was eyeballing but they were such cunts i decided not to buy them. maybe dont be a condescending jackass when i'm obviously debating on buying something. maybe i would've bought your copy of resident evil outbreak!

being a nerd/gamer/whatever is so mainstream now you literally CANNOT be a twat to people anymore about it. you shouldn't have even when it wasn't but like. holy shit. wake the fuck up bro you're not an outcast because you play video games you're an outcast because you're an asshole!!!

we got lunch at steak n' shake which was a bizarre experience and not at all what i remember it being. there are no servers anymore and its all digital it was so weird and almost a sterile dining experience.

we started on our way home after that and for some reason my brother randomly decided to start making transphobic jokes about one of his coworkers and we got into a huge fight about it. i was screaming at him and he started screaming at me because i "take everything too seriously" like sorry i don't think you throwing the t-slur around is funny and never have??? like why did you think i would laugh??? we got stuck in standstill traffic for about two hours and sat in complete silence for the whole ride home.

totally miserable day that would have otherwise been fine if my brother wasn't a complete and total moron.

saturday:

my dad left early saturday morning because the next day was my brother's birthday and i think he was afraid of wearing out his welcome. i was worried sick about him getting home but i helped route his gps and he called me when he got home. he didn't get lost or try to fight the gps. Yay!

sunday:

my brother's birthday. his friends were coming over so i was kinda hiding out all day. I do not like his friends and they make his already bad sense of humor worse. mom cooked some food on the grill and got a cake. i mostly hung out with her all evening. i got eaten ALIVE by mosquitos because mom loves hanging out on the back porch. it was nice to spend time with her anyway.

i went to bed early because i had a long day of traveling ahead of me on monday. i was worried no one was gonna take my airport mania seriously because i like being there super early.

monday:

mom took my airport mania seriously. thank god. the airport was an hour away and with traffic in this state i had no idea what to expect. we got there early, it didn't matter anyway because my flight got delayed. mom parked and walked me in and we hung out and got breakfast before i went through TSA.

it was hard saying goodbye. my trip hadn't been the best but i still love my family even if they piss me off constantly. she wants to do this again next year and i probably will but. we will see.

i slept through both of my flights and before i knew it was home to dutch!! it was sooo good to see him again and to be back home. we got cane's for dinner and just chilled together it was so nice.

here's a collection of all the christian stuff i saw back home. it was everywhere and there was even more i didn't get to get photos of. it wasn't just churches either. I kept trying to get pics of the signs we'd see on the road just randomly placed and menacing as hell. i'd forgotten how it's literally just... everywhere. there was a church every other building it seemed. one road in town has five, all different sects all in a row. it's wild. my mom kept asking why i was taking pictures of it all. its weird thats why!

mom bought me tickets to visit and the date is approaching faster than i'd like. i'm dreading this whole trip and i know i'm being dramatic and it will probably be fine when i get there but i keep Freaking the hell out about everyone i'm gonna have to see and the shit i'm gonna have to deal with and it makes me crazy.

i'm really hoping they'll all be so excited to see me its not going to matter and they'll be on their best behavior but i'm skeptical. i know my family and they seem incapable of keeping hurtful shit to themselves and it makes me crazy and that's just my immediate family!!! i'm also going to have to see cousins and aunts. who i do not like. and my mom's friends and my brother's friends and i'm like. ugh. i do not like these people! just from the stories i've heard about them. i don't want to meet them!!

i know this is awful but i'm already looking forward to leaving. i like being home with my gf more than anything. i love my family but the distance between us is for the best and i know it is even when i'm missing them really badly.

really hope this trip goes well and i'm just freaking out over nothing but i'm so anxious about it lmao i feel filled with dread over it and it's making me crazy.

i'm actually so impressed with how quickly he shipped and arrived. i think we got the tracking number this week and he's already here. we got him from onesixthkit, which i cannot recommend enough. he was packed incredibly well and obviously the ship time was insanely fast.

Capcom didn't officially license this figure, so there will be slight differences from his canonical model appearance. i still think he looks great for a "bootleg" but i know a few people disagreed based off the promotional images master team toys shared. honestly, i don't think those images do him justice at all compared to how the figure looks irl. he looks great and the likeness is close enough that i don't feel like i have a stranger sitting on my shelf.

on a side note, i think the only 1/6 figures that are officially licensed are the DAMTOYS figures of the re2 remake and the old HOT TOYS re4 and re5 lines (which are now being resold for ridiculous prices). i've no idea if official figures for 4 remake are in the works because apparently, the resident evil licensing is notoriously difficult to get/work with. so we will see if anything comes out. i will foolishly be hoping.

anyway, back to the gorgeous figure we do have!

he came with a good amount of accessories, lots of hands, an "angry" expression, and a stand. having to put his gear belt together was very daunting and i was dreading it. those little straps are so fragile and testy, i get scared i'm going to rip them or something. i do wish we'd gotten some more "fun" accessories because so many figures come with pistols and shotguns its kinda crazy. some 1/6 ada figures are coming out that have really cute accessories and im hoping i can get them secondhand for a good price.

this leon figure has moveable eyeballs which is so cool and i'm excited to take pics and utilize them. It is kinda hard making sure his gaze is even but it's such a fun feature i don't even care. i can't wait to play around with him.

he has a soft body, which i love/hate because i like the invisible joints but the silicone is susceptible to tearing if left posed too long which... sucks. my kitbashed leon has a soft body and i left his arm bent too long and now he has a torn elbow. the bodies are easily replaceable but it's still frustrating. i want to do cool poses without having to worry about damaging the figure.

his clothes are so nicely made and i'm thankful they opted for this material rather than faux leather for his jacket because that can flake/peel with age (rip to dutch's hot toy re4 leon's jacket). i had to pull down his pants a bit so that his pants weren't pulled up past his belly button and that his shirt could sit over his belts like it's meant to. getting the bags on his utility belt was a Chore and god was it stressful. the small clip pouches were the hardest to put on because the loops were so small.

i brought dutch's midnight wesker in for a photo op and they argued over who is the best sanrio pup: pochacco or purin. leon isn't having it, it's obviously pompompurin! i love the moveable eyeballs lol... they're so fun and add so much emotion to the figure! i completed my unboxing with a family photo of all my 1/6 leons. look how nice they all look together ^__^!

i have a gorgeous 1/6 ada, also by master toys, coming later this year and a 1/6 wesker by present toys coming early next year. i'm so excited to have them all together again and can't wait to take a ton of photos!

redacted bc it was cringe and i'm embarrassed now

redacted bc it was cringe and i'm embarrassed now

the stupid thing locked up and froze before shutting down entirely while i was out with the dog. i couldn't get it to power back on so after my pup did her business i hauled ass back to the house and ran to get on my ipad to text my gf. as i was sitting down i tossed my phone onto our coffee table, something ive done before with no issue. This time, i heard this awful cracking sound and when i looked, my phone's screen was bowed and shattered. the battery had made a nice little pillow out of itself and destroyed my screen.

after freaking about it, scrambling to get photos off of it, and trying to factory reset it all while being scared it was going to burst into flame we ran to the local best buy to recycle my old phone. the pillowed battery was making me nervous and i really didnt want to play god with the thing. afterward, we went searching for a replacement.

thankfully we found one at a good price. we made a pitstop at claire's and a local place for a phone case and a screen protector. while we were at claire's dutch got me a little purin mystery figure. i got the omurice purin ^__^. we went home and i started setting it up. i lost progress on a few apps (rip all my pompompurin plushies on hello sweet days 💔) but otherwise, i was able to restore almost everything. i immediately set to customizing it with leon pics and made a new photocard to put in my phone case.

let me start off this rant by saying i don't think you need a "valid" reason to hate a character. you can simply hate them, i truly do not give a fuck. there are a lot of characters i simply hate for no reason or over a truly stupid reason (the fans). its expected, right? but with women characters, specifically morally grey women characters, even more specifically poc characters, people really pull out all the stops to be just... fucking deranged.

ada wong is one of those characters and the behavior surrounding her is. astounding. repulsive.

i'm just gonna say it. most people i see hating on ada are just misogynists. or racists. mostly, they're both. they hate her violently. it's almost frightening how much energy they expend hating her. they seem to get off on it and love boasting about drawing her with her throat slit(a real thing that i witnessed happen on twitter), calling her a "black-haired bitch", and "bitch in the red dress"(this is something krauser also calls her in the game but... whatever.), a slut, a whore, a cunt. some people have just outright called her slurs.

they blame their hatred of her on her morality, but i don't honestly believe them. the way they talk about her i simply cannot believe it's over her moral ambiguity. not to mention, these same people also enjoy other morally grey/just plain evil characters like wesker, luis, krauser. for fucks sake leon and chris are morally grey at this point!!! like, oh my god.

a lot of the hate toward her is spurred on by shipping wars. not going down that rabbit hole, but holy fuck is it fucking stupid. the worst part is its all over fucking leon s kennedy. seriously? you're gonna argue about who should be a tradwife for leon?

i love leon, obviously. but you're gonna boast about how you have a dart board with ada's face on it over him? over a man? embarrassing.

i see people talking about ada and its just so obvious that they have so much shit internalized and don't even realize it. they can deny it all they want but when you're talking about leon and ashley as a couple and make a statement like: "there are no leashes, no humiliation, leon is a man with her." you have to realize there's something you're not addressing within yourself lol.

like, let's unpack that statement. you're not less of a man if you're submissive. you're not lesser for participating in dom/sub or humiliation. implying otherwise is just ignorant. they take a great deal of trust and communication and honestly, self-confidence. i'll save the rant about anti-sex, anti-kink attitudes in fandom for another day, this entry is gonna be long enough as it.

another thing they like to do is... make shit up. to justify hating her? they say she doesn't care for leon, she just wants to use him and she's an uncaring bitch. but she compromises herself and her mission for him countless times. she could've let him die in RC. instead, she tucks him in with her jacket after patching him up lol. she could've let him die in 4. she could've given wesker the amber and gone on her merry way. what does she do? saves him. over and over again. they say leon doesn't care for her which. lol. okay. you played the game blindfolded and with ear plugs in, apparently.

i'm not sure why luis, wesker, and krauser get a pass when it comes to manipulation and being morally dubious. well, i do. but again, a rant for another day.

it's just strange. i don't really see this sort of vitriol for other women in resident evil. yeah, people are shitheads about them but i've literally never seen anyone talking about how they want them to die or brag about drawing them with their throat slit.

the post that inspired this rant really got to me, i'm not sure why. i was hoping it would come to me as i wrote but it didn't. the post said that ada kissing leon on the tram was sexual assault. putting aside the fact that it is grossly wrong, irresponsible to call it that, and that he enthusiastically kissed her back. people mod claire over ada all the time in that scene. they love it! but somehow suddenly the scene is fine then? only when it's claire doing it? strange.

ada is a lot of things. she is manipulative, she is morally grey. i get that not everyone is gonna like her. she is also, at the end of the day, a dragon lady stereotype. i think the remakes did a lot to correct this but it's still there, it's still an issue. i don't see people hating her for these reasons, though. there is always an undertone of violence in the reasoning and when confronted with this fact they double down or deny.

i love ada, i love how complicated she is. i love that what happened in RC shook her to her core and now she's got to reckon with that. i love her moral ambiguity that contrasts with what's truly inside her heart. she's got softness, she's playful, she takes no shit. she's a badass. i just love her.

i'm gonna wrap it up because i've made this entry too long and talked in circles but. people need to shut the hell up about ada if they hate her so much. they talk about her more than they do the characters they supposedly like. fucked up that not even fictional women are safe from this shit.

yesterday, i was sitting on the couch when i noticed something skittering across the floor. it was a local, very tiny, fence lizard.

it seemed to be a little tired which was good for me because it meant it wasn't as fast as these lizards normally are. we have big furniture and a lot of nooks and crannies. if i lost line of sight, i doubt i'd be able to find it again. i have no idea how long it was in the house. i'm thinking at least a couple hours. i think it got in when i took the dog out earlier in the day. i managed to get it to a corner and herd it with a sock(lol) where i gently grabbed it. i dumped it in a jar so it couldn't escape my fingers and to avoid potentially hurting it. i ran upstairs to show dutch how tiny this little lizard was. we both giggled for a few minutes, overwhelmed at how cute this tiny guy was before i brought it back outside where it belonged. i hung out with it for a few minutes and it chilled on my hand for a bit. afterward, i put it on a flower stem in the sun (it was a little too cold + a bit lethargic) but made sure it was hidden enough so that no predators could get it.

here he is... images dont do much to convey how small this little guy actually was.

later in the evening i took my dog for her big walk and a tiny bug landed on my shoulder. it was a woolly aphid. i'd never seen one in person before and it was so cute, it looked like a little fairy. i carefully guided it onto my finger to observe it better. as i watched it stretch its tiny wings in the evening sun i was kinda blown away by how amazing nature is.

little fairy.

redacted bc it was cringe and i'm embarrassed now

he's so cute, i can't get over it.... even his box looks great! i was so anxious to get him out of the box but first... pictures.... >:3c i took so many its kinda embarassing lol but i've been waiting on him for a while so i think i'm allowed a moment of cringe.

i had so much fun playing with him, his little accessories are so cute. i'm afraid of somehow losing his gun and knife so i've decided to keep them put away. i want to get the ob11 body for him eventually so that he and my custom wesker nendo are in scale. they captured a lot of detail on such a tiny figure and i'm really impressed by how good he looks... i hope they continue making more RE nendos and maybe even re-release the chris 25th anniversary one they came out with a while back. i'm really hoping for an ada nendo... fingers crossed.

he looks so cute with the capcoroms!!! i'm so glad he's finally home hehe... he fits right in with the rest of the leon gang. can't wait until my other preorders come in and i can take some more family photos ^__^

he's so cute! i can't wait to pose him with my custom wesker nendo and the little ada and wesker capcoroms. I might consider making a collection page on here eventually as well and dedicating some time to taking nice photos of my stuff. photography isn't really a strong suit of mine but i'd really like to get better at it. tinkering with this website has really encouraged my creative drive and i really wanna stick with it.

i hope he arrives quickly! i've been waiting so long and so patiently but now knowing he's not that far away is killing me! right now he's techincally sitting in the goodsmile warehouse waiting to be shipped. i seriously wish it wouldn't be marked as shipped until it was moving though the postal system but... i am not a post master and thus must deal with these things...i have a few more things sitting in pre-order and hopefully one of them should be shipping soon(within a month or so) so i have even more to look forward too which is awesome. i will post a new entry when my little leon arrives as well as some pictures. i'm so excited! my darling boy please come home i miss you....