I don't post much on this blog... I'm mostly posting to a couple topic-specific blogs.
Ephemeral Builds is where you'll see me talking about my primary hobby - gunpla. I've almost always got a kit I'm working on, and I try to post something there weekly.
Ephemeral Ephemera is where you'll see me talking about all of the media I'm consuming... Movies, TV shows, books, anime, manga, whatever.
You can also find me on Bluesky, ScaleMates, TikTok, Letterboxd, StoryGraph, and MyAnimeList.
the way ozempic has finally made the fact that eating healthy and exercising doesn't necessarily make you thin well known and society's reaction to this is not "oh i guess being thin or fat doesn't actually show if you're healthy" but "oh i guess everyone should be on this drug"
Tirzepatide has absolutely changed my life. After literal decades of struggle I'm finally able to do something with all that "diet and exercise" advice I've been getting. It's like the drug leveled the playing-field.
And now that I'm finally losing weight... All the folks who called me weak-willed and lazy for being fat are saying I'm "cheating" by using a medication.
Seems to me the fact that this can be treated with a medication sort of proves that it's not some moral failing.
I'm not super-active over there... I'm not great at tracking my reading (I usually use StoryGraph for that) or watching (that's usually over on Letterboxd) there. And I'm usually here on Tumblr or over on Bluesky for the discussions and social interaction.
But, hell, I do use the site and it does have some info/stats on me.
Santa's Slay is one of my favorite Christmas movies. It's fantastically cheesy. They clearly didn't have much of a budget - but they put some real effort into this movie. It's great fun.
Another 2025 wrap-up... This one is from Daylio - a microjournaling/mood-logging app I've been using for a few years now.
I find it helpful to have a reminder every day to pause and reflect on the day's events. To think about what I accomplished and how I feel about it. And it's also great to be able to look back and see trends or habits I don't notice when I'm in the midst of things.
Looking back over the year... You can see I had a very rough January and April... But there's been more good days than bad since July. And things have been pretty great since October or so.
My YouTube watching has dramatically decreased this last year... I used to have a lot more downtime between tasks. These days it's usually a gunpla review or live-build as background noise.
Seems like everyone is doing a yearly "wrapped" thing now...
My Wife and I discovered Finch a little while ago and it's been pretty terrific. Just little daily reminders to do things and an incentive to actually get them done. It's clearly intended for self-care and has some fantastic tools built-in like breathing exercises and self-affirmations... But I also use it to nag myself into getting shit done around the house.
I'm going to be shuffling things around a little bit...
I didn't really understand how primary/secondary blogs worked when I first got on Tumblr and was just posting everything right here on my primary blog. But I don't really want absolutely everything I do on Tumblr to be under that "ephemeral-builds" label. So I've created a new/secondary blog to post my builds to.
If you're looking for gunpla you'll want to check out the ephemeral-builds blog.
I've also been watching some Macross and posting my thoughts over on ephemeral-ephemera if you're curious.
My wife bought me a "DIY Miniature House" for Christmas last year, and I didn't love it. It didn't push my usual plamo buttons and much of the build was annoying.
Well, this year she tried again with the CuteBee DIY BookNook Owl Bookstore.
Right off the bat - this kit looks a lot better than that "DIY Miniature House" last year. It's mostly laser-cut wooden parts. There's a sheet of stickers and some clear plastic for windows, as well as a lighting kit.
The wooden parts are fantastic - great printing, clean cuts, easy to snap out of the runner, and they fit together very tightly. It's definitely pushing some of those plamo buttons for me.
There's a bunch of plexiglass-ish plastic to glue into place for windows. I used some canopy glue, which dries completely clear, so I didn't have to worry too much about making a mess.
Some of the stickers didn't work great... It kind of looks like this was originally a sheet of printed paper to cut and glue that was upgraded to stickers at some point, because they don't always make sense. There's a couple pictures to stick into frames, but the sticker-y adhesive is on the wrong side. So I had to cut and glue them. Same thing with the sticker that goes behind the "Owl Bookstore" signage.
Everything continues to snap together nicely. There's some more gluing to do, but nothing egregious. No papercraft books to cut/fold/glue. No tiny furniture to upholster. I'm finding myself really enjoying this build.
And there it is - all assembled and lit-up. It looks fantastic. And as the picture up top shows, it looks even better up on my bookshelf.
The build was really satisfying and I'm not at all opposed to building another one of these. Far superior to that "DIY Miniature House" I built last year.
I wasn't a huge fan of Build Divers. The whole Build series is kind of an interesting premise... I mean, I'd absolutely love an actual game like that. But the stakes feel necessarily lower when they're basically just playing video games - not actually fighting wars. (Well, at least in Build Divers.)
But some of the suit designs are absolutely amazing. I love seeing these characters' customized gunpla. And the MomoKapool is just adorable.
I think this is my first HG Build Divers kit, and it's about what I expect from modern gunpla. There's a few polycaps, of course, but it's not excessive like some of the older kits. And there's no ABS inner-frame.
The head/eyes on this kit annoyed me.
There's a whole pile of stickers for various expressions, but only one head/eye section. So I can't really change the expression as I (re)pose the model. I would've really appreciated having a couple extra head/eye sections so I could do multiple expressions.
Also - it wasn't clear until after I'd applied the stickers, but there's a color-separated eye section. So I probably didn't actually need to use a sticker at all.
This whole kit is adorable from head to toe. Stubby little fingers. Big, ducky feet. Roly-poly, fat body.
One of the weird (?) things I like to do as I build a kit is kind of play with the parts as I assemble them. Examine the joints and construction and see how things move. Put a limb through its paces. Just kind of marveling at the engineering and design of the kit.
But this time around I found myself just kind of grinning at the cute little parts. It's just silly from start to finish.
So there aren't really any accessories to speak of... No weapons or shield or anything like that. But there is a cute little Petitkapool to ride around inside it.
And, again, there's a variety of different eye stickers for the Petitkapool... But you're basically stuck with just the one. There's no good way to swap eyes.
Scattered across the runners there's enough left-over parts to build another two arm segments. You could probably use these to make the arms longer - kind of like the extendable arms we see with the Acguy kit.
The MomoKapool is just adorable. I know I keep saying it, but that's just such a striking thing with gunpla. Usually they're big, scary weapons of war... And this thing looks like a penguin plushie.
There's basically no articulation on the PetitKapool - but that's fine. It's really just supposed to hide away inside the MomoKapool. I'm honestly kind of surprised that Bandai bothered to include the thing at all. Especially with its own eye stickers and display stand. Definitely shows some dedication.
The arms pop off and everything folds up into a cute little ball. Again - it's adorable.
The articulation isn't great. The legs are very short and stubby and stiff. The arms are actually surprisingly good, but the fingers barely move. There's some bend and flex at the waist, but not much. Surprisingly - the head/eyes can rotate some, independently of the body.
I'm really kind of surprised by how solid and satisfying this build was. I guess I kind of expected it to be almost a joke or a throw-away. Bandai clearly took this design seriously despite the fact that it looks almost like a joke.
I've been building a High Grade Phenex for the past couple days and am almost done with the main build at this point! Just gotta finish up the backpack/armed armors and then it's time for paint. Because that plastic gold color sucks so much.
Thought I'd show you because you're one of the few gunpla Tumblrs I know
Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, that injection gold can be rough... But the build is looking good despite it!
Have you checked out the gunpla community? Lots of great builders posting all sorts of stuff over there.
