Unboxing: Watch_Dogs Dedsec Edition

Long time no post!  It's in part due to the fact that I'm actually writing The Rose Queen—I know, me, writing; whatever is the world coming to—and partly because I am a lazy arse.  I'm pretty sure you've already noticed the latter.

I didn't feel like I was making much progress with The Rose Queen to be honest, until I actually paid attention to my total word count last night and realised it's currently at 21,000 words.  So... not a novella then.

Short update aside, that isn't what this post is about (I'll maybe do a dedicated one later on).  Nooo, this post is about the downright huge box that arrived this morning.

Meep.  AC:IV for size reference.

 I normally preorder games from Game due to things like shiny reward points and supporting British game stores, but in this case they'd actually sold out of the Xbox One version(!) so I bought it from Amazon instead.  That comes with the added advantage of coming via Amazon's delivery network, which now they've worked out the kinks is pretty good and means deliveries arrive when they're supposed to.  Anything using the Royal Mail here is at the mercy of the postman—which can mean anything from the delivery driver shoving a "You Weren't In" card through the door when I plainly was, to returning items without attempting to deliver them because they were damaged by postal staff, to outright theft.  (Yes, all three have happened to me; the first and last most recently.)

Rant aside...  I thought the size of the box would be misleading, because sometimes things are packed to the gills with paper and plastic, and the contents are tiny.

And to be fair, when I opened it, this was the first thing I saw, so you can't blame me.  So I dug in, started fishing around in the box and realised...

I hereby claim this box...

It wasn't misleading at all.  I was not expecting that.  The last special edition I ordered was DmC, which came with a hoodie, soundtrack CD and DLC, and all items were separate in the cardboard box.  To have it arrive in a nice box was... unexpected, although possibly shouldn't be because Ubisoft have a history of nice packaging.

The skinny little legs in the background belong to Q, a cat with a pathological love of boxes.  He'd perked up when I bought the box in, and now he was going to nonchalantly come and 'look'.

Once I unwrapped the packaging (so much for Amazon's eco-friendly stuff, the amount of plastic that went into covering this!), I was again surprised.

The box is nicely designed and the inside packaging is designed with a place for every piece of the special edition kit—although in my case, a lot of it had slid down during transit.  You can see the bottom of the Augmented Reality card box beneath the game box, which should have been much higher up, but all the contents were safe and undamaged.

The full extent of the contents is still surprising, considering IMO the price isn't that much higher than a standard Xbox One game.  It comes with a fairly large and very nicely detailed Aiden Pearce figure, soundtrack, AR cards, map, artbook and three badges as well as the steelcase box.  Aiden comes in his own safe packaging to protect him, so he hadn't budged in the slightest in transit.  I've yet to find a good home for him (he's bigger than Shiki and Akira on my desk, so between them doesn't work) so he's gone back into his box for now.  Everything seems nicely detailed: the artbook is hardback and filled with beautiful concept art, the cards come in a staggered file-type packaging with their own box, and the map is made of glossy, good-quality paper and fits neatly into the steelcase box for handy reference.

By this point, I'd moved the packing box and paper contents to one side; you can see Q eyeballing it.  He hopped in not long after and proceeded to traumatise the parrot, who thought a kraken had moved in under his cage...

So, that's the unboxing of the Watch_Dogs Dedsec edition.  If anyone wants closer, more detailed pictures of anything, just let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I've not even had a chance to play it yet!  That's this afternoon's entertainment...

Copic atyouSpica Pens - Review

I bought these pens from Cult Pens last year and I kept meaning to review them, but I wasn't sure whether I had enough experience using them to be able to do so.

And then on Friday my trusty lavender pen, fading and no longer quite so glittery as it had been when it first arrived, finally died halfway through helping me plot out a story, and I realised then that perhaps, just maybe, I had been using them quite a lot after all.  So, while I'm waiting for a replacement to arrive (no I can't just use another pen, it'd feel wrong), I thought I should finally review them.

Copic atyouSpica glitter pens come individually, in a pack of twelve of a single colour, or in two sets (A and B) of every colour.  Set A contains more strident colours, such as lavender, red, sky blue--which is darker than you'd expect--as well as black, gold and silver.  Set B contains pastel colours as well as some darker versions of set A, a clear pen, and one of the blackest black pens I've seen.

The pens write very nicely and the ink flows well onto the page.  They survive my too-strong pressure and spiky handwriting admirably and don't dry out too quickly if you leave the lid off, which is particularly handy when your inspiration suddenly dies on you.

Each pen also contains glitter and the effect varies depending on the brightness of the ink: the glitter is very visible in the black pens, while it's nowhere near as noticeable in the pastel colours.  The exception to this appears to be the orange pen--at least, in my case--which is packed with a surprising amount of it.  The glitter doesn't slow down the flow and is evenly distributed in the ink.

The glitter will wear away from the page with time, but the colours remain strong and bright.

The pastel colours are hard to see on white paper, particularly in low light, as are the orange and yellow; the clear is for accent purposes and is near impossible to see.

For pens that are primarily designed for crafting they make beautiful note pens and are great for general handwriting.  I use them for colour-coding my plotting notes, as well as for a little extra sparkle for things like greetings cards.

Finally, you can get a lot of use out of one pen--I'd plotted out a novella and a half with the lavender before it died!  And more to the point, I'm surprised at how quickly I've come to rely on them--they've become my 'go-to' pens in a very short space of time.

My new lavender pen meets the pack

Kuretake Zig Cocoiro Letter Pen - Follow-Up Post

I wrote about my first impressions of the pretty Cocoiro pens on the 23rd June... not that long ago, in fact.  But since just over a week has passed, I thought a follow-up post might be fun.

Mostly because I loved them so much, I went and bought more (and completed my atyouSpica collection at the same time)!

My preciousssss...

Having managed to lure the always-lovely Danni into trying out the pens too, reading her comments about how the Hoarfrost White case looked made me curious... so I think we can chalk up another victory to her, because it's right there in the photo, along with Kiwi and Sunflower.

I actually would have ordered these sooner, but I had to wait for first the Kiwi, then the Sunflower, to come back into stock at Cult Pens--waited very impatiently, I might add; you don't want to know how many times I refreshed that page even when I knew it was futile (i.e. about six times on Sunday... just in case!).

One thing Danni mentioned was how pretty the Hoarfrost shell looked with the Rose Pink ink inside, so I decided to have a peek and I have to agree.

The white has a subtle sparkle that I completely failed to capture.

I'd initially only planned to get two extra cases to cover the refills I'd bought, but after I used the blue-black to handwrite part of a story and give my writer's block a kick in the groin (moderate success), I became curious about how a black brush nib would perform as an inking pen.

Bad photo; using my scanner would mean a blood sacrifice.

Turns out the answer is "far better than I could've hoped".  They do indeed relax the more you use them and because they're comfortable to hold it's easier to focus on the lines.  It holds up well against a putty eraser (always good) and you can get some good line thicknesses from it--but it really excels at very fine lines without needing to swap to another pen.  I'm really happy with the results.

Now I'm just hoping that Kuretake release the six colours that don't currently seem available in the UK... because how could I possibly resist a choice that includes orange and green??

Kuretake Zig Cocoiro Letter Pen - First Impressions

I normally tweet about new stationery I've been 'encouraged' to buy (I know some truly evil enablers on Twitter!), but when the jiffy bag with my new Cocoiro letter pens arrived, I knew I'd be taking more than one or two photos.  Whittling it down to these was... fun.

The problem with following Cult Pens on Twitter is that it's an incredibly easy route to spending money--particularly where my friends are concerned.  And when Cult Pens tweeted about the Cocoiro pens I was curious enough to and have a look.  I didn't bank on promptly falling in love with either the choice of shell colours or the fact they have mint green and rose pink inks.  After some humming and hawing I finally splurged on two shells in my favourite colours, three brush pen refills and an ever-practical black rollerball refill.

They arrived today in an A5 padded envelope and the first thing that struck me was that they were a little smaller than I was expecting, although to be honest I'm not wholly sure what I was expecting.  From base to cap the shell is around 11.2cm.  I chose shells in Duckegg Blue and Green Apple (neither of which have any justice done to them in my photos as the weather is a bit iffy here and my camera is moody), both of which are lovely.  The blue in particular is a very pretty and delicate shade and I'm already considering buying a couple more to go with my additional refills.

The refills come with their own protective caps which don't fit with the pen once they're combined so can probably be thrown away unless you've got more refills than pens, and a brush protector for the brush pens.  Being the kind of person who doesn't read instructions--which are provided on both the letter pen and refill packets--I did have a short struggle with figuring out how to add refill to shell (I'm bright like that) until I realised the refills have a thread and you screw them into the base.

Once fit together they look both comical and sweet, a little like they've outgrown their refills, but it is a useful way to see what colour is in which pen at a glance, although I don't imagine it helps you tell the difference between the black ballpoint and black brush pen.

With the body shaped as it is you might expect it to feel a little cumbersome to hold, but in reality it's surprisingly comfortable.  The curve of the shell fits neatly in the curve of your thumb, although the edge of the casing at the bottom might rub against your thumb joint if you're not careful.

The first thing that struck me about the brush pens is that they're more solid than I was anticipating.  They'll probably loosen up with use, but it took a moment to get an unbroken line out of the rose pink.  They write with a beautiful and vivid ink with the colours exactly as advertised.

Apologies for my handwriting. Yes that does say 'rose' and not 'nose'!

I'm looking forwards to experimenting with them and I think if I'm not careful they could end up as a guilty pleasure--or an addiction.  All I need to do now is start hand-writing things more often...