photo saturday: little green guardian

I'm laying the blame for today's DnD Character Colouring Book squarely at the feet of all the videos walking through the upcoming 2024 DnD core rulebooks. Because of all the new artworks for the core races, the one of the gnomes is possibly my favourite. They just look so cute (I'm not switching from my deep love of halflings, but let's not talk about the deeply terrible new race artwork for the halflings... they all look like Dark Crystal podlings and I hate it), and there's a green skinned kid gnome at the bottom of the image that I'm just obsessed with. So I took that idea and matched it up with the subclass that I absolutely want to play as my second character... the Path of the World Tree barbarian.

And we end up with Oren Wildwander, guardian of a gnomish/elvish/druidic forest enclave.

I also hope that the final rules follow the path of the playtest rules and remove the penalty for small creatures trying to use heavy weapons. Because it just makes sense that they would be using a heavy weapon designed for them. If not, then the two handed maul (which is a combination of like three different Hero Forge items) just goes back to being a warhammer.

Anyway...

This week's soup was potato and leek basically... and maybe I should have blended it up... it was... fine. You can always tell when I'm not really vibing with it, because if I have any potential other option on Friday, I take it. Thus was the case this week.

Mini movie reviews this week kind of ran the gamut... Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (yes, I know) and Hail, Caesar!.

I was curious about TRotB just because it's the "sequel" to Bumblebee... but sadly, it throws away all the good work that movie did and just does the same old same old. Also, it introduces the "Maximals" who have always been kind of stupid. Because the point of Transformers is that they go from Robot Person to Some Other Thing That They're Disguised As. The Maximals just go from Robot Person to Robot Animal. And they transform from Robot Animal to Robot Person for a grand total of about 11 seconds on the movie, during a battle, so you barely see them.

The movie overall is pretty dumb, and then it really crowns the dumb cake with dumb sprinkles right at the very end of the movie when they try to tie in the GI Joe universe into the Transformers universe. It's just very dumb.

Hail, Caeser! on the other hand, is a lot of fun. I was kind of expecting more from it, or at least, expecting the story to go slightly further than it did, but I realised at the end that that wasn't what it was doing. And what it was doing, it does incredibly well. Worth a watch.

There wasn't a third movie this week, mostly because my back, much like clockwork, has been doing it's monthly bullshit. Fuck that literal noise.

Otherwise, it's just been damn fucking cold this week.

Friday Night DnD was... a lot. I mean, it was and it wasn't. It was a lot narratively, but we also dipped into a location I think we were supposed to spend a lot more time in, and then almost immediately dipped back out again and finalised some of Fluffy's backstory story.

But sadly we're off for two weeks because Mr and Mrs are off on holiday.

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything... I had vague plans, but then woke up to it just raining... so, yeah, fuck that. Plans can wait.

Instead, after the supermarket, we watched the Puss in Boots sequel. Because I'd grabbed it from the library so that I could give it another go. I think my previous brief commentary stands, there are cute moments, the speed ramping/animating on 2's that I think is happening in most of the fight scenes still feels... odd. But less so than it did the first time through.

And that was it really.

photo saturday: dancing devotee

So... the new DnD Players Handbook is coming soon... and they're going heavy on the reveals right now, and I'm pretty excited. Then we combine that with coming across a whole subReddit full of Hero Forge poses that are very much "due to a glitch" and not repeatable by anyone who doesn't know what they're doing. But also, some of them definitely need to be real poses. Like this one. I get why it's not, but also, c'mon, get a little crazy.

Which results in today's DnD Character Colouring Book... featuring the new Bard subclass that is basically a Monk/Bard hybrid and that I'd almost be tempted to go back and give the bard another go for the College of Dance Bard.

Micah is one of three triplets, and the Bigheart Brothers are all involved in the Church of Lliira, goddess of joy. And because her symbol is generally three different coloured stars (yellow, red and orange), each brother has a costume featuring that colour, Micah being yellow.

Anyway...

Soup this week was my lasagne/pasta sauce soup... which is so damn good, but this one was particularly good because I grated potato, turnip and parsnip which thickened up the soup nicely. I also very much love the broken up lasagne noodles that go into it.

My movie choices for this week were a little bit all over the place. But I'm enjoying watching things that I missed out on when it was at the cinema, or that I had kind of written off as being a little bit trash. And I'm happy to be proved wrong.

First up was The King's Man. Both the third in the Kingsman series and a prequel. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton and literal human wallpaper, Harris Dickinson. But it also very much positively surprised me at certain points while also being a Kingsman movie. Thankfully it's also been a while since I've seen the previous two, so some of the Very Obvious References that they shoehorned in because it's a prequel floated over my head. Not all of them, but mostly the King Arthur references.

Next up, Bumblebee. Yes, a Transformers movie, after I swore off the franchise because it just got too fucking dumb and ugly and jumped the shark. But, you know what... Bumblebee is actually really damn good. The Transformers look like updated 80's versions of the characters for the most part, and because there are only really a handful of robot characters with dialogue or significant screentime, it was less of a "indistinguishable CGI robot punching other indistinguishable CGI robot, cut to same thing with probably different robots, it's hard to tell". And Bumblebee was always my boy. It was also directed by the guy who directed Kubo and the Two Strings, so that certainly helped.

I also, knowing it was going to be trash, sampled the dumpster fire that is Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It's bad. Like very, very bad. The script is bad, the leads are horribly miscast, the effects are empty calories. It's bad. Don't see it. I shouldn't have.

Lastly, I did a double-feature of Deadpool (which I haven't seen since it came out, regardless of the fact that I own the DVD) and Deadpool 2. I'm glad I did the double feature, because they do work well together. And, elements of it managed to be genuinely emotional. Other elements, mostly the character played by Julian Dennison, didn't. Maybe it was the script, maybe it was the way Dennison was playing it, I don't know. But I just found him annoying for the most part. And yet it managed to grab me in the feels on occasion.

I've been crocheting... something... this week. Originally it was supposed to be a blanket. But then the yarn I'm using is probably a little thin for the kind of blanket I kind of want. And maybe the hook is a little too big. And maybe the stitch I was trying didn't come out exactly the way I wanted it to. And maybe I'm going to frog the whole thing and work out some other way to go with it. I might also need to put this particular yarn to one side and try something else for a while. Or go back to making little granny squares.

Friday Night DnD was very much once again Telling People More Things Than We Probably Should: The Game. But, you know, also, collecting potential allies and favours and such. And it got us where we needed to be, so, you know, overall net positive.

Anyway.

The usual supermarketry this morning. And not much else... although after Ma left, I took a quick trip to Burnside Library to grab some DVDs, since all the ones that I currently have on order are... somewhere between there and here currently.

photo saturday: eater of waffles, inventer of zips

So, for various reasons, having played with the Thursday game for so long, I have a collection of OPC, or Other People's Characters in Hero Forge. And when I was going through and updating all of my own characters, I decided, fuck it, there are some characters that I could just make what we'll call "fan art" of. Your character is your character, even if it was made a long time ago and is kind of m'eh... I'm going to make my own version of it just for me.

And possibly because of that reason, I pushed this particular model further than I perhaps normally would with the facial posing and the implied action, but I love how it turned out. And it's very much on brand for this character, one of Pery's party mates from our Out of the Abyss game.

Anyway...

This week's soup was Halfling Everything Soup... only, I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer on Saturday, or even Sunday morning, or even any point before late Sunday afternoon. So I had to just stick the frozen breasts in to let them soften up enough that I could chop them into small pieces. I was honestly unsure if it was going to be a disaster or not, but it worked out mostly good in the end.

I did something different for movie nights this week... the Sandman TV show, season one. And it was... not really my jam. I was looking, for maybe, more Sandman in my Sandman TV show. Or more interesting stories, I don't know. The episode with Death and Hob is outstanding. Everything else is... fine.

And Sandman himself would fluctuate between being really damn sexy and weirdly blob jawed depending on how they were shooting him on a shot for shot basis.

I loved Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne and Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death. However, the amount of actors who have guest starred in Doctor Who was slightly egregious. I mean, understandable since that show, Game of Thrones and "The Boy Wizard" have essentially been keeping the British film industry alive for the last 20 years.

And even as a gay man, the queer representation in the series is, likewise, slightly egregious after they introduced the 12th or 14th constitutive queer character. I mean, sure, great, but also whut?

I tried starting something with the very pretty yarn I bought last weekend... and I thought I was doing well, making something that was maybe going to end up as a lap blanket or just a generally small blanket... but when I rolled it up at a certain point, I discovered that one end was just a diagonal line, because I'd been fucking it up.

So, we're going back to Frog Town, and I'll start over, maybe make a giant solid granny square instead. I dunno. It took me all week to start on anything, and now I have to start over.

Friday was Chiro Day... the weather was also terrible. And once I'd chatted with the receptionist about crochet, had my appointment, wandered around the three places I wander around every time, I just decided to get on an earlier bus, which turned out to be one of the ones headed to the old apartment. Yeah, that was a dumb. But it was a dumb I've done once before, so I knew where to jump off.

But that also happened to be the time when the heavens opened and all of the rain decided to fall precisely on me. While I was only carrying a small umbrella, and this, like one of my other umbrellas has started to develop leaks from the inside, somehow.

So I got home basically soaked from the knees down and all down one side. Urgh. Good times, good times. Thankfully, cranking up the heater dried everything off relatively quickly.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week, but Fluffy and I did movie night instead. Yes, movie night, where we punished ourselves with a terrible movie that we knew was going to be terrible, because Fluffy is, in fact, a masochist and wants to inflict mental trauma on both of us. I guess that technically also makes him a sadist, because he wanted to inflict it on me also... whatever.

After that Hot Mess, I continued Fluffy's Movie Education with one of my favourites, Dangerous Liaisons. I love that movie so damn much. It was also interesting seeing it through somebody else's eyes, because Fluffy both made a connection about one of the characters that I hadn't consciously made, despite the number of times I'd seen it and also made me look at the whole movie with fresh eyes.

So, good for all concerned. And he enjoyed it more than I thought he might... or rather he enjoyed the movie and the performances while also hating the characters, which makes perfect sense.

Anyway...

Today was pretty average. Supermarket and then me acting as "tech support" (because, honestly, it wasn't really tech) for Ma after she called the ISP and they didn't fix the issue they should have very easily fixed. Grr.

That was it though.

movies: wish

I feel like I owe Strange World an apology. Because, in that review, I said that it wasn't a real movie.

That was before I watched Wish.

Wish is not a movie.

Wish is what happens when a multinational conglomerate strip-mines nostalgia in order to make a profit. 

Wish is what happens when you give an AI references to previous Disney movies and ask it to write a script. 

Wish is what happens when you utterly fail at a thing.

Wish is ugly, badly written, lifeless, has instantly forgettable songs, no charm or character and is a ham-fisted collection of references to the 100 years of Disney history.

Let's just back up there a second. Yes, I'm describing a Disney movie as UGLY. Because normally even when a movie is terrible or just, you know... m'eh, I at least can say that it looks lovely. Wish is horrible to look at.

Wish is also trying so fucking hard to steal Sleeping Beauty's lunch money that it's embarrassing. I mean, it's literally stealing from everyone, but, visually, it's stealing so much from Sleeping Beauty and just getting it wrong consistently.

Honestly, I could have gotten behind Wish with all the references and nostalgia if they were well done or if the story and songs had been good. They're not. The references are clunky, stupid and desperately out of place, the story makes no sense, and the songs are... nothing. They're empty air, instantly forgettable and painful to listen to.

Nothing about this movie is good. 

Even the villain is ridiculous and so deeply just an uncanny valley version of Chris Pine that I was instantly repulsed every time he was on screen. 

I could rant about this movie for a long time, but, to be honest, it's not worth my time or yours. It either marks the point at which Disney Animation literally jumped the shark and began it's slow but inevitable decline into pumping out trash or will be quickly swept under the rug and never spoken about again.

Everybody involved in this movie should be ashamed of themselves. This is an embarrassment to 100 years of Disney history. Do better.

So yes, this is the second Disney movie in a row to get no score out of 5, because this isn't an actual movie.

yani's rating: [vomit emoji] references to better films out of 5

photo saturday: old lady druid

Weirdly, I thought I'd dropped an earlier version of this character... but clearly I did not. But this week's DnD Character Colouring Book isn't one of my characters, it's the one and only character Ma made, when she asked me to run a solo game for her and then I organised a game with some of my Adventurer's League chuckleheads, including Fluffy.

And this was her character, Nanith, a Wood Elf Druid. 

It seemed fitting, given that it was Ma's birthday this week.

Anyway...

I started off with potato, bacon and dill soup this week. I mean potato soup is pretty hard to mess up too badly, and I was using little pieces of bacon, so it was pretty good overall.

Then there was the fun and games that is Cleaning For A Rental Inspection. Not that it was overly arduous this time around. At least up until the point where I was vacuuming the carpet in the bedroom and the vacuum, which had given me some amount of grief during the previous inspection, just flat out stopped working.

Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. One minute it was working perfectly, the next minute, it just turned off and wouldn't turn back on again. While I still had a small circle of unvacuumed carpet right in front of the bedroom door.

Rude.

So... I grumbled about it for about 30 seconds and just got on with things, because what else was I going to do? But I was pretty much all done by about 1pm, which isn't bad, given I started around 9, and wasn't exactly rushing through things. And, honestly, I definitely spent a bunch of time waiting for the floor to dry after I mopped.

I also spent more of the afternoon laying down in order to let my body recover. Because old and broken.

Tuesday, I got my shit together early, left a note for my rental agent saying "soz about the carpet but reasons" and headed out to the library near my old apartment. I ended up sticking around longer than I needed to, because I was so close to finishing my book. And then I detoured to Burnside Village to grab some lunch before heading home.

Insert usual comment about post-inspection house being best house.

Thursday I picked up books from the library, and then ended up going on a quick excursion to pick up a DVD that should have been on the way, but the third movie in the series showed up before that second one.

Thus, rounding out my Marvel catch-up (because fuck Guardians) was my literal least favourite entry into the franchise... Ant Man. Or more specifically Ant Man and the Wasp plus Ant Man and the Wasp Quantumania as a double feature on Thursday night.

I honestly don't have a lot to say beyond the fact that I don't find Paul Rudd funny or charming and hot or whatever other people seem to be under the delusion that he is, and I never have, also, these particular movies lean on the type of "comedy" I just call cringeworthy.

The second movie (AMATW) is.... fine. I mean, it's cringy more than it needs to be, and it has both too many villains and no actual real villain, because the person who you're supposed to label as the villain is just handwaved at the end of the movie into being Not The Villain.

And Quantumania is... a delusional fever dream that would be a complete dumpster-fire was it not for the fact that Michelle Pfieffer literally improves every single scene that she's in, even the ones where Bill Murray shows up for literally no well explained reason.

The literal less said about MODOK the better, because the IQ of everybody both in the movie and watching the movie drops like 100 points every time he's on screen. That was a mistake. Honestly, the whole damn movie was a giant mistake. But seemingly, due to the fact that the actor playing the bad guy is, himself, a human dumpster fire, it looks like they won't be revisiting that storyline any time soon.

Glad to have ticked them off, but yeah, they were as bad as I thought they were going to be.

Friday Night DnD was us being less stupid, but possibly angrier. Which makes sense for the characters. Or possibly just my character. And because this campaign just seems to spend a lot of time throwing things at the party even when we're already trying to get something else done.

So even though we were pointed at Plot Thread A, Plot Thread B presented itself as an option, which we rejected and then it turned out that the thing we were headed to in order to activate Plot Thread A was actually sitting smack dab in the middle of Plot Thread C.

Which meant a session of sorting out Plot Thread C and a combat encounter that literally took about 12 seconds (in universe) to defeat the guy we needed to defeat.

Also, because there's only three of us, and my character can make additional magic items, we're already tripping over magic items, and it's only going to get worse as we go along. I feel like maybe it's the DnD Universe correcting the fact that we haven't really had that many magic items in the last couple of campaigns.

Anyway...

Today was, technically speaking, Ma's Post Birthday Birthday Day... 

We did the usual supermarketry, and then Ma wanted to go do Looking At Things at Spotlight, so we did. And maybe I got more yarn, that I have no idea what I'm going to do with, but it was too pretty not to pick up. So, for now, it's going to go with the last instance of the very pretty yarn that I don't know what I'm going to do with.

And then we went to North Adelaide and picked up some pies and nostalgia at Perryman's Bakery. Because, you know, it's in North Adelaide and I was there for 20 years, so... [cue high pitched cat wailing singing] memmmmmmmmmmmmriesssssssss!

After that, because we were already halfway there, and they were having a sale, we took a little trip out to Lincraft in Sefton Park. Also, memories. I will say, back in the day, I much preferred Lincraft over Spotlight, because Lincraft seemed like they had their shit together and they had more things and it was just nicer. And then, at some point, something happened and now, they're just kind of... grubby. I mean, not literally. But it always feels... disorganised and a bit of a mess. We also didn't find anything good there, although they had some pretty yarn.

And that was it really.

photo saturday: eighties teen movie dnd

Sometime Hero Forge adds items where I look at it and think "yeah, I'm never going to use that for an actual character". But then there are items that show up that just niggle at my brain slightly. The Letterman Jacket was one of those.

And given that the items were all from Dimension 20's Fantasy High, (which I'm aware of, but haven't seen) I started thinking about what character I might play in that kind of game.

Thus, we ended up at Berg Ken'ervs, or Ice to his friends. Because icebergs. Half-drow swim team dude-bro. Or, not dude-bro... 80's teen movie villain. Basically. And the nickname happened organically. I was looking through a Drow naming table and after a couple of names I discarded, found Berg, which means "graceful, fluid, like water", so of course that's his name when he's on the Swim Team and also a Fathomless Warlock.

Because of course he made a Warlock pact in order to get a swim speed in order to win. He's an 80's teen movie villain.

Also, I did the usual Photoshoppery on his jacket to add the letter (because, for no well explain reason, the Letterman Jacket, the defining feature of which is that it has a letter on the front, doesn't have a front facing decal, but does have a big letter A you can put on the back for no good reason) and the nickname, I also modified the sneakers to add a Converse-style patch with a spider logo, because drow, which is also where he stores his spider familiar when it's not in use.

My headcanon would be that whatever school Fantasy High takes place in, he's a transfer from a rival school and isn't happy about it, and is still wearing his jacket from his old school.

And of course, I shared Berg with Fluffy, and we threw around ideas about what his character would be. So, going completely against type, Fluffy decided on the school stoner/dealer. Basically, Shaggy from Scooby Doo but with actual drugs and not dog treats.

Then Hero Forge dropped their "Near Future Fashion" set, and while it was another set I probably won't use most of, I instantly saw the way to use several of the items in order to make a version of the character Fluffy and I talked about. 

Initially I made him a druid, but an artificer makes so much more sense, because I'm pretty sure that he's making the pharmaceuticals himself. And then wraps them up like candy. Or else he's literally embedding the drugs in chocolate. Because that seems like I think a gnome would do.

Also, if Hero Forge had a skateboard, he would 100% have a skateboard.

And, because the school dealer always knows everyone, that's why he and Berg have any kind of relationship, even though Berg wishes that there was ANY other option. Pog just enjoys watching him squirm.

Anyway...

This week was a slow slide into [endless screaming across the void].

Which is also me being super overly dramatic, it was just a lot of minor niggles. But still.

Soup was good. I made my non-minestrone minestrone. And that's always a good time.

This week's mini movie reviews picked up an extra movie. I started with Venom 2, after having watched Venom last Friday because we didn't have DnD.

What I will say is the very best things about the Venom movies are Tom Hardy, both as Eddie and the voice of Venom. I love their bickering and their interactions. Occasionally we can include Michelle Williams in that list. The worst thing about the Venom movies is literally everything else. And specifically I'm bored with the fact that the only bad guys that show up in Venom movies are other symbiotes. So it's just Big CGI Thing fighting Big CGI Thing at the end. And I know it's partially because Sony is limited in what IP they have access to, but, seriously, can we not include somebody else?

Second movie was Black Widow.

Back in 2015 I said this...

But I still hold to the idea that I don't want a Black Widow solo movie... not because I don't think Johansson would be great, and with the right writer and director it wouldn't be interesting, but I still like being able to just see tiny slivers of her past rather than laying it all out. And given what we've seen so far, I also think it would be hard to make without making it really, really dark and borderline depressing.

Turns out I was right. I don't want a Black Widow movie. Because this movie was... pretty terrible. And they managed to not make it dark and borderline depressing by making it stupid and borderline depressing. I also don't know if Johansson just didn't care by that point because this was the last contractual obligation she had with Marvel, but she's pretty flat in the whole thing. Black Widow works as a member of the ensemble, not as the main focus.

On the plus side, Florence Pugh is phenomenal. I would watch her all day. Also, the fact that most of the time she's actively mocking Black Widow is great.

Last on the list was Steven Universe The Movie. I cried. I just did. I enjoy those characters so much, and they did a good job at hitting the right beats (for the most part) around those characters, that it just hit me all in the feels. What I didn't really like was the end of the movie, because it just seemed like creating a problem for another day by sending one problem off to solve a different problem, creating a big toxic problem. But otherwise, good.

And then we started the slow slide...

It started when my back started making rumblings. Not enough to be a problem, but definitely enough that it affected my week.

Then it rained on Thursday and I managed to step in a puddle on my morning walk and also cut my finger on a sharp piece of metal on my umbrella that I should remember because I catch my fingers on it every time I use the umbrella.

Then Friday morning, while there was no rain, there were large piles of leaves, one of which contained the uneven paving that Norwood has in abundance. Or, you know, there was nothing there at all and I'm too clumsy to live and I fell down, banged on knee and slightly twisted the ankle of the other knee.

BLAH.

Also, I have a rental inspection next Tuesday. So I now have to clean my house with all that going on. I did make a start on Friday, mostly because it was easier to be up on my feet than sitting when bending either of my legs hurt for different reasons.

Then we come to Friday Night DnD. And it all started well. I did some recon, I made some magic items. We got the information we needed. It was all fun and games.

And then, we, as a group, became the dumbest dumbasses who ever dumbed a dumb. In fact, Fluffy and I spend the entire car ride back to my place almost exclusively telling each other that we were, in fact, idiots. And Discord chat this morning reiterated that, yes, as a group, we are actually stupid.

Because when you know that the big bad of the adventure can turn into a cloud giant and a cloud giant shows up out of nowhere right after a big storm, and has a name that is basically the second half of the big bad's name, and nothing about this cloud giant really seems to check out, and she essentially seduced/magically charmed our giant friend... and it was only when we left the room and encountered an NPC who said "yeah, there was a blue dragon here, and then we saw somebody walking into the place you just were"...

And the penny finally dropped. Mostly that we are intensely fucking stupid. 

But also, it proved something that I've known about DnD for a while, that you react to things based on the verbal description you're given, rather than actually being in the space with the creature in question. Because as soon as DM Mrs brought out the mini for her, we all took one look and went "oh, yeah, she's OBVIOUSLY super fucking evil".

What's fascinating is that we went from "we don't have a plan for this thing we're doing next" to "we have a very clear and obvious plan for the next step because we've been such literal dumbasses, and now here is exactly what we want to do".

I also think that this is one of the very clear moments in the campaign that knocked some of the New Adventurer Smell off my character. There was one a while back when he saw people get squished by giants in a big battle. And I feel like this was another one. He knows he's not insightful, but there was no reason he should have been taken in by her, or that he shouldn't have put the pieces together quicker. He was also incredibly mad afterwards, which is, for the most part, also new.

We'll see where we go from here.

But, just to reiterate... we are, in fact, dumb as fuck.

Anyway...

Today started off with slightly more drama than it needed to. When I tried to text Ma yesterday to remind her to bring something today, my messages failed to send. So I called her, reminded her, told her that messaging was being stupid and if my messages came through, to ignore them.

And then fixed the problem, sent her a message, that she normally would have responded to anyway. But she didn't, because I had told her not to bother.

So, this morning, I didn't get my usual "on my way" text from her. And while I knew that either text messaging was still being dumb or she'd forgotten, I still tried to call her, which I also knew she probably wouldn't answer because she should have been driving. Mostly I knew all the reasons that everything was fine, and still...

Turns out she was fine, was driving, had messaged me and the messaged failed. Why I have no idea. Because I couldn't see any issues on our phone provider website, either existing or resolved. 

And I got her to switch her phone off and on again, which is how I fixed mine, when she got here, and the two text messages I sent her yesterday and the alert to say she had a missed call all came through at once.

So that was drama nobody needed.

Otherwise, it was the usual. Supermarketry. And I didn't really want to do anything else given my ankle. So we didn't.