photo saturday: magic hands

There's a reason why I often just have whatever the last DnD Character Colouring Book character I've made sitting on the side of my desktop... it allows my brain to work out what's missing or get a handle on the character in general.

Zak'n is definitely one of those. Because when I made him, I was making a Warrior of Shadow Monk. Hence the fact he's a drow, he's dressed all in black/grey, etc. Also, I was fucking around with the idea of courtesan/sex worker as entertainer, because for whatever reason, I often gravitate towards the idea of a male sex worker in a lot of other TTRPG systems, even if I never end up wanting to bother playing those systems.

So chasing those ideas to the bottom of the jar gave me the idea of him being part of an order of Sune, goddess of beauty and passion, hence the amulet with the lips on it. And also adding a resized key, because the position I'd put his hand in really looked like he should be holding onto something.

But then at a certain point I was looking at him while also watching something on the laptop and I realised that he should be a Warrior of Mercy Monk, because they both heal and do additional harm... and the idea of a masseuse plus the snake tattoos (which I just added because they looked cool and I haven't really played around with those new tattoo decals very much).

And is there a large amount of Photoshop fuckery in order to get the "spider silk" mesh shirt in place, yes, yes there is. But I do quite like him.

Anyway....

I fucked by basic chemistry this week and made what should have been really good soup... bad and then questionable at best. Because I'd read a bunch of tips about removing some of the acidity from tomato soup, and I think it said either baking soda or baking powder, but I went with baking soda, which I think was wrong, and I also went with too much.

And guess what gives tomato it's general flavour? Yeah, the acidity. I also threw off my mouth's general pH and made the soup and my mouth taste generally a bit soapy. Not fun. I mean, it mellowed out generally as the week went on, but it wasn't great. And I won't be doing that again.

This week's mini movie reviews are the first three John Wick movies. I'd already seen the first one and really enjoyed it, but hadn't dived into any of the sequels.

I'll be honest, of the three, I think the first one is still the perfect version of that idea, but the thing I like about all of the movies is less the gun-fu/murder 900 people with a pencil of it all and more the world that these movies hint around without ever going too far into detail to over explain things.

I also love that in an alternate timeline, they're all incredibly low budget movies starring actors that you've never heard of or vaguely remember from the 80's and probably never made it past the first one. But instead we get to the third one and have collected people like Halle Berry, Anjelica Houston and Laurence Fishburn.

Also, the production design, costumes and lighting on those movies is fantastic.

If I had any complaint, it would be that a lot of the digital squibs/bloodsplatter/bullet hits look a little fakey. And sometimes the fight scenes seem to go from a little to fast to what feels like incredibly slow. But, once again, some of the fights are the least interesting part of the movies for me.

And I have the fourth one on order at the library... and have no idea why there are a whole bunch of copies just marked as "available on shelf" at various libraries and none of them are currently being sent to me. But it'll show up eventually.

In crochet news, I finished the second arm warmer/cuff/bracer and did, indeed, start on a hat. And progressed on the hat until I started to lose the will to live and then frogged the entire hat because I was going slowly insane because counting crochet stitches is my kryptonite and also slip stitch ribbing is really fucking hard.

I will give it another go, but once again just making up my own pattern as I go. 

After checking various places we go for a clear shower curtain, I finally thought about just fucking Googling it, only to find that Bunnings had some this whole time (well, I assume the whole time). So I took a little sidequest off to the Kent Town Bunnings on Friday... and, honestly, they need to sort out their damn parking lot, because it's a disaster. I did, however, get a park very quickly, but then, after asking for directions, continued to not find the shower curtains until I asked for assistance from someone else entirely.

Because they were both packaged in a shape I've never seen shower curtains packaged, and also hidden right at the bottom of the shelf and I just didn't pattern match them to what I expected to see.

Also, for whatever reason, the actual plastic on these ones is much closer to something like a department store bag plastic than it is to the inflatable beach ball type plastic of the old ones. Which isn't great. But at least this one doesn't look all gross.

And, finally, at lost last... after three weeks off, Friday Night DnD was finally back. Woo. But as Fluffy said as we were about to leave my place, it felt like both a long time and also no time at all. Which makes perfect sense.

The session itself was very much a "planning what comes next" kind of game. Which is never a bad thing when you're coming back after a break. We're also not that far away from "the end", but then the actual end will be if we run out of things that we want to do. Because there are more than a few loose threads. Admittedly, not all of which we care about, but some we definitely do.

Anyway...

Today was perfectly reasonable.

And I say perfectly reasonable, but it's also going to drive me very insane in the very near future.

We did the usual supermarketry, and given the amount of stuff we had in the trolley, I was sure we'd slightly overspent, but, turns out no. Not sure what happened there.

Then we went off to JB Hi-Fi to investigate the PS4's that they had on sale. And by investigate, I mean buy a very early Christmas present. We also then poked around both JB and Good Guys just looking at various things it. Mostly vacuum cleaners, TVs and sandwich presses.

The next step should be relatively easy... but at the same time, I have to remember passwords and also put up with the old PS4 doing the beepy thing that caused me to stop using it in the first place.

Cross your fingers for me that it's much less painful than I think it might be.

photo saturday: mercenary champ

So there are times when a character just takes up residence in my head and needs to be made into a Hero Forge mini. Rin is absolutely one of those times. She started life due to the villain in the third season of Star Trek Picard... and then just became one of the better minis I've made in a minute.

Normally I don't really use the splatter decals, but something about her was just crying out for one. They started out the usual blood colour, but at some point I decided that acidic green goop was more fun. In my head, she's just killed an ankheg or some other kind of insect-y type monster, and is catching her breath/smoking her cigar because cleaning the goo off her gear.

Technically I think she should probably be a Battle Master... but I just like the simplicity of the Champion, plus she feels like a character that just does more damage more often than someone doing a bunch of tricks. Also, as a brief note for future me if I ever do play her... while it looks like she's in leather armor, that's technically chainmail covered in leather (I mean, it's not, but if I was going to play her that would be the excuse between her stats and her aesthetic)... and that leather gets damaged a lot, which is why it's all stitched back together and the colours of a lot of pieces don't match.

Also, while she very easily slides in the general direction of "gruff lesbian", part of me loves the idea of her just being in a straight couple with switched gender expression. Or, you know, she loves the ladies... either works.

Anyway...

This week's soup was chicken noodle and worked out really well. A touch of cayenne pepper certainly helped, giving chicken noodle a little bit of that "fighting Winter colds" heat we all need this time of year.

I also finished off the Star Trek Picard series this week... and it was... fine. I did subtitle the entire third season "Everybody Gets A Paycheck"... because I didn't completely realise what was happening until it was actually happening... but not only were the core TNG cast all in attendance, but also a few other people who had shown up in various shows previously, plus LeVar Burton's real life daughter playing one of his on-screen daughters.

Everybody gets a paycheck.

I can see why people had issue with it though. And, honestly, it's the worst of the three seasons. And there are story elements from the previous two series that just get shoved out the window in order to basically do TNG Cast Reunion. If this had been the only season... then, yes, absolutely, this would have worked. But it just feels weird after the other two.

Also, the ultimate Season Villain was... underwhelming.

But I'm glad I watched it even if it doesn't stick the landing.

This week is a dive into the world of John Wick... I've seen the first one, but none of the sequels, so we'll see how that goes.

After last week's footling around with crochet, I made a whole arm cuff/wrist warmer/fingerless mitten thing with the other red yarn I got for my birthday. Is it perfect? No. Did I look at several patterns and mostly ignore them all and basically just made a rectangle and worked out how to join it together and leave a thumb hole. I'm now working on the second one. And then maybe there might have to be a matching hat.

There was no Friday Night D&D because people who aren't me were sick or live with people who were sick... 

Anyway...

Today there was too much rain. I mean, there was the usual shopping, but after we got back here, literally the whole day's worth of rain arrived and just stuck around until Ma left and then stopped.

I am not, however, suggesting causation.

photo saturday: holy sister

So, around the same time that I did my Three Loves of a Scoundrel, I had dipped back into Pery's character sheet and looked at his background blurb. And remembered that he was a twin. And that his sister was a priestess (rather than being a full character class Cleric) of the halfling goddess Yondalla. Which I keep telling myself that eventually I'm going to play a character who worships her, I've just never officially gotten there yet.

Also my foray into making the rest of the family members for Belben meant that I was on a roll when it came to sibling creation. Plus, it's relatively easy to make an opposite gendered twin just by adjusting the Softness slider on the face.

Like her brother, I feel like Dahlia definitely has a silver tongue and the gift of the gab, she just chooses to use it in a much more productive and less... criminal way. Also, as a priestess of the Nuturing Matriarch, she had been lightening her hair for years... either with lemon juice, honey or cinnamon, all of which the internet tells me, is a way to bleach your hair without modern chemicals.

I do occasionally wonder what a conversation between the two of them would have been like once Pery reemerged into the world and let people know he wasn't dead. I feel like she probably showed up on his doorstep one day and let him talk himself out before she took a deep breath and told him how much of an idiot he was. Because, yes.

Also, this is a character I haven't played in over four years.... and he still takes up valuable real estate in my head.

Anyway...

The less said about this week's soup, the better. There's a movie quote (I think, but I can't remember the movie in question, just that it's a kid and they're talking about... food maybe) that says "some experiments are doomed from the start"... and this is very much one of those.

This week's mini movie review is actually, once again, a TV show. Two seasons of a show to be exact. I managed to get through the first and second seasons of Picard and have the third season sitting on the pile to watch over the next few days.

Normally I am very much not a Nostalgia Nerd. I would often rather see something new and unique than just another reboot or remake or sequel to something existing. However, I was a big Star Trek nerd (specifically The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager, less everything else) in the 90's... and the Picard series absolutely found all my nostalgia buttons and pressed them hard.

Part of the reason I wanted to watch it was after reading about it in Patrick Stewart's biography. He didn't say a ton admittedly, but it was enough that when I realised all three seasons were available at the library, I figured why not.

I also have a vague memory that people had Very Strong Feelings about either all three seasons, or just the last season... but honesty, if those feelings were about the first two seasons... I get it. I disagree, but I get it.

Because they do do interesting things with both the character of Picard and both old characters and the few existing ones who show up. Some elements make sense, some absolutely do not. I'm thinking specifically of Out of Nowhere Lesbianism that literally made me go "whut", because there is nothing in the show to indicate it arriving, then bam, two female character hold hands in literally the last 45 seconds on the final episode of Season 1. I don't object to it, or think that those character wouldn't be into each other (although... honestly, making a couple of changes to scenes immediately before that might have helped a hell of a lot).

The cast of the first season in interesting... the series tries to gaslight me into thinking that Harry Treadaway in a terrible cheap black wig and crooked eyebrows is "sexy"... which is isn't. He's vaguely creepy and the character falling in love with him should instead be hitting him in the head with something heavy and running in the opposite direction. Everything about him says Creep Creep Weirdo, and nothing says Come Sex Me.

And it's just weird to me when they cast Australian Evan Evagora as a Romulan who grew up on a planet where LITERALLY NOBODY ELSE HAS AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT. Whut? I could have gotten behind it if the people who raised him had the same accent, even if nobody else did. And I already processed Orla Brady as a Romulan with an Irish accent... but also, the character is fucking amazing, but Evagora just sounds... Australian. It's weird.

Also, I'm sorry, but Evagora is kind of a terrible actor. He's pretty as hell. He does fight choreo wonderfully. I enjoy the character. But he opens his mouth and it's not good. I mean, it might be that element of cultural cringe where his very Australian accent just makes me want to claw my ears off. And he does get better in the second season, but, again, he's not in most of that season for reasons.

I think I prefer the second season overall... the whole Romulan bad guy/B plot in the first season was kind of irritating. Mostly the aforementioned character played by Treadaway.

And there are elements of both seasons that I feel like didn't make a lot of sense, even though I understand why some of it was there. Also, some of it slightly suffered from them having to make a story that lasted over 10 episodes. There is absolutely some filler content in both seasons.

But, you know, overall I'm enjoying myself. And I'm very intrigued by what the last season holds. Especially after the end of the second season.

Friday was Chiro Day... which was good, because my back had been generally complaining for a minute. Otherwise I just did the wander of stores I generally do, then came home.

There was no Friday Night DnD because Mr and Mrs are still away. And Fluffy was, I think, doing a work thing... so there wasn't even a discussion of movie night. Which was fine, I had the last four episodes of Picard to watch.

Anyway...

Today was fairly breezy. Well, actually, it was misty and rainy... but you know what I mean.

We did the supermarket thing, came back here and after some footling around there was some crochet... which, in both mine and Ma's cases will need to be undone and started over. Because neither of us did the thing we were trying to do correctly. Such is life.

photo saturday: ovelia in memoriam

I've said before that this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... my first ever wizard, Lady Ovelia, was one of the hardest to get right. But, honestly, this version is probably about right. It's just a shame this is a posthumous portrait, given that she met her end in the middle of a creepy temple at the hands, eyestalk, whatever, of a zombie beholder.

I had done a version of her after the Face Customiser came out... then they dropped both some new dwarven rings as well as the snake familiar. I went with albino snake for the purposes of the model, but her familiar was actually a Spiny Bush Viper, because they're adorable little danger noodles... even if it only ever really showed up as a skeleton because of the location we were playing. And then I copied a bunch of text explaining the origin of the magic staff she has and turned that into "carving" on the staff.

So let's call this the "if she'd survived" portrait.

Anyway...

This week's soup was what I'm going to call "Rice and Chorizo Soup". Basically that, plus tomato plus veggies. It was very good. And nicely spicy from the chorizo without being too much. And it mellowed out nicely across the week.

This week's mini movie reviews are an eclectic bunch. Technically only two of them are movies I got from the library, the other three are fairly recent movies that were either on Kanopy or SBS On Demand.

Firstly, The Northman. It's a very... pretty movie. And I like that the end is what it needed to be. It is one of those things where the reveal that happens midway through doesn't really feel like a reveal mostly due to the actor playing that particular part. Also, weirdly, both the movies I borrowed this week had Anya Taylor Joy in them... and so long as the movie industry needs someone to play a vaguely Eastern European woman who may or may not be a bitch, she's gunna have work.

Also, I'm just going to generally say... the reason given for the fact that a scene that should just be full on nudity but isn't is that "you can't show wang on planes" is... some bullshit.

The other ATJ movie was The New Mutants, which even a casual glance at the Wiki page will tell you had a checkered history, not helped by Disney buying Fox towards the end of the process. But, as a "Marvel/X-Men" movie, it's actually pretty good. Mostly because it's not doing the thing that those movies usually do, and I don't think any single character gets called by their "superhero name" at any point during the movie. It's more "superhero movie as supernatural horror". Honestly, I feel like they need to do more of that... we've done the superhero thing to death, let's just start putting superheroes into other genres. Or, you know, we could have an original idea and make a movie that doesn't rely on existing IP.

But I like New Mutants for taking big swings and doing something different.

Next up was The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which I think got "Dracula" slapped in front of the title because the great unwashed didn't know that that was the boat that Dracula sails in from Transylvania to London in the titular novel. It... wasn't very good. I mean, they tried, lord help them they tried. But when I say that this script/idea/project had been bouncing around for 20 years, that tells you a lot. What they ended up with was "dumb monster movie" just dressed in the text of a single chapter from an 127 year old novel. Also, it doesn't help when even when "Dracula" is mostly played by somebody in makeup, it ends up feeling like CGI nonsense, because the bits that stand out are probably CGI nonsense. And when your creature design is Gollum meets the Flying Gremlin from Gremlins 2.

So... Shin Godzilla isn't a comedy. It's not supposed to be a comedy. And yet. When the Godzilla design mostly just has derpy eyes that don't seem to look in the same direction and most of the movie is people from the government standing around talking to each other and a lot of the individual performances feel like they're being played for comedy... it starts to feel like a very dark comedy.

And lastly... The Vourdalak... a 2023 French film based on an 1839 novella. Which is a proto-vampire book written before Dracula. And, weirdly, they chose to make the movie on Super 16mm and using mostly practical effects (including making the titular Vourdalak/vampire/zombie/creature a practical puppet), giving the entire movie a late 70's/early 80's vibe. Like, if you told me that they made the movie in 1983 and it sat in a warehouse until someone discovered it five years ago and restored it, I would totally believe you.

It's good though. Weird as hell, and, honestly, sometimes the 16mm of it all kind of gets in it's own way, but overall it's done well.

So, this week the weather got real cold on Tuesday and Wednesday. Like, actual frost on the windshield of the car first thing in the morning, new lowest July temperatures for a bunch of places, equal lowest for Adelaide, very damn cold for here in Australia cold.

No Friday Night DnD this week because Mr and Mrs are off on vacation for a week... so no DnD next Friday either. And because my back has been being a little bitch all week, or rather, my leg, funnelling issues from my back, so Fluffy and I didn't do a movie night.

Anyway...

Today was Finding New Things To Replace Broken or Dying Things Day.

Firstly, supermarket, as usual. I am inventing soup this week... I have no idea how it will turn out. I am hopeful, but also, am questioning my future life choices. At best, I hope it's fine. At worst, I'm mixing two different ideas and hoping for the best.

After supermarket, we went to Big W on the hunt for a new kettle. Because my current one has a small leak at the bottom, which comes and goes, but honestly, I'm not fucking around with the combination of electricity and boiling water. Also, my wireless mouse committed suicide one too many times last weekend and stopped working, so I was back on crappy corded mouse until today.

I had assumed that Big W was the better option for kettles. I honestly don't remember where I bought my current, metallic red shiny kettle... and the blog doesn't help, all it tells me is that I got it "at Arndale" in 2015. The assumption then would be either Big W or Harris Scarfes, since those are basically the only options. And more likely Big W, because I don't like Harris Scarfes. It does mean that that kettle has lasted me for almost a decade though, which is decent. Especially for something that I don't know that I spent a ton of money on.

Where was I? Oh yes... Big W. Turns out the options in Big W were... boring or ugly or dumb or looked flimsy. Sometimes all four. So we decided to head over to Kmart, even though Kmart, because I know that last time we were there they have many kettles.

And yes, that was correct. I had, potentially two many choices. Sadly, none of those choices were shiny or red. A number of those choices were boring or ugly or dumb, but there were a few that I really liked, and a couple of those were the clear variety, which just amuses me that you can watch your water boil. Also, both of those kettles lit up as they boiled... so... yes? Admittedly, I would have gotten the one that changed colour to denote different temperatures, but did I need to spend and extra $10 on a feature I was never going to use, on a kettle that was a slightly worse shape? No, no I did not. But the one I have lights up blue because... water? I have no idea. It's not as pretty as my red kettle, but if it lasts as long I'll be pleased. It won't. 

Mostly because we're living in 2024 where nothing lasts that long.