photo saturday: alt boys

We're going to do a brief reprise for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... with the full final version of my last Thursday Night D&D character, Dax Oreva.

I realised that I only posted an earlier version of him, and then added the final version to the banner art.

But, because of DM Fluffy shenanigans, we're going to briefly step into the Multiverse of Dax for a second. That's a thing that happens when one of your fellow players has a character who is a time wizard, and doesn't give the DM much of a backstory... especially DM Fluffy. What you get instead is a peak into the multiverse at other versions of who your character might have been. Even if it's just a name and a brief description.

And you know I then had to fuck around and make those characters once we were done with the campaign. Obviously.

Three of these are the ones that DM Fluffy invented, the second from the right is my own addition. But what's funny is that with Dax and with the addition of Brother Kas, I cover all possibilities on the human/orc/elf timeline. But we have human, half-orc, orc, uniya (elf-orc hybrid, specific to Critical Role) and drow elf. I suppose if we were to complete the circle, there would be a half-elf version too. That one might just be full Rogue though. 

Also, as much as I love DM Fluffy, naming things is not his strongest suit... so the human and drow timeline versions got more fitting names... and he can fight me about it. But once I realised that "dax" was an actual suffix on the Drow naming table, it had to happen. I did keep his name for the orc wizard, because, honestly, it was the best of the names.

And there was a version that is only one step away from Dax, but the main difference between those two was between requited and unrequited love. Also the difference between a lucky and an unlucky dice roll at a point before the campaign.

I'll be honest, the ones that Fluffy invented might not have been the alt versions I would have made myself, or at least with the Ranger I might have gone for a different subclass (Gloomstalker or Swarmkeeper probably)... because we're leaning very heavily on some Drizzt Do'Urden fanfic there, which is fine for a throwaway character mentioned once that I was never going to play. But at the very least, I would have picked a different animal companion. The idea of him rolling around with a tiger is appealing. Or one of the in-world creatures that looks pretty much like a panther with tusks. But on the plus side, there is a version of the Beastmaster where you can decide what your companion looks like each time you summon it... so, you know, it would definitely be that.

Interestingly, just putting these together, I started pulling on the timeline threads that would have needed to change in order to get Dax from Dax to one of these characters. Some of them honestly aren't that long of a walk away. Some of them are just a change the location or circumstances of his birth, or a slightly different upbringing.

I did keep Dax's grey/colourless eyes though. Because I feel like that's a one of a couple of constants throughout the multiverse. The day he was born and the fact that he was born with those pale eyes.

But this does mean that I can now put this particular idea to bed where it belongs.

Anyway...

This week's soup was essentially just chicken and vegetable... but I added some medium grain rice for a change, as well as a healthy dash of cayenne pepper... which very much gave it the "fighting off the last remnants of the cold I had a few weeks back" vibes. Because that will clear out your sinuses. Good stuff though.

This week's mini movie reviews are a documentary, an old favourite and a series.

We start with the documentary Scream Queen, by/following/about the lead actor in the second Nightmare on Elm Street movie (you know, the one that's incredibly queer)... and it was... interesting. Honestly, I feel like he could have just gone to actual therapy to work through some of this stuff, but at the same time, given that some of the issues he was dealing with were also very much public and out in the world, it makes sense.

Next up, an old favourite... that I simulcast with Fluffy (by which I mean "we both hit play on the same YouTube video at the same time")... Vibes. If you haven't heard of Vibes, I'm absolutely not surprised. But it's an 80's movie about people with psychic powers going on a "road trip" (for want of a better term) starring Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper. And yes, I put all those words together in that order, and that is a movie that exists.

And sometimes when you go back to old movies that you watched a lot in your teenage years, you suddenly go "well, this is actually terrible". This wasn't the case. It was actually better than I remembered. Still completely bonkers. And very much a movie from 1988, but everybody is giving their all and it's a lot of fun.

Last up was the Discworld adjacent series, The Watch from 2021. Is it on a level with the best of Discworld? No, absolutely not. Did they take ideas from Pratchett and go their own way with them? Yes. And, honestly, I like a lot of those places. They also fully acknowledge that they're doing their own thing in the credits at the start of every single episode.

I also love a lot of what the production design, wardrobe, hair and makeup and set dressing are doing. Some of the versions of particular characters don't quite work for me, but I like the core cast of the titular Watch.

But for what it is, it has a charm.

Friday Night DnD was... nearly a disaster. We nearly got drowned, we nearly got squished by a giant... but we still managed to squeak through by the skin of our teeth. Or beak, in the case of my character. We are into pre-end-game at this point. As in, the actual end-game will happen whenever we finish doing a bunch of other little bits and pieces that we didn't do before now.

So, some good old DnD level grinding. Which, honestly, is not really a thing that often happens, but I'm here for it.

Anyway...

Supermarket was as supermarket does. I'm winging this week's soup and going for a weird hybrid of two previous soups, so we'll see how that goes. Otherwise we didn't do anything exciting.