photo saturday: demyan on repeat

deyman - whipmaster, asshole, artist

If I actually kept all the old versions of my characters in Hero Forge, I get the feeling that my Dumpster Fire cleric, Demyan might have ended up with the most versions. Because there was a time there where every time I made "the version" of him, some new item would drop and I'd have to update him.

We have the original version from back in 2021... those are the 2018-2021 versions that changed very little. And then we had the Pre Face Customiser version, which I still really love. There was also a Post Customiser version, but that only shows up in the header. But then, during the Advent Season last December, they dropped the hand fan. The item that I had been using at the table as my shorthand to get to Demyan. The item that I should have flavored as his shield the whole time I was playing him, because it doesn't make a lot of sense that he'd walk around with an actual shield. So a new version was born. But not long after they dropped both new hair, shaved hair decals and a set of new breastplates.

Which brings us to where we are now.

I don't see many new versions coming from this point onwards, not least of all because the only thing I would want to update from this point forward is if they drop a new version of the hakama pants. Although they did revise the original version at some point, but I wouldn't object to a whole new set. Also, if they change the way that the minis hold onto items like the fan.

And I think that, in the real world, that breastplate would be longer and actually sit more on his natural waist, handing down over the pants. But Hero Forge doesn't like doing that, keeping a strict waist seam on pretty much every item that isn't a coat. So, my headcanon is that the underlayer and the sleeves are a very, very fine metal mesh/chainmail.

Anyway.

Short version. I sick. I've been on a slow downward track all week, before really hitting a proverbial wall yesterday. It feels like the same kind of head cold that I had back in 2022. Although without the overwhelming urge to nap. That might come this week to be honest. For most of the week it's just been a general feeling of lurgy. Which I dealt with, like I do every time I get sick, by mainlining the leftover Codral I have in the medicine cabinet from the last time I was sick. I did buy more of the usual supplies for combating being sick, but I'll get to that later.

This week's soup was beef and barley. And actually really good. Admittedly, because I resisted the urge to add tomato and did add a lot of parsley, it came out somewhere in the grey/khaki/green/brown colour palette and looked very unappetising, but tasted amazing. Also, I love using beef that just falls apart when you cook it long enough like this did.

My bruises from falling down and going boom at the start of last week are mostly gone, having been relegated to a slight dark mark under where the thumb pad meets the wrist. The graze on my knee is more of an issue, because, like I said last week, every time I bend or unbend that knee, I break the scab in places, so that's fun.

This week's movies were actually not from the library, since nothing I'd ordered in had arrived last Friday, so instead I fell back on The Maze Runner Trilogy... because I have all three movies but I'd never seen the third one. I also, weirdly, had a completely false memory about the second one. Because I had convinced myself that they had reconned a helicopter crash at some point... I have no idea what that was about.

It's a weird fucking series though. Because the first one is basically a sci-fi drama. The second one is a zombie movie and the third one is basically a heist movie. I don't know how closely they all stick to the books (I think none of them are especially close, based on what I've read), but I do wonder if the books also do the same tonal shift as they go along.

I also don't really "get" the ending. I mean, it ended, I get it. But I don't really know what they were going for, because there's a (fairly fucking obvious and telegraphed) reveal after the mid point in the third movie, and then everybody who knows about the reveal ends up basically dead... and then nothing comes of it.

Having watched all three inside of a week, they're all a bit of a mess, honestly. I think it's one of those things where they cut a bunch of stuff from inside the books that would explain most of it, and if you've read the books, you just kind of colour those elements in on your own, but if you haven't, you just go "huh?".

The ensemble cast does well throughout, although they do kind of get wittled down to a small group by the third one. And not all of those characters are especially memorable. But I enjoyed the movies well enough. And it was good to round out the story, even if it doesn't necessarily all connect in the way that I feel like it should have done.

I also managed to crochet another set of bracers/cuffs and get most of the way through a beanie this week. Turns out that the trick is using much chunkier yarn and a bigger hook. And because I was using variegated yarn, it ended up making a quasi repeating pattern across all three items that I quite like.

How well the hat actually fits remains to be seen. Also, because I took the pattern I was using that didn't work for me and basically modified it so that it did work for me.

In other news, after having had the kitchen tap work itself loose a few weeks back, it developed spontaneous holes in the spout for no well explained reason, and after the landlord attempted to fix it with a little bit of epoxy putty and it didn't work, he came and replaced the tap in the middle of the week.If you didn't know, you'd never notice, because he replaced it with one that looks essentially identical. But after having had general tap issues for a long period of time, it's nice to have it all fixed.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week, because Fluffy had Plans. But I might have pulled the plug on it anyway, given that I wasn't feeling great yesterday.

Anyway...

Today was... brief.

I had called Ma yesterday just to warn her in advance that it would be a short day because I was sick, and I didn't want to pass on my cooties to her. So basically we just went to the supermarket, came back here and then she headed home. And I kept a mask on the whole time she was here. Just to be safe.

And she was gone by just after 9:30.

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