Jan252025

photo saturday: basic dnd food groups

oldy mcoldbeard - old, punchy, father celesti elle - talkative, astral, traveller

This might become slightly traditional... the DnD Character Colouring Book the second week of any new campaign might just be my versions of my fellow party members. It certainly worked for the last campaign. I also realised this week that we ended up picking, essentially, the three most basic DnD Food Groups for this campaign. Human, elf and dwarf.

And no, those are not their actual names. I'm also pretty sure, in the case of The Oldest Dwarf Ever, that his background and class aren't right either, but he does feel slightly like the World's Oldest Urchin, and while he's definitely a monk, the Long Death subclass just seemed to comedically fit.

What I will say is that Celesti was the result of a post-game workshopping of a mini that Mrs was unhappy with (even if I was handicapped by it being on a mobile that wasn't mine), but then I did my own version of it last Saturday. And she was so happy with it when I sent her the mini, she ordered that version with no changes. Which I take as a win, since when I was running Witchlight, she never ended up with a mini design she was happy with.

What I will say is that I really like the face on Oldy. And the I feel like I'm in a groove both with posing and the Face Customiser. Especially when looking back at some of the very old minis.

Anyway...

Tuna Pasta Salad this week... and it was good.

In Mini Media Reviews... Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy. Favourite character absolutely remains Number Five. I don't see that changing. And I care less and less about Luther and Diago as times goes on. And speaking of time, the (mild spoilers for a show from 2020) time travel to 1960's of it all certainly expanded the scope of the show if not necessarily the core idea. Weirdly, even though it was the same number of episodes, and several of them felt shorter or were shorter than their first season counterparts, Season 2 felt much longer. Mostly, I think, because each character was dealing with their own external storyline instead of (mostly) internal storylines about the interfamily dynamic.

The only other thing I watched was the 2019 Hellboy. Which was, for the most part, just straight up terrible. And looked so much worse than it's predecessor from 15 years ago. Because 2019 relies on CG for the most part, whereas 2004 do so much stuff practically.

Which is a shame, because Neil Marshall also made Dog Soldiers back in the day. So I don't know what happened. I do know that at least part of it is absolutely miscasting David Harbour as Hellboy, because he manages to be completely without charm throughout. But I also lay blame on Andrew Crosby for writing a script that was predominately forgettable.

Friday Night DnD was good... we're still finding our feet, and being level 1 is always somewhat of a struggle based on limited resources and abilities. Also we're very obviously still in the opening act, and have barely touched on the wider plot. Plus our characters have known each other for like three/four days.

So we're clearly on the Struggle Bus. We'll get there though.

Anyway...

Today wasn't anything exciting. We did the supermarket and all that entails, and then we just took a wander off to Cheap As Chips mostly for The Looking At Things. I mean, we had things we were looking for, they just didn't have any of those things. Then we did the very short wander in the little shopping centre across the way... forgetting that it doesn't really have anything interesting. We were going to call off at a market we saw on the way there, but then I went a different way back, so we ended up calling off at the dinky little Target on Unley Road... which is mostly dinky and barely has anything. But it was nice just to have a wander.

Jan182025

photo saturday: dapper man

whisper - pickpocket, telekinetic, sorcerer

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is the start of the new Friday Campaign. And the return of Whisper. Both versions of Whisper.

Because one of the weird things about a lot of the DnD I've played is that with the exception of a few story requirements, the characters spend... six months, maybe a year, in the same damn outfit. While also being shot at, stabbed, magically set on fire, camping in the great outdoors, being sprayed with acid, falling off things, being tied up, travelling through a variety of environments... and doing it all in the same pair of pants and same shirt that you started the adventure in. Sometimes you'll get new armor or a magic item that is also a piece of clothing. But for a lot of character, even that doesn't necessarily happen.

And this had been wandering through my head for another character recently, but I decided that, given how fancy Whisper normally dresses, he would probably have an outfit for the travelling we were doing at the start of the adventure. So, this above is his travel outfit. Complete with perhaps a couple of days of unshaven scruff.

It was also fun because this was how I debuted him, but I also got to do the reveal before the end of the first session...

whisper - pickpocket, telekinetic, sorcerer

To Whisper as a Fancy Lad. And, really, it's only the shirt and boots (and hat) that got changed from the previous outfit. It does give a very different vibe though.

More on the first session later though.

Anyway...

This week I made a pretty good quiche and entirely forgettable potato salad. Which is disappointing, because usually I'm pretty good with potato salad.

Also this week, some Mini Media Reviews...

So, when I first saw the trailer for Transformers One, I was like "what actual hot hot garbage is this?", because it looked, in a word, terrible. And you know what... I was wrong. It's not actually terrible. If I had to rank it in the oeuvre of Transformers movies, it goes after Bumblebee (which is at the top) and the original Michael Bay movie (because it's not perfect, but I still really like it), but before all the other sequels.

It's heart is in the right place, even if I absolutely see this as sitting inside it's own continuity separate from everything else. I don't know that I would have paid money to see it. But borrowing it from the library worked just fine.

Next up is the absolute dumpster fire that is Wolf Pack. This show should have been a slam dunk. A show about werewolves, with the same show runner as Teen Wolf, and with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Rodrigo Santoro in the Responsible Adult roles.

But it is just... a mess. The story is bananas, the four lead teen actors are doing as good as they can with the material, but the writing is not on their side. Likewise for everybody really. There are some of the minor characters that are questionable actors, but mostly it's the writing. Also, I'm all for not having gay characters in things always be perfect, but literally every gay character in this is a thundering asshole.

And almost every adult character who isn't SMG or Santoro is, likewise, a thundering asshole.

I also need Makeup Department Head, Shawna Maharaj, to explain why, at various times, all the women in the show had foundation that was absolutely the wrong colour for their skin tone. Was it a post production colour correction thing? Did somebody not order in the right shade? What happened? Because it was so blatantly obvious in one episode that I couldn't focus on anything else.

Actually, I did wonder what they were doing to the women at various points, because while the men had, you know, skin texture and detail, the women looked either like they're been dipped in full coverage liquid latex or had some sort of post production smoothing done to them.

Also, I very much appreciate Teen Wolf completing a storyline inside of a season. Because Wolf Pack did not do that. And was them promptly cancelled because, I assume, it was terrible.

It was slightly surreal though, watching a show in which wildfires in California are a major plot point while actual wildfires rampage through California.

Last and absolutely best... Season 1 of The Umbrella Academy. I know, I know, I'm late to the party. But I got here eventually. And I absolutely loved it. I mean, it's completely messed up, and often I wanted to punch various characters (honestly, mostly Luther... occasionally Diego), but mostly I just loved everything about it.

Favourite character, absolutely Number Five. The combination of the way he's written and Aidan Gallagher's performance... love, love, love. But everybody is doing good work. I have the second season ready to start tonight too.

So, as I said, Friday Night DnD was the start of the new campaign. Which is always a little strange, because you never quite know how a party will come together. And this is the first time since back in Adventurers League at Greenlight that Fluffy, Mrs and I have been a party together. We played Hero Quest back in 2023, but it's very much not the same.

Stupidly, both Fluffy and I chose to make characters who don't talk much. I mean, my previous character did All The Talking. I did have slightly more of an idea of who this character was before I hit the table though, so a definite step up from Hali.

And most of it stuck the landing. He felt like the character.

Granted, he is very nearly the only one who survived the ambush that started out the adventure, and I already got too dip into some fun foreshadowing stuff while Whisper was the only one conscious. Which also, fortunately, worked.

It was a fun session though.

Anyway.

Not a lot to report. Mostly because the weekend weather has been tending to warmer for a while, so there isn't much point in doing any longer excursions.

So we just did the supermarket, came back here for a while and then I sent Ma on her way. Nothing thrilling.

Jan112025

photo saturday: he is the night

bo bafflestone - ranger, emo, assassin

There have, at this point, been ten versions of Bo Bafflestone over six posts, including this one.

And today's DnD Character Colouring Book is the 2024 PHB reboot. Which partially came about when I realised that Here Forge had updated the blade prosthetic to that the pants tucked into it nicely and didn't just cover it over in a really dumb way.

But given that there isn't the Drakewarden Ranger in the new PHB, I decided to flesh out the middle Emo version from the previous incarnations. And decided on a Gloom Stalker/Assassin combo. Whether or not that would be fun to play over just a straight Ranger or straight Rogue remains to be seen, but I also don't know that this is a character I would end up playing. I do like to just keep him alive within the context of the world though.

Anyway...

I finally managed to make a pasta salad that wasn't a struggle to get through this week. Turns out the answer was Thousand Island dressing. And not using yoghurt.

This week's Mini Media Reviews is a Tale of Two... somethings. I don't know where I was going with that. But I started with Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham.

Which I wasn't sure exactly where we were going... because the font of the title is a little bit like the video game Doom. But it turns out this is "Batman: Cthulhu Edition"... And I'm absolutely here for the 1920/30's of it all. There were some points where it didn't completely gel, and, honestly, I'm mostly bored with any Ra's al Ghul storyline. But overall I liked the various versions of Batman characters in this genre.

Paired with that though was possible the best thing I've seen in a hot minute.

The Interview with the Vampire series.

I read the book back in the day, I saw the movie in theatres, I'm here for the story generally. Although I did find that when I tried to go back and reread the book I couldn't do it after having read some of the later ones.

But I adore everything that they did with this series. Moving the historical timeline forward to the 1910's, making Louis and Claudia black/creole, making the 1970's original interview canon, but also making this interview be set in 2021 as a follow up, weaving in references to some of the later storylines without taking away from any of them, just seeding them in when appropriate.

I will say that I would, at some point, like a version of this story where they cast Armand correctly according to his book description, but I also fully acknowledge the inherent issues with "a beautiful adolescent boy, 5’6, with curly auburn hair, large brown eyes and slender fingers" when casting something and given what's required of the actor in this part. But it would have been fascinating.

That's only a minor quibble though, because no version has gotten it right (although Queen of the Damned got the closest, but even then they hired a minor Australian actor and reduced his role to a glorified extra with a couple of lines).

But disregarding that, it's basically 10/10. Even though there are times you want to punch everybody in the face... but that's just the story really.

They are making a third season (and probably a fourth) that will cover The Vampire Lestat. And I'm absolutely here for it. I'll be honest, given where the books go later, they can do The Queen of the Damned and kind of give up after that. Just drag in the good plotlines from some of the later things.

Friday was Chiro Day. Which fortunately was just a minor tuneup. I wandered around a little afterwards and decided that I'm going to wait and buy the new PHB later... there's no real rush, I have access to all the information, and maybe I'll wait until they make the first round of corrections.

Then Friday Night DnD ended up being Session Zero for the next campaign. Which mostly consisted of each of us having a little side conversation with Mr, who is running this one, while the other two entertained themselves in another room. It will be interesting to start the campaign next week and finally meet each other's characters.

It was a very atypical evening for us though, but pleasant.

Anyway...

Today was the usual supermarket wanderings followed by a quick trip out to Spotlight for new bedding for Ma. And a rummage through the left over stuff from Christmas. Which was mostly underwhelming.

And that's it really.

Jan42025

photo saturday: adventing 2024, part five

hero forge advent calendar - week five

Well... the 2024 Hero Forge Advent Calendar mostly left with a whimper not a bang. Firstly, we don't need any more shields at this point. We have shields. The breastplate is kind of weird, but decent enough. The book would be okay if we had a version without the dumb letters/compass rose on it.

And the less said about those slippers the better. They are literally cursed.

But honestly, at the end of 31 days, there are like four or five items that I would bother using in the future. Honestly, the whole month was a little bit of a dumpster fire. I mean, yay for new, free items. And great that their artists get to design a bunch of random things for the month.

It's just that this is much more of a disaster than previous years. It's not just that a lot of the items are stuff I wouldn't necessarily use... when when they're an item that I could have considered using, they were just an uglier version of that item.

Disappointing really.

Anyway...

This week has somehow felt forever days long. I don't know if that's because I spent a lot of time writing things for the blog, or because I saw Fluffy twice this week, or just because, you know, New Years.

I made what I'm called "loaded potato salad" this week, basically just potato salad with bacon and some extra stuff. It was enough to get me through the week tho.

I already covered NYE/NYD... but this kind of feels like the right spot for both a Mini Media Review, but also my Best Of Media 2024 list. Which I couldn't really justify a whole post for.

This week, in addition to Teen Wolf: The Movie and Big Business, I watched Hellboy: The Crooked Man and Invitation to a Murder.

Hellboy was... trying too hard. I know it's based on a graphic novel, and I might search that out at some stage, but, honestly, the movie was trying too damn hard to be spooky and creepy. So much so that it mostly succeeded in putting me to sleep. And Jack Kesy didn't really work for me as Hellboy. Partially, I think, because they just slapped the Ron Pearlman makeup on him, but he felt too small. And I liked Jefferson White as Character We've Never Heard Of Before more than Hellboy.

It was kind of like watching a fan-film or a student film. Big swing, big miss.

By comparison, Invitation to a Murder is... kind of a mess, knows that it's kind of a mess, leans into being messy and was 100% more enjoyable.

Weirdly Mischa Barton kept giving me slight Kirsten Dunst vibes, but I also think that it was because I haven't really seen her in anything for about 15 years. So she's just a 38 woman now as opposed to the early 20's she was then.

The movie is completely ridiculous, but I still very much enjoyed it.

As far as The Best Things I Watched In 2024... in more or less descending order

I'm also going to add the entirety of Westworld as an Honorable Mention, even if it was occasionally doing too much. And because the final season will probably never happen.

Friday Night DnD was The End Of The Campaign. Which meant that we did about 52 sessions across 84 weeks. Which makes sense given various bouts of travel, sickness and what-have-you.

Mostly we mopped up the final details from last week, and moved on to our "what happens next". And, honestly, I didn't have any grand ideas, but this is very much a character that is going to continue on in the background, just doing his thing.

Anyway...

Given that it was going to be relatively warm today, we really just did the supermarket thing.

Jan22025

my 2024 in books

books 2024

In 2023 I read 198 books. In 2024 I read 123 books. So about 60% of the previous total. But still more than I read from 2020-2022 combined.

I feel like there were probably less "really good" books this year. Partially because there were just generally more last year, partially because I think I probably took a few more chances this year, partly because I think I'd had a lot of potentially good book on my radar for a few years, and went through a lot of that list in 2023.

books 2024

So, once again, because I can, and with the assistance of Goodreads... the images that go along with this post are all the books I read in 2024... in reverse chronological order.

Did I also pull data from Goodreads and make my own spreadsheet again like last year. You bet your sweet ass I did.

books 2024

The majority of my books were from the library once again, clocking in at 112 titles (91%). The split this year was also a little more in favour of books over graphic novels, (55% to 45% respectively).

And the ratio of queer books stayed about the same, with just under a quarter of everything having queer theming.

books 2024

But, as I mentioned, my average rating was a little lower, topping out just under 3 out of 5. Which makes sense to me. And once again most of my ratings where either "Liked it" or "Really liked it", so the math checks out.

I did abandon about the same number of books as last year with a total of 8, which means, percentage-wise there were more (even if they don't show up as part of the overall numbers). And yes, there were a few "Hate Completes"... actually most of the 16 books (13%) that I rated 1 out of 5 come under that category. A few of those were fine in the reading, but just left a bad taste in my mouth by the end.

Both non-fiction and manga were still minor entries again this year (6% and 7% respectively).

books 2024

The overall average page count was also up, to around 260 pages, which may just be because of the number of graphic novels last year vs this year. I still tried to stick to my "below 400 pages" vibe. Honestly, "below 350" is actually more where I like to stay. But a lot of the books that did go over turn out to be graphic novels.

As far as theming goes, I stuck pretty closely to the Urban Fantasy vibes of last year. Beyond that and some of the instances of working my way through a graphic novel series, there was a lot of stand alone stuff this year. And quite a bit of detective fiction of one form or another.

August and December had the highest title counts, mostly due to revisiting Scott Pilgrim in December and some other graphic novels in August.

books 2024

Which brings us to the best stuff I read in 2024. Starting, as usual, with the honorable mentions. Most of which come from the 4 stars reviews...

The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic and Monster of the Week by F.T. Lukens, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (I need to get back to the series), Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Wranglestone by Darren Charlton (ignore the sequel, it's complete trash), The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (which I said I would be recommending to people and them promptly completely forgot about) and Different for Boys by Patrick Ness.

books 2024

Then, once again, in mostly chronological order... my Top Reads in 2024...

Horrorstör
Grady Hendrix

Horrorstor is a book that is at least 50% successful at what it's doing BECAUSE of how it looks and how it's laid out. It's an IKEA catalogue. This is a surprise to nobody, because the book is set in a store that is Definitely Legally Distinct From IKEA by being a store that, in the universe of the book, is basically an IKEA clone.

I need to revisit Hendrix. I do love the overall experiment here, where graphic design is doing as much work as the prose.

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone & Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect
Benjamin Stevenson

I don't even want to talk about why it's good... I just want you, the person who might be looking at Goodreads reviews before choosing to read a book to go and read it. Because it's excellent.
Stevenson absolutely sticks the landing, in fact he sticks the entire "second book". Even if this one is much more meta just due to the nature of the story. And this one is a writer writing about a writer writing about other writers and writing. And manages to not become so "inside baseball" that it loses the reader.

If I was a person who picked a single book as the Best Thing I Read This Year, then these two books would be that single book. Of the two, the first one is stronger overall, but I'm very excited that the first books I'm reading in 2025 is the third book in this series.

Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road
Kyle Buchanan

How the hell this movie actually got made, let alone made into such an amazing piece of cinema is a story that it if itself was a movie, people would go "well, that's a bit far fetched, isn't it?".

Yep, non-fiction on my Books of the Year list. Who saw that coming? Mostly I kept this on the list because the overall story is so fucking strange and I appreciate the fact that this book exists and has documented the literal fever dream that was the process of making this movie.

Thornhedge
T. Kingfisher

What if Sleeping Beauty was the villain? And what if the wicked fairy was the hero?

Short, simple, to the point. It does what it says on the tin.

The Wild Robot
Peter Brown

The book is about a lot of things. On the surface it's about a robot trapped on an island with no idea of where she should be who befriends the inhabitants. It's about kindness being a survival skill (to paraphrase the director of the movie). It's about found family and adopted families.

Yes, this is a direct result of the movie. I love them both in very different ways though. And I'm just in love with Brown's writing. There is a style there that goes beyond the intended audience that just works for me. And yes, this is a book written for "middle-grade" children (11-13), I absolutely do not care. This also might have taken the top spot this year if I had to choose just one. I also read the sequel, The Wild Robot Escapes, and that books solves the "it just stops" problem that this book has. I think this is a stronger book though. But you could count the two books as a single entry for the purposes of this list.

Jan12025

movies: teen wolf - the movie

teen wolf: the movie - the pack is back

Before we talk about Teen Wolf: The Movie, a little background.

I'm a huge, unabashed fan of Teen Wolf (the series). I just am. It's melodramatic and often spottily written. It makes narrative leaps that it doesn't always clue the audience into, it's often a camp-tastic mess. And I love it anyway.

I love it for the shirtless boys and for them always swinging for the fences, no matter how well they actually manage to hit the ball. When it's good, it's outstanding... when it's bad, well, it's still watchable if completely insane.

If I had to rank the individual seasons (or technically half-seasons, because there are a lot of those) from the series, it would be, as I said when I finished the series...

6A, 3B, 5, 6B, 3A... and then 1, 2 and 4 is some random interchangeable order. If I'm counting the two split seasons as a whole, then I think the ranking is 6, 5, 3, 2, 1, 4 maybe. Again, the last three are a little switchable.

Given that, I feel like Teen Wolf: The Movie possibly sits in that pocket between between what I consider the "good series" (3, 5 and 6) and the ones that can more more of a struggle (1, 2 and 4). Because parts of this are very good, other parts make literally no sense for both internal and external reasons.

Let's start with some of the external reasons first. Also, there will be spoilers.

Firstly, I feel like I was in pretty much the right position to enjoy this movie as much as possible, having just rewatched the whole series. Most of the plot points and characters are fresh in my mind and I've seen all of their shenanigans very recently. If you were coming back to this after not having watched the show for seven years, I don't know how you'd fare.

Also, minor point, but the movie does a weird little time hop thing because the actors were already in their mid to late 20's at the end of the series, playing kids just out of high school. The movie premiered seven years after the final season. In the world of the movie, 15 years have gone past. Meaning, technically, the movie takes place in 2032. Or the final season supposedly took place in 2008 (I disagree with this based on phone technology alone). It feels like maybe the movie makes a subtle reference to it being "the near future" via the character of Lydia, but also, it just does not matter and the movie does not care to expand on it. That will be a recurring theme.

The Teen Wolf wiki seems to indicate that the 2008 timeline theory is the correct one, which seems dumb to me.

Secondly, Dylan O'Brien is not in the movie. Clearly, he's a big movie star now, being among the most successful (and, let's be real, one of the best) actors of the core cast, and he decided he didn't want to do this. Whether he just didn't like the part they'd written for him, whether he just had too many other things on his schedule at the time (he had two movies come out in 2022 when this was filming) or what, he's never said as far as I know.

But Stiles is the beating heart of most of the series. And while his absence is felt it also makes sense within the context of both the movie and the last half-season where O'Brien was also mostly absent due to a serious injury.

Thirdly, the original script for this movie absolutely featured the character of Kira, played by Arden Cho. But when Cho was then offered "half the per-episode salary proposed to her three [female series regular cast members] counterparts", she declined to come back, and somebody clearly did a Copy Paste on the script, replacing Kira's name with "Hikari" (played by Amy Workman). Hikari is barely a character, is namechecked only once and the entire character is so VERY clearly Kira.

I'll also be honest, I don't completely understand why they're paying people for a movie based on a "per-epsiode salary" from the series. Maybe there was a clause in their series contracts about a movie, but that just seems shitty and dumb overall. Either pay the actors properly and consistently, or don't just Copy Paste over a character whose actor refuses to show up.

They also put this character ON THE MOVIE POSTER. What are we even doing here?

Also, this is a 160 minute movie. Compare that to a regular 10-12 episode "season arc" of 410-492 minutes. And then trying to cover a series cast of about 15 characters in that movie time means that there are characters who essentially just don't do anything or have any kind of storyline.

Colton Haynes, as Jackson, is basically turned into a comedy sidekick for Holland Roden's Lydia. I also do wonder if he was originally supposed to be Third Wheel to the more compelling story of Lydia and Stiles before O'Brien backed out of the project. It very much feels like they wrote a script quickly after the movie was greenlit (they announced it in September 2021 and started filming in March 2022) and then when people didn't want to return they did a somewhat hasty rewrite.

Dylan Sprayberry and Khylin Rhambo, whose characters were best friends in the series, don't even talk to each other I don't think. They may not even be in a scene together.

But everybody outside of Scott (Tyler Posey), Allison (Crystal Reed) and Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) are woefully under-served by this movie's plot.

And I get it, you want to serve your main couple and the character with the strongest arc/link to the newest "major" character. The downside being, for me, that I was absolutely never a Scallison fan. I was a Scira man (Scott and Kira... also, these ship names are terrible), or, to be fair, I was absolutely a Scisaac (Scott/Isaac non-canonical ship) man, or, in the actual narrative of the show, I was a Allisaac (Allison/Isaac) man. But Daniel Sharman also doesn't show up as Isaac (he also seems to have been busy doing other things) either.

I also get that having him in the movie does complicate the Scallison storyline. But then Kira would also have done that, and the movie was definitely going to throw that in.

The character with the best arc in the movie is absolutely Derek, mostly because of the relationship with his son, Eli, played by a floppy haired Vincent Mattis. Derek has never really been my favourite character, and the show definitely didn't really know what to do with him at times, but I like what they did with him here.

This is kind of the other point where the absence of O'Brien is felt. Because Eli is 100% Stiles coded from top to toe. Because of course the fandom that was Sterek (Stiles/Derek) would be on board for Derek having to deal with his son acting exactly like his non-canonical boyfriend.

Doubly so because the movie never bothers to even mention a mother. For all intents and purposes Derek gave birth to this child via immaculate conception. Or, as I will maintain in my own headcanon, this is Derek and Stiles' son via magical mumbojumbo. At a bare minimum, given that they've been gone from Beacon Hills for 15 years and this kid is 15 years old, then this child was conceived either during or directly after the final season of the show. By a mother who then handed over the child and vanished.

Movie absolutely does not care about Eli's mother or lack of same.

As far as the actual plot goes, bringing back one of the strongest antagonists from Season 3B was an excellent idea. That does slightly fall apart when you also don't bring back Cho. Because she's literally the other narrative half of that season. Bringing back Allison, sure, I get it, given that she died in that season. That's supposedly your main characters first love, the romantic ideal, etc. Except they were always slightly toxic for each other and were better apart, but sure.

The movie also does a thing that the series did entirely too much and gives us a very incestuous friend-group. At this point, Scott had been in a relationship during the series with three of the four major female characters, and kissed the fourth once. So now Malia (Shelley Hennig), who previously had hooked up with Stiles and Scott is now in a fuckbuddy relationship with Deputy Parrish (Ryan Kelley), who previously had a thing with Lydia who also had a thing with Stiles than never completely got started on-screen and has ended off-screen in the intervening years, who was, as previously mention, in some kind of relationship with Malia.

Find some new people to fuck you guys. Seriously. Or, you know, don't... just keep swapping partners when the music stops. Live your lives.

Speaking of fuck. Because this movie was going out via streaming instead of on cable, the folks from Beacon Hills can now swear. Which basically amount to, as IMDB's Parents Guide kindly reports... a "half dozen uses of 'f**k' and 's**t', as well as some other milder swears". Which, honestly, I might not really have even noticed if I'd been watching it alone.

Also, butts. The show itself had a penchant for showing us handsome young men with their shirts off for large chunks of time, and the movie gives us... two female butts and a male butt. The butts in question being Malia, Parrish and Allison. The first two make sense given that it's right before an off-screen sex scene, Allison's feels a little... unnecessary, honestly. Narratively I get it, but also, why are you making Reed show her ass.

It's also almost comedic how little skin Posey shows. And I know why. He's now COVERED in tattoos and clearly they either didn't want to slather him in makeup or he didn't want to sit in the chair for that long. But even at certain points where he should just be wearing shorts, he has a pair of full length running leggings on under them. And a long-sleeve jacket on for pretty the whole time. There is one tiny scene where he pulls up part of his shirt to show a wound, and that's it.

I will also say that there is the tiniest bit of gay-erasure in the movie. While Jackson shows up, his partner of now 16-17 years in the show's timeline, Ethan (Charlie Carver), does not (although is name-checked). However Mason, who is canonically also queer, gets flattened down to essentially "sheriff's deputy" as his only character trait. And there's no reference to either his previous love interest or a new love interest. Boo I say. I like Mason, he was always a good character. He's massively underused in the movie.

Like much of the series though, the movie has plot holes you could drive a truck through. Why does Character X who was supposed to be dead show up again with no explanation? Why did Character Y have that MacGuffin? Has nothing supernatural been happening in this town the last 15 years? Who the hell is Eli's mother? Who, exactly, made the preserved vegetables that production design added to Derek's basement? Does Derek garden now? Or is this the fictitious wife/mother? Why would you not want your mother to know you're back in town and then meet at her house? Did Scott's mother actually become a doctor?

Just a million tiny questions that the movie never bothers to address directly that could very easily have been covered.

Honestly, this should have been a mini-series. Like 3-4 90 minute episodes. So that the whole thing could just breathe and do the business it needed to do and not rush through the story.

Having said literally ALL of that. I didn't hate it. It was massively flawed, yes. Some of it actively does not work or contradicts bits that do. But the bits of it that I liked, I really liked. 

Most of the stuff with Derek and Eli was great. I loved seeing Aaron Hendry back as the Nogitsune (and I didn't realise that he played that role as well as the homicidal orderly in that season of the show originally), he does fantastic work. Likewise just seeing everybody that did come back, even if they're only back for 10 minutes of actual screen time and have almost no lines.

I just enjoy this world, flawed though it absolutely is, and I very much enjoyed getting to spend just a tiny bit more time there, even if it wasn't perfect.

But sadly, I don't give half-scores in my reviews. It's full numbers or it's nothing... so I'm actually going to round-down because of the behind the scenes fuckery that clearly was going on in the production offices.

yani's rating: 2 '1980 robin's egg blue CJ5 Jeeps' out of 5

Jan12025

2025

2025 - international year of peace and trust

Welcome to 2025.

In addition to being the International Year of Peace and Trust, 2025 is the International Years for Glaciers' Preservation, Cooperatives as well as Quantum Science and Technology. However, as much as I would have liked to feature "hot boy on iceberg", the image search gods were not with me in this effort.

I also realised that 2021 was also a "Peace and Trust" year. Turns out that that's just the United Nations way of going "hey kids, quit squabbling, also we exist still" essentially. The more you know. And good for them I guess.

Weirdly, New Years Eve felt like it snuck up on me this year. I don't know if that's because there was a weekend in the middle, or what, I don't know. But yesterday was very "oh, it's NYE".

After my walk I went through my usual NYE chores. Change the bedding from festive red and green to calming black and white, tidy the house, vacuum, trim my hair, etc. All thrilling stuff, but necessary. And all very much my NYE "traditions". In the loosest definition of that word.

As is also tradition, Fluffy showed up in the evening for our usual New Years Eve Moviefest.

Of course, after a month of watching nothing but the entire run of Teen Wolf, and inspiring Fluffy to do the same, just slightly behind me, of course our first movie pick for the night had to be Teen Wolf: The Movie. I'm going to do a full review on it shortly... but it was both very good and in line with elements of the series, and also an entire dumpster fire. Very solidly average.

We followed that up with 80's camp classic, Big Business, partially to expand Fluffy's knowledge of Lily Tomlin, partially because it's just a big camp farce. It is, at times, somewhat slower than I remember it being and doesn't quite do as much of the, to quote Noises Off, "...doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce."

I mean, it does all that, just less frantically. Still great though.

And, because we never quite get the timing right, we finished the movies at 11:30 and I drove Fluffy home, getting back just before midnight and basically just listening to the sounds of about 10 minutes of fireworks before I called it a night.

This morning wasn't anything new or surprising, just my morning walk.