character saturday: cerulean sketch

A while back I posed Ari Chasing-Bear, a halfling barbarian. He was based on a Aasimar barbarian with the same pose and outfit, who in turn was based on, as I said in the previous post "a dual bladed wizard for Samwise", one of the Thursday Boys. And Aurelius was initially based, at least before we changed the pose, on a Wood Elf World Tree Barbarian. 

So, at this point we're four characters deep. 

Mostly I based him on an existing idea because I know that Samwise is the "poster child for distraction", as I previously described him, and I wasn't about to start completely from scratch on an idea that I was sure had the shelf life of room temperature milk.

The request itself went something like this...

Him: You have a task when you are bored 

Me: Do I now? 

It then proceeded to the point where I asked him several other questions before presenting him with the first version of our boy up at the top there. 

Neither of us are that enamoured with the swords, but we both also acknowledge that Hero Forge has a dearth of good looking scimitar style swords. Those ones are my favourites of what we have. Samwise's mileage may vary.

Will I potentially recycle him into something else at some stage? Possibly. 

Anyway...

This week's soup was not in fact soup but Tuna Mornay. I did a few bits and pieces that I haven't done in a while, including adding onion (which the original recipe listed, but I don't know that I've done for a long time) and some celery. I also threw some rice into the roux/sauce... which... yeah. The idea is solid, but next time, cooking the rice first and throwing it in with the tuna and everything else may just work better.

I also need to remember to add cheese to the roux. I always think about putting cheese on top and then change my mind, when what I should be doing is making a cheesy roux.

But it was very tasty. And I didn't go too hard on the spices.

The crochet jacket is getting there. I'm nearly at the point where I can join the shoulder seams and then I have the very fun job of tying off all my ends and weaving them in. Not the most fun job, but it needs to be done.

I may also have to think about the idea of pockets at some point. Probably before the ribbing goes on. 

This week's Mini Media Reviews start with How To Train Your Dragon: Hidden World (aka HTTYD 3), and I don't really disagree with anything from my original review (except the idea that Eret might have been queer coded, I think I was reaching a little).

Next up was 65. Which is absolutely a ridiculous title for a movie. And I was fully expecting the movie itself to be a total shitshow. And bits of it are. But I don't know that it absolutely deserved the savaging that it got when it came out. There are a couple of minor tweaks that I feel like could be made... because the movie is both trying to go for an "It was Earth the whole time" both from the beginning and in a reveal at the end of the movie. While also having totally wacky designs for a lot of the "dinosaurs". I think you could excise a lot of that guff and just make them "dinosaur like monsters" instead.

But even though some of it was a little bit formulaic, I still quite enjoyed it.

And we finished up with Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Yes, yes, I know. Most of the Kevin Smith movies shouldn't necessarily be For Me. And some parts of them absolutely are not (I also definitely skipped the ones about the walrus man and the tiny bratwurst nazis... those I haven't seen). But there's just something about some of them that really get to me.

I'm also not going to lie, Jason Mewes manages to actually do the required emotional heavy lifting for this one. Yes, granted it's not like it's a particularly large weight. But he does well.

It's also interesting so see the range of people that Kevin Smith has either had in previous movies, directed in episodes of other people's TV shows, or has some other kind of relationship with who will absolutely show up to be in a movie for literally one scene.

Then, the thing that I should have expected was going to happen, happened. Because all through the Before Times, J would absolutely text me out of the blue on like a random day of the week and go "hey, I'm at a place not that far away from the place that is your place, we should coffee". I should have known that nothing would have changed in the intervening 12-ish years.

Because rather than doing something pre-planned like actual grown ass adults, he did what he always did. Which, you know, is what it is. And we are where we are.

He came over, we chatted, I finished up the scarf I had made for his mama, but I also recognised, once again, that there were definitely reasons that I wasn't especially bothered that time and distance meant that he slid out of my life. You know?

It's nothing terrible. It's mostly just that his life went in one direction, my life went in another direction and there's actually not that much left to the join anymore. The overlap that used to exist is the barest of slivers and most of it is based around having had a history together during a formative period for both of us, even though we're about a decade (potentially actually a decade, I forget) apart in age.

It also doesn't help when I have Fluffy to compare him to. Because after a certain point there were always periods where J and I would come to an awkward pause or awkward silence. Where the conversation just ran out. And I could feel it again this time, and it wasn't a new feeling. It was the same feeling as always.

Fluffy, on the other hand, I think we're at like seven years... plenty of silences, none that either of us could remember felt like awkward silences.

As I said to him on Friday, I traded up.

Speaking of Friday. No Friday Night DnD again this week. So instead Fluffy and I had movie night. Well, mostly we talked a bunch before we haven't seen each other in like three weeks. And then we watched Some Like It Hot, because it was on the Show Fluffy Movie List. And I haven't seen it in a hot minute.

It's still great.

Anyway...

Today was very simple. A slightly underwhelming supermarket visit... and I don't quite know why exactly... 

And then we wasted some time here before I went Ma off on her merry way.

So, yeah, not exciting, but fine.