character saturday: big blue berserker

I'm absolutely blaming Reddit for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. Because there was a post about what characters do you have that never made it into a campaign for various reasons.

Of course, my answers were Alby and Lucky, and then I brought up the metric ton of barbarians I've made for the next campaign. That is mostly down to two at this stage... Kordela Buttons and Havoc. But the original, albino version of Havoc.

But the problem there is, visually, my choices for the next campaign are either albino character in white/grey or old lady character in white/grey. Which sent me back to the original inspiration for Havoc... which was technically Wrath. And Wrath's original inspiration, before he got turned into an albino, was actually Raze Darkholme. I don't even remember where I saw the image of Raze originally, Tumblr maybe?

So the blue skin/red hair combo was Wrath's original look. And then I just tried out the albino version.

But I figured, what the hell, let's try Havoc in that colour variation.

What I kind of realised is that, with the tattoos, he kind of ends up coming out like a full sized Nac Mac Feegle from the Tiffany Aching Discworld books. And, you know what, I'm not mad about that. It would definitely be a theme for his personality.

I do think, having lived with this version for a few days, that the correct answer might be actually putting Kordela into a coloured dress instead. The default would be green, but I've had a few characters with green as their colour palette. The ones I haven't really dipped into are probably pink or orange/yellow. I might need to have a play around with that honest.

You'll know that went well if that's next week's character.

Anyway.

This week was Tuna Mornay... although, once again, technically this wasn't a "mornay" since I always forget to add cheese to it. But, to be fair, that's the way we've always made it, sans cheese... but I might have gone a little hard on the spices... mostly because I found some of the spice mix I used last time, after I'd already mixed up a new batch for this time... so I just threw it all in. It wasn't the worst idea I've ever had in relation to this dish... but it was a little intense the first couple of days.

I also did add more rice in this time and that continues to work well.

This week's Mini Media Review is the third season of Black Sails. They're definitely leaning further into combining real historical figures (John/Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Charles Vane, etc) and the cast of Treasure Island before the book (Flint, John Silver, Billy Bones, etc). And it's still incredibly good. I'm very excited to watch the final season this week.

The crochet project continues... I'm almost finished. Then I need to work on some border details and do all the finishing details.

My toe is... fine. I mean, it's still busted, and I changed the tape on it twice this week. Once because the tape they put on at the clinic really wasn't doing a hell of a lot, but then I used too much tape the first time, so I had to adjust. I do suspect that, unlike the thumb, the toe is probably not going to bounce back in the same way, so the end of my toe may be permantly a little crooked. And it is what it is. It'll just be interesting to see where everything ends up. So long as it functions and isn't sore, I'll cope.

Friday Night DnD was... interesting. We cleared out a bunch of the dungeon we've been in the last couple of weeks, but by the time we got to what should have been the Final Boss, we decided that no, we weren't ready to fuck up his shit, and would come back at a later point. Even though that was supposed to be the end of the first half of the campaign, and we should really have wrecked his shit. We'll come back to it, probably.

But now there is no Friday DnD for a month while Fluffy goes off and Does Stuff.

Anyway...

Today wasn't really much of anything. I mean, we did the supermarket thing. And came back here and did the usual faffing about. But that was really it. 

character saturday: forest boy

There are just some characters that keep getting minor do-overs, even though I'm never going to play them again. And this week's DnD Character Colouring Book is one of those. This is Macabe's fourth variation, although the last few haven't been that different.

We did the Photoshop Color, the Tall Collar, and the Precursor to this version. I am slightly obsessed with that short hair though. He had a man-bun for the longest time, and he might again in the future, but I wanted to shake it up a little. Also, the asymmetric Japanese style bow is absolutely more his flavor. He's very "bow as tall as me" as a vibe.

Anyway...

This week has been... too much.

Let's start with the easy stuff.

Soup this week was Pepper with Stuff. In truth it was Off Brand Minestrone. But I opened the new pepper grinder and may have treated it like it was the current one where you have to work harder. So, the flavor of the soup was mostly pepper. Good though. Just peppery.

This week's Mini Media Reviews is mostly the second season of Black Sails. And it is still not disappointing. It's saying something when characters can be complete assholes and I still love them. Granted I don't really care much for the actual lead character of the show. But everybody else, thumbs up. I just need like... 15% more gay content. Or more specifically gay male content.

I also watched Dragon Hunters... for no real reason except that Fluffy and Mr conspired against me. And Fluffy encouraged Mr to give me a copy of it when he was giving me a copy of something else. It's not... terrible. I mean it's bad, and it makes sense that this is the prequel to a TV show, even if this came out a year after the TV show was done. And it's either that it doesn't translate from French well, or that the script is terrible, or a combination of the two. It was good enough to crochet to though.

Speaking of, I did get some more work done on the blanket this week. And I'm probably going to end up with a much squarer blanket than I originally envisioned. Which is fine.

Having gotten all that out the way, let's get into the week.

We start off with cleaning for my rental inspection. Which was on a Tuesday this time, and kind of threw my internal clock off slightly all week. But I did the kitchen on Sunday. And then, as usual, moved everything not nailed down onto the bed on Monday after my walk and cleaned everything else. Thankfully it was warm and windy enough that everything that I mopped dried relatively quickly.

The whole thing didn't take hugely long, but I also wasn't rushing the whole time. And, as always, it was nice to finish and have a clean house. Then I had to cook soup, so that was an exercise in annoyance.

I was up very early on Tuesday in order to do my walk, have breakfast, clean up from breakfast and vacuum my bedroom for a second time before I walked out the door. As usual I went down the road to Burnside library, and kind of avoided reading my book, instead fucking around on my phone.

But I came home to the best feeling, and I will say it every time, a clean house and a completed inspection.

Oh, and then realised that I had completely forgotten that it was Fluffy's birthday. For which I plead "rental inspection". 

Then we get to Thursday. Later in the afternoon I was rushing around and slipped on some water on the bathroom floor. Yeah, not when I'd been cleaning, but three days later. And my toe did a weird thing and hurt in the moment, but afterwards was fine. So I continued on with the rest of my Thursday.

Only to see my toe get progressively more bruised over the course of the evening. Now, had all things been regular, and Friday Night DnD had been happening (spoiler alert, it was not and did not happen), I probably would have dragged my ass off to the Emergency Department first thing on Friday morning. But instead I procrastinated. I also didn't go on my walk. Because I'm not that stupid.

But by about 2pm, when my whole toe was red and black and entirely a bruise, that I figured I should probably head off to Emergency. Which I did. And when I finally got to talk to the nice man at the triage window he suggested that I head off to the Urgent Care at Sefton Park next to where we used to shop many moons ago. Only to discover that they were referral only. Dammit Triage Man, you had one fucking job.

Thankfully, they didn't send me away, because, at that point I was just over it and would have come home. Long story slightly longer, I did a lot of sitting around, read chunks of my book, and then progressively people came over to me, I explained what happened multiple times, people poked my foot, a nice x-ray tech brought their mobile x-ray machine over to me and took shots of my foot, and then we all waited until the doctor took the 2 minutes necessary to actually look at the x-rays in order to tell me what I already knew.

And that is the thing that happened to my thumb about a decade ago. What, in the thumb, has the delightful name of Gamekeeper's Thumb. It doesn't seem to have an equally poetic name when it happens to your toe, but it's essentially the same deal. The little bit of bone holding the ligament in place snapped because you hyper-extended the digit.

Unlike the thumb, they don't put it in a cast. They don't really do anything. They just taped the big toe to the second toe and sent me on my way. Somewhat anticlimactic. But preferable to it being more of a problem. So, I think I'm supposed to keep this taped for a couple of weeks. And then go and see my GP, which I won't be doing, because that conversation will essentially be "yep, that's a toe alright".

I'll be honest though, right now the fact that the two toes are taped together are more annoying than it being broken in the first place.

And I will be attempting my walk on Monday. Probably just the length of my block though, not the full three block walk. Just to see how I go.

By the time I got back home though it was 6:30. Which wasn't great for the bread that should have been having it's second proofing around 4pm. I did proof it for about an hour and threw it in the oven, and it turned out fine. Plus, it meant I had hot fresh bread to eat while staring into the void for the rest of the evening.

[le sigh]

Anyway...

Today was fine.

We did the supermarket thing.

Afterwards, we were going to do a Big W/Kmart run... because I realised when I was cleaning that my door mat has gotten very thin (so much so that because it was very windy on Monday and it flipped over right outside the door), so I probably need a new one. But then we happened to look at IKEA and they have a doormat with big fat pussycats on it... and I need that.

So instead we decided to go to Kmart and look at their dumb Halloween stuff. Because they did have a Halloween mug that I needed. Because who doesn't need a cauldron shaped mug that says "Witch's Brew" on the front of it? Was I intending to get a little blue bat plushie that is giving Stitch vibes? No. Do I need a blue bat plushie? I do not. Do I currently have a little blue bat plushie sitting next to my laptop, yes, yes I do.

That was it really though. Just a wander around looking at things. And then that was it. 

character saturday: getting the band back together

Well, after a couple of months of being separated, the band is finally back together. So I thought I'd celebrate by grouping them all together in a single image. Complete with a slight make over for Oldy McOldface that happened a while back in game.

And I'll get into it later... but I may have some opinions about the disappearance of our little green friend, for various reasons.

There might be some minor tweaking to the paladin's fit in the next couple of weeks, depending on what happens with that character and the treasure we just found. We'll see what happens.

Anyway...

Soup this week was... not exactly the Lasagne Soup... mostly because it was a little thicker that that generally ends up due to me using noodles over the lasagne sheets. Good, but quite thick.

This week's Mini Media Review... the second anime I've actually loved, Sasaki and Miyano. The first being 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team. And not at all weirdly, they're both predominantly an all male cast. But Sasaki and Miyano is my first proper experience with BL (or Boy Love) anime. There was some mild flavouring of that to the Volleyball show, but it wasn't a direct theme. More accidental queerbaiting.

But Sasaki and Miyano is excellent. Incredibly well done, not least of all because it's as much a comedy as a romance and also because it's a BL anime about boys who love BL manga, so there's some meta explanations in there that I found helpful as someone new to the genre.

I will also say that I am 100% a Dubs stan for this particular anime. And you can lay that at the feat of Kellen Goff who does the voice for Sasaki. His character choices and line readings, exceptional.

I knew enough about most BL anime to know that we were headed into the realm of the 1950's screwball comedy... I could expect one or two chaste kisses before the end of the show and anything else would happen off screen after the show was over.

And that's what I got... and, honestly, given how much this whole show really hit a lot of those early gay relationship vibes, I was grinning like an idiot quite frequently, but never more so than in the final episode where they shared one chaste kiss that was essentially off screen and a second one that was essentially filmed from two neighbourhoods over. Still not mad at it.

The crochet blanket proceeds. I will say that I had some creeping doubts about whether the choice of stitch was the right one and if the yarn was too rough as a result. Weirdly, how scratchy that yarn feels seems to change on the daily. So I'm just going to keep going and then investigate some of the common remedies to dealing with less soft yarn. So there's that.

Friday Night DnD was me being foiled from enacting a plan by DM "interference". Admittedly fully understandable interference. But from my character's perspective, interference. I do, however, now have access to 3rd level spells, and hence Sending, so I can be all up in everybody's business all the time. Well, at least twice a day currently.

Yeah... that spell is going to be a problem. Not for me. For everybody else. 

Anyway...

No grand excitement for today... really just the usual supermarket wander. 

character saturday: stormcloud

Taking another dip back into the Existing Character Redesign box for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. This time all the way back to one of my very nearly characters, Masika El-Borak.

She last showed up, pre Face Customiser, a couple of years ago. And while this still isn't The Perfect Jacket, this is a much better version of the Staff of Thunder and Lightning. And while I probably could go in and do minor tweaks on her face until the end of time, I feel like the attitude is absolutely correct here.

And much more on brand with what I said last time...

If Masika El-Borak is looking at you like that, you should already be running... because you've clearly annoyed her and now it's time for lightning. Or thunder. Or both.

Because she will fuck you up.

I do wish the knee armor disappeared when you put high boots on... but you can't have everything.

Anyway...

This week was... all over the place.

Soup this week was Beef, Vegetable and Rice. Decent, although honestly, the beef that I used really needed a longer, slower cook. Also possibly everything needed to be chopped a little larger.

I did start the new crochet project... firstly by winding all the yarn into cakes, then having massive indecision about exactly what the hell I was doing. And then lastly doing the thing. Of course, given that hindsight is somewhat 20/20, are there other things I could have done? Absolutely. But I'm happy with how it's coming together right now.

There's no Mini Media Reviews for this week... mostly because I didn't have anything to watch, at least partially because I was working on crochet and ended up just putting nonsense on so there was colour and movement in the background.

Otherwise, the Gentlemen of the Gentlemen's Apps were, essentially, spending entirely too much time on my last actual nerve. Also absolutely my own fault for getting into a mood I would best describe by Wednesday as "feral". I did get over it though.

Friday was Chiro Day. Hence the going into town and wandering around at all the usual places I wander around.

Friday Night DnD was... one long combat. Like two and a half hours worth. Did things go according to plan? No. Did we get 90% of the things we needed to get by the end? Yes. Is the one thing we don't have the one thing I want us to have? Also yes. Are we done yet? Not on your nelly. Wheels are still in motion.

Anyway...

Today wasn't overly exciting. Supermarket as usual. And that was it really.