character saturday: hot nerd boy

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book went through some iterations. I think it originally started with a Reel I saw on Instagram that saw in passing about making male characters vs female characters. Where you make a range of body shapes and sizes and ages and weirdness when you make female characters, but your male character roster is mostly Hot Boy, Hot Boy, Hot Boy. I felt seen and I didn't appreciate it.

And it's not 100% true. Sometimes they're a Hot Halfling. But my male characters do tend to default to things I find attractive vs my female characters. Flip and reverse that as needed for your own gender identity and sexual orientation.

But Zahir yn Hamza el Sadhara yi Memnon (or Zahir, son of Hamza, of the Sadhara family, from Memnon, based on Calishite naming conventions), who would probably put the title of Ynamalik (or lesser prince) at the start of that if he was feeling formal, doesn't contradict that idea in the slightest.

Because I really need to play a warlock in a full game. And I really want to play a male tiefling. But Zahir started out as a remodel of Alby Abeowan, because that's a face that I still adore. And pulling from Riddle a while back, the Sphinx Celestial Patron and the Sphinx of Wonder familiar. Although I did some Photoshop fuckery in order to make a monochrome/grey Sphinx cat. Because that really just suited his Zahir's vibe. He did start out with both purple skin and a dark blue pinstriped suit... but when I decided on Celestial, he ended up in white and then the purple looked a little too over the top. 

I did, however, go back to the idea of a tiefling with a succubus lineage that I keep coming back to. Hence the pretty.

He did start out skinny like Alby and Riddle, and then at some point I gave him the full KPop Demon Hunters Saja Boy makeover. And added in the glasses, because I don't use glasses on my characters nearly enough. And then added in the very skinny tail art, because Hero Forge doesn't have skinny tails.

Finishing up with a walking cane/rod arcane focus. Honestly though, if Hero Forge let characters actually hold a book like a normal human being, I might have been tempted to give him both the Pact of the Chain and the Pact of the Tome boons and use the book as his focus. I might still play around with the idea of some point. Because the idea of him being the hot nerdy bookworm is appealing.

And did I just stop, flick through the book assets and find one where he can hold it properly and then redo the image... yes, yes I did. Does that hand/wrist still look a little... funky? Yes. But red leather Book of Shadows. I'll live with it. Might he end up with all three Pact Boons... I mean... maybe.

I tossed the idea of either a Noble or a Charlatan... but they come with the same feat, so I think he's actually a Noble but using that and his relationship with his family in order to be a little stinker and his actually a Charlatan. Because he really hasn't been in touch with his family since he was sent to The Lady's College in Silverymoon to become a wizard, but instead just read a lot of books until he stumbled on some particular magical secrets that led him down to the Frozen Sea Desert and his patron.

See... this is what happens when a fucking backstory just flows out like fucking water. Not like the pulling of teeth that a number of my barbarian character concepts were. 

So we'll just leave all this here if it turns out I ever do anything with Zahir. It all very much depends on what's actually available by the time we've finished both the next campaign and then the campaign after that which will be my turn as DM. So it's going to be a hot minute. 

At worst, I will reskin him into a new character. 

Anyway...

Soup this week... Mostly counts as Shit I Made Up. But it was kind of Chicken Caccitore if we just count the caccitore as me thinking about remembering what caccitore is. And without olives. And with a lot of rice. And, honestly, I made too much of it. But it was very tasty, so I didn't mind all that much.

Mini Media Reviews... Firstly, a revisit of The Mitchells Vs The Machines from New Years Eve 2023. I don't really disagree with anything I said back then. It's very Not For Me, and a bit too random to be completely successful. But pleasant enough.

The other movie couldn't have been more different. The Age of Innocence. I have a complex relationship with this movie. Well, less the movie, and more just the fact that I know that it's the movie that I was watching when Ludo declared a "Family Meeting" and informed me that he and Lownee had decided that I was moving out of the house we were sharing at the time. Suffice to say, by the time I came back to the movie I was singularly uninterested. Plus I think it was actually on TV at the time, so it's not like I just stopped it and could pick it back up again. I honestly couldn't tell you what I did for the rest of that evening, other than perhaps cursing his name repeatedly.

Admittedly, watching it this time I remember none of the movie. Partially because it has been at least 25 years, partially because I think I literally saw the first three minutes of the movie. But the movie itself, divorced of all other context, is actually really good.

It's all very angst and yearning and repressed high society and whatnot. But within the genre of that, it's very well done. Not least of all because Michelle Pfeiffer is in it. I mean, a lot of good actors are in it... but I always think that you can't go wrong with Michelle.

The weather this week has been Cuckoo Banana Pants. Big fat rainstorms multiple times, including as we speak.

Still no Friday Night DnD.  I think we're back next Friday. At the very least the week after. But if it was any longer I may legitimately go insane.

Anyway...

Today was less of a headfuck than I thought it might have been. The supermarket and everything was fine, but I needed to do some things for Ma online and wasn't sure how simple that was going to be. Turned out, a lot simpler than I expected.

So we rewarded ourselves by taking a drive out to my old stomping ground in North Adelaide and getting a bunch of stuff from Perryman's. Because sometimes you need a Thai Chicken Sausage Roll and an Apple Turnover.

And to drive past places you used to live while singing the song you continually think it Memory from Cats but is actually The Way We Were from the movie of the same name... but like Macy Grey was singing it. And only like three out of the first four lines. It's a very complex performance. With layers.

character saturday: piratical woman

Yep... we're back in the Barbarian salt mines for today's DnD Character Colouring Book. Welcome to the roster, Pearl Yarwood. And, I know I've said this a couple of times, but I think we might have found the actual character for the next campaign. Maybe. At the moment.

My issue with previous characters have been the backstories. Because I was very much leaning in the direction of the original Havoc, but any backstory I came up with got too complicated too quickly as I tried to circle the square of his background mechanic and his look. It just wouldn't come together.

So I started again from scratch. And went a different route somewhat. Admittedly, she did start life as a tiefling called Anarchy ("call me Ana"), and I liked that version, but I kept circling back around to aasimar. And when I dropped in the silver skin I used for last week's Ayda, it all started to come together. I did go for more of a midway point between gold and silver for Pearl, which in the end became the inspiration for her name. I've continued to fuss and fiddle and finesse her for the last week more or less. I've changed the eyes several times, I added in the makeup basically yesterday. There might end up being a version with a more defined muscular body at some point. Just little tiny tweaks here and there.

I'm not going to lie though, there's a non-zero amount of crossover to the backstory of Masika, my Storm Sorcerer. And also a non-zero amount of the fact that I watched all four seasons of Black Sails. And her look is somewhat inspired by both Charles Vane and Billy Bones.

But at least I made it all the way through the first draft of her backstory and had it still make sense when I was done.

Also, the idea of a dual wielding barbarian is appealing. I did toss around the idea of giving her an axe and a cutlass, but none of the smaller axes on Hero Forge are right. If they happen to update that between now and when the campaign happens, well, all bets are off. Likewise with certain costume elements.

We'll see how long this lasts (very much fingers crossed). I do need to have a conversation with Fluffy about her though, or at least certain aspects of her backstory that I pulled from the wiki, but I don't know how much that actually features in the campaign we'll be doing. 

Anyway...

This week's soup was not soup but instead was Tuna Noodle Do. And not a terrible version of same. Possibly because I added more of the wet ingredients, so the whole thing worked better than the last couple of the previous versions have.

The Mini Movie Reviews for this week were very lucky choices. Because I didn't have anything come in last week, so just picked a couple of options from random.

Firstly, there was Weathering With You, by the same writer/director as Suzume that I watched late last year. He has a very specific point of view in his work... a weird one, but specific. He does enjoy taking a simple story and adding a supernatural or strange element to it. I definitely need to watch more of his stuff I think. But without spoiling anything, the ending of this was the bit that got me. Let's call it a unique ending. Certainly not how I thought it was going to end. But excellent.

Then there was Babylon from 2022. Which is a three hour movie about the end of the silent era in Hollywood starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie that I had never heard of. And it's very good. Yes, some of the sequences go on just a touch too long for me. And the movie could do with being a little tighter, because three hours is a lot. But it's a hell of a movie. It would also make for a really, really fucked up double feature with Singing In The Rain. Also, maybe also throw The Artist in there. Because they're all the same time period.

Although Babylon is the most... adult of the three.

Two very good random pulls.

Still no Friday Night DnD.

Anyway...

Today started out like all the Saturdays. But because my car hasn't had a proper run for a few weeks, it was being a little temperamental this morning.

So we ended up taking a drive down to IKEA, just to work all the kinks out. And because it was at least a place that we had things we wanted to do. But we decided that there was no point doing the upper floor since we didn't really need to wander around the large furniture, we just wanted the Marketplace.

One set of drinking glasses for Ma and one new doormat and a 100 new tealight candles for me later.

And entirely too much time going "ooooooooooh" over kitchen utensils. What? They had nice wooden handles. I will also say that the Christmas stuff this year is probably better than the last couple of years. More Christmas colours and less weird Scandinavian aesthetics.

character saturday: light as a feather

Last week's post led pretty directly into this week's DnD Character Colouring Book.

I played around with some character ideas based on that, although I kind of took a left and ended up here. And for some reason I just want to play Aasimar as very tall folk. Probably because both the Solar and the Planetar are Large creatures in the game.

Ayda ended up more than a little bit Genasi-coded, especially since I figured that both her Aasimar lineage and her monastery are connected to Akadi, the elemental goddess of air. There was another god I was considering, Shaundakul, even though technically he disappeared a couple of editions ago.

I don't have a full backstory for her yet, but I know that she acts as a guide and protector for travellers, merchants and caravans. And her reason for getting involved in the campaign would be that she's the one who knows the way there or she's been there before. Something like that.

I also decided that I was going to theme her Warrior of the Elements powers, because who says you have to use all of the damage types. I can totally theme her as a cold/thunder/lightning monk. 

It's also always interesting to me when a character just quietly announces their sexuality to me. And maybe it's because there's a slight visual similarity to my Storm Sorceress with the close cropped hair and also because I was looking through similar names. But at some point I just realised she had a female partner. And I ended up thinking about a gold dragonborn, but honestly, brass might be a better fit. There was a moment where I thought about adding a kid to the mix. But I've done the partner and kid vibe already fairly recently. But I haven't done just a partner. So there's that.

And I found it amusing that the clown pants from, I think, last April Fool's, were what I ended up going with. Because I just wanted loose "harem pants", and those were the best fit. And had a belt. Which too many Hero Forge pants just lack.

My main issue right now is that while I'm excited about this character right now, I don't know if I actually want to play a monk in this campaign. Yes, I want to play something melee based. And yes, I'm still leaning in the general direction of barbarian. I just haven't found a character yet that really excites me. There's the original version of Havoc. I just don't know how he'd actually play at the table. Like many other character ideas, he'd really need a full backstory.

I think the other problem is kind of that I'm not really that excited about most of the 2024 Barbarian and Fighter subclasses. And it doesn't seem like a lot of point not playing a 2024 subclass.

So, I'm just going to keep playing around with ideas until I get somewhere. Maybe Kordela from last week would work as a different subclass.

Anyway...

Firstly, fuck you Blogger. No I don't fucking want to have you force "search links" into my posts using, presumably, AI. I would love to turn that fucking option off. And never have to see it again. I will definitely never be clicking that button. Not even to test how badly it works. 

Moving on.

My toe is... fine. Technically. The fact of having tape across two toes for like three weeks means that the skin is wrecked. So I've had to unstrap it. And it's not really any worse than when it was strapped. So there's that.

I am still on my shorter walk though. Just to be safe. 

This week's soup was Chicken Noodle. Partially to make up for last week's disappointing noodle soup. And partially to chase away the end of the cold I had from the week before. Even if the chicken and the noodles didn't help, the slight excess of black pepper and cayenne pepper certainly chased it away. Also I decided to use some linguini noodles that I had, broken into four pieces, and I'll be doing that again, because they were amazing.

Mini Media Review for this week... was something of a failure. I had grabbed the first series of The Originals. Without knowing that it was a spin off from The Vampire Diaries. And it was about vampires and werewolves and witches and set in New Orleans.

And also fucking terrible. I mean it wasn't unwatchable terrible. And not as bad as the Van Helsing TV show I tried to watch back in May. It was just... overly dramatic and very much a WB drama that they threw a vampire story over the top of. I made it through two episodes before I gave up.

So we're not counting that.

Nothing much else to report for the week really. Still no Friday Night DnD.

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything either. We did take a slightly pointless trip to Spotlight after the supermarket this morning. But while they have both Halloween and Christmas stuff out, nothing really caught either of our eyes. 

character saturday: golden buttons

I did say that this was going to happen last week. So this week's DnD Character Colouring Book is Kordela Buttons, but in golden yellow. I did also make a pink version, which might work better for story reasons, but a kind of orangey-yellow is a colour I hadn't really done for a character at this point.

Admittedly, predominantly grey is also something I haven't really done in a long time either.

The problem is... as much as I like Kordela... and the Path of the World Tree is the subclass I keep gravitating towards... all this has really done is make me thing about other possible characters. And as much as I've only really done Barbarian a couple of times, I've only really done Monk once. And Fighter, or at least melee Fighter not really much at all.

So... and this is really only for Future Me... let's look at what I could play. Honestly, of the four Barbarians, it could be any of them. Wild Heart I've done before when it was Totem. Berserker and Zealot are going to be simpler than World Tree. Fighter, I just default to Champion, because I don't care about most of the other ones. Maybe Eldritch Knight would be in there. Monk... I mean, all four of those are potentially good. But we have a Monk in this campaign. And as much as I like all of the Monks it's probably either Shadow or Elements, mostly for story potential.

Then we come to species (née races)... and it's either Aasimar, Goliath or Tiefling. Mostly because I haven't played the first two before and have only played the last one once. I just don't currently have any strong character ideas right now.

I dunno... maybe I need to put the barbarian idea to one side for a bit and poke other melee classes with a stick for a little bit. Or think about other combinations that I haven't already done. Aasimar Zealot Barbarian is potentially interesting. Goliath Elements Monk likewise.

The other issue I have right now is really wanting to play a female character again. So I feel like that might be impacting my thought process.

And also the fact that I kind of still have Rin in my back pocket. But she was never supposed to be a full campaign character.

Of course there is also a book with new subclasses coming out at the end of the year, but that only has one Fighter and neither of the other two classes. And, honestly, I don't really like any of the other ones that have been announced.

I have character block/decision paralysis... can you tell?

Next week might have to be the line up of Friday Night characters since we started. Maybe that will shake something loose. 

Anyway...

The foot is... fine. I mean, it's not fine fine... but it's not causing me any additional problems. I changed the taping a couple of times this week. Once because the original version was too damn tight, but then I redid the replacement so that it worked better. I'm still on the short walk. And probably will be until the end of the month, just to be safe.

I'm already bored with it, but in a different way than, say, having a cast on my hand when I broke the thumb equivalent. This is more "this is just dumb and pointless" over "this is a giant obstruction on my hand that stops me from doing things".

The Mini Media Reviews for this week are the fourth and final season of Black Sails and KPop Demon Hunters.

Did I get emotional more than once in the last few episodes of Black Sails? Yes, yes I did. Did it end how I expected it to? Yes... and also no. It didn't go as full on Treasure Island as I was expecting it to or hoping it might, because all the elements were there.

And without spoiling anything, a quote from one of the characters right at the very end of the final episode really summed up the total ethos of the show...

A story is true. A story is untrue. As time extends it matters less and less. The stories we want to believe... Those are the ones that survive, despite upheaval and transition, and progress. Those are the stories that shape history. And then what does it matter if it was true when it was born? It's found truth in its maturity... Because what's it all for if it goes unremembered? It's the art that leaves the mark. But to leave it, it must transcend. It must speak for itself. It must be true.

And very much made sense from a show that took "real life" pirate characters (as in people with those names existed and are part of the historical record) with the characters from Treasure Island. So, this is their version of those things. That, to me, transcended, that spoke for itself. That became true.

I did very, very much enjoy it. 

KPop Demon Hunters, by contrast... is taking a lot of well worn tropes and doing about what you'd expect from them. It's not bad, by any means. It's entertaining, the music is stupidly catchy (and has been all over Instagram for several months at this point, so I already knew bits of songs I didn't realise were from this movie). The animation is strong... even if, occasionally, translating 2D anime faces into 3D animation feels... weird. My issue is more that this is all well worn roads in a shiny new coat. And I don't even know how you actually make these story tropes feel fresh at this point.

But I do like the shiny coat of Korean KPop/Mythology.

What I didn't realise until I was looking up stuff afterwards is that the lead actress is also Kira from Teen Wolf. Which was fun.

And for those of you who have been around and know my tastes... Saja Boy Abby. Just because pink haired himbo. Hmmmm... maybe that's the Aasimar character I need to make... pink haired himbo.

Oh, and the crochet project is done. Is it perfect? No. Could I have made better decisions? Absolutely. Am I going forward with it anyway? Yes. The end result has the vibes I wanted it to have. And I will post some pictures and do a full breakdown once I've given it to the person it's for.

Soup this week was... lackluster. Well, that's not really fair. It was very tasty, it was just the vegetables that annoyed me by the end of the week. Which is why I ended up just dipping bread in the broth on Friday and making that dinner.

Speaking of Friday... Friday was Chiro Day. Which was good because since the last one there way Toe Gate and also the Rental Inspection and the aforementioned crochet project. Things needed resetting.

There was not, however, any Friday Night DnD... and won't be, until the end of the month, because Fluffy is Currently Overseas. So that's what's going on there.

Anyway...

Today was a relatively chill supermarket visit. It was one of those weird ones where I didn't get a lot... and will probably come to regret that by about Wednesday when I realise I forgot X, Y and/or Z. But right now I don't know that I did.

And that was it really. There was some faffing, but that's about it.