character saturday: florid friend

For reasons that should be apparent to anybody with access to.... I was gunna say the internet, but, really, the world, this week... I needed a bard.

Because we lost Dolly Parton this week (and then Tim Curry and then the voice of Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen... fuck this week). And I don't generally get overly emotional about celeb deaths, it's very much "awww, that's very sad..." and then I move on. But just the huge outpouring of emotion from people everywhere about Dolly's death really hit me directly in the feels.

I mean it makes sense. Dolly was just kindness and love personified. Dolly wrote so many songs that you just know without really knowing how you know them. Dolly's Sand Dollar production company produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dolly donated a million dollars to help fund the creation of a vaccine during the pandemic. Dolly's Imagination Library has given away over 330 million books to kids.

So, yeah... I needed a bard for today's DnD Character Colouring Book.

Sure, I could have whipped up a Dolly-themed bard, but it made more sense to dip into my existing characters. And Harland Honeypot just felt the closest to that idea. This is very much a post-campaign Harland. Back in Waterdeep writing smut. Having bought the festhall his mother works at.

I love Harland generally, but he's also a character that really came into being inside of a blog post. Definitely interesting looking back on that post and seeing the character that actually came to be slowly coming into focus.

Anyway...

Was this week Cheesy Potato and Bacon Soup or was it Flavoured Wallpaper Paste? The jury is still out. Was it terrible or inedible? No. Was it entirely too thick? Yes.

Mini Media Reviews for this week might not be so mini...

There's definitely a lot of them.

Pillion. I have some very serious issues with the structure and choices made in Pillion. Because if you're trying to make a movie, albeit a black comedy, about a dom/sub relationship where the dom is legitimately an abuser and a toxic human, you can't also give him a group of friends who are also in the same BDSM community, who don't also seem to be toxic abusers. It just fundamentally fails. They would absolutely not allow that kind of bullshit. Especially since they seem to be of the "oh that's just how he is". No. Just no.

You also can't really that when you have a plot line where we never actually see any of the communication between the dom and the sub. I mean, fuck it, even fucking Fifty Shades got that bit kind of right. Plus we don't see the conversation about shaving the sub's head or locking him with a padlock. Those things aren't actually given any weight or meaning within the story, when they should absolutely have been corner stones of what happens between them.

Part of the problem is that the book this is based on is set in the 1970's. If this had been set in the 70's, a lot of my issues kind of go away, because we're not in the present day where consent within these kinds of relationships should be key.

I will also say that the things that are the cringiest aren't the relationship between the two lead characters. It's literally every scene involving the parents of our main character. That whole situation seems completely untethered to reality, other than the scene where the mother tells the dom he's an asshole. Yeah, lady, we been knowing that, we're completely with you on that.

I very nearly wrote a whole review about Pillion (and yes, this kind of ended up being that anyway, but I could have written more, trust me). It swirled around in my head for a couple of days before other things this week really swept it to the side. The performances from Skarsgard and Melling are outstanding, a lot of the visuals are great. I just have fundamental issues with many of director Harry Lighton's choices. It also makes sense to me that Lighton has only really directed short films up until this point. I think this could work better as a short film. You'd remove all the unnecessary details and kind of distil it down to it's rawest form.

In the end it's just kinda sad and cringy. It's not particularly joyful or sexy. Which is disappointing. I didn't expect a lot, but I kind of expected better than we got.

Streets of Fire. I fully blame Fluffy for this one. While he never said it was good, he did seem to enjoy it for reasons that I absolutely do not understand. Because this is A Bad Movie. The performances are bad. The script is bad. The music is bad. The costumes are... mostly questionable. The editing is bad. The sets... both bad and also mostly just grey. It's bad. And somehow many of the people in this actually went on to have/continued to have careers. Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, Willem Dafoe, Bill Paxton... even Ed Begley Jr shows up for about 11 seconds until an unrecognisable layer of filth.

Thankfully this was my Sunday afternoon movie and I mostly crocheted through the entire thing. Because it was bad.

The Vampire Lestat. I mainlined the whole season over two nights. Because the first two seasons, Interview With The Vampire was pretty much the best thing I watched in 2025. This is just as good. Even if it does very much leave things on a massive cliffhanger, but that's also what the book does. So I fully expected it here. It's just such good fucking storytelling.

I will fully admit that I remember much less of the books that this season is (and the next season will be) based on. I mostly remember the somewhat terrible Queen of the Damned movie from the early 2000's. And they already messed around with the storyline. So I honestly couldn't tell you what they actually changed up vs what was originally in the book. And some of the end of the season gets a little confusing. I assume at least some of that will be straightened out by the next season.

But it's still exceptionally good.

No. 6. I think I want spelunking, as I am wont to do on occasion, on lists of "queer anime". And one of those trips led me to No. 6. Which is slightly more gay than other anime thanks to two kisses that are chalked up to "goodbye kisses" within the narrative, everything else is very "between the lines".

As general storytelling though, it's not bad. Yes, it's a little bit histrionic. Because it's anime. And the end of the series/season is a little rushed, but I quite enjoyed it overall.

The Last Kingdom. Or at least the first three episodes of the first season of the same. If you'd said to me before I got on this TV show download spree that I was very much into historical drama, I would have asked you how high you were currently. Because of course I don't care about historical drama.

Newsflash. Romulus, Paris Police 1900 and 1905, Black Sails, Vienna Blood, The Alienist, Murdoch Mysteries (just the one season), The Musketeers, Gentleman Jack, Crossbones, The Knick, Leonardo, The Serpent Queen, Versailles and This Is Not A Murder Mystery would appear to prove me wrong. And that's without including the shows with some kind of supernatural edge like The Nevers or Penny Dreadful.

And The Vikings is on my To Watch list. Also maybe Medici at some point.

So, yeah, I watched a lot of stuff this week.

Friday Night DnD was... well, it was yet another grey dungeon, because the map designers for this part of the adventure are allergic to anything that isn't a straight line. Or a circle.

I will also say that transitioning over to my girl Molly was absolutely the right call. Because now I can just pick up the weird flesh ball and feed it pocket bacon... and get in the glowing green bathtub and get a hotline to an elder brain... and stick my face in a device meant for a beholder eyestalk and very nearly get subjected to the Feeblemind spell, which would have been very bad. I could potentially have gotten to the same place with Whisper, but it would have felt like trying to push him uphill the whole time.

Anyway...

Ma called me this morning, which never bodes especially well, to say she was a little "wobbly" this morning and would I come up to her place. And look, based on how the world had been going up until that point in the week, yeah, sure, not a problem.

So not really much to report. I went, we shopped, I unpacked and repacked, I came home.

 

character saturday: respect your elders

A very minor makeover for my favourite halfling barbarian... and weirdly, just like last time I was sure that I had shown off Beilyn Porridgepot more than just once... clearly I had not. This is mostly a do-over with the halfling ear choice (rounded rather than pointed), and some minor posing changes because the other pose was slightly uncomfortable looking.

One day they might add in a better axe, but for right now, it'll do.

Anyway...

Sunday was A Grand Day Out. I needed to head down to Harbour Town to look for new sneakers, and of course I parked at the left end of the complex and it turned out the store I wanted was literally the furthest right hand store at the other end. But once I got there it was relatively easy in and out and I came away with a lovely set of New Balance "DynaSoft Nitrel v6" sneakers in the "Castlerock/Black/Sienna" colorway. Thank you to Harry for making it very painless.

Next up, after wandering all the other way back to the car, I stopped off at IKEA for the Looking At The Halloween Collection. Which, potentially because it's only August, is not actually collected together in any one spot but instead spread throughout the whole store. I'm definitely here for the KUSTFYR collection. There were a few things I was looking for, and I left with none of them. Admittedly I had assumed there would be a central point for most of them, but also they definitely didn't have anything currently in stock. What I did get was the cute little house shaped tealight candle holder.

I also gathered significant mental trauma by trying to buy food from the cafeteria at lunchtime on a Sunday. Urge to beat people with a tray was high.

Last stop was the Bunnings that took over the empty store of a now defunct hardware chain. Basically, right next door to IKEA. I almost didn't find what I needed, because the "fairy lights" section wasn't really doing it for me, but once again Halloween in August came to my rescue and I found a set of purple fairy lights for only $10.

I set them up later in the week, and while I'm fully aware that a) they came fully charged in the box and b) they're less complex than the previous set I had... these are still slightly insane that they last literally the whole night. Like, we're talking "they still work at 5am" whole night. I'm sure that will drop off potentially as we go, but it's a thing currently.

This week's soup was Chorizo, Tomato and Rice soup... admittedly, I should have gone slightly more rustic and chunky with the chopping... but it was very nice overall. 

This week's Mini Media Reviews goeth thusly...

We started with This Is Not A Murder Mystery over the weekend. Which was, in fact, a murder mystery. There are specific reasons it's called that though. I'm also not going to try and claim that my overall enjoyment of the show wasn't very much assisted by just how pretty Pierre Gervais looks in period clothing. But it was just a good cozy mystery with some interesting flourishes. The weakest part might be the Who in Whodunnit. Given certain elements, the list of viable suspects wasn't as extensive as it actually should have been. But still enjoyable.

And then I finished up the third season of The Musketeers during the week. I still maintain that the show improved exponentially once they stopped sticking to existing source material. I also need to give full bouquets to the  two costume designers. Both Phoebe De Gaye for the first two seasons, and then the amazing refresh that Hayley Nebauer did to the customers after a time jump of about five years for season 3. Likewise full kudos to every single leatherworker who worked on that show.

I'm glad I went back and finished out the run though.

Thursday I watched The Castle of Cagliostro, admittedly while also crocheting a new dice pouch for my big old Aasimar boy.

Lastly Friday night there was no DnD, instead Fluffy took me out to dinner and then there was a Movie Night, so we watched The Producers. And as much as I love that movie, watching Fluffy watch the movie for the first time definitely augmented my enjoyment. It also very much reinforced that that movie is one where pretty much the whole script just lives in my brain.

Anyway...

Nothing thrilling to report for Saturday Supermarketry. Really just the usual loop.

character saturday: call her mama

Interestingly, I've posted much less of Mama Lullaby than I thought I might have. And the version I did post is pretty similar to this one, just with some minor face tweaks. I think that's probably a post Face Customiser make over. Mostly because I really like the outfit. Even if she doesn't have her signature embroidered coat with many pockets full of treats.

Also, her magic effect got updated from the Hero Forge version to just Photoshop fuckery.

I'll be honest, I think there might be a newer pair of boots that would work better than the ones she has on, but I'm not fiddling around with a new version. I will go look at updating the books though. And... fixed.

And it was her birthday two weeks ago... because she's one of the original group of characters that I went through had gave actual birthdays to.

Anyway...

This week's soup was plain old Chicken Noodle.... which I always very much enjoy, because it is so simple. And also because I not only use spaghetti for the noodles, but always add cayenne pepper so it has a bit of a kick to it. Always good for fighting off a cold. Or the last lingering remains of one anyway.

It's been an eclectic mix for Mini Media Reviews this week.

Starting off with Children of the Sea, quite a good anime, even though it didn't necessarily completely stick the landing. Which, I'll be honest, has been my experience with a large number of anime titles.

I followed that up with The Bride!, exclamation point very much included. I actually enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I was going to for various reasons. That is, at any rate, after the first 10 minutes caused me to wonder what fever dream I'd stumbled into. I can see this one coming back around, honestly, after the current obsession with Frankenstein quiets down.

Next up, a movie that appears to have like three titles all squashed together... High Speed! Free! Starting Days (aka Starting Summer if IMDB is to be believed), again, with included exclamation points. This is my first entry into the "Free" universe, mostly because I can't get hold of the first season of the TV show from the library. But I quite liked it... more than I thought I would. Even though, as I said right after I finished it, that it was "50% gay longing, 30% homosexual angst and 20% swimming". Oh, the angst. Oh, the longing. Oh, the thinly disguised homosexuals.

I need to get my hands on the TV show.

Rounding out that day was Kokuho, a movie about the men who play women's roles in Kabuki theatre. Because of course some ruler or other got bent out of shape about women in the theatre, even though Kabuki was started as an all-female dance troupe, if Wikipedia is to be believed. It was an interesting movie... very long (just shy of three hours) and quite slow and languid at times. And, I'll admit, much less gay than I thought it might have been. But still very, very good.

And lastly, the second season of The Musketeers. Which, I will say, is somewhat of an improvement over the first season. I still don't care much for their Milady, but otherwise it was quite good. I think possibly because they're mostly out from under the shadow of the original book.

Friday Night DnD was... well, very nearly a TPK. It could have gone real, real bad. But also there was new kitten to play with... well, less full on kitten and more little cat. But still adorable kittenness.

Anyway...

Today was much the usual... just supermarket stuff really. 

After Ma left I did wander down to The Parade to look at a couple of places that might have had sneakers. I mean, they had sneakers, just not ones that were either the types I wanted or the price I wanted to pay. So that's probably going to require a drive down to Harbour Town... maybe tomorrow.

We'll see. 

 

 

character saturday: proto captain

You know when we're close to starting a new campaign,when I start overthinking and iterating on character ideas. Which is why we have yet another version of Captain Finn Halyward. Because I suddenly realised that we would be starting as Level 3 and then very shortly progressing on to Level 10 to begin the actual adventure.

And it makes very little sense that my boy would have the same outfit for that prolonged a period of time. So a Level 3 version was required. And I leaned into the idea that the Level 3 version had just come back for a prolonged period on an island after having been shipwrecked and came back to civilisation with very little to his name.

It did mean that I needed to fuck around with the tattoo... and I'm not 1000% content with it. The problem is mostly that it's not quite what I want, and the things closer to what I do want only currently exist as photos of actual tattoos and thus not useful for my purposes. We'll just call that one a placeholder for now. But I may very well go back in this afternoon and fiddle around with it some more.

[cue me getting distracted for a good twenty minutes looking at things]

Yeah... that might need some concerted time and effort.

Anyway...

Soup this week as Lasagne Soup without the lasagne noodles. So basically it just kind of ended up as... pasta? We'll still call it soup. It was pretty good overall.

In Mini Media Reviews... I finished the first season of Preacher... I think that might be one of the ones that I don't bother continuing. It wasn't quite my thing.

Next up, Victor Frankenstein... which wasn't 100% what I was expecting, but pretty good. The fact that it ended up being [mild spoiler] the event that happens before the actual event we already know about but basically identical was a little... dumb. They also didn't pull the trigger on a story beat that I thought it was building towards.

But Radcliffe is excellent, as is McAvoy.

Then, we had something a little different... The Man Who Fell To Earth. I don't specifically remember what triggered me to borrow it. Whether it was mentioned in something I was listening to/watching or it just showed up on the library list... but I figured, why the hell not.

My takeaways? Firstly, everyone involved was doing a hell of a lot of drugs during every single element of this movie. Secondly, the first half is interesting, if confusing and the second half is pretty fucking boring and terrible. Also, seeing David Bowie fully naked and the overwhelming emotion being "well that whole scene is a bit sad" wasn't really on my bingo card for the movie. I didn't love it.

Then we had the second season of Classroom of the Elite. After I watched the first one a couple of weeks ago. Now the first season was entirely too much pervy jiggle physics and for my liking. And the story was a bit... m'eh. The second season is... problematic in it's own unique way. The writing is a hell of a lot better generally. It feels less superficial. Possibly because the main female character from the first season is essentially relegated to the background.

However when the main storyline is mostly about psychologically tormenting a girl by allowing others to torture her in various ways until she's broken enough to be useful to you... it makes it hard to watch at times. I also still have difficulty believing some of these clearly 35 year old men are supposed to be high school students.

And lastly, because Friday Night DnD got cancelled at the last minute, I grabbed an extra movie from the library in the city, and finished out the week with Children of the Sea. It started out really well... a slightly different visual style from a lot of other anime that I've watched... but the ending got... real fucking weird. Not a bad watch, but a little too esoteric for a Friday evening.

Otherwise, not much to report. I had an appointment in town on Wednesday, Friday was Chiro Day. 

Anyway...

Yesterday was pleasant, sunny and warm, today has been rainy and cold the whole day. So we did the supermarket and pretty much called it a day.

character saturday: updated luck

So... I started reading a book last week (that I later abandoned), which made me think about Lucky... and i realised that I'd updated Lucky at least once before on the site, but never reposted him. And I just kinda god the itch to revise him. Even though he's one of those characters that isn't going to see the light of day.

Weirdly, the overhaul gave me a little bit more of an edge than he previously had. The shadows under his eyes possibly shouldn't be there, but I kind of like the way they came out. Likewise I decided after reading through his backstory that he would probably have cut off all that long luxurious hair when he left the Feywild as an form of protest. Himself. With a dagger. And probably no mirror. 

I also fully admit that the bow string definitely defies all the laws of physics and definitely would not work that way, I probably should have run it across the top of his arm. But that looked goofy too. Let's just pretend that the angle is correct.

But I like having an updated version of him, even if, as I said, he'll never see table time.

Anyway.

First up.... had a fucking cold all week. Thankfully one that I mostly managed to murder with cold and flu tablets, but I've just got a mild case of the sniffles left over.

This week's soup was Chicken Pot Pie Soup... yeah, I know, the name is both accurate and dumb. And honestly, the finished product wasn't that far off from various chowders I've made. I did make more than I'd intended, and also some of the veg ended up a little firmer than I would like just because of the way it cooked. But a good result overall. And yes, with less liquid this is definitely one that could be turned into pie filling.

Mini Media Reviews for this week goeth thusly...

Dracula: A Love Tale (or just Dracula, depending on where you are) from 2025 is... a mess. It's a movie that is so fucking obviously stealing Bram Stoker's Dracula's homework from 1992. I will say that it's very strange in parts, things are absolutely never explained (Why are the little gargoyles there? Why do they turn into children at the end?), the movie is also unaware that it's like 30% a comedy. Or maybe it doesn't realise that it's very stupid. Possibly both. Caleb Landry Jones is amazing whenever Dracula is under heavy prosthetic makeup and terrible any time it's just him. It just does not work.

Next up was Shangri-La Frontier.Well, the first half of the first season anyway. I hate when they do that with anime. Stop splitting the season into two releases. On the plus side, it was reasonably enjoyable and much less pervy than some of the other things that I've watched. On the down side, it's a little repetitive (given that they're 20 minute episodes and most of them include at least a portion of the ending of the previous episode at the start), and some of the voice acting is Doing Too Much. There's at least one character who literally makes my ears hurt every time they talk. I did get the second half of the season in, so I'll finish that at least.

I rounded out the week working through the first season of Preacher, but I'm not done with that yet. I have thoughts, but I'll reserve those for next week.

This week was one where I'd ordered in a large number of things from the library and about half of them just showed up on the same day, most of them movies and such... so we'll see how we go this week.

Friday Night DnD was a brief sojourn back to Whisper's crew, then the start of the final arc with Molly's crew.

Anyway...

Nothing hugely different for today... just the usual supermarket wander, followed by doing what basically amounts to admin for Ma.

And then sending her on her merry way. Because while I did have an errand to run, turns out they didn't have the thing I needed, so why bother.