character saturday: handicraft halfling

Today we have another backup character for DnD Character Colouring Book. One that I may or may not actually use in the current campaign. Because I now have Other Plans. Or at least Other Ideas.

But because we're lacking in an actual dedicated healer, of course my back up character for Friday Night DnD is a cleric. And of course she's a halfling. We been knowing how I feel about halflings.

Also, she definitely crochets. Because I put a crochet texture on that cowl, but also because a cleric for the halfling goddess of "hearth, home, hospitality, trust and handicraft" absolutely knows how to crochet.

She's one of the more modern of Cyrrollalee's clergy, going out into the world to cultivate "strong, respectful relationships with other goodly races". And also to find new locations where halflings could settle. Hence the Hearthfinder title.

Originally, as often happens, she had a different name... Poppy Greenleaf, which I ended up partially repurposing for the wife of one of the potential barbarian characters. I don't remember exactly why I then changed it. But I think I picked out Bridie before I realised that she would then be named after somebody I used to work with a long time ago. Which also absolutely works for who the character should be. Bright and bubbly and perky but still charming.

But as I said, there's a different idea stewing away in the back of my head currently. Hopefully we won't need it. But it's there.

Anyway...

This week was vaguely chaos.

Let's start with the boring things. Chicken and rice soup... a little dull overall, but decent.

Mini Media Reviews. Based on last week's trip to the movies, and a lack of anything from the library, I rewatched the animated How To Train Your Dragon and then How To Train Your Dragon 2. It's been a hot minutes, so I was kind of surprised at how dated the original HTTYD looked. It's still well made, but you can see the vast difference between the first and second movies in the quality of their animation and lighting even though they're only four years apart.

I was also quite surprised at how much of the live action movie actually is in the animated one. Or vice versa I guess. So I still don't quite know how we got to a movie that was half an hour longer. I will say that the animated movie moves at speed. Ten minutes in and we were already at Hiccup finding Toothless in the forest. And I'm pretty sure that the live action movie doesn't get to it anywhere near as fast.

I also think that I worked out the problem I was having with Astrid... since the animated version is less harsh to Hiccup overall, mostly because they barely exchange any lines before she changes her tune. So it's less of a hill up which to push shit, as they say.

And I can't wait for them to make the second movie into live action. Also, I was wrong about Emma Thompson in my review... I had misremembered that she was doing the voice, but it's Cate Blanchett, and should be her in the live action version also.

In crochet news... I'm poddling along on my "is this actually going to be a jacket this time or are you going to get annoyed again and frog it" project. Which I had to start over again when I realised it was never going to fit. It's doing okay at the moment.

Which isn't bad for a project that I did a bunch of calculations for and then have completely ignored all the measurements and have just been making it up as I go. Which is fine thus car because it's just a giant rectangle at this point.

Moving on to this week being chaos.

It all started on Tuesday when Ma called me to say that "her computer wasn't working". And if there's anything I love, it's attempting to do tech support over the phone. So after hitting my head against a brick wall, I gave up, jumped in the car and drove down to her place. After a 40 minute drive I discovered that her internet was out. I didn't even look at the computer.

But after looking at the outage map for the ISP, there was an little popup that said "you could be impacted by this widespread outage"... so I assumed it was a result of the wild weather we'd had the night before and told her to keep checking on it.

No luck there, but the more I looked at the outage map, the more I realised that that was a mostly pointless "fault" report that had been sitting there for two months, confusing people far and wide probably.

So I attempted calling the ISP on Ma's behalf, because she doesn't do well with those call centre calls. But of course, you can't do fuck all without having the actual account person there. Which is completely fair. And I said as much to the very nice Indian call centre woman I spoke to.

Which meant that Ma came down here so that she could do the things she had wanted to do on her laptop at my house where the internet was working and I could call the ISP and get things sorted.

And it honestly didn't take that long. I called, he poked the connection with a stick, said it wasn't them and had passed it up the chain. We put my name down on Ma's account as somebody who is authorised to make calls on her behalf (thank fuck) and by the time we'd gotten off the phone Ma had a message on her phone saying that the team up the chain had passed it on to, I think, the NBN people. And by the time she got back to her place her phone was full of messages saying "hey, we're coming out to fix this tomorrow".

Ten full points for getting this shit together quickly.

And by 8:30 the folllowing morning, they'd been to Ma's place, poked her NBN box just to be sure, then gone off to (and admittedly, this is where I lose some of the story because Ma doesn't really know what they did), I assume, the node to poke that with a stick.

The whole thing was fixed by about 9:30.

It just meant that I saw and spoke to Ma an awful lot last week. And took an unexpected drive.

Also there was no Friday Night DnD this week. Or next week. Because people who aren't me appear to have lives. Good for them. Or something.

Anyway...

Today wasn't hugely anything. Mostly because, as I said, I saw Ma quite a bit this week.

We did the supermarket thing. And then finally got around to taking a side trip to Haighs for Ma's birthday at the start of the month. Which we did right after the supermarket, so we got there basically as the doors opened.

That was it really though.

movies: how to train your dragon (2025)

The original How to Train Your Dragon movie is one of those movies that is Very Important To Me. So when they announced a live action remake I was slightly dubious. Given the drivel that the Mouse House pumps out.

But then I discovered that it was being directed by one of the two original directors, Dean DeBlois... and I was basically onboard.

Then the trailer came out and I fucking cried. I was all in.

And, I have to say that How to Train Your Dragon absolutely sits comfortably beside it's animated predecessor as a slightly more mature and complex retelling of the original.

And, oh how I cried. I cried during the closing narration for fuck's sake. The bit that is all happy and joyful. But I knew that crying was absolutely going to happen.

It's one of those interesting things where it's very nearly a completely faithful remake, but there are just, as DeBlois said in an interview, "good, subtle, and significant enhancements" to certain elements.

And in some spots that pulls it above the 2010 version, in other spots, it drops it below slightly, and sometimes it does both in the same scene.

First up though... Mason Thames. This entire movie, no pun intended, rides on his back. If he doesn't work, nothing works. He is, without doubt, exceptional in this. He brings all the personality Jay Baruchel brought to animated Hiccup, and fills him with even more emotion than the animators managed.

This version strengthens the relationship between Hiccup and his father Stoic (and nobody else could have been Stoic, so I'm so glad that Gerard Butler returned... the only returning cast member between the two as far as I'm aware). And they definitely give Stoic some more depth, give him moments to just exist in not understanding his child. Things that 2010 got across, but 2025 leans into.

And I wonder how much of that is a 55 year old DeBlois vs a 40 year old DeBlois. Also understanding exactly who all these characters are after three movies with them and coming back and getting to take a fresh crack at them all. 

The viking kids are good overall. Do they suffer ever so slightly from not being voiced by comedians? Slightly. At the same time the roles get expanded during some of the action scenes and they're all well cast. But, honestly, the supporting cast of Snotlout, Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut were never my favourite characters in any of the movies.

Which brings us to Astrid. Played by Nico Parker. Firstly, I like that the movie explicitly created a relationship between Astrid and Stoic, even if it's more of a "tell don't show" relationship beyond a couple of small moments. I just feel like Parker was... a little... flat. I dunno how to describe it really. And maybe that's how the character was written... and maybe America Ferrera pulled off a miracle in 2010 by making Astrid more than the sum of her parts. Like I said, I can't put my finger on it. I'd need to see the movie again I think. She's good, don't get me wrong, there's just something that she didn't quite have that Thames had in spades. Maybe this version of Astrid feels harsher at the beginning, so her change feels too abrupt, I don't know.

On the "some changes are both positive and negative" front... making the tribe of vikings be composed of people from various places around the globe who specifically came to hunt dragons... great. Gives us the opportunity to cast people other than just white folks... completely on board.

But it also changes to vibe of the village a little. Instead of being people who have always lived on this little rock sticking out of the ocean and who are too stubborn to go live anywhere else just because there are dragons, now you have people who, potentially, sought out this place because of the dragons. It doesn't change anything explicitly in the movie, but it changes to feel of the place somewhat when I thought about it afterwards.

That may also be because I feel like we spend too much time with the adult characters at the start of the movie. I kind of don't need Snotlout's dad. I don't really need the woman with one leg who has no other personality traits as far I can see. I'm not sure I need the "blink and you'll miss it" scene that may or may not have been Astrid's parents, because they never have a scene with Astrid, so I'm basing that completely on something I read after the movie. It just pads out the start a little too much.

It's a 125 minute movie compared to 2010's 98 minutes. And a good chunk of that is in the final battle scene, but I also feel like the other half of that time is spend on characters that the movie really isn't about. I get the idea that we're expanding the world, I just wanted to get to the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mean Toothless.

The CGI Toothless is excellent. There are times when I felt like perhaps we get slightly less personality from him... but that might be more a case of the lighting and texture and live action of it all. It's been a minute since I've watched the 2010 version (that's absolutely on the docket for tonight's viewing), but it felt like there were certain scenes in that where his expressions had been easier to read because they weren't hidden by 2025's dust and lighting and fog and just being "real". But again I could be making comparisons between a single movie's worth of character vs three movies worth of character.

Because he looks amazing overall.

Speaking of the CGI... there were moments in the first half of the movie where I just kept thinking that nobody in a particular scene was actually outside in the world. Or they were, but that background was definitely not really there. Not that it doesn't look amazing, but there was just something that just pulled me out of it in certain spots.

I also specifically need to call out Lindsay Pugh, the costume designer. She did amazing work... especially on Hiccup's hoodie. I'm slightly obsessed with that particular garment. But everybody looked amazing. I will extend that kudos out to all the art designers and set decorators.

Likewise John Powell, who was the composer for the original three HTTYD movies and returns for this one. I've been listening to the soundtrack while typing this and absolutely love it. I specifically love the Meeting the Queen track for whatever the hell is going on at the start of it. Powell definitely improves on his original score from 2010.

The story, which I love, doesn't really change... not in any meaningful ways... and didn't need to. I still love that there are consequences in these stories. 

If I had to rank them, based on right now of not having seen 2010 in a hot minute... I think 2010 just edges this out. But we're talking a few degrees of separation. And I absolutely need to see 2025 again.

Which is why this also gets the same rating as 2010.

yani's rating: 5 toothless dragons out of 5 

character saturday: clever girl

For reasons that will become clear later... we're trying out a 2024 Dragonborn character for today's DnD Character Colouring Book.

Because Hero Forge does slightly struggle with making more interesting dragonborns. At least the way I like to make them. Not least of all because the dragonborn face hasn't gone through the Customiser process yet.

Ontrix happened when I was playing with potential ideas around fighters. And I quite like her overall vibe, even if I'm not 100% sure about Eldritch Knight as a subclass. It's also not often that I go for a dual wielder type character, in this case the short sword/dagger combo, and I like that particular weapon set quite a lot.

At any rate, any dragonborn character just sits in the archive so that I can potentially use them as a base for something else later on.

Anyway... 

First up, this week was Lasagne Soup. It's a good soup. I mean, it's basically just slightly runny pasta sauce with noodles already in it. But I like it regardless.

In crochet news... I finished another scarf, potentially as a gift for someone, but if that never ends up happening, it's one I'd probably be happy keeping for myself.

I also decided that my scarves need names... rather than just descriptions.

And more so that I remember later, we have Ketchup... the red scarf I made for myself last winter with the cosy thick yarn that I got for my 50th birthday... and Mustard... the dupe that I made for Fluffy with yarn he bought for that purpose.

Then we have the two I showed off last week... the pastel one I'm calling Nefler By The Pool (if you know, you know) and the other one I think is Sugar Snap, given that it was for Fluffy's Ma, using yarn from Fluffy's blanket, and he just started playing a goblin character of the same name on Friday night.

And mostly that was all because the one I made this week, using verigated black, white and grey yarn intersperced with stripes of a different verigated yarn that's officially called Jewel (think sapphire, emerald, ruby, amethyst and gold), that I'm calling Test Pattern. Because it's giving a non-zero amount of this.

I also did it in the same Moss Stitch as Sugar Snap, but vertically rather than horizontally. And not gunna lie... making a scarf vertically feels like much harder work. Not least of all because I changed yarn between the two a LOT. There might be a photo of Test Pattern when I'm done, because I have to weave all the ends in first.

This week's Mini Media Reviews...

Firstly... Fuck Little Women. Specifically fuck the 2019 version. To be fair, while I was aware of other versions (the 1933 and 1994 versions respectively), I was never actually interested enough in the story to bother with it.

And I was just fucking bored. Mostly with Saoirse Ronan as Jo. But slightly more with Jo in general. I also don't think the flicking back and forth in the timeline actually works. Because I was just fucking confused for the first ten minutes until I realised what was happening, and then the absolute flaw in possibly all of the adaptations was made worse because instead of just having to buy that these women in their 20's are supposed to be playing girls who are between like 13 and 20 at best. And then flicking back to them playing closer to their actual ages... it just... doesn't quite work.

Because when your movie doesn't make me like Florence Pugh, you're doing a movie wrong. I mean, I liked the grown up version, not the kid version.

The standouts were absolutely Pugh and Timothée Chalamet, and not just because I wanted to break Laurie in half in a good way.

Also, the movie trying to have it's 1868 cake AND it's 2019 cake... just doesn't work. You wanna fuck around with the idea that Jo doesn't need a man, don't give Jo a man. Don't force in the real life experience of the author and pass it off as the character. The movie absolutely can't afford to cash the "Jo loves this man" cheque that it's trying to. So by the end of it I was mostly just making snide comments to Fluffy over Discord and begging for it to be over.

I knew going in that Little Women wasn't really My Vibes. But it absolutely proved itself to be true very, very quickly. 

Conversely, I finished Penny Dreadful this week. 

Goddamn that's an amazing show. I absolutely wish they'd been given a fourth season, but at the same time, they managed to wrap the main storyline up in a satisfying way. It's very clear that they were leaving enough plot threads in the wind in order to make another season if they should be called on to do so, but, honestly, I kind of prefer when a series doesn't feel like it has to wrap up every single thread. Because you can imagine then that the characters go off on their own and have their own adventures.

But I absolutely cried more than once in the later half of the season, and got emotional over characters I never thought that I would back in Season One.

That show is exactly my dark and fucked up vibes from top to toe.

No Friday Night DnD this week. Which also meant no kitten cuddles.

Anyway...

Today we had A Plan. Granted it was a plan that I thought was going to morph into a slightly different plan, but ended up as the original plan.

We started with shopping, then, given that we got back to my place early enough, we skipped a few of the general steps we might do on a Saturday morning and instead headed off to the movies to watch the new live action version of How To Train Your Dragon. More on that later.

Did I want to murder the little coven of alternagoth teen girls who came as a pack, two of whom were carrying Toothless plushies from, I assume, Build A Bear? I mean, yes, they talked too much, had to go to the bathroom in pairs (possible the same two twice... I'm not sure) and were sitting directly across the aisle from us. But I shushed them once and that was mostly enough.

Afterwards we had a little bit of lunch and a wander and then called it a day. 

character saturday: shady lady

There have been certain character designs that I've gone back to and then done a reboot or a remake or a reimagine. Mostly just switching out the class and the gender.

Thus it was with Silence. He was a Shadow Sorcerer, now she's a Trickery Cleric of one of the elvish gods.

There really isn't much more to say.

Anyway.

This week's soup was potato and bacon. It was decent. If not exciting.

There really isn't a Mini Media Review this week.

I did crochet two scarves this week though. One in the usual ribbing style with the leftover yarn from Ma's cardigan, and one in Moss Stitch, which I quickly became obsessed with. The Moss Stitch scarf was using the leftover yarn from the Original Crochet Project, Fluffy's Blanket. Which was fitting, because Fluffy picked out the yarn from my stash when I asked him what colours his mum would like. And I was not surprised in the slightest that he picked the green and the grey. I then added the gold, because it seemed fitting.

Normally I would absolutely have made a repeating or symmetrical pattern for the Moss Stitch scarf, I specifically went for something else. And it made a remarkably solid fabric. So we'll be coming back to that for certain.

And after yet another failed attempt at a cardigan that I pulled the pin on after a few rows, I decided to finally attach all the granny squares made from leftover yarn from my hexagon cardigan. And I'll be honest, I have no fucking clue what I'm going to do with it once it's done. Because I feel like it's going to be too narrow and too long. But at least it will be done.

Friday Night DnD was... regularly interrupted by delightfully psycho kittens. Did I end up sitting there for part of the game holding one of those fluffy things on a string to stop the kittens having the zoomies all over the place.

The game itself was fine. It was really one of those filler sessions where we were mostly setting up the next major set piece.

Anyway...

Nothing overly exciting to report from today.

We did the supermarket thing, but because my back was being a little bit problematic, we didn't do anything else. 

character saturday: little green dufus

So, this week's DnD Character Colouring Book is another one that is classified as "fan art". And yes, this is also the second time that I've done a similar off-centre pose for a character involved with the Phandelver Above and Below campaign we're playing on Friday night.

This is also very much my interpretation of the character based solely on vibes and after a makeover. I am also fairly sure that the background and subclass I've picked here are wrong. But again, based purely on vibes.

And I'll explain exactly where this Little Guy fits into out adventures when we get to Friday's DnD roundup.

Anyway...

This week was yet another incarnation of my minestrone soup, using the leftover tomato soup from a couple of weeks before as a base, because I had one left and shoved it in the freezer. It was a good call honestly. A very tomato-ey and rich minestrone.

In, "I'm clearly a witch" news... on Saturday, while talking about a set of boyfriend twins we saw leaving the supermarket (I've seen them before, I'm fairly certain it's a gay couple that just looks entirely too similar to each other, but there's also a non-zero possibility they could just be siblings), I said a name out loud that I probably haven't specifically said so that the universe can hear me in... a while.

And thusly, because, as previously mentioned, I am clearly a witch, that person messaged me after having spoken to them/seen them for 12 years. Yes, J has appeared from out of the ether after over a decade. And it definitely has to be that long, because they still remembered me living on Childers Street, and I moved out of there in the beginning of 2014.

Getting a text out of the blue was definitely a surprise, but we set up a call for later that evening, which was just long enough for my brain to run through the usual "panic later" routine... and honestly, my brain eventually just came back with 404 File Not Found. Which was actually nice.

I did, however, remember part way through the phone call that J is both A Lot Of Work, and that I think he's something of a pathological exaggerator. Not a liar, you understand, I just feel like he embellishes his stories. Which circles back into being A Lot Of Work.

It was a pleasant enough phone call though, and at some point I'm sure we'll do a dinner, but it absolutely feels like a lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge since then. And, honestly, the place in my brain that used to hold space of J now basically holds space for Fluffy. Which sounds terrible, I fully understand, but doesn't make it any less true.

In crochet news... I undid/frogged the entire shrug cardigan I mentioned last week... and started making a second thing, which was essentially just a big granny square. That I then gave up on by the end of the week and also frogged. Because that will happen when you try and make a square using different weights of yarn and the corners end up bowing out slightly. I very much liked the way the colours looked, but by the end it was just not sitting the way I wanted it to. So I pulled the whole thing apart and will ponder my next step while doing some other projects this week. 

This week's Mini Media Reviews are the last of the X-Men movies and the second season on Penny Dreadful.

Now, I absolutely don't understand why all of the reviews for X-Men: Dark Phoenix are terrible. Truly I don't. Because it's better than the last time they tried this storyline in The Last Stand. It's certainly infinitely better than Apocalypse. I do get that it very much feels like a massive left turn for where the previous movie was pointing the characters. But it also makes sense. So, yeah, I liked it a lot.

The second season of Penny Dreadful was both better than the first one and also just fully leaning into Gothic tragedy. I'm just hoping that it manages to stick the landing in the third season, given that the series was cancelled. But I'm also not expecting anybody to get a happy ending, the series being what it is.

It is absolutely my vibe and beautifully made though.

Which brings us to Friday Night DnD...

Firstly, more kitten cuddles which is lovely.

And then, because Fluffy's character had disappeared off into the night at the end the last game, he just ended up sitting there for most of the game while Mrs and I did some bits and pieces, mostly just housekeeping stuff because we all knew is was going to be a short session.

Right up until the point where my character went out during the night for a little bit of light B and E to gather some information. And on the way back happened to come across a certain shadowy figure doing it's own bit of breaking and entering at one of the stores in town. So, as a good, civic minded citizen, my boy absolutely stuck his nose in with the intent of stopping the robbery. Yeah, the hypocrisy was breathtaking.

I'll be honest, I was assuming I might run into Fluffy's character on my way back, and I did... except it was the wrong character. Fluffy took great delight in taking the unopened folder in front of him and swapping it out for a completely different folder. And debuting Sugar Snap, the goblin rogue, who will be with us until we break his former character out of the lair of some nasty goblins we were intending to head towards anyway.

I haven't bothered asking the why... because this is absolutely a Fluffy Plan, rather than potentially a thing that the DM did. Or, at the very least, it's some bullshit the two of them cooked up together. And I understand the timing to some degree. It just feels a little dumb because we were fully in the middle of a story dump for his previous character... so I guess I just don't get swapping characters in the middle of that.

But it is what it is.

And it will serve him right if we end up liking the new character more than the old character, even if he wants to change back to the old character. It would also have served him right if I'd just murdered his character in the middle of the night.

Anyway...

Today was Ma's birthday... which, I will fully admit, I absolutely forgot about until I happened to check my phone after she got here. But also, I gave her her present last week.

But we did the usual supermarket thing, and Ma had decided she wanted to do lunch at the same place we went for my birthday, The Republic Norwood.  And this time I had the schnitzel I should have had last time. Because it was pretty much excellent. Maybe more so because it had been raining heavily on and off all morning.

And that was it really. 

character saturday: hellooooo

If you'd asked me, I would have sworn up and down that this week's DnD Character Colouring Book was a character I'd posted before. She's definitely a character that's been around since the days of Nightingale. Or at least the days when our characters were in the Nine Hells. But after a couple of different searches through the blog, I could not find the previous version of her.

I don't remember exactly how Fluffy and I got to "Mrs Doubtfire, but a tiefling/devil"... but I know that's basically where we ended up. Hence, Mrs Hellfire, the tiefling dwarf, was born.

And Hero Forge dropped some new umbrellas this week, so I basically rebuilt the character from scratch.

Would I play her? I mean, I've never had an overwhelming desire to play a Fiend Warlock... but I do like an old lady character. Even so, probably not.

Anyway...

Soup this week was a slightly spicy chicken noodle soup. Essentially, regular chicken noodle soup (except for the fact that I used spaghetti as the noodles) but with some cayenne pepper.

In crochet news... I finished two whole projects this week.

One of which was Ma's cardigan which looks like the Easter Bunny threw up. I mean, she loves it, which is the main thing. One of the issues with just making up a pattern from inside your own head is that you get to the end of it and go... "well, what I SHOULD have done was X, Y, Z". And thus happened with this project also.

I should probably have done narrower stripes, although I was using a fixed quantity of yarn, and a couple of the colours I only had a single ball of. But even potentially making the strikes five rows instead of six would have allowed me to get the second apricot colour onto the front of the cardigan. That would probably have meant that the stripe up the back would have been white, but that also would have worked.

Overall though, I'm please with it. Especially the ribbing, since I absolutely failed to do black on black ribbing for the cardigan I made for myself last year. I have done so much ribbing since that this was actually simple, albeit time consuming.

And, as I said, Ma likes it, which is the main thing.

However, I also finished the shrug cardigan thing I was making for myself. And it fits, it does what I was expecting it to do. And I absolutely want to unpick the entire thing and maybe have a third go at it. Because it just doesn't work in the way I wanted it to. Part of that I think is that the very lovely grey yarn I bought to finish it off with is... possibly a little too thick. And because the sleeves are all one width, the cuffs are too wide for my delicate little wrists...

I'm absolutely going to deconstruct the thing this week... even though I don't specifically know what I'm going to do instead. 

[extended break while idly Googling variations on "crochet cardigan pattern" without any definitively useful results]

This week's Mini Media Reviews... (which I totally didn't forget and totally didn't have to come back and add in four hours later). First up, Kraven the Hunter. Which was... well, as I described it to Fluffy last night... "Had it not been for Aaron Taylor-Johnson's abs, I would have called it a complete disaster". Because, honestly, that man's acting chops and his body-ody-ody were the only things worth watching. Well, I'll also give some kudos to Fred Hechinger as Kraven's brother. Likewise the two boys playing their younger selves. But everybody else is pretty much drowning under the weight of the shitshow being piled upon them. The effects are questionable at best, the script is awful, I have no idea what direction was given to Alessandro Nivola as this movie's version of The Rhino... but all of it was bad.

Whether or not it's a result of it being a Sony movie rather than a Marvel one, I have no idea.

Next up was the unrequited gay love story that is X-Men: Apocalypse. Because if you try to tell me that any of these Fassbender/McAvoy movies are not the story of Xavier trying to get Magneto into bed, I will call you a liar straight to your face. Regardless of how much they dangle Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique between them. It was okay. It's not great. But the X-Kids are decently cast and do well with what they're given. Oscar Isaacs is doing his level best pushing shit up hill as Apolcalypse, but it's not a terrible movie.

Friday Night DnD was... well, on the drive home we christened the session "Kittens, Cookies and Family Drama". And only one of those things actually happened inside the game. Mr and Mrs just got two new kittens, so there was much squeeing and playing with adorable kittens. And then Mrs made cookies, warm, chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, yes please. And then Fluffy's character had existential family drama, that I got to deliver. Good times. And because of that we honestly didn't get a whole lot else done in game.

Anyway...

The usual supermarket things, followed by a trip to Big W for, very excitingly, new socks for me and then to Kmart mostly for looking at things.

character saturday: wild (heart) woman

We're dipping back into the Potential 2024 Barbarian well this week, not least of all because I haven't really made a new mini in a few weeks.

I tried any number of combinations of possible characters while I was looking for things that spoke to me. Especially any of the races that I hadn't already played with the Friday group... or, you know, haven't played at all.

This particular experiment was looking at the new PHB version of the Orc (because I had played a 2014 iteration, my favourite Big Dumb Boy) and possible the idea of a polearm weapon. I think the Wild Heart subclass came half way through once I'd designed the face and used yellow eyes... I then changed them to the more beasty black sclera and we were off to the races.

And even if I never play any of these experiments, at the bare minimum I have a bunch of prebuilt faces that I can fuck around with later.

Anyway...

This week was... [gestures randomly in all directions].

First up... soup. This week was the Halfling Tomato Soup I've made a few times before... and, honestly, as good as the recipe is, I don't think that it's a good soup for eating all week. Part of the problem was that I didn't buy the right kind of cheese for making toasties with... so I didn't really get to have the whole tomato soup with cheese toastie experience.

Next up, the Mini Media Reviews for this week.

Penny Dreadful has been somewhat on my radar when it came out because of all the naked men, but I didn't really know all that much about it beyond "Victorian London Gothic Detective Story". Holy. Forking. Shirt. Balls. If you have not seen it, absolutely do yourself the literal pleasure. I was hooked from the first episode, and while there were a couple of performances where I went "well, yeah, this wasn't the right choice", overall it was amazing. I'm now waiting with bated breath for Season 2 to arrive at the library.

It's one of those ones where I don't want to get into WHY it's so good, because I went in not really knowing what to expect and was delighted by the suprises, but Sexy Victorian London Gothic Supernatural Detective Story pretty much covers it.

I followed that up with the first season of Wednesday. Now, we've kind of already covered how I feel about most of the adaptations of The Addams Family. Specifically the animated movies I watched a few weeks ago. But, really, the only version that seems to get it are the Barry Sonnenfeld movies from the 90's. Nobody else seems to have really gotten it. And I'm going to give Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson for the first one, and Paul Rudnick for the sequel their flowers. Because they collectively got it.

Granted the second one is mostly just Rudnick taking the script for the first one and improving on it. But even so.

As for Wednesday, show creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wrote a serviceable teen mystery show and spectacularly failed to Addams correctly for the majority of the run time. Don't get me wrong, the show is very watchable. As a teen drama it's solid if unremarkable. But as a piece of Addams Family media... it's very possible that the animated movies understood their assignment more.

Jenna Ortega does decently with the material she's given and I would literally watch Gwendoline Christie do just about anything. The thing I cannot get past is the decision to cast Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Gomez and Morticia respectively. Absolutely fucking not. I very nearly died of cringe every time they were on screen.

I will also give props to Hunter Doohan as "the love interest" for being in his early 30's and convincingly playing someone in his... late teens. He was very good though.

Moving on.

Yes, the week was that time again. Rental Inspection Time.

So I did my usual trick, cleaned the kitchen on Sunday and then on Monday did a deep clean of the bathroom, moved all the furniture around and did the full floor mopping and whatnot.

Tuesday I headed out to Spotlight to pick up some more yarn for the crochet shrug cardigan thing I'm currently working on, then went to the library at Burnside for a while.

When I got back, I did what has turned into something of a habit of late, and after working on the shrug for a while with the new yarn, I looked at it, decided I hated everything that was going on and frogged the whole thing. I then started again from scratch with the new yarn. I'm basically now at roughly the same point I was when I frogged the whole thing on Tuesday.

And then on Thursday I took one of the two skeins of yarn I bought on Tuesday back, because the red really wasn't the right shade, and I really liked the grey, so I swapped it out for another one of those.

I then ended up having to go to two different Bunnings stores... because I really don't know why I bother with the one in Kent Town... 

Also, this is just a general note for me... next time we go looking for clear shower curtains, can you please remember that Bunnings has perfectly serviceable ones for under $10, and just go get another one of those please? Instead of getting one that isn't clear and gives you generalised anxiety and just makes you uncomfortable regardless of which side of it you're currently on.

Thank you, Future Self.

Friday Night DnD was mostly Talking To People About Things. Which I always enjoy. Setting wheels in motion. Getting our ducks in a row. All that good stuff.

That did, of course, mean that we didn't go and do the thing that would allow us to level up... and all the both jiggery and also pokery that I did organising my new leveled up sheets was not immediately necessary. I mean we'll get there... it has just definitely been a minute since we last levelled up.

Anyway...

Today was mostly chill. We did the supermarket thing, and then I wanted to catch up a little on Ma's cardigan and then do what is hopefully a final fitting so I can finish it up this week.

And that was it really.

character saturday: small town crook

Sometimes your DM makes an NPC that you enjoy so much you're required to make a mini of them. And thus, this week's DnD Character Colouring Book brings us Whisper's Criminal Contact, Iago.

Iago has a fucked up arm and a fucked up leg (I can only do so much with Hero Forge in that regard, even if I remade him with the new Body Modifier) and has a lisp and comes across a little bit if you got Peter Lorre to play an Igor/Fritz character in a Frankenstein movie. And I would fucking kill for Iago. Once I realised he was very sad and not actually at all creepy, I instantly fell in love with him.

And he came back in last night's session. I didn't get to speak with him sadly enough, but it was fun watching somebody else interact with him.

Anyway...

It's been an odd week weather-wise. This is weather I would have expected back at the end of March/beginning of April, where I'm wearing shorts all day but maybe throwing on long pants in the evening, to being fully rugged up and chilly by the end of the week. But here we are in the middle of May.

This week's soup was Chicken Chow-DAH.  And I was doing very well most of the way through with how much there was, but didn't factor in the last couple of ingredients and I made more than I intended. Not the worst problem in the world I guess. But I've been trying to make less.

Ma's crochet hexagon cardigan continues. I did have to frog/unpick several rows because I'd done too many, but then did several more rows on both sides, changed colours and then realised that I'd actually been fucking up the supposedly straight edge I needed. So I had to frog the whole thing on both sides a second time and start over.

I do seem to be frogging things as much as I am making them of late. Speaking of which, Ma brought back the shrug cardigan thing I made, and I'm planning to frog that also. Or at the very least, undo the side seams and turn it back into a blanket, at least until I decide what I'm actually doing.

[Brief pause while I realise I'm slightly chilly and do that exact thing so I can use it as a blanket.]

I also started working on something else, which might also get frogged because I don't have enough yarn to finish it without switching to something else entirely. These two previous ideas might come together. Or they might not.

But I very much enjoyed working with a slightly larger hook and slightly thicker yarn, just because it felt very loose and open and easy. And the end result was really pretty. So I'm not making any definite decisions as yet.

This week's Mini Media Review is just a single movie. Which I quite enjoyed. Under Paris. Is it making great strides in the world of shark movies? Not overly. Did I definitely pull inspiration from everything from Jaws on down? Absolutely. Is it full of characters that you're very happy to see die? Oh, 100%. Which I actually like in a slasher/monster/disaster movie. Is Nassim Lyes (the male lead) ridiculously beautiful? Fuck yes he is.

It's also a very serviceable shark/monster movie. It's shot well, the effects are good, the writing is fairly solid. Does it get kind of bananas in the last 20 minutes? Absolutely. But I also really dig that about it, and I'm very much on board for the sequel that the ending sets up.

Friday Night DnD was good. We all split off from each other again, and all learned various things. My boy did some underhanded negotiations, but, honestly, the target already wanted me to do the thing I wanted him to do in exchange for the thing I wanted... so it made my life considerably easier.

Anyway...

Today was basically just the supermarket. Nothing much of interest beyond that.

character saturday: dapper man in blue

You know what I love in a DnD campaign? When you actually get to update your outfit. And less a "Hero Forge released a new piece that is actually better than the existing piece, so I'm changing the art but the outfit is basically the same" and more "this is a new outfit".

So this week's DnD Character Colouring Book is my boy Whisper in his new, slightly more revealing, striped navy blue fit.

But it's also what happens when your boy who may or may not be part of a criminal organisation gets the standard outfit for that criminal organisation recognised by people.

Time for at least a new shirt. Also, he got a new magic item, so I wanted to include that. Did I choose to pull the magic item art from an existing image instead of just picking something basic from Hero Forge.

Is it the look I would personally have chosen? Probably not. But it is a little extra, so I'm not completely mad at it.

Also, having him show more skin makes so much more sense now that I've actually played him at the table.

Anyway...

There was much crochet this week. Did it turn out that the two sides of the hexagon cardigan are actually slightly too big and I need to frog the current colour back to half the number of rows. Yes.

This poor yarn. It's been made, frogged, made again and will be at least partially frogged again.

But I should also be able to knock this one over much more quickly than the one I made for myself, which is good. Also, I now know how to actually make ribbing, so I'll be able to finish it properly.

In soup news... I made my lasagne soup. Which, for something I mostly made up, works pretty damn well every single time. Because, really, it's just bolognese pasta sauce made with more stock and with broken up lasagne noodles thrown in.

Not exactly rocket science.

In Mini Media Reviews... in my ongoing adventures with anime, and I don't quite remember whether or not this was something I heard about from a person or just something I saw on the list of things that the library had... I watched the first (and currently only) season of 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team. Why does it have the numbers in the front? Because the regulation men's volleyball net height is 7 feet, 11 ⅝ inches or 2.43 meters. I mean, obviously.

And, even though I don't much care about volleyball, and I don't much care about sport, and I don't, in any way, get as enthusiastic about literally anything as these boys get about volleyball, I really, really fucking loved this show.

Is part of the appeal a very obvious homoromatic relationship between the two lead characters, two of the supporting characters and two of the characters on the opposing "villain" team, where they're substituting talking about volleyball for talking about kissing, etc? Yes. Absolutely. Is part of the appeal that they actually don't make the "villain team" a bunch of assholes? Yes. Absolutely. I would have been completely happy if the season had ended in a draw between the two teams.

Is this also a show where you just want one character to tell another character "hey, you're being kind of an asshole, maybe you don't do that and just talk to the rest of us like we're actual human people with feelings and thoughts"? Yes. Absolutely. 

But I loved it all the same. I would kind of liked a little more fleshing out of the rest of the main team, most of them are relegated down at most a single character trait, if they get anything at all. Mostly they are kind of just a hair colour that differentiates them from everyone else.

I also attempted to watch a TV show called Van Helsing from 2016. I made it all the way through the first episode, I then made it 10 minutes into the second episode before the combination of horrifically bad acting and very confused story telling made me pull the pin. The two leads have all the acting ability and chemistry of a toothache, and the story wants to both be Post Apocalypse Zombie Vampires AND Secret Vampire Society With Terrible Accents.

But mostly it was the horrific fucking acting.

Friday was Chiro Day... also some expected and accidental errands.

Friday Night DnD was... later than usual. As in we left my place later. But honestly, our amount of actual playing time, about the same.

Did we nearly have a TPK? Yes. Did I realise this afternoon that I was fucking up my AC the entire session and it was actually much higher? Also yes. But we survived, and did the thing we came there to do.

So, all good.

Anyway...

Today was a minor exercise in frustration.

Mostly because it seemed like tomorrow being Mother's Day brought a bunch of randos to the supermarket.

Afterwards, I did a fitting on Ma's cardigan. As mentioned earlier.

Then we did a trip to Spotlight to pick up another skein of yarn. Only to not find the yarn, have one of the staff say they would find it out the back, ask us to wait because it was "very high up" and then not only not go get the yarn but also not come find us and tell us they weren't going to get the yarn. So, you know, slightly annoyed. If you can't get to it safely, fine. However, you said you would do a thing. Either do the thing or tell me you're not doing it without me having to come find you again.

On the plus side I did teach one of the (non craft section) staff members about yarn dye lots... because for some fucking reason I had "please talk to me, I love random human interaction" tattooed on my forehead all day. And the person who was ordering three skeins of that purple yarn over the internet... you're absolutely fucking welcome that you got three from the same dye lot because of me.

So we left there without the thing we came for.

And then went to Haighs for the second week running. Forgetting, of course, that it is Mother's Day tomorrow. And most of the people there where, in fact, fathers and sons. We also didn't manage to find dark chocolate broken Easter Egg, but we did find broken Milk Chocolate Hot Cross Bun Crunch Egg. So, you know, absolutely not mad about that.

character saturday: big dumb boy

I didn't realise that I hadn't ever posted an updated version of Khurg after the first one. Which is a shame, because a lot of those original ones now fill me with deep shame LOL.

But he makes a reappearance for today's DnD Character Colouring Book because Hero Forge dropped their new Body Customiser this week. And what Khurg has desperately been needing for a good long while now is just giant meaty hands. Also feet.

Khurg really is one of my favourites who I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked. Every time I remember that he canonically met Santa who also him the snowflake pin, and that it was one of the elves that embroidered his overalls, it just makes me smile.

Suffice to say I really like this version of him.

Anyway...

This week's soup was my version of Minestrone... and quite good. I could perhaps have forgone the potato, but I also ending up picking through each bowl and eating the potato first... so, you know, whatever works I guess.

And this week's Mini Media Reviews are the two Addams Family animated movies.

I was absolutely not a fan. They really just didn't understand how The Addams Family should work and what makes them unique. Cramming a generic "my parents don't understand me" plotline for Wednesday is the last thing that should be in an Addams Family movie. And the fact that they doubled down on that in the sequel and made Wednesday's whole plotline a "I don't fit into this family" one is... breathtakingly dumb.

But I did realise that there isn't an Addams Family movie that actually has any idea what the hell to do with Pugsley. This does not break that trend.

In crochet news, I finished the squares I was making... I'm just not sure how I'm going to join them together. So they're currently a problem for another day. I also tried to put something together with the other red yarn the Friday folks got me for my birthday last year. And, honestly, I just can't do it. There's something about yarn that I just don't enjoy working with. I tried and subsequently frogged three different starting points, because nothing was working the way I wanted it to. So I've now put it away.

Friday Night DnD was good. Should we have gone left before we went right, oh absolutely, I knew that. I don't think it would have overly mattered in the scheme of things, but I at least had the idea that left was important.

But otherwise we did a lot of going from A to B to C.

Anyway...

Thank all that's holy that we did not, in fact, have to go vote today. Having said that, it might legitimately have been easier and less bothersome than doing it last weekend. Which is somewhat annoying. Because by the time we were leaving the supermarket, there was no line at the polling place and very few assholes standing outside taking up space and oxygen. Lessons learned I guess.

But, we did the supermarket thing, then detoured off to Haighs for broken Easter Egg. Now... I've said this before, and I will say it once again. For the last few years, they have said that they had "broken Easter Egg" when what they actually have is "broken Easter chick/duckling", which, while similar, is not actually the same thing. We also got some actual Easter Egg which had bits of macadamia nut in it.

So good times all around.

And I'd asked Ma to bring the Thneed that I made back down, because, honestly, while finishing off the squares this week I realised that I could absolutely have used that yarn to make a hexagon cardigan rather than the slightly useless thing that I made.

Which meant that I spent a couple of hours frogging the whole blanket thing into it's original seven balls of yarn. And will now turn it into something that is actually usable.