character saturday: character sketches

Wizards of the Coast, the folks who publish Dungeons and Dragons, announced a new book this week, entitled Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, will contain a massive number of new subclasses. Twenty-two of them if the general scuttlebutt is to be believed, plus reprints of other ones that have appeared in other books. Which is very exciting. I mean, like Xanathar's before it, we're aware of essentially all of them as far as I know, because Wizards like to get the community to playtest potential subclasses, or just give their opinion on the potential build.

And that brings us around to this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... where after a random comment from one of my friends, I designed a character for a subclass that isn't even published yet... so we have Sister Lomea, the wood elf Twilight Cleric, who I made using a lot of the design choices that came out of last week's artworks. She's also my second lesbian character, since I just knew as I was putting her art together that she had a wife. Sometimes you just know, you know.

Just don't ask me how goddamn long it took to put that Elvish script around the top of her weapon.

Then, I realised that somewhere in the back catalogue was a character I first created probably 15 years or so ago, who was originally a sorcerer, but who would make a very different and interesting kind of druid. Which led to me making Blaze (not his original name... but the name he gave himself... I think he was probably called something basic by the orphanage like James Rose), the former orphan and human Circle of Wildfire Druid... along with his wildfire spirit, Ember (which is just some very cool phoenix art I stole from the internet).

So think of these are a character sketch more than anything.

Will I ever play either of these two? Who can tell. It will partly depend on how much they change the subclasses, whether I'm more excited by some of the other ones. I've probably played less than half of the ones in Xanathar's at this point... so only time will tell.

And if not, it was a fun exercise in character creation/adaption. Plus the artwork looks fucking cool.

Anyway...

This week's soup was a pretty simple potato, bacon and leek... blended smooth, which I haven't really done this year, because I've been enjoying the chunkier kind.

Thanks to SBS On Demand, I've ended up watching a slew of Jackie Chan movies... which is not something I'd done before. Not for any particular reason, they just never seemed super exciting to me. But they're fun. In most of the movies I've watched the female characters are often portrayed as complete idiots, and the commitment to stunt safety based on the post credits footage is insane to the point of lethal. But Chan is super charismatic, has amazing acrobatic and martial arts skills and they movies are a fun romp for the most part.

Wednesday's DnD game was decent. I mean we did have a character death, but the player concerned wasn't overly cut up about it. Otherwise, decent.

Friday's game was great... I mean it was mostly a shopping episode, but I love those. And we got a bunch of fun character stuff, which I also love. I will say that once we've shopped and done all the other bits and pieces, and schemed and plotted and whatnot, I wouldn't mind a big, fat, protracted combat session. Because it's been a while... granted the last few of those felt more deadly than I would have liked, but we've levelled up a bit since then.

I also had a really interesting and intricate conversation with Fluffy before we headed out, which was great.

And after the game, we worked out that there was a very high likelihood that at some point during my tenure in North Adelaide that we were all in the same place at the same time without knowing it... or at the very least all crossed paths at certain points. Which wouldn't surprise me, honestly. But is still kind of awesome.

Today we had good weather. Especially compared with the last few weekends. But actual sunshine and the ability to not wear a jacket and whatnot.

We started off with the supermarket... I'm doing something with chicken and soup again this week. Very likely including some noodles of some description. We'll see.

Otherwise it was definitely one of those "many things" supermarket days, especially given that the last couple haven't been, so I'd run out of a bunch of stuff. But overall, not that much different from usual.

Afterwards we did the unpacking and a truncated YubTubs, then headed into the city for a few errands. Not gunna lie, it's still weird. I mean it's probably going to be weird for... the foreseeable forever... but yeah, just going into town is weird. I would imagine going to one of the large shopping centres is even weirder, but we haven't done that in quite a while.

Anyway... we ran a few errands, nothing particularly exciting, and then called it a day. But it was nice to be out in the sunshine.

Current mood:

character saturday: fantasy fashion designer

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is one I wouldn't perhaps normally do... in that it's OPCs... or Other People's Characters. But in the case of both of these, I had quite a lot of involvement in the design of the HeroForge models, and I'm completely responsible for the colour design for both... so fuck it. Plus I'm probably going to redo the artwork for Lucas because the player came up with a different, more interesting pose... damn him, I mean I also want to colour the new version, but damn him anyway.

But honestly, I love the final results of both of these, especially Lucas, because total Edgelord (which was absolutely the design aesthetic for this whole character), but the hair and beard texture on Torren is probably one of the best I've done, to totally toot my own horn.

And I worked out some new techniques on both of these, especially the subtle chainmail texture on some of Torren's armour. Not to mention the Glomesh style texture on Lucas's tunic because I had to resolve the confusion between his chosen clothing piece and the fact he's wearing scale mail. Plus, it's pretty fucking extra.

EDIT: Okay, so I updated the Lucas art... because I love it even more than the original, which is weird, because it's the exact same colouring, with the exception of the rune glow and the pose... but somehow it's even better...

They're also travelling around with my gigantic Dragonborn boy Marux... and what's amusing is that while he's 7'2", all the party, independently of each other, are quite tall, even the dwarf (relatively speaking), so when I put all of the characters in an image together and scale them accordingly, they all look average height. Because a sense of scale is important. In all things, but definitely in character art.

So this week has been... something.

We started with soup what I made up out of my own head... in that I put some vegetables, some tomato, some chicken, some hope... and it all came out pretty well actually. I mean it was just me mashing together three of four different soup ideas, but it worked out well.

Wednesday's DnD game was pretty decent... playing a high charisma, low wisdom, low intelligence character has it's moments. And there were a couple of moments where I said the right thing at the right time for something that became a plot point later... and I had no idea at the time.

Thursday I had my first haircut in 169 days (nice), or as the "time between" website pointed out, 46.17% of 2020. Yep, from neat and trim to dishevelled hobo in just under half a year. Wow... totally did not realise it was that long. I knew it was a hot minute... but that's longer than expected.

And as I had intended for a while, it wasn't back to the same old same old... we went different. Not dazzling or spectacular, but different. We skipped the colour, but I got her to run a toner through it, so that any of the yellow in the grey or the remaining bleached hair got taken out. I was also very grateful that she offered to trim my beard for me also, since I hadn't bothered to trim it in a little bit... I didn't actually take notice of how long, but let's say more than a month.

Since it didn't require me to do anything other than sit there, I was totally on board, and I left there looking and feeling more like an actual person than I'd done for a while.

So there's that.

Of course that's also the time when Winter properly hit, and the temperature turned definitely bitter cold. Because timing is important.

Friday morning I got a call at about 10:20... and when I picked it up it was my chiro's office, because I hadn't put the appointment in my fucking phone and hence had absolutely forgotten. Goddamn it.

Thankfully she had an appointment in the early afternoon, so I headed into town for that.

Then Friday night was DnD... except it wasn't because one of the party needed a nap, but we didn't know that until we were almost there. So there were board games instead. Well, a board game, Villainous to be precise. And it's pretty damn good.

I feel like it's one of those games that is easy to pick up but difficult to master, and very much depends on which villain you're playing, and the luck of the draw in a lot of ways. But a lot of fun.

And what with standing around like numpties chatting to start, and then more of the same once we were done, it was after midnight before we left and around 1am by the time I got home.

Today was the new average... also it was too fucking cold to go anywhere after the supermarket.

So we did the supermarket thing, I'm making some version of potato, bacon and leek soup (but not chowdah this time), otherwise I didn't buy a hell of a lot of anything. Which might bite me in the butt later in the week. Or not.

So, yeah, then we came back and did the YubTubs thing, then called it a day.

Current mood:

character saturday: bad girls have more fun

This week has been a very Nightingale focused week, so we're revisiting her for the DnD Character Colouring Book.

I mentioned her originally in the template post, but she's been through a lot since then, including a costume change and a haircut... oh, and a fuckton of interpersonal drama, which I ate up with both hands and a spoon. But going to hell will do that to you. I liked her original outfit and design, quite a lot actually... I liked that she used her hair as a tool for her role as a performer, and the fact she would often wrap it up into a coil on top of her head was great roleplay fun. But then I played around with the "Avernus" costume, and the haircut and suddenly I was obsessed with it. Sadly we weren't even in hell at that point, and it took what felt like forever before I got to make the change-over... but the moment was the right one.

My only regret is that I did the colour for the new costume before the high heels appeared on HeroForge (which was this week).

She is by far my most complicated character. I mean, she makes sense inside my head, but other people seem unsure about her, which I kind of love. Even if this, my first experience with the bard class has confirmed that bards are demonstrably pretty shit and I'd rather play just about any other class. I love her anyway.

But like I said, this week has been a lot for her. She discovered a whole lot of information about her family (which honestly threw me for more of a loop than her), she killed her backstory nemesis while transformed into a giant ape, finally shared her history with her travelling companions, met a unicorn, a dao (earth genie), a titan, and traded a powerful item for the blood of a dragon goddess. But it's also not every day a bard is able to string their violin and bow with the gift of unicorn hair.

That's what happens when you have two DnD sessions in a single week. Since we missed our Friday session last week, we moved it to Monday, so yeah, a Monday and a Friday session. Plus a Wednesday session for my other group. With a different DM, which will be interesting.

I also got an update about my oven, which still hasn't been fixed by the way. Since May. But it turns out we're still waiting for parts from overseas. Via Melbourne. Or Melbourne via overseas... one of those. But the tradie has already paid for those parts, so he's at least got a vested interest in getting it done.

So, now we wait. Hopefully not for that much longer, honestly. But we wait.

And, yes, the the Hearty Herdbeast Stew worked out really well this week. I mean, it was the version of it where I read the recipe, remember the major points and just do what I want instead.

Today was about average. We did the supermarket thing. I had no fucking clue as to what kind of soup I intended to make, and honestly, I still kinda don't. I just know it will be something with both tomato and chicken... and also the vegetables. So there's that.

Then there was unpacking and the YubTubs and the usual shemozzle.

And then we went to Big W, for random reasons. Which was followed by a side trip to Target, again for reasons. And that was about it.

Current mood:

character saturday: crew quarters

We're going back to the land of NPCs for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. And honestly, of the large number of NPCs I've made, these are two that I would absolutely play.

My bard character, Nightingale, needed a crew of fellow performers for our Descent into Avernus (I mean, she absolutely didn't... but I wanted her to have one), and so I came up with a half dozen characters, some of whom basically had two lines and a walk on part in the actual adventure. All bards, obviously, but I dipped into every possible subclass for them.

And these two are my favourites. The fact that their colour pallets are essentially mirrors of each other was pure happenstance. Firstly we have Rhapsody, tiefling courtesan, singer and College of Glamour bard. She's also Nightingale's best friend, and when she walks into a room all eyes go to her. Then there's Taavi, human acrobat/tumbler and College of Valour Bard (I would probably give him a level in monk if I actually ever played him). I described him to the DM as being "clueless but sweet"... like, he has no idea how damn sexy he is or the effect he may have on other people outside of performing. You know, one of those imaginary hot people. I'm sure he probably owns a shirt or two, but he'd definitely of the "sleeves are bullshit" school of dressing.

Soup this week was a very thick chowder... with the chicken and the chorizo and three kinds of onion (because leek is technically an onion, right). Pretty good actually.

This week there was only one DnD session... Friday got called off at the last minute, but we're rescheduling that for Monday, so there's that at least.

Otherwise, nothing much to report.

Today was yet another case of "second verse, same as the first"... Did I use that joke last week? I feel like I've used it about 1500 times since March. But we did the supermarket. I'm revisiting an old favourite this week. Or at the very least, I'm going to make my own version of same, which will generally just mean upping all the quantities.

Then we ran into an acquaintance we haven't seen in a while, chatted with him briefly before heading back here.

And then we did the usual gubbins... which is to say, unpacking, followed by the YubTubs. But then a really beautiful animated movie (My Life as a Zucchini... beautiful, but melancholy and a little dark at times) was just starting on the TV, so we watched that before Ma shuffled off home.

Current mood:

character saturday: inspired by the discworld

First things first... and this is said with all due vehemence, FUCK THE NEW BLOGGER INTERFACE! 

Everything is nine times larger than it needs to be, it's taken directly from the "entirely too spaced out and too clean while being shit" school of design, you can't drag and drop images anymore and while they have put in the ability to manipulate the HTML code, they've also hidden it in a place that makes no sense and the editor is now adding in stupid fucking code it doesn't need to. Fuck that noise.

I will remain annoyed for some time but will try not to mention it again. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Moving on, we have this week's DnD character designs, both of which are inspired to greater or lesser extents by Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I mean it makes sense because I've been reading through the series for a while now, and I don't know if I'm ever going to get around to actually being able to play either of them. But if not I do have half of a plan to use them as NPCs for a later campaign.

So, we have Brother Dilmah (yes, named after the tea brand), from the Temple of the Golden Leaf, a Way of Shadow Monk. He's, unsurprisingly, inspired by the History Monks, specifically from Thief of Time, and he's also the first time I attempted to give one of these character designs wrinkles or signs of age. It's super simple, but I think it works pretty well all things considered. And he gets a shadow simply because he's a Shadow Monk, but I was kinda proud of how it came out.

Next to him is "Goody" Adora Posset (Goody being a title short for Goodwife, Posset from the drink of the same name) along with her albino raven familiar, Master Finian. And she's both a College of Lore bard and my take on one of the Discworld witches. Because of all the DnD spellcasting classes, the bard is the one that feels the most like the Headology we see in the books. It's about words and their power and making people thing the way you want them to think. And the bard class has access to all of those spells.

But I gave her access to a couple of other spells, including the Find Familiar spell so she could have her own version of Nanny Ogg's Greebo and Granny Weatherwax's You. Weirdly, although it's one of the simplest designs of a costume/character, it's kinda one of my favourites. And after this design, all the potion bottles I've added are modelled after this one because it came out so well.

Moving forward...

Still waiting for a functional oven. Allegedly the parts are on the way. I don't know I can throw much of a spaz. But I'm considering it in the next week or so.

This week I made basically vegetable soup... but added salami to it. Because if there is any rule that I've followed all my life it's that the thing with many vegetables is good, but it's 1000% better if you add salami to it. It's just facts.

Otherwise I did a good solid bout of tidying up my crap early in the week. Stuff that just needed to be put away in the place that it came from and not just left swinging in the proverbial wind.

There were just the two DnD games this week, the usual Wednesday and Friday. Honestly Wednesday nearly turned into a complete shitshow... people who don't usually show up were rumoured to appear, people who should have been around weren't. It very nearly didn't happen. But there were three of us and we decided to play anyway.

It was a weird game, mostly because it felt like the other two weren't overly engaged. And on top of that the adventure was written a little clumsily... or perhaps a little too openly. We legitimately either didn't pick up on the cues or the cues were vague as fuck. Or maybe a little of both. But we got there eventually.

Friday night's game was... character reintegration. And it was cool, a lot more effective than the last time we attempted it. Choices were made, good choices. Weird as fuck, but good. So we'll see how that goes. Hopefully this means that we can make some progress in the story, since it's been a little bit. I mean, don't get me wrong, I live for the roleplay, and I'm sure the direction the plot is leading isn't anywhere near as straightforward as I think it is.

We are starting to think about what comes next though... so there's that.

Today... today was a world of "Henry VIII I Am"... "Second verse same as the first". Nothing new or exciting really. We did the supermarket thing... I reverted back to chowder again this week. Because it's easy, and I wasn't feeling the other options.

Then we came back here, discussed important things, like teevee shows where people commission art, watched things on the YubTubs... all the hits of yesterday and today. We had a wander over to the Village, and then pretty much called it a day. Not thrilling. But we haven't done thrilling in a while.

And that was it really.

Current mood:

character saturday: halfling clerics

I'm obsessed with halflings. Of all my characters, the largest percentage are halflings (I mean, not by much, but it is where I gravitate). I just love the little fuckers.

And I wanted a halfling cleric, so what's the most sensible option? Make two and play the one you're feeling the most at the time I hear you say. Absolutely.

In the end I chose Littlefoot (on the left), the War domain cleric, who goes by her surname and is essentially a halfling policewoman, mother of twins and the definition of big Mum energy. I always describe her without her helmet as having a very plain face, a nose that has been broken at least three times and a sensible haircut. She's also the character who proved why pulling a strange lever in the creepy temple is totally a bad plan, because her head literally got chopped off. I mean she's fine, because death is never really the end in DnD, but I also haven't played her since then.

Otho on the other hand... I love his design, I love the freckles and the scar and at least some of the back story I came up with. He might need a little bit of a rework before I actually play him though. Or else I just need to tweak some details. And work out if I actually like the Knowledge domain. Or if I need to rejuggle things and make him a Grave domain cleric. Which honestly fits his concept so much better.

Also, yes, totally the same pose on both of them.

Every time I make chilli I always make what can only be described as a metric fuckton. I mean that's great, but there was a lot of chilli. And it was pretty good. Many beans, two kinds of mince. All the spices. And great with rice, mashed potato, pasta and your basic corn chips.

And I totally turned into an infomercial right there for no damn reason. Sorry about that.

This week's DnD was Wednesday and Friday... and honestly, we nearly had two total party wipes. I mean, it was kind of exciting, but also terrifying. The Friday game was weird, just because one third of our party wasn't there, because we're between characters with him. But we meet the new one next Friday, which will be interesting.

It's also super weird when you know your character is kind of in love with another character but you're pretty damn sure the player doesn't have any clue. I mean it's great, and I kinda want to get to the end of the adventure before it comes out. I also don't want to fuck up the great relationship they have either, because it is definitely awesome. And there are just these role play moments between them that I totally love.

Anyway.

I also went through a box of tchotchkes of various descriptions, a box I haven't been through possibly in... four years. Maybe. But I found some stuff I had totally forgotten about, some stuff that I knew I had but didn't know where the fuck I'd put it and some stuff that definitely needs to find a proper place outside of the box.

Friday was Chiro day, so I did the city trip thing... so there was that.

Today Ma was getting her hair did, so I did the shopping thing on my own. On the menu for this week is... fucked if I know... some kinda vegetable soup, honestly. I don't have a full on plan.

Then I came back, unpacked until Ma turned up, we futzed around here for a bit, then took a trip to Spotlight for no really real reason, then called it a day.

Current mood:

movies: spider-man - into the spider-verse

If I'd seen Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse when it came out in 2018, it would immediately have gone to the top of my list for movies I saw that year.

Which is why, a year and a half on, I'm doing a review.

Damn this is an exceptional movie.

Visually, this is like nothing else I've ever seen. Just the colours and the animation style... styles honestly. The use of text boxes and on-screen onomatopoeia... brilliant.

The slight comic book blurring took me a while to get used to, but otherwise, this movie is an absolute feast for your eyes.

And the fact that Miles goes from 12 fps to 24 fps throughout the movie as he comes to grips with his powers... perfection.

Then we get to the story... and of course the man responsible for both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and The Lego Movie was the driving force for this. It's clearly got his fingerprints all over it. Amazing characters who you care about and who have real emotions and an emotional arc throughout the movie. Yep, that's pure Phil Lord right there. You magnificent bastard!

Because that's the heart of this movie. Not just making a single version of Spider-Man that you relate to and care about... no, doing it a minimum of four times... then adding in even more Spider-Persons and making you still care. Giving them relationships that you care about. Making the relationships vital to the direction of the story without becoming overly sentimental or saccharine.

And the call back joke that could have gotten super old super quickly but absolutely does not. In fact the final time it occurs, it's actually an emotional moment.

This is also a stellar cast... I'll be honest, beyond two voices, I didn't recognise anybody, which I kind of like for this kind of movie. There doesn't need to be recognisable voices here. It needs to have voices that work for the characters. And boy oh boy do they work. But at the same time, if you can slip Lily Tomlin in there at just the correct moment, absolutely do that.

While everyone is excellent, I do need to call out Shameik Moore as Miles Morales,Jake Johnson as Peter B Parker and Hailee Steinfeld for giving their characters life and heart and a weight.

I don't often comment on the music in things, and I'll be honest, at a certain point in the movie I absolutely stopped noticing it (which is what happens in all movies unless it's a musical... I am listening to it while writing this though)... plus out of the 20 or so artists, I recognise about four of them... but the music is not what I would have expected from a Spider-Man movie and at the same time it fits beautifully with this world and this Spider-Man.

So while I'm so very late to this party, if you're even later and have somehow missed this, absolutely go back and check it out. Thank me later.

yani's rating: 5 goobers out of 5

character saturday: imaginary family

We're dipping into the NPC (non-player character) box for this week's DnD character art.

The trope I see most often about characters is that they have tragic backstories... everyone died in a fire, was killed by raiders, abandoned the character when they were a wee baby... some reason for them to head out on the road and become an adventurer.

The majority of the time I say "fuck that". A character who has a loving family and a secure home and still wants to go off and see the world is much more exciting to me. So, almost all of my characters have some sort of family somewhere. Some of them lost one parent or another, but that's never the reason they became an adventurer... I do have one went that route after he lost his wife, but that's it really.

Which is the long was of saying, these two halflings, Brandien Beestinger (baker and crossbow fighter) and Melody Longpond (sage and beast master ranger... and her peregrine falcon Essel), are the parents of Belben Beestinger (that's him, second from the left in the header image), my first ever DnD character.

Which is also super appropriate because tomorrow is the third anniversary of my first ever DnD game.

Given that he's an adventurer, descended from adventurers who are in turn descended from adventurers, at a certain point I did designs and characters for his Beestinger lineage.

Belben's direct family all have names inspired by Doctor Who companions (yes, I'm that kind of nerd)... Brandien translates to "Blue Hero" aka the TARDIS (hence his blue colour scheme), his mother Melody Longpond is a variation of River Song, his sisters are Rose, Marigold (standing in for Martha), Belladonna (Donna), Cara (Clara) and Pearl (the first name of the actress who played Bill Potts).

And part of the fun of designing his parents was figuring out how the genetics worked backwards. At least for me.

I will say that I've always been super happy with how Melody came out... both the white armour, which is mostly impractical but looks stylish as all fuck and the fact that I got a very peregrine falcon look for her bird companion thanks to cutting and layering actual photos. Less sure about the green trim on her bow to be honest... orange might have been more appropriate... but whadyagunnado?

Anyway...

Today is my 15th bloggiversary. Holy fuckballs. I mean we're definitely not in the heady days of 400-500 posts a year, I haven't broken 100 posts per annum since 2017, but we're still here.

It's also super weird to look back at some of that early stuff, where I didn't have a lot of routines and structures in place and I would just post about whatever whenever. Probably in the way I have used Twitter I guess. Random thought, tweet that shit.

However if I spend too much time looking at how many of the links in some of those old post are just broken or don't go anywhere sensible anymore, I will go insane.

In other news... which isn't really news, but still... I am not as scary as folks seem to believe I am. I mean, yes, but that's mostly for and about people I don't give two shits about. So, you know, other people. Yes, I have opinions... I have many, I hand them out on a regular basis, you only need to ask. Sometimes I give them away regardless. Do with them as you will. But if you think that means you can't bring your concerns to me or have a conversation about an issue, to that I say "look at your life, look at your choices" because you've made a wrong turn somewhere. But I love you anyway. And for the record, yes, you, you know who you are.

Now that we've got that out the way.

Chowder was more of a success this week... still a little too thin, but that was more about me putting more liquid in than it really needed... on the up side, it made 8 serves instead of the usual 7, which isn't a bad thing.

DnD was just Friday this week. I won't lie, one game a week isn't quite enough. Two games is better. Three is kind of my sweet spot I think. I know that four is too many. The Friday game was all roleplay once again. It kinda needed to be for logistical reasons, and some of it was just information transfer, but it had it's moments. And I did finally realise the root of the issues my character was having with the other character. The voice. Which sounds insane, I know this. But the character's voice was drilling straight into the part of my brain that instantly rebels against being condescended to or talked down to. And it also made perfect sense that my character would have the exact same response to that kind of voice.

Plus the two characters were just incapable of actually seeing each other and not the idea they had about who the other was. Sometimes it all gets real "persykological", to steal a word from Terry Pratchett.

We'll see what the next "chapter" holds.

In the Oven Repair Saga... the one thing I said to my land agent that was important in this whole rigmarole was that I wanted to be kept informed on where we were at. I mean, not that fucking hard, right. You find out a piece of news, you spend at most 90 seconds on an email, then you go on with your day. But I had to chase the job up again, only to find that yes, the repair has been approved and we're waiting on parts. When was it approved, fucked if I know. Sometime in the last two weeks, clearly. And I know it was probably going to take about two weeks for the parts to arrive during this time of strife. So how soon will it be fixed? Sometime in the next two weeks, possibly. Who can fucking say?

Again I say, in a much less forgiving tone of voice...  "look at your life, look at your choices".

I just wanna fucking bake bread again. Like seriously. Bread... and sausage rolls... and maybe a cake... and a tuna morney... and a whole fuckton of roast potatoes.

The plan for this week is a reasonable sized batch of chilli. With mushrooms. Plus other hidden vegetables. And my chilli game is pretty decent.

Otherwise, we did the supermarket thing, came back here, did the YubTubs, then went for a wander across at the Village. Picked up a copy of Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse for under $10, so hopefully it's as good as I've heard it is.

And that was it really. A wander and then we called it a day.

Current mood:

character saturday: boots the house down

Part two of my DnD character HeroForge/Photoshop art.

This time I'm putting Alby, the very odd human Celestial warlock (which is honestly amongst my least favourite classes tbh) and who is entirely based around the idea of a healing potion warlock, with his pseudodragon familiar, Leaf, up against Tranquillity, my voluptuous tielfling wild magic sorceress (sorcerers are amongst my favourite classes though)... given that they both have the exact same lower robes and boots. But come out very differently, partly due to body shape, but partly due to colouring.

I haven't played either of them yet... Alby was supposed to be my next character, but then the world caught fire and that never happened. And Tranquility was the first time I really built the character in HeroForge before I even had a proper concept. I just wanted to play around with colour and body shapes and tiefling horns, and then there she was.

Neither of them especially feel like characters I want to play in online games, so they'll just have to sit in the wings and wait for right now.

Moving on...

Yeah, I spent some of the weekend and a little of the beginning of the week still inside my head as per last week, but it got better as the week wore on. It also helped that I knew that I was in my head. It's certainly better than not being aware of same.

This week's soup was... less successful. I made chowder, only I think I sliced a lot of the ingredients too small, then possibly cooked it for too long for the size of said ingredients. So it was all a bit mush. Which I fixed by blending the whole thing... which was fine, but blended soup is always much less interesting and exciting.

And we had two DnD sessions this week... Wednesday and Friday, which will be the new normal for a little bit. Wednesday was pretty good, although we came a little too close to a total party wipe. So that was fun. For a specific meaning of fun.

Friday's game was basically 100% roleplay, which I love. But when one of your party puts it to your character whether or not their character sticks around... because for reasons I can't totally articulate, this character has worked my last nerve since about 5 minutes after I met them. And look, I wanted to say yes... but I just couldn't get past my characters objections. So we're looking for a new party member as of next week.

Fun times. Again, for a specific meaning of fun.

Also in DnD news, Critical Role is back, playing their first game since the middle of March. My Tuesday nights haven't been the same since, so it was nice to have that element of normalcy back... I mean they're all sitting between 5 and 20 feet from each other in the studio, so it's not totally the same, but it's better than nothing.

I mean it's not like they've been totally absent from YouTube or the world in general, but not as these characters, so it's nice to dive back into their world.

Otherwise, this felt like a long week. I don't know why exactly, but yeah, it just dragged.

Today was decent.

We did the supermarket thing. I'm having a second go at chowder this week. Without leek, which was the main issue last week. So we'll see how that works out.

Then we came back here, did the usual YubTub malarkey, Ma futzed around with the hat she knitted me, because the changes we've been attempting (and by 'we' I mean she) to make to the... wait, what's the rim of a beanie called? You know, the bit that surrounds the hole that you put your head in... anyway, that bit. This is the second time it's been changed, and it just isn't working. So we're going back to the original, because fuck it.

After that, we headed off to Cheap as Chips because Ma wanted a couple of rugs for her place. It turned out to be a pretty successful trip, I picked up some little notebooks and a bowl, because bowls are awesome... and I found a little storage case. Because dice. Because a percentage of everything is always about dice.

I had no idea now many dice sets I own, but it had 18 compartments, which I figure would be more than enough.

Turns out I have exactly 17 sets, plus a bunch of extra d6's. So that was awesome. And now all my dice are grouped by colour/set and I can see them all, because the box is clear. I mean it takes up like five times the room of my pretty little pencil case, and about twice as much as my wooden dice box. But it's awesome.

So that was it really.

Current mood:

character saturday: in and out of my head

I've officially run out of usable 'featured photo' photos. Well, no, that's not true. I still have about 30-something photos, but they're ones from the last seven years that, at this point, I just don't have a match up for or just don't excite me. FWP, I know.

Instead, since I've been producing a lot of character art for my DnD characters, by taking HeroForge screenshots into Photoshop and cutting and colouring the living shit out of them. And in some regards I've started almost creating them backwards, putting together a HeroForge character and then turning them into an actual character. If I couldn't make a convincing facsimile of a DnD blue dragon, I didn't want to make a blue dragonborn character.

Because of course I like my dragonborn to have characteristics of the dragons they're descended from. Even though they don't have to.

So, I present my 5'4" teenage human wolf totem barbarian (hence the yellow eyes), Fenris with his shiny new battleaxe (because I love playing against type, and big beefy barbarians are boring)... and the 7'2" blue dragonborn paladin warlock, Marux (which I'm choosing to pronounce as Maroo, because I can pronounce made up words however I like) with his somewhat sentient metal eyeball sword, Nym... a sword who only exists because I had a moment of 'genius' during the colouring process when I realised that the pommel was a sphere and I could do something with that. I then turned it onto a character detail that I would absolutely not have come up with otherwise. Which are those ridiculous character creation moments that I love.

With both of these, I created a version, coloured it, lived with it for a bit, then realised I wasn't happy, redid the model and then subsequently redid the colour. Three times now for Fenris since I decided to change his weapon.

Will we see more of these portraits? Who can say. I do know that I have enough images to last until November (or January if I include NPC designs), some of which haven't yet seen the light of the gaming table.

Moving on...

This week's chicken soup was... decent. I make a decent chicken soup. Sometimes better than others, but generally decent. The secret ingredient is always chorizo. Granted that's generally the secret ingredient in all my soups, but still.

In other news, I got super into my own head this week. Yay. By which I mean, not yay. I'm aware, mostly of the whys and wherefores, but that didn't stop it from happening. And a couple of badly timed external things just made it worse.

It did colour the week in increasingly more saturated colour as we progressed though.

So there's that.

When I started this week there were four DnD sessions on the docket. However, in a fact that is surprisingly completely unrelated to the previous one, yet still coloured/flavoured by it, by the end of the week that number was two. Monday and Tuesday happened. Monday was the last Monday session. Or the last Monday session for now/in the current adventure. Tuesday was the debut of Marux, and the same group as the Monday group, but with an additional interstate visitor (because online). And while the adventure was too damn easy, it was a good session overall.

Wednesday and Friday didn't happen. Other people pulled out, so I came down with a severe case of 'no-fucks-given-itis' and removed myself from the equation.

I'll have to deal with that later, but that's a problem for future me, not right now me.

Today wasn't much of anything, as previous today's have been of late.

Firstly supermarket. I'm going back to the chowder this week... but without chicken, probably. Most likely because I'll forget to check my freezer, and I didn't buy any. I wasn't intending to add chicken anyway, so that'll work out fine.

Then back here for all the usual stuff... which then got sidetracked because Ma was attempting to make corrections to the beanie she knitted me because it turned out too small... which in turn made it even smaller. So that wasn't exactly a productive use of time.

And that was it really.

Current mood: