character saturday: demon twink farmboy

So, I have to half blame this week's DnD Character Colouring Book on the book I'm currently not really all that interested in reading (and will definitely pull the plug on, probably later today), Queer as Folklore. I mean, as a book, it's fine, it's just a little blah... but this isn't where we review the books.

One of the upcoming chapters is called Demon Twinks... which, naturally enough, got me thinking about a potential new tiefling character. Because, honestly, I haven't designed anything new in a hot minute.

It was also one of those character where the choices I made in the outfit definitely changed some of the rough ideas I had. The base model is Moist, the once mentioned "NPC", but given that we have the Body Modifier now, I made a number of tweaks in order to get him to be closer to late teenage skinny twink rather than mid-20's skinny.

And the overalls just segued him from potential Fiend Patron Fancy Twink into Celestial Patron Country Twink. Also, the synergy between having a sphinx patron and a Sphinx of Wonder familiar just worked for me.

Does it make a huge amount of sense that a farmboy is wearing three inch heeled boots? Probably not, no. And I feel like if I was actually making this character, I might go with the overall top that has both straps fastened, it just looks a little cleaner. Because there just seems to be too much empty space on the right side of his shirt. I just kinda liked his vibes though.

Anyway...

This week's soup was... Tuna Mornay. What is amusing is that I've only recently realised that technically to be a true "mornay", there's supposed to be cheese added to the sauce. And I always forget. Except this time. Where I just grated half a block of cheese that had been sitting in the fridge for a while straight into the pot. I don't know that you could overly taste it in the final product, but I did it anyway.

Likewise, I got the rice thing right this time, because I cooked a couple of cups of rice and threw it in the bottom of the casserole dish, then mixed it through with everything else. It was a good call. I probably could have gone harder to be honest.

Mini Media Reviews... firstly, Hundreds of Beavers is a movie that both exists and that I have watched. I'll be honest, it would make a good 15 minute short. I'm not sure it needed to be a 108 minute movie. I don't know that I'd say it was bad, but I did start to doze off at a certain point.

The other thing I watched this week was the first season of the Murderbot show. Now, I adore the books, and they were amongst the top books I read in 2023. I have thoughts on the show though. Now it's been a hot minute, and I need to reread the first book, because some of my opinion is definitely coloured by what happens in the series later.

But the flaw in the show is mainly the humans. My memory of the book is that the human characters are much more in the background and we're mostly focused on Murderbot and care about them. Which is harder to do in a TV show, where you can't just employ six actors and have them stand around in the background doing nothing. But there is just a high level of awkward and cringe to all those characters that I wasn't really a fan of. And in some ways, I feel like it works against the general awkward vibe of the Murderbot character. Likewise, there's a point where a character is acting incredibly suspect and awkward and cringe, but nobody picks up on them being clearly a problem because everyone else is acting suspect and awkward. Also, that character isn't in the book.

The production design, set design, wardrobe and effects are exceptional though. As is Alexander Skarsgård as the aforementioned Murderbot.

And I would watch a second season.

Friday Night DnD happened. And was DnD. And involved entirely too much quoting of song lyrics. And much wandering through a dungeon. Not a literal one. But essentially.

Anyway.

Today was something of a weird shopping adventure. Because I swear based on what we had that the total should have been much higher than it was. So, don't get me wrong, it's a good problem to have, it's just slightly odd.

Then we just went to take a wander around Spotlight. Not for any real reason, just because we haven't gone anywhere the last few weeks and the intent was just to do a lap. But we did go later than we usually do...

Only to find... the carpark was full, so we had to break out Ma's pass to park in the handicap spot, then the elevator wasn't working, but we just took it slow and took up all the space, only to discover that, for some reason (Book Week? The fact that it was after 12? Some other reason?) the place was full of people. So we mostly just did a lap, looked at the Halloween decor, looked at the yarn, looked at the mostly ugly bedding on sale, and then called it a day. 

character saturday: desert explorer

Revisiting an old friend again for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book.

And by "old friend", I mean a character I never really got to play enough back in the Adventurer's League days. He hasn't shown up on the blog since 2020 though, back in the Photoshop colouring days... and let's just steal the blurb from then.

The Morning Star was my desire to go completely the other way and was my first (and to this point, only) full elf character (well, surface elf anyway). He comes along with a ridiculously crappy French accent, and while many of my characters are verbose, he takes the cake even within the Venn diagram. He was also the first design I did where I really properly played around with patterns, something I've done a ton of since then. 

While I did like his old braids, I do like the natural hair poof also. I feel like that makes the most sense for him. At least until a more interesting "natural hair" style comes along. I will say that "crappy French accent" really is an accent that I should revisit. I probably could have revisited it for my boy Whisper honestly. 

I am also slightly annoyed that HF doesn't give us even basic body controls for the familiars. Just give me the ability to adjust the head, please, without having to go all the way to Kitbashing. That would be lovely.

And I feel like he has more than one vest in his load out. Because I still feel like there needs to be a purple/green toned one as well.

Anyway...

I'm going to file this week under A Number Of Minor, Meaningless Inconveniences That Added Up To General Malaise.

Let's start at the beginning.

This week's soup was Mexican Chicken Soup. And it was... fine. But also just... 20% Not Right. And I honestly don't know why. I think it was probably the packet of taco seasoning that I used. Well, possibly that and the combination of Mexican bean mix, corn and rice. Or maybe the coriander (cilantro) I added. I don't know. I just know that I got sick of it throughout the week and basically left some of it in the bottom of the bowl each time.

Next up... Mini Media Reviews. And this is less of reviews and more.... "Anime really doesn't work for me", Chapter 37. So, I tried to watch Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and then Vinland Saga. I got further with Vinland, but I still "noped" out of both of them. 

Frieren was just too melodramatic, although I will give it credit for sewing the idea of a potential future DnD character (interestingly enough, an elf, much like Morning Star... in fact he would be a character that I could see it working for), an elf that forgets that shorter lived races don't view time in the same way and going off "wandering" for 80 years means that the humans or shorter lived folks you used to know are all dead or so old they've retired. But regardless, I didn't get far enough into Frieren to even meet the third "main character" on the box art.

Vinland, as I said, I liked more. But the longer it went on the more I disliked the main character. Which is always a problem. Bits of it were definitely good though. 

But in both cases I found myself falling asleep during episodes.

So for anybody keeping tabs, the only anime I've really enjoyed was 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team. And I don't really care about sport, I just really liked that story.

It did mean that instead of a week full of things to watch, I found myself flailing around and ended up going to bed early several times just to fuck around on my phone.

Moving on.

The ear doctor. I headed out for my appointment on Tuesday, caught the landlord outside and mentioned a couple of things that needed a minor looking at, and trundled down the road. Thankfully it wasn't far. Thankfully, that is, because it was the wrong day and I was in the wrong location. The wrong day, because it was actually supposed to be Wednesday. I still don't know where the fuck up came about. I mean, it was definitely the doctor's fault. I just don't know why he screwed it up.

And the place thing... that was 50% me, 50% the practice. Because why you gotta have two locations, essentially 100 metres apart on the same road, with essentially the same name. Urgh.

But come Wednesday, I got to the right place at the right time. However, because he's a travelling doctor and, honestly, I think he's just gone out on his own and has started his own little practice, nobody at any of the surgeries really know who he is. Because the receptionist at the second location just looked at me like I was nuts when I said who I was there. It was only because the ear doctor was on his way down the corridor for other reasons that it didn't turn into a Abbot and Costello sketch.

The actual doctoring itself was fine. What I will say is that technology is great and all, but being able to see inside your own ear is perhaps a bridge too far. I don't need to see that shit, just fix it for me, please.

Also there was more than one point where I wanted to tell the doctor "dude, I've had this done multiple times before, I understand how it works, you don't need to keep either reassuring me or checking in with me. If there's an issue, you'll know about it, I'm good.

Of course, I would also have appreciated it if you'd bothered to get your new payment machine out of the box over the previous two days and checked that it was actually charged. I mean, admittedly, plugging in the base station and putting the machine in that cradle should absolutely have meant that it ignored any "low battery" warnings and just worked.

Thankfully we did fix the issue. As much as this issue can actually be fixed for any length of time. But the immediate crisis has passed.

Afterwards I went and did the rounds at Burnside Village, just because I haven't been there since they finished the renovations. And by "finished", I mean "the area is open, some shops are open, but we're still a good six months away from it feeling finished". And, while it's all... you know... acceptable looking... it's also all just blah. I mean Burnside Village was never super useful to me when I lived next door to it. It's mostly just women's fashion and... well... honestly, it's essentially just that. And, you know, associated industries.

There is a JB HiFi there now. A JB that stocks no physical movie media. Because I assume JB still does that... hang on... [furtive Googling in the background]... okay good, they still do.

But honestly, the whole thing was very... [slow, sad, deflating balloon sound]. 

Friday was Chiro Day. Followed by the usual Wandering Around Looking At Things that always comes after.

And then Friday Night DnD wasn't. Because Fluffy's house came down with actual influenza. So, very much "Get away from me Unclean Thing". Thus, no Friday.

Anyway...

Nothing of much import for today. Just the Supermarketry really.

character saturday: underwater dad energy

Weirdly, if you'd asked me, I would have said that I absolutely already posted this do-over. And yet, it doesn't seem to be anywhere on the blog. I know there was a different version before I swapped over the hair, and maybe that one was on the docket. I have no idea.

The only version of Oceanus that I can find is from back in 2020 when I was doing janky Photoshop colouring. But pulling his bio from when he appeared in the header image for a while...

Oceanus (Oh-see-ann-us... not any other variation of how you might pronounce that particular name, thank you very much) is Southern. My accept repertoire isn't enormous... I can do a decent accent from the American south though. And by decent, I mean often terrible, but a bad real world accent makes for a workable DnD accent. It also makes him often more laid back than I might otherwise play characters. He's also had a little bit of Big Dad Energy. I didn't want to play him that way, but maybe because I play him mostly with people roughly two decades younger than me, it's just what happens.

Yep, that about sums him up. He is also absolutely a character that, if I was going to update him for the 2024 rules, would become a Circle of the Sea Druid. Because that is perfectly his vibe.

Also, screw you "new" version of the Water Genasi that gives them Acid Splash as their racial cantrip instead of Shape Water. It makes literally zero sense. Grrr. 

Hero Forge really does need to do a new version of a pirate coat though. Because the current one suffers from the "everything's too bulky" that a lot of the older pieces do. Hence the switch to the slimmer fit coat.

I am really proud of his new face though. Oh, and Photoshopping an existing item to turn into his focus on his belt.

Anyway.

This week has been something of a ride.

Sunday the power just randomly went out in the neighbourhood for a little over two hours. No idea why. The storms/rain the previous couple of days most likely. 

Next up, the issue that has plagued me on and off for a long time has raised it's head again. Some combination of otitis externa and ear wax means that my right ear has been dicey for a while, but finally gave up the ghost and got blocked last Friday.

And knowing that last time I went to my GP about this, he sent me off to a ENT doctor who charged a ridiculous amount of money (which, weirdly, I don't know that I complained about at the time on the blog)... and so I went looking for a different solution.

Long story, mostly dull, after a 20 minute car ride, a set of fortunate happenstances, including but not limited to the choice of direction of that car ride, a young Asian doctor who was in the right place at the right time and me just being lucky, I have an appointment with what seems like a lovely ENT doctor at the beginning of the week just up the road from my previous apartment.

Which is possibly the only thing that kept me somewhat sane the rest of the week. Then of course the weird air pressure bubble in my ear popped on it's own on Friday while I yawned on my walk. Because naturally. The ear is still definitely an issue though, but at least it's slightly more comfortable now.

Good times.

This week's soup. Lasagne. It's always a banger. No notes.

Mini Media Reviews for this week... first up, Flow. Flow won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2025. Against The Wild Robot. Which, if I didn't already know that the Oscars were 100% cooked, this would totally confirm it.

It's not bad. But at the same time it looks like an extended cut scene from a video game from 2010. And it doesn't really bother to tell a story that goes anywhere or has a satisfying ending. Bits of it are lovely. I don't have an issue with there being no dialogue. It was made by a very small crew and is primarily the passion project of one guy, and that should be commended.

That doesn't make it good unfortunately.

But this is absolutely one of those movies that people are going to be pretentious about the meaning of for some time to come.

Next up was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. A movie that would be significantly better if the majority of the cast were 10% better actors than they are. And the boys were about 35% hotter. Not you, Douglas Booth, you're going the Lord's work, carry on. But Elizabeth and Darcy specifically... they're just not at the level to make this the camp masterpiece it could have been. Especially if the IMDB trivia that says that Natalie Portman was originally attached to the project is true.

It wasn't terrible, bits of it were quite good, it just was a very, very solid C when it could have been at least a B+. 

That was the majority of the week honestly. Everything else was attempting to not to lose my mind due the aforementioned ear.

Friday was not, in fact, Friday Night DnD. It was a return to the land of Hero Quest due to a birthday. And you know what sucks... going back to the beginning of that game without all the cool shit we had previously. LOL

Seriously though, it was fun. It was an expansion pack, and we only did the first map, so it wasn't too strenuous.

Anyway...

Nothing much to report of interest for today. We went, we shopped, we came back, we poke YouTube for a bit, I sent Ma home.

character saturday: muscle mommy

Today's DnD Character Colouring Book is from the "Let's explore 9000 different variations of Barbarian" playbook. I believe what I was roughly aiming for was the idea of Muscle Mommy Karlach vibes from Baldurs Gate 3. A game, I will add, in which I find every single companion character deeply unattractive. Admittedly, I also haven't played the game, but going purely off the game art and vibes... no, absolutely not, you're all terrible, get in the bin.

However, this was out starting point. I think the scar and the tattoo kind of came as a package deal, but I do know that the hair was blonde for a good chunk of time until I was looking for something that pushed it a little bit more interesting. And I realised that the whole pink/green combo was working overall. 

Zahri was also one of those characters where I realised I do often make a slightly masculine female character. Not always, and some of it is what works for the character, or the specific look of some of the facial elements in Hero Forge.

I'm not 100% convinced that the Berserker subclass fits her. But, you know, it'll do till something better comes along.

Anyway...

So, chicken soup with alphabet noodles and just enough cayenne pepper to make it interesting. It's just simple and clean and tasty. I'm a fan.

In Mini Media Review news... sometimes just randomly grabbing something off the shelf at the library just because it's there and none of the things you ordered had come in actually works. Like, unbelievably well.

First up was Mickey 17. I don't know that I knew it was by Bong Joon Ho going in. I did know it had Robert Pattinson, but honestly, beyond that I really didn't know anything. And it was absolutely amazing. Big, big fan. It's very, very dark black dystopian humour. But damn it's incredibly well done. No notes.

I followed that up with The Dead Don't Die. Again, I had literally no idea what I was getting into, except for the fact that the cast list for it was ridiculous and it was clearly about zombies. I was a little concerned when the name Jim Jarmusch popped up as the director. The only experience I'd had with Jarmusch movies was Dead Man back in the 90's, and I absolutely hated that.

However Dead Don't Die is just the right kind of unhinged. I mean, it gets a little bit "Old Man Yells At Cloud" at the end, because Jarmusch clearly has some Very Specific Opinions About Capitalism. And you know, it does kind of end with a whimper rather than a bang. But I was never bored or not completely entertained by the level of ridiculousness.

I've been slightly dragging my feet on the crochet cardigan... partially because I'm just not feeling it. And also today I realised that I'd been decreasing too much on the second sleeve, because I just randomly did it on the first one, and I got a little too focused on doing it. So that got frogged and I restarted that bit.

We got to actually do Friday Night DnD this week. Which was good. Also, Fuck you Fluffy. You know why. With your replacement character and your fucking backstory clues. And me being entirely concerned with the literal wrong parts of said clues [sigh]. Fuck you.

This was also definitely one of our "come back to town, do random conversations with people" episodes.

The drive up there and the drive back were... challenging. Because it had been raining pretty much all day, we were up in the hills with either fog or very low cloud, depending on your opinion I guess, and a car with no working windshield demister. Good times. We only nearly died like three times. Not really, but kind of.

Anyway...

Not a exciting day today.

Basically we did the usual supermarket circuit. Not really anything else to report. 

character saturday: tiny ginger menace

I'll be honest... for a variety of reasons, I haven't been making many new Hero Forge DnD Character Coloring Book of late. I don't know exactly when I made this one, but he's kind of a remake of the very first character I played, Belben. You can tell I made it a while ago though, because young Tobias uses the pointy halfling ears that I've stopped using.

And once again, because I've never played a redheaded character, for reasons that just baffle me.

I'm not sold on the name, to be honest, but that's really the easiest thing to change. I also don't know that I'd want to revisit the halfling + criminal + rogue character. I do like his cute little haircut with the stars though.

Anyway...

This week has been... pfffffffffft.

So Saturday evening I just started feeling a little bit off. Not fully terrible, just off. And either a little bit fevery or else I had just left my very warm blanket hoodie on with the hood up and felt a little overheated.

But in that weird, "I have a mild fever and feel bad, so I'm going to cook whatever is wrong with me out of my system" kind of way. 

Which also feeds into this week's Mini Media Review... which was the first season of Titans. Because I was trying to watch the first three or four episodes while also not really feeling right, and feeling a little sleepy. Still not sure if the sleepy was because I bored senseless or slightly sick.

Because the original New Teen Titans comic books were the thing that really got me into superhero comics way back in the day. And I still own a giant box full of Teen Titans/Titans comics. It was my literal jam for the longest time, and the main reason why I consider myself a DC comics boy.

And Titans is... in a word... shit. The show absolutely did not understand a single one of the characters, or their history or their lore. And yes, trying to pin down any superhero character down to one version of their lore is like trying to nail Jello to a tree.

But in the comics, Raven is my girl. No other version of Raven gets her right. Well... I liked the AU version from the Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo comic books. Which is like the decent version of these characters.

If I can give future creators a piece of advice... stop treating Raven like Wednesday Addams. 

They don't get Raven right, they don't get Starfire right, they don't get Robin right. I didn't stick around long enough to see what they did to Changeling (not Beast Boy, thank you). They just fell into the "We Are DC, We Must Have The Angst" issue that is what I generally hate about almost all of the DC properties I've watched as part of this little ongoing experiment. 

And I'll fully admit that I'd been slightly falling asleep through what I believe was the third episode I watched. That's fully on me. But do you want to know the point where I 100% pulled the pin, where I noped all the way out?

The Doom Patrol crossover. Because, no. I mean, yes, great that they remembered/used the fact that Changeling first appeared in the Doom Patrol comic, and he was part of the line up there before he moved over to Teen Titans and was adopted by characters from the Doom Patrol.

Characters that I know are not together in the TV show, since I saw them both in the first season.

And it wasn't even when the Doom Patrol mansion showed up, I could technically have lived with that. No, it was when they had one of the DP characters show up that I literally went "nope... nope nope noppity nope" and stopped the show.

No.

On the plus side, I did end up going to bed pretty early for the rest of the week, so at least I was free to do that.

Soup this week was... Disappointment. I was supposed to be making a potato and leek thing. With sausage. And, to be fair, I did do that. But for whatever reason, I was just underwhelmed by it the whole week, and never finished a full bowl of it outside of maybe once. Of course, a non-zero amount of that could very likely be a lack of appetite from being sick. So... you know.

It was also the first time in a good long while where something caught on the bottom of the pot and I had to resort to baking soda and vinegar.

I was never hugely sick thankfully... just kind of borderline mildly sick. With a number of early nights.

Which should have meant I was okay for Friday Night DnD. And I mostly would have been I believe, but I was going to mention it, but before I did, it turns out that Mr had also been sick all week, so we decided to call it off.

And that meant that I finished reading my book last night instead. Which was enjoyable.

Anyway...

Today really wasn't much. We did the supermarket thing, I bought the things I would have bought last week if I'd known I was going to be sick (most notably the makings for chicken soup and Nippy's Lemon Drink).

And I pulled out my mask for the first time in a good long while, just because I didn't want to share my germs with the wider populace. I also sent Ma home relatively early for the same reason.

But Ma did bring the extra ball of grey yarn we went looking for last week, so that's a bonus. 

character saturday: drowned diva

So, in the last few weeks I've done a couple of "redesign character who was one thing into another thing". And much like Silence before her, this one had a gender flip and also became a Trickery Cleric. But not a rename.

Let's be real... I need to play a cleric sometimes soon.

But in this case, this is another one of those where I like to disregard the recommendations of matching cleric domains with individual gods and just... make something up that works for me.

In the case of Umberlee, aka The Bitch Queen, it was mostly due to this line from the blurb about her clergy...

When there are no worshipers present, Umberlant priests then remove the offerings from the stone block altars at Umberlee's shrines and sluice the altars with buckets of sea water containing seaweed to signify that the Sea Queen has come for what is rightfully hers. 

And she's an evil goddess... who doesn't really care why people worship, only that they do.

So it all tracks in my head.

Also, I do love a slightly sassy woman who used to be a sailor. 

Anyway...

This week's soup was beef, barley and vegetable. I might switch up some of the vegetables next time, but overall it was good.

The Mini Media Review for this week was the "follow up" series to Penny Dreadful, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels.

And I don't think anybody has absolutely failed to stick the landing on a follow up as hard as City of Angels did. The original series is small and intimate and full of characters from the aforementioned genre of Penny Dreadful novels.

City of Angels is sprawling and bloated and instead of the idea of these characters and storylines from Victorian Gothic literature being given a new life. And because they only got one season, the story has no conclusion, it just ends.

There are some amazing performances, there are some great moments, but also, leaning into the Los Angeles late 1930's of it all with racism, Nazis, Jews and police corruption. It was all... a bit much. It also really ham fists the "supernatural elements"... but then really does nothing with them.

I almost didn't bother after the first couple of episodes, but I really wanted to see where they went with it. And I'm kind of glad I did, even if it was mostly a disappointment.

I will also give full kudos to Natalie Dormer, who works her ass off. Likewise Nathan Lane, who is always excellent.

Otherwise, it's always slightly strange when you don't realise you've entered a competition and you get a call early in the week telling you that you've won a $500 gift card just for scanning a loyalty card. I mean, yes, thank you very much, I'm not going to complain. So that was a nice surprise.

As was the Gentleman Caller who swung by early on Thursday morning. 

Friday was Chiro Day... and I absolutely needed it, my back has been whinging for several weeks now in varying degrees.

It was also Friday Night DnD for the first time in a month basically. Which is currently as much Dealing With Kittens as it is Playing DnD. Which I'm not particularly mad about.

The session itself was... one of those ones where you realise that if you'd gone left instead of right in the previous session, it would have been an entirely different outcome. But it all worked out in the end.

Anyway...

Today wasn't hugely exciting. We did the usual supermarket thing, and then we took a trip to Spotlight to look for some more yarn for the random cardigan I'm still working on. 

And, of course, the Spotlight we generally go to has their stockroom organised by... I dunno... circus animals. Because the last two times we've been in and I've had to ask about yarn, they've either not been able to find the yarn that their system tells them exists or find it but it was in some precarious place they couldn't get to.

Thankfully they supposedly have "loads" at the store near Ma, so she's going to take a look this week.

Also, there was a very random moment after I'd been waiting for the shop assistant but Ma had been asked by a couple of women about picking the right crochet hook... so, of course, while she did tell them what was what, she asked me to talk to them about it (like I'm the damn expert LOL), so I did a little bit of song and dance with them and they left happy.

You're welcome Spotlight. Have the fucking yarn I need next time please.

But that's it really. 

character saturday: cerulean sketch

A while back I posed Ari Chasing-Bear, a halfling barbarian. He was based on a Aasimar barbarian with the same pose and outfit, who in turn was based on, as I said in the previous post "a dual bladed wizard for Samwise", one of the Thursday Boys. And Aurelius was initially based, at least before we changed the pose, on a Wood Elf World Tree Barbarian. 

So, at this point we're four characters deep. 

Mostly I based him on an existing idea because I know that Samwise is the "poster child for distraction", as I previously described him, and I wasn't about to start completely from scratch on an idea that I was sure had the shelf life of room temperature milk.

The request itself went something like this...

Him: You have a task when you are bored 

Me: Do I now? 

It then proceeded to the point where I asked him several other questions before presenting him with the first version of our boy up at the top there. 

Neither of us are that enamoured with the swords, but we both also acknowledge that Hero Forge has a dearth of good looking scimitar style swords. Those ones are my favourites of what we have. Samwise's mileage may vary.

Will I potentially recycle him into something else at some stage? Possibly. 

Anyway...

This week's soup was not in fact soup but Tuna Mornay. I did a few bits and pieces that I haven't done in a while, including adding onion (which the original recipe listed, but I don't know that I've done for a long time) and some celery. I also threw some rice into the roux/sauce... which... yeah. The idea is solid, but next time, cooking the rice first and throwing it in with the tuna and everything else may just work better.

I also need to remember to add cheese to the roux. I always think about putting cheese on top and then change my mind, when what I should be doing is making a cheesy roux.

But it was very tasty. And I didn't go too hard on the spices.

The crochet jacket is getting there. I'm nearly at the point where I can join the shoulder seams and then I have the very fun job of tying off all my ends and weaving them in. Not the most fun job, but it needs to be done.

I may also have to think about the idea of pockets at some point. Probably before the ribbing goes on. 

This week's Mini Media Reviews start with How To Train Your Dragon: Hidden World (aka HTTYD 3), and I don't really disagree with anything from my original review (except the idea that Eret might have been queer coded, I think I was reaching a little).

Next up was 65. Which is absolutely a ridiculous title for a movie. And I was fully expecting the movie itself to be a total shitshow. And bits of it are. But I don't know that it absolutely deserved the savaging that it got when it came out. There are a couple of minor tweaks that I feel like could be made... because the movie is both trying to go for an "It was Earth the whole time" both from the beginning and in a reveal at the end of the movie. While also having totally wacky designs for a lot of the "dinosaurs". I think you could excise a lot of that guff and just make them "dinosaur like monsters" instead.

But even though some of it was a little bit formulaic, I still quite enjoyed it.

And we finished up with Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Yes, yes, I know. Most of the Kevin Smith movies shouldn't necessarily be For Me. And some parts of them absolutely are not (I also definitely skipped the ones about the walrus man and the tiny bratwurst nazis... those I haven't seen). But there's just something about some of them that really get to me.

I'm also not going to lie, Jason Mewes manages to actually do the required emotional heavy lifting for this one. Yes, granted it's not like it's a particularly large weight. But he does well.

It's also interesting so see the range of people that Kevin Smith has either had in previous movies, directed in episodes of other people's TV shows, or has some other kind of relationship with who will absolutely show up to be in a movie for literally one scene.

Then, the thing that I should have expected was going to happen, happened. Because all through the Before Times, J would absolutely text me out of the blue on like a random day of the week and go "hey, I'm at a place not that far away from the place that is your place, we should coffee". I should have known that nothing would have changed in the intervening 12-ish years.

Because rather than doing something pre-planned like actual grown ass adults, he did what he always did. Which, you know, is what it is. And we are where we are.

He came over, we chatted, I finished up the scarf I had made for his mama, but I also recognised, once again, that there were definitely reasons that I wasn't especially bothered that time and distance meant that he slid out of my life. You know?

It's nothing terrible. It's mostly just that his life went in one direction, my life went in another direction and there's actually not that much left to the join anymore. The overlap that used to exist is the barest of slivers and most of it is based around having had a history together during a formative period for both of us, even though we're about a decade (potentially actually a decade, I forget) apart in age.

It also doesn't help when I have Fluffy to compare him to. Because after a certain point there were always periods where J and I would come to an awkward pause or awkward silence. Where the conversation just ran out. And I could feel it again this time, and it wasn't a new feeling. It was the same feeling as always.

Fluffy, on the other hand, I think we're at like seven years... plenty of silences, none that either of us could remember felt like awkward silences.

As I said to him on Friday, I traded up.

Speaking of Friday. No Friday Night DnD again this week. So instead Fluffy and I had movie night. Well, mostly we talked a bunch before we haven't seen each other in like three weeks. And then we watched Some Like It Hot, because it was on the Show Fluffy Movie List. And I haven't seen it in a hot minute.

It's still great.

Anyway...

Today was very simple. A slightly underwhelming supermarket visit... and I don't quite know why exactly... 

And then we wasted some time here before I went Ma off on her merry way.

So, yeah, not exciting, but fine. 

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.