photo saturday: home town teachers

Something a little different for today's DnD Character Colouring Book... NPCs. The backbone of any good campaign. In this case, the leaders of the Kaboom Collective, where my bird boy Hali learned his trade. The Craftmistress Ulla Horcusporcus (and yes, it is one of the more ridiculous gnomish surnames, but also one of my favourites), and Forgemaster Tygus Ironcloak.

I also wanted to go for more of a "full scene" for these two, so that both my DM and the other players got a sense of the location. I don't exactly remember where the art behind them came from, but it fit the bill pretty much exactly.

And honestly, I possibly should have posed the the other way around, but I like that it looks like either Ulla has just handed the gem off to Tygus or he's about the hand it off to her.

Anyway...

So, fun fact, that became blatantly obvious once I thought about it for five seconds... when you make something and put a lot of chopped, fresh parsley in it, the water in the parsley has to go somewhere. Which meant that this week's quiche was a little damp. Overall not bad, but it didn't hold together quite as well as it should have.

I also started another crochet project... just for me, and for no real reason... I just decided that I wanted to make myself an amigurumi snake. Mostly because I'd worked out exactly how much fucking yarn I currently own. But also just to make myself something cute.

Weirdly though, while I could work on the previous shrug cardigan project for long stretches of time, I've been doing the snake in shorter bursts. Possibly because I'm basically working a tube that I have to hold with my first two fingers and thumb. But it's coming out super cute. I just have to work out when to stop... because it's a snek, so while I can just keep going until I run out of this particular yarn, I have quite a bit of it left. And there will come a point of ridiculousness. I assume I will stop just on the other side of that point.

Because, you know... me.

There wasn't really much of a Mini Media Review this week. I just watched the third season of The Legend of Vox Machina. It was... fine. I think there's a slight cognitive dissonance with doing twelve half hour episodes for a storyline that was over 50 hours of table game time. And it just kind of squishes things down a little too much and turns what I know would have been impactful battle scenes fighting literal dragons into a five minute sequence Which I get, I do. But both things can be true at the same time. I also don't have a huge knowledge of or emotional connection to the first Critical Role campaign. So it just left me a little underwhelmed.

It wasn't terrible. I just found myself zoning out a little.

Also, insert my yearly vague complaint about car races and the need to also have jet planes flying directly over where I live repeatedly. I mean, do all those things... just do them elsewhere.

Friday Night DnD was the introduction of the aforementioned NPCs. We finally make it to Hali's backstory, which will only really be a flying visit, but it was good because I got to kind of step temporarily into the DM seat in order to introduce the location, rather than just trying to download my entire brain into the DM's brain. And it doesn't completely wrap his backstory up... there are still things to tie up and at least one plot thread that I definitely want to tug on.

It was a good session overall honestly, although, I would say that because it was very My Character focused. But look, everybody else has had those moments, mine just came last. Which I'm fine with.

Anyway...

Today was... warm. Not as warm as it was forecast to be. But still "hide indoors where the sun can't find you with the air conditioner on" warm.

So, we just did the supermarket thing, and then I sent Ma on her merry way before it got too warm.

photo saturday: dancing queen

So, I kind of backed myself into a corner with the Bard in the 2024 PHB Character Colouring Book. Because, honestly, while I like the College of Dance Bard, I'm still not really here for Bards. Plus because of the way I'd assigned the other species and done a distribution of gender, I was slightly stuck with "female Aasimar noble" as my starting position.

I mean, nobody but me is making these rules, and I could ignore them, or I could have made a non-binary character or something... but I feel like if I was doing this for real, it would be a world away from that as an idea. And I did already do a trial run of that concept with Micah. There's also a non zero amount of Micah DNA in Oriel's design.

But Oriel is the third iteration of the idea. Not counting Micah. Because I'd also gotten it into my brain that she needed a shaved head. Which was nice, but kind of walled me into a mental cul-de-sac as far as design went.

Have I done this outfit combo before? Not 100% specifically... but Countess used the same jacket and top. And I've used the jacket a lot, including last week on Nightingale. Plus there are some characters who haven't seen the light of day that definitely use a similar combo.

The new nails, the bracelets and the choices I made with the face did make this the one that I finally considered good enough though.

Anyway.

I delved back into the world of quiche and potato salad this week. I am considering leaning into a whole pasta salad vibe as an alternate, because honestly, just iterating on the same thing gets kind boring.

The first dip back into the pool was still tasty tho.

So, this week's Mini Media Review (because I'm still flipping between movies and TV), is the end of Teen Wolf. More on that in a second.

Well, technically I did try to watch Violet Evergarden, but it was absolutely not my thing. I was mostly bored to the point where I half fell asleep during the last episode I watched, and when I was awake I was somewhat icked out by whole "is this woman who make be a robot or some weird genetically engineered slave supposed to be 12 or 37?". Honestly the only part of the story I was vaguely interesting in was what the hell Violet actually was, but the show was interested in something that definitely wasn't that. And I know that there's a lot of technical aspects behind the look of the show that make it "important", but, honestly... m'eh. It wasn't ugly, but there wasn't ever a single moment when I stopped and went "wow, that's gorgeous".

So, yeah, we're filing that squarely in the "not for me" category.

The final season of Teen Wolf on the other hand. Holy fucking shit.

Technically speaking, there are "eight" seasons in Teen Wolf. But seasons 3 and 6 are both divided into A and B parts that each take up half the season and that were aired about six months apart. Seasons 1, 2, 3A and 3B are all 12 episodes long. Seasons 4, 6a and 6B are all 10 episodes long, and Season 5 is the only "long season" that has a single storyline that lasts for all 20 episodes.

But I'm talking about both Seasons 6A and 6B here. They're both amazing. 6A might be the best Teen Wolf season though. And if I had to rank the whole show... it may well be 6A, 3B, 5, 6B, 3A... and then 1, 2 and 4 is some random interchangeable order. If I'm counting the two split seasons as a whole, then I think the ranking is 6, 5, 3, 2, 1, 4 maybe. Again, the last three are a little switchable.

Season 6 as a whole is very, very strong though. I will freely admit that I cried or teared up in pretty much every single episode of 6A at one point or another. And if it wasn't every episode, it was pretty damn close. I love the choices, both the ones the production made and the ones caused by circumstances that they had to adapt to, I love everything about it. Is it incredibly silly at times? Absolutely, but that's Teen Wolf. It's basically a Supernatural Soap Opera, of course it has silly moments. I still fucking love it.

And then we come to 6B. Don't get me wrong, it's excellent. It's just, intentionally, hard to move through. Both halves of the season deal with the same theme, they just come at it from opposite ends. I will also say that given where the world (specifically the US) was in 2016/2017 when this was produced/aired, 6B makes perfect sense.

Are there parts of 6B that I found it hard to watch? Yes. Are there also parts that made me clap my hands like a demented clockwork monkey? Also yes. And as I said to Fluffy earlier in the week as he still lags behind me by a couple of seasons, there are a couple of ways you can end a series like this. One of those ways is the Buffy route, where you just drop the entire location of the show in a giant hole in the ground and leave it at that. Or you can go the Angel route and proudly proclaim that this is probably the end of the world and then never resolve that.

Or, you can do what Teen Wolf did. Life keeps going. We're not going to be watching it on a weekly basis anymore (or, you know, binge watching it over the course of a couple of days on DVD, whatever the case may be), but the characters pick themselves up, dust themselves off and carry on. And it's a fitting way to round out the season and the series.

The movie will be on the radar at some point, but Fluffy made me promise we'd watch it together. So fully expect that to show up in the Christmas/New Year slots at some point if we don't get to it before then.

I also managed to finish my crochet project. I wasn't tracking the length of time it took, which I possibly should have been. I know that it was many, many hours of both Teen Wolf and watching people play video games though. And I did turn it into the cardigan/shrug, which mostly works. If I knew when I restarted it what I know now, would I have made different decisions? Sure. But I gave it a test run last night and it works and it serves it's purpose, and I once again mostly just made it up as I was going along (if making a rectangle and then attaching two parts of it is "making it up").

It was also designed as something the throw on when I was just a little cold, or on DnD nights when I need a little something for the drive home. Because it's not a full on Winter clothing item... it doesn't have any real arms... but it will be useful for just sitting around home at certain points.

And I like how it looks.

It does mean that I am "in search of a new project" at present. I have a few ideas... but I need to get past the "how the fuck do I start this" of it all first though.

Friday Night DnD was... not exactly chaos... but more "expectation of doing A, however B happening instead". Which has happened a few times this campaign and is totally fine. I'd just set my brain to A already.

Anyway...

Today was basically just the supermarket. Nothing much to report other than that.

photo saturday: complicated woman

So... it's weird. I was certain that I'd done an updated, post Face Customiser version of Nightingale. Turns out, no, I had not. And I know this version has been around for a while, because the bustier is from the 2023 Advent Calendar, and there's a version of her in a different top from before that. The jacket is from March though, so that might be when this particular version was finished.

I did, of course, need to update her with the new nails.

But this is another one of those where you compare the old Photoshop coloured version with this version and just go... well, clearly that version that I thought was pretty good was actually just hot garbage.

I also added a Flaming Fist badge from Inky's waistcoat... because, honestly, those badges have all been the gift that keeps on giving, and I've reused them on numerous other models. Does it makes sense that the post campaign version of Nightingale would be wearing it, even though we definitely had badges at an early point in the campaign. Not really. But I like to think that maybe she did some additional work with them as an Outside Contractor. Or maybe she just wore it as an accessory and to remind the Flaming Fist guards she encountered not to piss her off.

The second one feels much more Nightingale, honestly.

I do also wish that maybe Hero Forge would see their way to updating some of the more basic instruments with other basic versions... and not ones all crapped up with skulls and demon wings. Because I could do with a nicer, less chunky violin. It's also somewhat weird to me that her violin became so integral to who she was... and that I kind of stumbled into the idea of plucking or pizzicato without specifically knowing it was a thing. And she definitely did that a lot.

Anyway...

I think this week marked the last week of Soup Season. We're in November now and the weather is definitely leaning away from soup being an option. But as a last entry, this week's soup was basically chicken and vegetables, and pretty good. I think that a shot of paprika does help any slightly generic soup though.

I have also continued to mainline Teen Wolf. I finished Season 4 and Season 5, although I did have a little break between the two. I also have little to no actual memory of most of Season 5. I was pretty convinced that I'd only seen the first three or four episodes, but I was just doing a little poking around in the blog archives... and found this from the beginning of July 2016...

And I mainlined the entire fifth season of Teen Wolf between Sunday and Wednesday.

 Given the context of the rest of that post, I 100% understand why I do not remember any of it beyond the first couple of episodes. But it's weird. There have been things in other seasons that I didn't completely remember, but there were also things I definitely did. There was nothing beyond the first couple of eps. No elements pinged any memories of any kind. Which is weird, because it's actually one of the best seasons. Definitely on par with the third, which I have long touted as being the best.

And I didn't get Season 6 on DVD until Christmas 2018... so I think given that there was such a gap, I was just waiting to rewatch the whole series before diving into the final season.

But that's basically where we are now. And I definitely haven't seen any of 6... I don't believe.

Also, this was the first kind of complete fail I had regarding library DVDs. I got two DVDs in this week, one a series, the other a movie. But it turned out that the disc the series was on was completely busted and I couldn't play it. And the movie was the final Resident Evil movie. Which I was sure I hadn't seen... got it in from the library, though to myself "I might just check what the last one I own is, watch that one first maybe"... turns out, I own the last Resident Evil movie. I got it Christmas 2017. And according to my records, I watched it in August 2019. No fucking memory of it.

The other thing I've been doing a lot of this week is crochet. Well, and crochet related things. Because I got a slight bee in my bonnet early in the week about the fact that I still had a bunch of yarn in a sports bag by my bed, and space in the big plastic tub. So I lost a good chunk of time winding skeins into cakes and untangling skeins that got tangled in the process so I could keep winding them. I didn't manage to completely empty the bag, but I at least managed to get all the large cakes of yarn into the same place, and shoved everything that was leftover in the bag.

I also continued on my Is It A Shrug Cardigan Or Is It A Rug. Because, honestly, a couple of people have asked me "what is it" about the current project, and my default answer is "yes". It's gunna be something. If I can make it a cardigan, it'll be that, if not, lap rug.

But I've switched from the very pretty jewel tone yarn to white yarn, which was part of the plan given the amount of the jewel tone stuff I had and the general size this thing needs to be, but I'm just enjoying making what, right now, is just a big old rectangle.

What I do want to do next is also a little thing for me... I wanna make a little snek. For no specific reason... but also, it's just a tube essentially. And now that I have sorted out my yarn and can see exactly what I have, it might be a nice stashbusting project. Of course the other issue is going from "I have a lot of yarn in this nice neat box" to "I have now made a thing and need to put it somewhere". But fuck it. Some of that issue is solved by giving the thing to somebody else.

Friday was Chiro Day... I also stopped by Dymocks intending to pick up the new D&D Players Handbook... but because things are stupid, the literal books made by Wizards of the Coast are classified as "games" not books, and they come from a completely different distributor, and the very nice woman I spoke to couldn't a) order me a book in or b) tell me literally anything about when it would be available. And yes, I could have walked down the Mall, gone into my Friendly Local Games Store and picked up a copy. But I have a perfectly good gift certificate with money still on it at Dymocks that I want to use.

Urgh. Irritating. But I will bug the hell out of them until they can actually tell me something. Because it makes literally no sense they wouldn't get at least some copies in. But it's also not going anywhere and if it turns out that they're not getting it in, I can, as I said, literally walk down the Mall and get it.

It's just needlessly dumb and annoying.

Friday Night D&D was good... still wrapping up the end of our downtime. But we're back out in the world now and headed straight into my character's backstory. Which, as I said to Fluffy on the way there last night, it's been interesting to play a character who has so little backstory and so little high stakes, emotive backstory at that.

It's nice.

Anyway...

Today was warm... but windy. So, less unbearable than days that are warm but not windy. I haven't given up and put the aircon on anyway, at least not yet.

But otherwise, we did the usual supermarket thing, I bought things to make quiche and potato salad this week... so basically returning to the Summer Menu here at Casa Yani.

We didn't do anything after, because of the aforementioned potential for warm weather, I sent Ma home relatively early.

So, that was it really.

photo saturday: cat coded woman

Sometimes inspiration comes in various forms and coalesces into one unhinged final product.

Chenna Wildcloak is another in the list of Making One Of Every 2024 Class. Along with Paladin Rowan, Cleric Zovi, Ranger Kellen, Rogue Raali, Wizard Emrik, Sorcerer Shadur, Monk Zak'n, Fighter Rin and Barbarian Oren. Chenna covers the Druid portion of the list. The Circle of the Moon specifically.

Chenna is also very much cat-coded. So her four starting forms would be Cat, Lion, Tiger... and while I could double up with a Panther, the final one would probably be a Reef Shark, because you get to have a beast with a swim speed right from the jump this time, which is nice. Although I do also have a fondness for the Crocodile and the Giant Crab since they can both survive out of water. But I feel like Chenna is definitely more of a shark.

She's a feisty halfling woman who is also a shapeshifter, so you know... she does bite.

The additional inspiration come from the fact that Hero Forge dropped a bunch of new fingernails and claws this week. So Chenna was Number 1 on the list of Characters Who Needed Claws.

And all of that happened at the same time that I've been mainlining episodes of Teen Wolf all week. More on that later. But that show has a lot of people with golden yellow eyes and big old claws.

A last minute addition was Chicory... he is both Chenna's Wild Companion Familiar and probably roughly what she looks like in her cat form too.

Now we only have the Warlock and the Bard left... but, I'll be honest, the Bard might never see the light of day, because I'm not completely happy with her. The Warlock though... he's a character I definitely will be playing when we finally switch over to the 2024 rules. And he's been through a bunch of iterations, which oddly enough, kind of started with Liberty.

Anyway...

This week was Tuna Noodle Doo rather than soup. Not a bad iteration, although as often happens, the pasta does tend to pull too much moisture out of the mix when I make it outside of the regular recipe proportions. But it was still pretty good.

As I said, this week I continued in my deep dive back into Teen Wolf. I was just about finished Season 2 last week, now I'm on the last disc of Season 4. And Season 3 is the same length as 1 and 2 combined. So there's that.

I will say that I absolutely remember almost nothing about Seasons 4, 5 and the first half of 6. Even most of the way through S4, I still don't know where we're going fully. And things are happening that I was convinced didn't happen until S6. But, with all that being said, Season 3 is the best season of the whole run of the show, and more specifically, the second half of Season 3 (or, as I like to call it, Season 3.5, because it's basically an entire new season which they just call part of S3). It is so damn good.

And while the show is still firmly High Camp Melodrama... or, you know, basically a Supernatural Soap Opera, it's still an incredibly solid show overall.

I also continued on with my crochet project... and got most of the way through another ball of yarn before deciding that the whole thing was too wide and the wonky edges bugged me and... frogged the whole entire thing and started over. Now it's entirely possible that the whole entire thing is slightly too narrow. However we will wait and see...

Friday Night DnD was a relatively short one, due to people having things on this morning. Which was fine, because we're still rounding out our downtime in Waterdeep. I am very much going to miss being able to turn a dice roll of a 2 into a 24 on Intelligence checks when I'm no longer playing this character. I mean, he can't roll Persuasion to save his damn life... but he's very bright.

Anyway...

Today was fairly standard. Shopping, unpacking, general banter. We didn't do anything much else though.

photo saturday: speak softly and carry a big sword

Today's D&D Character Colouring Book is what happens when you're trying to style a Hero Forge piece that looks a little weird on it's own or with the full set it came with. Also because I haven't made a halfling character in a minute. Hence, Reed Greenleaf.

And, yes, the name came after the decision to give him the Farmer background. Plus, honestly, with the new rules allowing for small characters to use big ass swords... that's going to happen at some point.

While the other Fighter I made recently, Rin, is also a Champion Fighter, she should technically be a Battle Master... I just don't really care about most of the other Fighter subclasses... so I tend to default to the idea of the Champion.

For Reed, I kind of had the idea that one set of his grandparents used to be adventurers back in the day, and the chainmail is his grandfather's, while the right arm and the sword belonged to his grandmother. Cleric and Barbarian respectively maybe. Also that his partner knitted/crocheted the green cowl and arm.

Anyway.

This week's "soup" was an experiment that... mostly worked. I was kind of going for more of a pasta bake/variation on my lasagne soup with just regular pasta... but I kind of didn't have enough liquid when I put the pasta in, so the whole thing was a little... tight. Basically one of those situations where adding a little water before reheating it solved the problem. Not maybe the best version of the idea, but tasty.

There's not really a Mini Movie Review this week... firstly because I'm actually revisiting old content I've seen before, and also because it's a TV show. Finally, after having said "I must do this" for what feels like the last four years, I'm finally revisiting Teen Wolf which I started some time back in about 2013 (there isn't a direct reference to me starting the series, it must have been pretty close to this Random Hotness... ah, the memories).

Knowing where the show goes to, watching this early stuff again is... rough. I mean, the bones are there, the characters are there... these first couple of seasons are just... rough. They're also High Camp Supernatural Melodrama... and I'm absolutely here for it.

It's also slightly weird, I've only seen the series once, and I never finished if for a variety of reasons (all of which were logistical and none of which had anything to do with me falling out of love with the series), but there are certain moments that stand out very strongly. Also helped, I guess, by the fact that some moments showed up as Tumblr gifs. But there are points that are fixed in my memory and other parts that I have literally no memory of. Which is interesting.

Have I also accidentally convinced Fluffy to give the show a try... yes, yes I have. Which is amusing. How long he'll last I don't know, but it's nice to have somebody to actually talk to about the show.

This week's weather was... too damn hot. Basically it was the weather where it's hot in the day but doesn't cool down much at night, which I hate at any time of the year. But it's only October, that shouldn't be happening yet. And then we had a big old thunderstorm, and it went back to sensible October weather.

I started a new crochet project this week. Should I have frogged the whole thing and started over because I only worked out how to do the turns after it all went a little wonk. Will that matter in the final piece? Probably not. And I'm too far in at this point to want to go back.

And either it'll turn into a much lighter weight cardigan than my first one or I'll have made a blanket with a slightly wonky top part.

Friday Night DnD was also a thing. Yay. Because it's been a minute, given that the last time we were actually together we just sat around and didn't actually play. This was mostly a roleplay session honestly, but we are kind of in a "between action beats" portion of the campaign.

Anyway...

Today was mostly the usual... although with some added twists.

We did the supermarket stuff and then we were just going to head to Spotlight for a Wander with optional Looking At Things. And then I discovered that the Lego DnD Minifig collection was definitely out in the wild. So that required a trip in completely the other direction to Big W, followed by a round trip back to Spotlight.

I ended up with the Gith Warlock and the Halfling Druid. I give literally no shits about Gith. And the mini is slightly more yellow of skin tone than it really should be. The Eyeball On A Stick staff is fun, but otherwise blah. But Halfling Druid. I'm here for it. There are also another two that went into the "Away For Christmas" Abyss. So I might still be lucky enough to get some of the other ones I really like.

That was about it for the day.

photo saturday: witch season

This isn't the first time I've taken inspiration from the Witches of Discworld... it's not even the second time. Admittedly, the first time was literally working out how to make Granny Weatherwax in DnD. Which is how I got to Bard. Because Discworld Witches are Bards.

They don't play musical instruments (for the most part), they don't sing (excluding Nanny Ogg), they don't dance around, especially not at midnight with no clothes on (see also the exclusion of Nanny Ogg, also "the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedgehogs"). But they do, the best ones anyway, do Headology. And the Bard spell list in DnD does lean in the general direction of Headology.

So to me, mechanically, Granny Weatherwax is a Bard. Narratively, of course, she's a witch.

But mostly this happened because last Sunday I was attempting some crocheting (which I subsequently frogged because it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do) and had run out of things to watch/listen to, so I just stuck on the audiobook for Witches Abroad and let it chug away merrily in the background.

And of course because my brain was just chugging along I started thinking about attempting a Discworld witch in Hero Forge. Thus Granny Thornback was born.

To be fair, the name was the bit that probably took the longest time. But I came back around to Thornback, which is, in general terms, a term for an unmarried woman over the age of about 25, it's what comes after spinster and before old maid I believe. Or all three were used somewhat interchangeably.

And while it's supposed to be a pejorative term, it's also completely badass, and, honestly fitting for a character inspired by Granny Weatherwax. The first name went around and around and around. And eventually, given that all the other possible names had some other pop culture association I wasn't looking for, I ended up accidentally pulling from one of my favourite movies, What's Up Doc. And if I needed a shortened version like Esmeralda to Esme, then Una is right there.

This was also one of those instances where the Hero Forge design itself is incredibly simple (although I had a lot of fun with the face), but I went in and applied additional textures and some additional Photoshop edits (mostly making the hat look like it actually fits on her head properly) and adding the brooch.

Will I ever play her? Probably not. I'm very over Bards. Even the 2024 Bards. But I like her being in the catalogue anyway.

Anyway...

This week's soup was essentially Minestrone. My version, naturally. But with a tiny amount of paprika, which just elevated it.

It was also a very Movie forward week. 

Firstly, I attempted Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Saturday. And I made it all the way through the first three episodes and no power in the universe could have compelled me to watch more. I didn't realise you needed some familiarity with Discovery in order to understand why you're supposed to care about a group of very clear war criminals out ignoring the Prime Directive left, right and centre. Pretty much the majority of the characters in that show should be kicked out of Starfleet immediately.

I found every person in that show completely charmless, mostly smug and incredibly unlikable. I absolutely do not care about Star Trek: The Original Series, and even less so about cobbling together a bunch of characters from the pilot episode and mixing in TOS characters. Also, the needless callbacks to things I either didn't get or didn't care about.

Honestly, just make new things. Stop regurgitating nostalgia.

Monday was better. I watched the miniseries of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None miniseries from 2015. Which is very good. Also possibly the only version of that story that I've seen where the people being killed off seem like the deserve it. Which certainly adds to the vibes. And they definitely made a few changes, as they often do, and I quite liked the ones that I noticed. Particularly (no spoilers) what they did with the ending. Because it's no surprise in these modern interpretations that they like to change things up.

Tuesday was an actual movie at the movies.

Wednesday was Godzilla Minus One. I have some general issues with the few Japanese Godzilla movies that I've seen. They're, generally speaking, about everything other than Godzilla. Which is fine, the problem comes in when the lead actor you're supposed to care about is a bit of a damp squib and you generally dislike his character. I will say that Shin Godzilla, even with it's weird and fucked up monster, does this idea better. There are also some issues with the effects (Godzilla walking through incredibly deep water for no in-universe reason for example). Not a huge fan.

Then Thursday was Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga... I'm on record as being ambivalent towards Fury Road. Although I appreciated it more on a second viewing. I have also said since the beginning that Anya Taylor Joy is incredibly miscast as the younger version of Furiosa. Because in no universe does a woman whose face is 35% eyes grow up to be Charlize. Especially when you essentially cover all of her face but her eyes and only let her act with them. And you give her some of the worst wigs I've seen in a minute. Maybe next time we don't employ the woman who is contractually unable to cut her hair to play a character who should have short hair.

Also, Chris Hemsworth is... from a different movie. He's from Mad Max: A Wasteland Musical Comedy. He's not BAD, he's just... Doing Too Much. And much like Fury Road was a movie about Furiosa and did not need to have the title character of Mad Max in it at all, so the Furiosa movie mostly isn't about and doesn't really require Furiosa.

If I didn't already know that this movie was written before Fury Road and was nearly made before it, I would have assumed that this was a cheap cash grab sequel mandated by the studio.

It's also, compared to Fury Road, mostly an ugly movie. The effects are often really bad and stick out like a sore thumb. And a lot more things seem to have been done in CGI rather than practically. Or they're more obvious when they are.

I am not a fan.

There was no Friday Night DnD or Movie Night with Fluffy this week due to People Taking Interstate Trips. So instead I watched The Amazing Maurice, based on the Terry Pratchett book of (mostly) the same name.

It's not, perhaps, one of the better Pratchett books... it's solidly fine. And the movie adaptation is... solidly mid. The voice cast is solid, although the problem I have when you use well known English actors is all I can hear are the well known English actors. But it's hard to elevate an adaptation of a book that wasn't great to begin with. And the art style isn't doing anyone any favours.

Anyway...

Today wasn't really much of anything. Really just the supermarket.

movies: the wild robot

There are movies that just make me cry. Like, every time I see them.

And a non-zero number of those movies involve Chris Sanders, who is responsible for my favourite Disney movie, Lilo and Stitch as well as previous Dreamworks movies How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods, the former two alongside Dean DuBlois (who directed the later HTTYD movies).

Sanders is also the director and writer of The Wild Robot, based on the book by Peter Brown. And DuBlois acts as Executive Producer for this movie. Did that fact make me tear up at the end of the movie? Yes, yes it did. But honestly, I was a complete mess at that point.

The Wild Robot is the story of a service robot lost in the wilderness who, through a series of incidents, ends up raising a baby goose.

As far as story tropes go, it's some well worn territory. And it hits most of the required beats for the story that you expect.

However, Sanders has such an ability to drill directly into the heart of a story and hit everything just right. You know those moments when you're crying not really from your eyes, but it's coming from your whole chest/torso and your entire body is vibrating because you have all this crying trapped on the inside that needs to be on the outside...

There are at least three times during this movie I was at that point.

Do I have issues with some parts of the story? Sure. Is the beginning a little too much slapstick and people falling down the sides of mountains? Absolutely. Do I often wish in this kind of movie that they would actually just let the "kid character" actually end up looking like everybody else in his species? I do. I have the same issue with Happy Feet honestly... there's not reason the grown up penguin needs to look like the immature version of the character by the end. I understand the why of it, I just don't think it's particularly necessary all the time. Was I expecting a very different ending? Yes. But, I feel like that's a result of the fact that this is based on a book that is the first in a trilogy, and maybe the book itself is leaving the story more open for what comes next.

Also, did I immediately order in the book from the library, even though I know that they're not going to be the same? Yes.

But the important question is, do I actually care about the majority of those problems. No, no I do not.

It's a story about found family, about parents and children but more specifically about mothers and sons... it's a story about love.

This movie also gets... dark. Like dead creatures dark. There is a shot lasting several seconds, I believe, of the decapitated head of a bird. And another of the wing of a dead goose. Creatures die. It's literally a plot point in the movie. And it's handled appropriately. I also appreciate that the movie flirts very, very briefly with the idea of a "female love interest" for the goose and doesn't do anything with it because it's not the point of the story. In fact she never shows up again.

The voice acting is outstanding. With Lupita Nyong'o as the robot, Pedro Pascal as a fox, Kit Connor as the goose... they're all brilliant. And I enjoyed that I didn't actually recognise any of them instantly, which prevents me from being pulled out of the movie momentarily. Speaking of which, I did recognise Bill Nighy as the leader of the geese and Catherine O'Hara as an opossum mother, but Nighy's performance particularly is one of the points where I sobbed. Honestly both of them are great.

Visually the movie is... unlike anything I've seen. I don't even have a name for the style of the animation... it's kind of watercolour, kind of pastels, kind of digital painting, but everything has a loose, stylised, textured look to it in the world, so when you get up close on things it's soft and blurry, but everything still reads. And the characters keep the texture but less of the softness but still fully integrate into the world.

It is stunning. And I cannot recommend this highly enough.

yani's rating: 5 detachable hands out of 5

photo saturday: forest protector

Before there was Oren, there was Rowan. Playing around with possible 2024 PHB concepts for DnD Character Colour Book, I very much gravitated towards the Path of the World Tree Barbarian, and I've always like the idea of an elf barbarian, and meshing the concept of a Wood Elf and the tree themed barbarian seemed appropriate.

Plus, I had the idea that she carried around some powdered ash from Big Important Tree and that's what she uses to decorate her face each day, paying homage to the tree that she calls upon for her power.

But then Oren happened, and I loved the grumpy little green gnome guy, so I put Rowan on the back burner. Until I was trying to fill out the classes and didn't really have an interesting fit for Paladin.

Did I basically just change her outfit a little, give her a slight haircut and juggle around her background concept a little? Yes, yes I did. I will admit that I don't know if she is 100% the Paladin concept I would actually end up going with if I did play a paladin, but I like her for now.

And the ash thing still totally works.

Anyway...

This week has been kind of all over the place.

We start with CHOWDAH. Yep, this week's soup of choice was potato, chicken and sausage chowder. My estimates of how much stuff I will need for soup still varies wildly. So this one came out to be a lot, mostly because of veggies.

This week was also a full week of Mini Movie Reviews.

Saturday - Blue Beetle. It's solidly mid. Once again, it's DC trying to crack the Marvel formula and failing real, real hard. Doesn't help that their lead has about as much charisma as a cardboard box. What I will say is that the "love interest", played by Bruna Marquezine is actually much better than the lead. I could also have done without the comedy relief familly.

Monday -  The Night Owl. South Korean period drama about a blind acupuncturist who finds himself in the middle of murder and mystery in the royal palace. What can I say, I have a weakness for Korean period movies.

Tuesday - Bullet Train. Why did nobody tell me this was fucking amazing? It's fucking amazing. Farce, action, a stellar cast. If you haven't seen it, see it immediately.

Wednesday - Robin Hood (2018 edition). My bar for how fucking terrible a movie can be was somewhat reset by this movie. It also made other things I saw not look as bad by comparison. This movie is a mess. The editing is horrible. Honestly, the premise is workable, but they didn't commit enough to turning Robin Hood into a period/modern/futuristic story. Instead they tried to have their cake and eat it to. When you're pulling story ideas from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, you know that your movie is in trouble. And I will never find Ben Mendelsohn even slightly intimidating, because I remember him from too many terrible Aussie TV shows from the 80's. Also, they absolutely did my boy Will Scarlett dirty.

Thursday - Mortal Kombat (2021 edition). If I had not watched Robin Hood, this would have been the worst thing I saw this week. Honestly, the 1995 one looks good in comparison. Again, the supposed lead has all the acting chops/personality of a wet cardboard box, the accents waver between Actually American and Australian Pretending to be American to Will Somebody Please Kill Kano Now. It also manages to be about the Mortal Kombat tournament without actually taking place AT said tournament. I also spend most of the final fight between Sub Zero and Wet Cardboard just marvelling at how the set had very clearly just been wrapped in plastic to simulate ice... and looked like plastic.

Also on Monday, my back was Having Issues. Not the usual issues either, more muscle spasm issues. Less good really. I still went for my walk, but I spend a chunk of the day laying on the bed to try and get things to settle down. Which mostly seemed to work. I also knew that I had a chiro appointment on Friday, which was good.

So, of course, Friday was Chiro Day... which meant chiro followed by random wandering of places.

Friday Night DnD was... not DnD. To be honest, it wasn't much of anything. For various reasons we just ended up sitting around the table and talking random crap for a couple of hours. So not unpleasant.

Anyway...

Today had two possible plans... we went with Plan B... but Plan A will return during the week.

So the usual supermarket stuff, then I had to finish up the crochet cuffs/arm warmers for Ma, which I had hoped was just closing them up, but turned out that they needed a couple more rows each before I did. But they came together pretty nicely. And Ma was pleased, so that's the main thing.

Then I needed to go to Spotlight because my body pillow is literally falling apart. Like the shitty cotton fabric it's made out of has degraded to the point where I grabbed it when I was changing my bed and my fingers went right through it. Stupid cheap crap.

And that was it really...

photo saturday: tricksy girl

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book takes another leaf out of the 2024 rules, when I started playing around with the idea of a Goliath Cleric. Trickery Cleric to be exact. Because, honestly, it's a Cleric subclass I've never played but really want to.

And now that Goliath are more "Giant themed", the idea of meshing Cloud Giant Goliaths and the Trickery Domain kind of seemed like a perfect fit. Especially since Cloud Giants themselves are known to wear masks, and I really wanted to play around with the fox mask. So I leaned much more into Giant lore and Giant gods rather than anything that has previously Goliath lore. Seemed more fun (because honestly, the Goliath gods are kind of dull, and they definitely lack a Trickery god).

Which led me to discover the Giant goddess Diancastra, who is both a minor Trickery goddess, a minor fertility goddess but also seems to be something of a goddess of pleasure.

So I ended up imagining Zovi (pronounced somewhat like "Sophie" said with an accent... although right now, I'm not completely sure where I got that name... and if it actually means something, because generally they do) as being a major flirt who might spend time in a tavern finding somebody to appreciate pleasure with... hence this alternate outfit.

The Bearmother nickname was taken from one of the previous edition tables of Goliath nicknames, my thought being that at some point she rescued a bear cub after it's mother was killed and raised it, earning her the nickname, but it also had a double meaning of her being fiercely protective of the people under her care.

Anyway...

This week has been... a lot.

So, soup this week was... kind of slightly less soup and more just pasta sauce with noodles... or technically my Lasagne Soup. Very thick, but tasty as fuck.

This week was also my Rental Inspection... so Monday I did a deep clean of the kitchen, Tuesday I did my usual "stack things on the bed, clean everything else"... which was made slightly more difficult when I discovered that I'd stepped on a small piece of glass, and without realising what it was, went to brush it off my foot, resulting in me slicing my thumb in a very shallow cut that bled like a mofo... right next to where I accidental sliced the heel of my thumb with a tin can lid on Sunday night... and also scraped the back of my heel while moving furniture around.

Basically I was a mass of minor cuts and scrapes for much of this week... just what you want when trying to clean things.

Once I had finished tidying, there was a prolonged period of Laying The Fuck Down because my body was Not Having It.

Then Wednesday I ran the vacuum over the carpet for the last time and made myself scarce.

I started with an early morning wander around Kmart, then took myself off to visit one of the other two libraries near me. Turns out the one I ended up at was only slightly bigger than the one down the street from me, so after taking a look around I ended up back at the one in Burnside where I hung out for a couple of hours.

It was, as always, nice to come home to a tidy house knowing that the inspection had been done.

But, I'll be honest, I was kind of wiped out because my back had already been grumbling and cleaning never helps.

This week's Mini TV Series Review is the third and fourth seasons of Westworld. So, in the last two weeks I have mainlined somewhere in the vicinity of 36 hours of Westworld. My brain definitely faces the other way now.

But I adored the first three seasons. The fourth season... yeah, not as much. The fourth just felt confusing for the sake of being confusing. But the third season was brilliant. Sadly the end of the fourth sets up for the fifth season that it seems might never happen. I hope it does so that the creators do get a chance to make that final season at some point, even if it ends up being something like a graphic novel. Because I do want to know how the story ends.

Will it makes sense when it does? Fucked if I know... but I want to go on the journey anyway.

There was no Friday Night DnD again this week, so instead Fluffy and I did Movie Night... and I got to introduce him to The Witches of Eastwick. So that was a fun evening.

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything... we did the supermarket and that was it really. I did break out the yarn I used to make Ma's scarf the other week and start on a pair of cuff/gloves to match. And we just kind of sat around and watched things on YouTube and nattered a bit until I'd crocheted a chunk of the first cuff, before I sent Ma home.

So that was it really.

photo saturday: lavender wanderer

Sometimes I like to go really left field from the implied archetype of a class. This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is one of those. And also another in the list of possible characters for the new 2024 rules.

Admittedly, I don't much care for what they did to the Ranger in the new rule set. Mostly because they attempted to improve the class by making a spell into a class feature, which I'm never a fan of. But I do like the way that Kellen turned out. And I do like a character almost entirely in purple.

He's also a jeweller... and his spellcasting focus is the brooch made to look like lavender. And the walking stick has a sword inside it.

Fey Wanderer Rangers can also cast the Summon Fey spell without a spell slot... And while I've played around with that spell before, on another purple-clad character...

Originally I was going somewhere else with this idea, but then I made one of these little friends and realised it would be fun if they were essentially either identical triplets (ala Snap, Crackle and Pop) or that it was the one fey who changed personality. But I also named them after three of the four fairies from Midsummer Night's Dream.

Anyway...

This week's soup wasn't anything major... just vegetable and rice with some chorizo... which made it pleasantly spicy without being too much.

There wasn't so much Mini Movie Reviews this week as there was Mini TV Series Review... two seasons of Westworld. As I mentioned last week, I was revisiting the first season to refresh my memory for the second... and I'm glad I did, because I really only remembered a couple of things from the end of that season.

The second season is... a strange animal. It does a thing with non-linear narrative that I'm not sure is completely necessary. Or, it doesn't do quite enough with it overall. There were some nice moments throughout though, even if there were certain characters I would happily see the back of. But, you know, narrative conflict and tension and whatnot.

I am interested to see where they go with the third and fourth seasons... which I will be mainlining this week.

Given that next week is my rental inspection, I took a little ride to dispose of the old TV and the busted vacuum cleaner. And given that a bunch of places only took TVs, I ended up at the Bunnings on South Road. It was nice to come home to not having a bunch of useless stuff taking up space.

I also crocheted Ma a ribbed scarf using some of the "make a granny square" yarn she got from Spotlight a while ago. And, I'll be honest, when I first saw that yarn my reaction was instantly to want to make something from it that that wasn't a granny square at all. And so, I got my wish. Personally I didn't like the colours of this particular yarn, but then the scarf came out really well. It was also relatively easy to do, since I've done a bunch of stuff in this ribbing stitch at this point.

Anyway...

Today was fairly standard Saturday... after the supermarket, I showed Ma the aforementioned scarf and when she was okay with the width of it, I sewed the two ends together to make infinity scarf. I'll be honest, that's always the weakest part for this... it really should be crocheted together, but I tried that too on mine and it just didn't work properly. It also didn't help that the yarn I ended up using to stitch it together was bright red, but I was stitching through areas that were not, in fact, bright red. But, you know, Ma didn't mind. And it's done now.

Afterwards, we did take a trip to Spotlight for the Looking At Things. And deciding not to buy more yarn because I absolutely do not need more, since I haven't used up the stuff I already have.

But that was it really.