This is a DnD Character Colouring Book story that starts back with this purple fellow... and ends with me spending too much time making our friend Malevolence here. Because when I started thinking about the first character I wanted to play with the 2024 rules, Warlock was definitely up there. As was tiefling. But then I went, as I've also done a few times recently... hey, aasimar also exists.
So I did a different warlock that was an aasimar. And was essentially the Level 10 version of Mal, but with blonde hair and regular coloured skin. Once I added the pseudodragon (because, yes, I will have a pseudodragon familiar at some point eventually), I realised the colouring was absolutely giving me Maleficent coding. And as much as I loved the idea of an aasimar, what really made more sense was to go fully into my second favourite Disney villain coding (behind Ursula... because, of course).
Because what had just been plain old Mal the aasimar became Malevolence the tiefling. And yes, the psuedodragon is called Carabosse aka Cara, which is the name of the "wicked fairy" in some versions of Sleeping Beauty. Because that's exactly the kind of nerd I am.
There were also a number of Photoshop versions, because the spear doesn't exist as is in Hero Forge, it's actually cobbled together from three different items. And getting Carabosse right took a minute, since you can't pose familiars on the shoulder like that.
I also started playing around with other thoughts, because if we were starting these characters out at Level 3 for an intro story, then doing a jump to Level 10 for the main adventure, that would be a large period of time... and, honestly, my DnD characters don't actually swap out to a new outfit as often as I'd like. So I set about designing the Level 3 version. Also because the original design had the Henley shirt, but editing out the sleeves was a pain, so I just swapped it out. And I'm vaguely obsessed with that shoulder harness. As evidenced here and here. Plus I just liked the idea that Cara used it to perch on if she wasn't on his shoulder.
Plus because of the badge which exists for story reasons, the vibe did kind of come across as police detective, which I'm absolutely not mad at.
And that led me his backstory... where I also developed a bunch of NPC characters to potentially furnish DM Fluffy with when we got there. Which of course lead to Hero Forge models of not just them, but also the early teen version of Mal.
And of course I had to include halfling twins... and have Bingo be deaf so that I had an excuse for Mal to know sign language, which is a new language in the 2024 rules. I've also mentioned before that I'm obsessed with the skirt on Sunny, I've used it so many times before I'm not even going to start putting links in. But then the combination of that with the new sleeveless turtleneck, double obsessed. I will have to reuse it for something at some point.
So, yeah, all that work and then I really just went "but I'm playing a Charisma based caster currently, do I really want to play another Charisma caster in the next one"... to which the answer is, seemingly, barbarian.
Anyway...
This week was slightly a mess.
Let's start with Mini Media Reviews. I started off with Venom The Last Dance. Which, admittedly, made be tear up at the end. But it was also infinitely better than the second one. But as with basically all three movies, I'm seldom really that invested in the overarching villain plot, because they're all a bit... m'eh. I am, however, deeply invested in Venom and Eddie and their relationship. And this one definitely has more of that.
And then, because I'd been considering it for the last couple of weeks, and didn't have anything else I was desperate to watch, stared on Miss S. Which is set in China in the 1930's and is a series of murder mysteries. The thing that it immediately reminded me of was Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, although I never watched any of that show. But after I'd watched a bunch of episodes of Miss S, I looked up Miss Fisher, only to discover that the plots were basically identical. Turns out it was an actual remake, not just a rip off, and the people behind the Miss Fisher series acted as creative consultants with Miss S.
I will say that the acting and either the scripts or the subtitles are occasionally a little questionable. The original shows were an hour long, and they've stretched these out to two hours. So sometimes the additional are incredibly obvious. Most of the cast is excellent but the weakest link, weirdly, is the titular Miss S.
I am slightly obsessed with the costuming and the set design/backlot they're filming on. The costumes because they're absolutely trying for a 1930's look, but most of the time (especially in the menswear) using slightly fashion forward modern items that have a vague 1930's style. And I'm obsessed, as I said.
I went out to replace my hair clippers after discovering that the guard was broken. So I went out to Big W, found the one that I'd looked up online, left and literally on the way back to the car discovered that it was one you had to plug in, despite none of the images on the box appearing that way. I could have taken it back into the store, but I also literally couldn't be bothered, given that the clippers were everything else I wanted. And it worked out fine, it's just a little bit more of a rigamarole that involves and extension cord.
Friday Night DnD was not actually DnD. Fluffy is off Doing Things And Having Experiences, so he'll be out the next two weeks, but I still went down to Mr and Mrs on Friday. We played some DnD themed Clue, which was my first instance of actually playing Clue. It's... a slightly weirder game mechanic than I was expecting, but interesting. I did not solve the mystery, but I had a good time.
After that Mrs and I watched the last two episodes of Season 6A of Teen Wolf. Which was fun. And ended up taking about the same amount of time as DnD and I got home after midnight.
Anyway...
Well, we're here. It's gunna be soup season this week.
I'm mostly making something up that involves chicken and rice and vegetables and tomato. But it will at least be soup. Yay.
Otherwise we just did the usual supermarketry, then came back here an puttered around. I promised Ma I would make her a version of the folded shrug thing I made at the end of last winter using left over yarn that she just had sitting around, so I told her to bring it down this week. And I just ended up throwing an old Miss Marple miniseries on that happened to live on YouTube for colour and movement and ended up starting the shrug thing.
So there's that.