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.

photo saturday: one slippery boy

Sometimes at a DnD table there's a dumb joke that becomes another dumb joke that turns into the idea of an NPC that turns into what could be a potential character.

So a conversation about a "dry sense of humor" turned into somebody asking whether or not another character was "moist", as in "not dry", but because that player had been sitting there at the table the whole time, listening to the earlier conversation even though their character wasn't there, they shot back with "no, I know Moist, they're a [insert euphemism for sex worker here]"... I don't remember exactly what term was used, but we both pretended not to understand what they were referring to, and it was all a bit silly.

And then, the following day, as is his want, Fluffy sent me his Hero Forge idea of the character... which... I mean... we've already covered how I mostly feel about that... so, naturally, I sidetracked during last week's post and threw together a better version and sent it to Fluffy. But, of course, we never accept a first draft. And bits of it weren't sitting right. So there was a slight redesign. Mostly a recolour to be fair. And some Photoshop fuckery. And about 300 minor tweaks, and a couple of slightly larger ones.

Thus, we find ourselves at Moist. Non-binary bisexual disaster. Or at least that's the version in my head.

Whether or not his subrace, background, class or subclass are correct or not I can't say. I could also see him as a College of Dance Bard. I also don't feel like he's my character to play. To redesign, yes. To reshape, yes. But I feel like this might be Fluffy's particular dumpster fire.

Mostly though, I'm very pleased with his face. Which was very much a part of the redesign. And might have been mildly inspired by somebody from the gay end of Twitter. Or at least the tongue thing was. It totally works though.

Anyway...

This week was Tuna Mornay... and not a bad one. Instead of rolling the dice and adding random amounts of spices, I made a spice mix first... which reduced some of the "rip the back of your head off" that often happens... but also, maybe I was a little too cautious. It was still tasty though.

This week's Mini Movie Reviews are two thirds "movies I've already seen", being the two Spider-verse movies (Into and Across). It's been a minute since I've seen either of them, and never watched them back to back. And while I love both of them, I think I like the second one more visually, and the first one more for the fact that it tells a complete story and doesn't stop halfway through with a "To Be Continued" title card.

Then it was the "thematic sequel" to Murder By Death... The Cheap Detective. It's not actually a sequel, because while it has a number of the same actors, the same writer and the same director, and Peter Falk is playing a parody version of Humphrey Bogart, they're not exactly the same character.

But this movie is what happens when you take The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and Chinatown and throw them in a blender. And then tone down the racism in Murder By Death to negligible levels. I mean, there's still not none, but there isn't a character in yellow-face.

I then rounded out the week by revisiting the first season of Westworld with the intent to then watch the other three seasons, since I've never seen them. It's a very different experience rewatching a series with an element of mystery to it, even if you don't remember all the details, given you know where it ends.

So that's potentially going to be all I'm watching (instead of movies) for the next couple of weeks.

Friday Night DnD was slightly unexpected. Because that happens sometimes when you get to a roleplay moment as a character and instead of zigging left you suddenly zag right. Made for an interesting scene though.

Anyway...

Today wasn't really all that different from last week... we did the supermarket, then we went back to Big W, this time to replace my busted vacuum cleaner, because I have a rental inspection at the end of the month. Is it a known brand? No. Will it last as long as the old one? Absolutely not. Will it get me through? Yes.

The other question I don't 100% know the answer to is "will it fit in the wardrobe where I kept the old one? No idea. But probably.

And that's it really.

photo saturday: smiling assassin

We're dipping back into the Potential 2024 DnD Character Colouring Book this week. Because I fucking love a dragonborn. I've only played a couple, but they've both ended up as characters that I really enjoyed. And, of all the D&D dragons, the copper dragon has always been my favourite. So I really want to play a copper dragonborn in the new rules.

And given that Hero Forge hasn't converted the dragonborn head over to the Face Customiser, but she still came out looking pretty good considering.

I also like an atypical rogue. So a friendly, charlatan assassin is right in my wheelhouse. And this post absolutely came together in a way that made me instantly get a sense of who she is.

Because I have friends, associates and contacts in the lowest of places, I may have gotten an look at the 2024 Players Handbook before the book is released to all of the great unwashed, and discovered that rogues can now use whips. And what is more ridiculous than an assassin with a whip. So dumb. So Raali absolutely uses a whip. Will I actually end up doing that if I made this character, I dunno, but it would be real damn tempting.

I also have... A Series Of Opinions About Some Of The Choices In The New Players Handbook. Which I won't go into, but I definitely have them about certain elements. Mostly the things I have opinions about are easily handwaved or ignored, but still.

There is also a lot of stuff that I am Very Excited About. Which, mostly, outweighs the other stuff.

Anyway...

This week's soup was me mashing together the idea of ragu and my lasagne soup. Or, you know, making lasagne soup but with diced beef instead of mince. In any case, it was fucking delicious, even if I did accidentally give myself minor third degree burns when a very hot piece of noodle came into contact with my lip. Owie.

You know what's fun... when you have eight books that have been "In Transit" from the library for about a week and a half and only two of them show up by the end of the week. Urgh. So, that's why this week's Mini Movie Review is only two movies. Because I kept expecting other things to show up, and nothing had done before Friday.

What we did have was Murder By Death from 1976. It's a weird movie that often doesn't make a lot of sense, but is doing so intentionally. Also, some egregious Yellow Face makeup/performance from Peter Sellers, which is an incredibly yikesy. Otherwise, it's silly, fun, nonsense with an amazing cast.

The other movie was the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Did I previously say "fuck Guardians" because it was the only Marvel movie I hadn't caught up on and didn't intend to? Yes, yes I did. However I picked it up when I was at the library a week ago because nothing else I'd ordered had some in and it was just sitting there. And I was planning to watch it on Monday... didn't watch it. Planned to watch it on Tuesday... didn't watch it. Finally just gave up and watched it on Wednesday night.

I have... Thoughts, Feelings and Opinions. Firstly, I didn't see (and now won't both) the Guardians Christmas Special, so it turns out that I missed out on a little context for this movie. But not enough for it to matter. 

Did I spend the first part of this movie siding with Will Poulter's Adam Warlock and enjoyed watching him smack the living shit out of the Guardians as a group? Yes, yes I did. Did I want to shove Chris Pratt AND Starlord's fucking entitled asses into the nearest airlock and eject him into space for full 90% of this movie? Yes, yes I did. Did I fail to really give a shit about Rocket and his Tragic Backstory? Yes, I really did. Do I only know about some of these new characters because of my continued obsession with Marvel Snap? Yes, absolutely. Did the movie slightly win me over by the end, and I'm okay with most of how it ended? Slightly. 

Would I have been unhappy to see Starlord die at the end, no. But at least they didn't get him and Gamora back together, because then I would have lobbed my remote at the TV. Making her come around to him even a tiny bit was bad enough, because that was some White Straight Male Privilege Bullshit right there. Sure, you loved the other version of Gamora, but she died. Think of this Gamora as her identical twin sister who you have literally never met before and who doesn't like you. Now relook at all your behaviour and understand what as asshole you are.

But now I am absolutely officially done with Guardians movies. We closed out the storyline, resolved all the stuff that needed to get resolved, I don't need to revisit these characters unless they happen to show up in somebody else's better movie, and then I will roll my eyes and move on.

So that was movies.

Otherwise, Friday was Chiro Day. So I did my usual wander around town, looked at a few things or rather looked for some things that aren't available yet, and came home.

Friday Night DnD was not exactly what I was expecting. I had thought we were going to go dashing off to have important conversations in far off places, and what we actually did was solve a bunch of riddles (thankfully, easily... or at least one of the three of us knew the answer, even when the other two were stumped). And finding out that when your BBEG has access to a future predicting oracle, you were always preordained to be the ones to get in the way of her plans.

So, you know, that was novel.

Anyway...

Today was relatively chill. But it always feels like I haven't really bought very much when I decide to make something like Tuna Morney instead of soup. Mostly because I buy minimal vegetables.

After unpacking and futzing around a little, we went to Big W to find me a replacement for my hair/beard trimmer which is currently dying. I had looked in the city, but they were more than I really wanted to pay. Will this not last anywhere near as long as one of those? Probably. But so long as it does what I need it to do for now, it's fine.

We also poked around the Christmas decorations, because, yes, as I have said before, I am Part of the Problem. But, honestly, it was all pretty fucking ugly.

So that was it really.

photo saturday: alt boys

We're going to do a brief reprise for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... with the full final version of my last Thursday Night D&D character, Dax Oreva.

I realised that I only posted an earlier version of him, and then added the final version to the banner art.

But, because of DM Fluffy shenanigans, we're going to briefly step into the Multiverse of Dax for a second. That's a thing that happens when one of your fellow players has a character who is a time wizard, and doesn't give the DM much of a backstory... especially DM Fluffy. What you get instead is a peak into the multiverse at other versions of who your character might have been. Even if it's just a name and a brief description.

And you know I then had to fuck around and make those characters once we were done with the campaign. Obviously.

Three of these are the ones that DM Fluffy invented, the second from the right is my own addition. But what's funny is that with Dax and with the addition of Brother Kas, I cover all possibilities on the human/orc/elf timeline. But we have human, half-orc, orc, uniya (elf-orc hybrid, specific to Critical Role) and drow elf. I suppose if we were to complete the circle, there would be a half-elf version too. That one might just be full Rogue though. 

Also, as much as I love DM Fluffy, naming things is not his strongest suit... so the human and drow timeline versions got more fitting names... and he can fight me about it. But once I realised that "dax" was an actual suffix on the Drow naming table, it had to happen. I did keep his name for the orc wizard, because, honestly, it was the best of the names.

And there was a version that is only one step away from Dax, but the main difference between those two was between requited and unrequited love. Also the difference between a lucky and an unlucky dice roll at a point before the campaign.

I'll be honest, the ones that Fluffy invented might not have been the alt versions I would have made myself, or at least with the Ranger I might have gone for a different subclass (Gloomstalker or Swarmkeeper probably)... because we're leaning very heavily on some Drizzt Do'Urden fanfic there, which is fine for a throwaway character mentioned once that I was never going to play. But at the very least, I would have picked a different animal companion. The idea of him rolling around with a tiger is appealing. Or one of the in-world creatures that looks pretty much like a panther with tusks. But on the plus side, there is a version of the Beastmaster where you can decide what your companion looks like each time you summon it... so, you know, it would definitely be that.

Interestingly, just putting these together, I started pulling on the timeline threads that would have needed to change in order to get Dax from Dax to one of these characters. Some of them honestly aren't that long of a walk away. Some of them are just a change the location or circumstances of his birth, or a slightly different upbringing.

I did keep Dax's grey/colourless eyes though. Because I feel like that's a one of a couple of constants throughout the multiverse. The day he was born and the fact that he was born with those pale eyes.

But this does mean that I can now put this particular idea to bed where it belongs.

Anyway...

This week's soup was essentially just chicken and vegetable... but I added some medium grain rice for a change, as well as a healthy dash of cayenne pepper... which very much gave it the "fighting off the last remnants of the cold I had a few weeks back" vibes. Because that will clear out your sinuses. Good stuff though.

This week's mini movie reviews are a documentary, an old favourite and a series.

We start with the documentary Scream Queen, by/following/about the lead actor in the second Nightmare on Elm Street movie (you know, the one that's incredibly queer)... and it was... interesting. Honestly, I feel like he could have just gone to actual therapy to work through some of this stuff, but at the same time, given that some of the issues he was dealing with were also very much public and out in the world, it makes sense.

Next up, an old favourite... that I simulcast with Fluffy (by which I mean "we both hit play on the same YouTube video at the same time")... Vibes. If you haven't heard of Vibes, I'm absolutely not surprised. But it's an 80's movie about people with psychic powers going on a "road trip" (for want of a better term) starring Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper. And yes, I put all those words together in that order, and that is a movie that exists.

And sometimes when you go back to old movies that you watched a lot in your teenage years, you suddenly go "well, this is actually terrible". This wasn't the case. It was actually better than I remembered. Still completely bonkers. And very much a movie from 1988, but everybody is giving their all and it's a lot of fun.

Last up was the Discworld adjacent series, The Watch from 2021. Is it on a level with the best of Discworld? No, absolutely not. Did they take ideas from Pratchett and go their own way with them? Yes. And, honestly, I like a lot of those places. They also fully acknowledge that they're doing their own thing in the credits at the start of every single episode.

I also love a lot of what the production design, wardrobe, hair and makeup and set dressing are doing. Some of the versions of particular characters don't quite work for me, but I like the core cast of the titular Watch.

But for what it is, it has a charm.

Friday Night DnD was... nearly a disaster. We nearly got drowned, we nearly got squished by a giant... but we still managed to squeak through by the skin of our teeth. Or beak, in the case of my character. We are into pre-end-game at this point. As in, the actual end-game will happen whenever we finish doing a bunch of other little bits and pieces that we didn't do before now.

So, some good old DnD level grinding. Which, honestly, is not really a thing that often happens, but I'm here for it.

Anyway...

Supermarket was as supermarket does. I'm winging this week's soup and going for a weird hybrid of two previous soups, so we'll see how that goes. Otherwise we didn't do anything exciting.

photo saturday: merchant of magic

I've said before that wizard isn't my favourite class. But I was also working through all of the new 2024 PHB classes for the DnD Character Colouring Book, as I've said... so I needed a wizard to complete the set. And, weirdly, I do love a dwarven wizard. 

Also, because there are only four subclass choices for each class in the new book as opposed to the eight from the current PHB, Evoker was the one that stood out to me... the "make go bang" wizard if you will. It was also good timing because Hero Forge dropped both a whole new outfit as well as a whole new set of dwarven beards with jewellery in them.

Because I've also been giving everyone a different background, I leaned into "merchant" for Emrik. And he represents a group of either enamel workers or glass makers and both his beard jewellery and his staff are an example of their work. I think I'm leaning into glass makers, because then that also covers his glasses too. Plus, glass and fire...

Works for me.

Anyway...

I set up my "new to me" TV on Saturday... and then spent the next several days trying to find the bits in the menu to make it not make me crazy. Mostly that was turning off the "make the screen dull when there's less light in the room" because I fucking hate that. Also, turns out that the sound on my old TV was much better. But also, this TV is bigger and doesn't have a giant thick line of dead pixels on the left hand side... so, you know, swings and roundabouts. Also it was free. So how hard am I really going to fucking complain.

Not that much.

Soup for this week was a lot of my made up Minestrone, which was nice and thick and chunky and full of pasta. Was there a moment when I dropped the chopped bacon all over the kitchen floor and had to scoop it all up and wash it before I could use it. Yes, yes there was. Also, don't judge me.

This week's mini movie reviews are, once again, a movie and a TV show. And the movie, again, turned out to be a biopic when I thought it was going to be more of an actual documentary.

And it was also a gay artist. This time, Robert Mapplethorpe, in the eponymous movie Mapplethorpe. It was fine... but, honestly, it could have done with more gay. It felt a little "safe" at times, even though it often featured his explicit photography.

Between this and the Tom of Finland movie, I think that is the better movie overall on a similar subject. But it wasn't terrible. And I got to see Matt Smith a lot more naked than I necessarily expected to.

The other choice was the Watchmen TV series from 2019. And I really liked it. It's a slow burn, and I wasn't sure I would after the first couple of episodes, but it pulled me in during the nine episodes and I really enjoyed it. Plus the cast is outstanding.

There's not a hell of a lot else to report for the week. My head cold is mostly gone, which is good.

Also there was no Friday Night DnD because Mrs also had a head cold, so instead I continued Fluffy's Movie Education with Breakfast at Tiffany's and Outrageous Fortune. An odd double bill to be sure, but both enjoyable for very different ways.

Anyway...

Today was decent... and we actually got to do things which made a change from the last two weeks.

The supermarket was fairly average, although I think we were running earlier than we usually do.

Afterwards we did a trip to Kmart so I could finally replace the "active tights" I tore the other week when I fell down. Which would have been easier if a) I hadn't walked past them 8 times and b) if I could have found literally any staff member in the entire store or when I did find one, any other staff member had answered his radio call. But after tracking down the one actual staff member and him telling me they were somewhere that they weren't, he finally looked up where they were and we found them immediately.

And that was it really.

photo saturday: farm boy

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there would be a Wild Magic Sorceress in my future... turns out I might have gotten the gender wrong. Also, this continues the 2024 DnD Character Colouring Book edition along with Zak'n, Rin, Oren and Micah (amongst others).

I've been playing around with trying to make characters for each class and all the races without repeating any backgrounds and with an even split of genders. Granted these might not all be characters I ultimately play, it is more than likely that by the time I get around to a sorcerer character, it might be something else entirely. And while I did play around with a female Orc for a different class, I ended up trying out the idea of a male Orc for Sorcerer. And, of course, Wild Magic Sorcerer.

And somewhere in the process of making him and playing around with the new hair options that dropped this week, I kind of fell in love with the idea of him/with him. Also with the idea of both an orc farmer and a farmer who suddenly wakes up one day and goes... "what is this magic and where did it come from?".

I was also playing around with the idea of Shadur being deaf. Because one of the languages you can take in the new PHB is Sign Language. How well that would work on a practical, at the table way, and how well it would work for me to play a character who has high Charisma but is potentially unable to speak to everyone they encounter, and how I would adapt to that kind of character remains to be seen. But I feel like he's going to live in my head for a little while. And remain at the very least partially deaf for the foreseeable future.

Originally I tried him out with a couple of different magic focii ideas... firstly a crystal, then a wand... but honestly, he wouldn't have either. I'm not completely sure if the drinking gourd he's carrying is his focus, or if it's full of mead (which would, in turn, make him a beekeeper) or seeds from his farm or if it's full of like dried beans that he uses as a way to attract attention when people can't see him. Or, you know one of those things as well as being a focus.

And yes, those stripes on the top half should continue onto the bottom half... but no matter how I slammed that idea into Photoshop repeatedly, I couldn't make it work the way I wanted it to. So I gave up. But just pretend like it does.

Anyway...

Just for the record, I had four hours sleep and I'm not really functioning on some of the higher levels. But more on that later.

Soup this week was a pretty decent potato and bacon soup. Nothing to write home about necessarily, but decent.

My cold/flu thing did kind of knock me about for a large chunk of the week, but the cold and flu meds definitely helped. Right now I'm mostly left with a minor runny nose and the occasional half-hearted cough.

This week's Mini Movie Reviews are a very mixed bag. We started out with the fourth and final John Wick movie. I... didn't like it that much. It all got a bit silly, even within the frame of reference of "The John Wick Universe" because suddenly people wearing what are clearly linen suits are acting like they're bulletproof, which means Keanu spent about half the movie holding the side of his jacket in front of his face and looking like a total goob.

Would I have preferred a movie where Keanu and Bill Skarsgard spent two hours making out instead of being on screen together for all of five minutes? Yes, yes I would. Do I adore the choices the costume designer made about Bill's wardrobe? Yes.

I also don't buy the ending. I'm not going into it further than that, although you can probably imagine what the end of that quartet of movies might be... but they also absolutely left it open enough for another one. As such, the ending as presented, I don't buy.

Next up was a biopic about gay erotic artist Tom of Finland. I didn't realise it was a biopic when I ordered it from the library... I had assumed it was a documentary. But it wasn't bad. There were times when it might have been served by more of a documentary format with additional information about certain events. Also, the occasional on screen date wouldn't have gone astray in order to place us better in time.

But it was interesting, none the less.

And rounding out this little trio was the sequel to 2013's The Croods. The Croods: A New Age is... fairly pretty, contains all the previous voice cast and is also... a hollow, slightly soulless follow up to a much better movie. Not really surprising given that it's not the original writers and directors and that it got cancelled and restarted a number of times, also that with one thing and another it took seven years for them to make a sequel. I feel like every time somebody replaced the person who was originally going to be part of this, the whole thing got a little worse.

It's still pretty, and I still love the ridiculous world/animal designs. It all just feels a little too "by the numbers". Although at least they didn't reset everybody's personality back to the start of the first movie. I don't know that I'd recommend it, but at the same time, it's perfectly fine. It doesn't hold any kind of candle to the original though.

Friday I took delivery of a second hand replacement TV, which is bigger than my current, slowly dying TV. I haven't hooked it up yet... there needs to be tidying and reorganisation first but it's still very exciting. Also free, which is the best kind of exciting.

Friday Night DnD was basically one big battle... and a slightly more intense fight than we've had in a minute. Are we probably completely screwed next week when the kraken wrecks the boat we're currently on and drags us to the bottom of the ocean... but, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Or you know, free the king of the giants and get him to save us... one of those.

However, because it was a whole big battle that we didn't really start until almost 11pm, we didn't finish until about 1:30... and by the time I drove Fluffy home and then got home myself it was after 2am. So my brain is broken and very much at the "Fire Bad, Tree Pretty" school of thought.

Anyway...

I did also wake up to discover that I'd forgotten to charge my phone overnight, which was a minor inconvenience.

Otherwise the morning was relatively easy... other than the slightly useless check out girl.

And because Ma had something she needed to do by a certain point today, she headed off early, although not quite as early as last week.