character saturday: the fledgling

The last of the supporting cast of Icewind Dale Rangers for today's DnD Character Colouring Book... the reason that Brother Ardu was trapped outside the region, the new apprentice that he went to collect in Luskan, Swift. Now, I know that I had an earlier design of this character, but he looked totally different and I'm pretty sure had a different name. And I don't think that I ever actually posted that version. Or if I did, I can't remember what his name was.

I made this version a member of the Emerald Enclave, because that seems like a thing that the Rangers probably need on staff.

This is also of those models that I might recycle later for other things, because I quite like the way the face came out.

Anyway...

Last Sunday's trip to the supermarket was... somewhat excruciating. With the combination of people who definitely would have been in the supermarket on Saturday, the people that actually shop on a Sunday, and just the general chaos of it all, I was very glad when it was over.

This week's soup, likewise, suffered slightly from the chaos of Sunday. Because I had intended to make minestrone... and functionally made minestrone, but picked up a soup pack which has extra veg that I generally don't add to minestrone, so by the time I was done with it on Monday night and sat down to a bowl of it, it was just not quite doing it for me for a number of reasons. So I blended the whole thing... noodles, bacon, veg, the lot. It wasn't stunning, but it was much improved.

The Mini Media Reviews for this week goeth thusly...

First the anime series Ranking of Kings. The first season thereof anyway. It was interesting. But it was one of those things where, as soon as I stopped watching it, I mostly forgot about the majority of the details. It was interesting enough, and the fact that it didn't really settle on any of the villains being just villains, instead making them complex, was certainly interesting. And I have the second season to watch, just for completeness sake.

Next up, In The Flesh, which ended up being a three part mini series rather than a full season of TV. But very, very, very good. Very nuanced and full of allegory. The fact that it didn't get much love before I saw some clips from it on Instagram is something of a shame.

The Red Dead Redemptioning has continued. I'm still only 35% of the way through the story, but I'm essentially making my own fun and doing all of the side missions. The list of Quality of Life issues continues to mount. It's almost like they created a living breathing world to surround the player and then forgot that the player is actually supposed to then interact with the things that are happening, rather than just passively watch 90% of the interactions happen without even being able to comment on them to the participants afterwards.

Also the fact that there is no way to sell guns that you pick up off the ground doesn't make a lot of sense. Either don't make them able to be picked up, or make the gun merchants buy them for parts or something.

I also miss just finding some wacky missions while roaming around the wilderness like in the first game. This game takes itself entirely too seriously. To it's own detriment, honestly.

But the fun I'm making for myself I'm enjoying.

Friday Night DnD was... transformative. Literally. My girl Molly got herself somewhat transformed after choosing to absorb some power from a giant green emerald. Because of course she did. The entire point either of my characters in this adventure was to access the Body Horror Table that I know was in the book when I glanced at it when it first came out. With Whisper it would have been much harder to do, or required a different approach. Molly both has no impulse control but also really only altruistic motives, at the same time as having a desire to go off and be Queen of the Goblins when this adventuring thing is all over.

It's the simple things.

Anyway...

Today, fingers, toes, eyes and intentions crossed, we finally had the break to actual Autumn weather, although I did think this before. We may also slide straight out of Autumn and into Winter without passing Go honestly.

So we didn't do much more than shopping, calm, sparsely populated shopping. Oh, the joys.

And that was it really.

character saturday: lonely ranger

Ahhh... Brother Ardu. The accidental love interest of my actual player character, Leif. And the existing Icewind Dale Ranger who wasn't in Icewind Dale during the campaign. He also didn't show up in the group shot for that reason, but got his own post.

Honestly, his makeover was mostly the horns and a slight muting of the colour scheme. Plus some very drastic guyliner and freckles. It's funny looking back on the previous post where I talk about what I thought the relationship was between Leif and Ardu, and the fact that having been separated for two or more years and just having that realisation slam into Leif at a certain point. That they'd both been dancing around the idea of being a couple of an unspecified amount of time before that, and after everything Leif had been through, he had no more time for that.

Anyway...

Whoever put this order in for Summer 2: Electric Boogaloo needs to get a refund immediately. Supposedly the issue is that high pressure systems that should be moving through and bringing colder weather along behind them are... getting stuck... for some reason. Not a fan. This shit should have been going on in mid March, not late April. I want long pants and getting cozy... I don't want this.

Soup this week... yeah, I still made soup, even though the weather is not soup orientated at all... chicken noodle. So basically chicken soup, but I've taken to adding broken up spaghetti to it, gives you those big thick noodles rather than the little titchy ones you usually get in chicken noodle. Strong recommend.

This week's Mini Media Reviews...

Marlowe is... an exercise in wasted potential. You have actual Raymond Chandler novels you could have based this one. Instead you base it on somebody copying his style. So we're already at an interpretation of an interpretation. I have to assume the novel this is based on was bad. Because this is just bad. By the time the movie is wrapping up I was like "wait, that's it, that's the whole story?". It just plods along without really every rising above workmanlike.

Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins... is a serviceable action movie. I don't really care about any of the GI Joe of it all, it's literally the least interesting part. But as a generic action movie, this kinda slaps.

Now... it's time to be controversial yet brave once again. I finally got around to watching The Mighty Nein, the animated series very, very, very loosely based on Critical Role's second season, and, without doubt, the best of the Critical Role campaigns. The series is... bad. Well, kinda. For someone who loves the campaign, it's bad. I fully understand that, especially in the beginning, M9 were really just bumbling along and accidentally getting involved in things without meaning to. Which doesn't make for great narrative television. So they've basically reimagined the entire foundation of the show. Characters arcs are showing up in the first season that don't show up until much later in the series. But the first season of the show is 8 episodes and takes in the first 13 episodes of the campaign. Which is... insane. If Amazon is just throwing money at them, they're still going to have to cull major story arcs in order to not have this thing run for 30 seasons.

But the end of the eight episodes, I just ended up mad at the show. The animation is beautiful, of course, much more anime themed than Vox Machina. But the story is just... not what I want.

I've also been playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2. But, not really the actual story. I don't much care about the story right now. I'm busy doing the things I want to do. Which mostly revolves around hunting right now.

And occasionally trying to squeeze my horse, full of perfect quality hides, between two other horse riders on a very narrow trail, clipping one of the horses, being launched off my horse over the two riders, getting up, having them start to shoot me, hearing cougar growl offscreen and then having a cougar literally launch themself at my face, and then die... not from the cougar but from being shot in the head.

The game looked me dead in the eye and went "fuck your whole deal".

Friday Night DnD was good... we managed to softshoe, sidestep or otherwise obfuscate our way through a few encounters (by design) thanks to some smart thinking on my part, not to toot my own insane goblin horn or anything. Wow, that's a sentence that doesn't make any sense out of context.

Anyway...

So... today was cancelled on account of public holiday. I went and did a mini shop on Friday to get me through today, and Ma is coming down tomorrow morning to do the actual shopping.

character saturday: gnomic greasemonkey

So, Brocc Ironhide has been through a number of iterations. I'm not sure this is his final form, although he's a Icewind Dale Ranger ongoingly. The vest isn't 100% correct though. We'll get there... the right item will drop eventually.

I also, once again, lament the lack of art for Steel Defenders in general. I'm also not 100% sold on what form his Defender is. Sure, the animal idea is fun and all, but I also go... but why would you replicate an animal when you could make something weird. And then I remember the Horizon video games exist. But also, The Wrong Trousers from Wallace and Grommit exist. But also, just a big metal dude.

Thus, right now, he has Schrodinger's Defender. It exists in all possible forms in potentia.

Also, he's definitely the one responsible for everybody in the Rangers having their own personalised cup/mug. Definitely Potter's Tools proficiency. His being his name in Common and Dwarvish.

Anyway...

Potato and Kransky soup this week. I think I ended up defaulting back to old quantities, because I definitely made a little too much. Tasty as hell though.

This week's Mini Media Reviews...

Firstly, know that if I was doing a fully review of the first two movies from this week (either together or individually), it would be one of those long and ranty ones.

I'm going to try and keep this concise.

Wicked and Wicked: For Good. It's incredibly stupid that the first movie's title card says Wicked: Part 1 and the second one is Wicked: For Good. That about coveys the level of... just not paying attention to the overall details. Secondly, this should not have been two movies.

A lot of the issues I have with it exist in the original book. You're going to do a prequel for an existing well loved classic. Sure, you were one of the first to do this in the modern era, but then you don't really pick a lane between the version from the movie and the version from the book. So you do neither successfully.

Every character in this is a full asshole. Up to and including Elphaba, who, admittedly, has reasons for being an asshole, and is the least asshole out of everybody, but still. Nobody comes out of this being unproblematic. Well, except maybe the goat.

Grande and Erivo are amazing singers. But a lot of the music is decidedly mid. The only good songs are What Is This Feeling, Popular and For Good. And the movies don't understand that the reason that there is a five minute music break at this point is the story is to allow the production of a stage show to happen. People need to change costumes, sets need to be moved around, things need to happen. We can absolutely trim that fat in a movie.

The first 19 or so minutes of the first movie is one musical number. Excessive.

I have made my feelings about Grande's cold dead shark eyes well known over time. Very little about this movie changed those feelings. But both of them do well in the last 20 minutes of the movie. Basically from For Good onwards.

The first movie is entirely too Patriarchy Bad and leans entirely too hard on the current politican climate. The second movie is too busy trying to cram in Wizard of Oz references and making [spoiler alert] Elphaba literally the origin of all three of Dorothy's companions. Stupid.

I spent almost all of the first movie just being mad at the movie. I'm not going to say that it was bad, just that I was mad at it the entire time. So much so that my jaw was sore by the end from clenching it the whole time.

The second movie more made me roll my eyes at how stupid all the decisions were.

Also, Goldblum and Yeoh are horrifically miscast and I will never understand why anybody finds Bailey anything other than a very basic white man.

Thus endeth the rant.

Next up, I rewatched both Into and Across the Spider-verse. Both of which I have already reviewed on the blog.

Lastly Lost Illusions, based on a novel by Honoré de Balzac. I do love a good historical French drama. Especially starring hot French boys. So that was fun.

I also played quite a bit of Red Dead Redemption 2 this week. Yeah... the game that that game thinks it is is not the game that I actually want to play. And it wasn't until I had a conversation with Fluffy last night that I realised that this game WANTS to be Western Grand Theft Auto, but somehow managed to make being bad not actually enjoyable in game. Because as soon as you're bad it costs you money to clear your bounty.

Also, there are so many quality of life things that just bug me. NPC collision detection. Especially once you're actively talking to that NPC. I was walking along talking to a dude after he asked me to accompany him back to town and he walked into my horse, screamed and ran off. My guy... I did literally nothing, you terrified yourself. Also, when somebody else rams their horse directly into my horse and then gets mad at me for it. So I'm just pottering around, doing the things I want to do, being very good, and just absolutely hating Dutch the whole time because I know how the first game started and what a piece of trash he actually is.

For what the game wants to be, I dislike it, but I am enjoying just wandering around (albeit incredibly slowly, because moving around is likewise stupid) doing the things I want to do and enjoying the pretty scenery.

Friday I finally got to see Owl Girl and the new baby after a number of false starts on both of our parts. And also take her the blanket I crocheted for him. Which she loved, obvs. It was a pleasant, if short, meet up.

Friday night was also DnD Night, and I kept being vaguely surprised that the crypt we were exploring kept having coffins in every room. But only for like a fraction of a second each time.

Anyway...

Today was... more stressful than it needed to be, for a variety of reasons. However, we did the supermarketing, noting that next week being Anzac Day means the shops are closed on Saturday (boo), so we might need to do it on Sunday instead. We also dropped into Haighs for broken Easter Egg right after the supermarket, and got some first try. Bonus.

Afterwards I had to upgrade the iOS on Ma's phone, not a difficult job but one that just takes for fucking ever.

And afterwards to went to Spotlight to poke around the special they have on yarn at the moment. 

character saturday: moth kitty

So, we're still in Icewind Dale Rangers territory for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. And I'm not gunna lie, for the most part with Tabaxi characters, I just keep reusing existing versions and tweaking them, because why remake the wheel. And this remake of Cuts Like A Knife is very much a remake of a character I made for something else. I just changed some of the details and accessories.

And then added a fuckton of lunar moths. Because Swarmkeeper Rangers live in my brain rent free. And what's better as a swarm for someone who lives in a location where the run doesn't really shine than a bunch of moths. Honestly, I do kind of wish that the subclass had thought more about the implications of the line... "While you're alive, the swarm remains in your space, crawling on you or flying and skittering around you within your space."

So, just all the time. Always. Pooping. Swarm. Having sex. Swarm. Swimming. Swarm.

I do kind of prefer there being an activation trigger of some kind. Because I've always thought of this subclass in terms of Mushizō from Ninja Scroll... like, the most horrifying version of this idea. But not a constant swarm at all times.

Anyway...

Normally in March there is a week where it goes very specifically from Summer to Autumn. That week seems to have only really happened this week. 

Vegetable soup with brown rice this week. Tasty, but ugly as fuck.

The Mini Media Reviews for this week are something of a mixed bag.

We start with The Garden of Words. I'm not completely sure that this anime counts as "a movie". Because it's literally only 46 minutes long. Also, Japan... can we not make movies about teenagers and adults "falling in love"? Can we just manage that? As, like, a bare minimum. And having the adult be a literal teacher at the boy's school (albeit one he doesn't recognise for some reason). Like, you could have done literally anything else other than that. Do better. And it's disappointing because it's a beautiful looking "movie".

Doubly annoying because it's the same creator who did Your Name and Suzume, both of which were amazing.

After that, I can really only blame myself. Fant4Stic. And I refuse to call it anything else. Wow... even if the studio took this off Trank and recut it and reshot a bunch of it, I find it incredibly hard to believe that this shit show was ever good. Because the script and the performances are just awful. Not even the raw charisma of Michael B Jordan can save this dumpster fire.

Last up was Lady Jane, which is a movie from 1986 that I've been aware of for a long time but never seen. And a very early movie for both Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes. Is it very melodramatic and not at all historically accurate in a lot of the details? Yes on both counts. But still enjoyable.

Friday was Chiro Day... and also Doing A Lot Of Things In Town Day.

I swapped out one of the video games Fluffy got me for my birthday for two other games. Bonus. I also wandered around the library in town and picked up a bunch of stuff, then grabbed a couple of things in Kmart.

Friday Night DnD was another big fight followed by a lot of Seeing Terrifying Things. Good times.

Anyway.

We've reached the weekend where they just choose to block off a bunch of roads in Norwood so that people can go eat food on a medium strip in order to celebrate football or some bullshit. Fuck literally all the way off.

So basically we did the supermarket and called it a day.

character saturday: fey wanderer

Happy Easter or whatever.

Another Icewind Dale Ranger for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. The fairy ranger Thorn Ravenwood. And, of course, a Fey Wanderer Ranger. And much improved over the previous version.

Anyway...

Lasagne Soup again this week. A little more liquidy this time, but still great. It's never not good honestly.

Mini Media Reviews for this week include finishing off Season 2 of Alex Rider. It is fascinating to see their version of the Stormbreaker story, since I remember that probably the best, since the movie is also based on the same plot. Still decent though.

I did attempt to watch Assassin's Guild. I literally gave up after about 7 minutes. Because while they had a decent budget they spent none of it on the actors and very little on the script. Also this is one of a collection of movies written, directed and starring the same guy. And that never ends well.

Next up was something I picked up at the library just based on vibes (and the fact that Gillian Anderson was in it), The Crimson Petal and the White. Quite good, a little intense at times... and there were weirdly a few plot threads that seemed like they were going to go somewhere and just never got picked up. But still enjoyable.

Lastly, Tales from the Loop. Based on the artwork by Simon Stålenhag of the same name. Oh my god. So damn good. Like, somewhat depressing, very much a meditation on sadness, very slow, very thoughtful, and some of it (especially episode 2) was very, very hard to watch, but in a good way. There were many times where I thought "oh, the happy ending version of this would be X" and then that ending never happens. And yes, I actively sobbed through the last episode. Very strong recommendation. Keep tissues handy.

Sadly, after trying all the tips and tricks for getting God of War Ragnarok to load on my PS4, I had to admit defeat. I might try again with the only other copy in the library network once it's back on the shelf since that library isn't that far away.

Friday Night DnD was... a late scratching. Like literally Fluffy had walked in my house but hadn't yet sat down late. So we just did a movie night instead. A Very Cary Grant movie night. Bringing Up Baby, which I realised What's Up Doc really stole a lot of their playbook from. And then To Catch A Thief, expanding Fluffy's Hitchcock repertoire.

Anyway...

I say this every year. People just be losing their damn minds in the supermarket on Easter Saturday. Sure, maybe you actually give a shit about Easter Sunday and do something. But the shops have been closed for a single day, why you all crazed?

We did survive though.

And that was it really.

character saturday: rune boy

Here he is. Chane Leger, the boy who started this whole current reboot project for the Icewind Dale Rangers. The old version used a lot of the old chunky armor, and it just wasn't doing it. So we have this version instead.

Do I think that wearing that much metal on your body/face in an environment where there's a lot of snow and ice and cold is a bad plan? Possibly. I suspect there is probably a lot of frost that forms on the chainmail in front of his face. I do like the helmet though. I just wish we had a better lantern. But the snowball is cute enough.

Also, Chane definitely has both red hair, some kind of beard, and a terrible French accent. Because the only French accent that I can do is terrible.

Anyway...

I made possibly the best chicken soup this week. Even though I forgot to get the chicken out of the freezer until lunchtime on Monday. I did the usual thing and just broke up some various leftover pasta (some various widths of spaghetti, some fettuccine) into small pieces and used that.

This week's Mini Media Reviews. I started with the mini series Leonardo. Decent, not stunning. And honestly, if this is based at all on historical accounts of da Vinci, then it seems like he might have been kind of an asshole. It's also a "murder mystery" based on completely made up stuff about a work of art that is lost to history. Also, Freddy Highmore is an executive producer on this... and also stars in it... in a role that he just seems completely miscast in. Mostly because putting Highmore in a fake beard and leather pants just looks... weird.

I followed that up with a season and a half of Alex Rider. I read all the books when I was in my early 20's, I quite enjoyed Stormbreaker (and just now remembering that that movie is 20 years old this year). This is a much more... realistic. Less James Bond and more Jason Bourne perhaps. Now, I know I've read the two books these first two seasons are based on, but as I said, not for at least 20 years, maybe closer to 25. So I don't really remember where the original plot goes. But it does feel a little bit like they're... not padding out the universe, but at the very least stretching out the available story to fit the eight 45 minute episode season. It's also slightly interesting that they chose to go to the second book for the first season and then pivoted back to the first book for the second season. So they pull some of the details of how Alex becomes a spy from the first book and bolt it onto the first season. Then fill in some of the second season with what basically amounts to Alex's PTSD. They also add in a best friend for Alex who is... honestly he's the nerdy, slightly pointless, best friend from every British show about teens. It's giving Sid from Skins.

It's not bad though.

I also finished God of War this week. I really, really enjoyed it. Sure, I already knew the ending. And in my brain I'd had some of the sequel game that I'd seen played mixed up with the first game, but I liked it a lot. So much so that I ordered the sequel from the library. And it turns out, my local library had a copy of the shelf. Bonus. Well... except that it seems like it won't load the last little bit from the disc for some reason. Bollocks.

Monday required another visit from my landlord. Because one of my taps just decided that it didn't need to turn off properly because the washer was completely shredded. Thankfully it didn't take that long for him to fix it once he got here.

Friday Night DnD... we basically did a big prolonged fight scene the whole session with a brief break in the middle. The second half of which was us fighting a large collection of goo balls that shat out little fleshy pyramids that tried to eat our faces. Good times. Thankfully we had a handy Water Elemental that literally saved our asses. It was a good session overall. Plus we levelled up. Woo.

Anyway.

Today was a fairly average supermarket adventure.

Then afterwards we took a little side trip to Big W to look at their fitted sheets. So there's that about that.

character saturday: hidden half-orc

Another Icewind Dale Ranger for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. This time, the half-orc Gloomstalker Ranger, Snow. Because if you haven't seen the sun in a long time, why not be the subclass designed to work in low light.

Snow was one of the ones that I remade a while ago. At some point I was just scrolling past and decided that I was tired of looking at the old version. It may have been after that particular mask came out. It is also fun being able to make an entirely white stealthy character because they're running around in snow.

The idea with Snow was also that him being a half-orc was going to be a reveal. He's help out the party with some encounter and then take his mask off. Not a giant reveal, I grant you.

Anyway.

This week had a lot going on. Let's start with the easy stuff.

 I started soup season. Because I'm tired of inventing things to make. So I went back to minestrone. Well, my version of minestrone. Damn good though.

This week's Mini Media Reviews started with finishing up the last season of Snowpiercer. Damn it's a good show. I mean, occasionally frustrating, but so well done. But it's basically a show where the problems all stem from Entitled Straight White Men. Story literally checks out.

I also watched the National Theatre Live version of The Importance of Being Earnest. I'm very familiar with the story, but this is the first time I've seen the full and complete version, which was 3 hours long. Generally it was very good. Excellent costumes and sets, there were some directing choices I was less set on.

I also watched Ron's Gone Wrong. Which was actually both different than I expected but also better than I thought it was going to be. It is a little bit "hey kids, stop being so into social media and take your face out your phone". Actually, it's a lot that. It's very on the nose. But it also manages to be pretty good.

Last up was the first season of The Knick. Which was rough. Good, but rough. Which is to be expected when you're watching a show set in 1900 about doctors... because doctors knew what the fuck they were doing, and also full of racism and several other isms and more drug use than I was expecting.

So, the rest of the week was... a collection of things.

I made the LEGO Toothless on Sunday, while watching Earnest. And honestly, it took me longer than the 3 hours of Earnest. 

But before that I wanted to move the Wall-E LEGO from my bedside table to the living room, which meant I needed to put something else away in it's box in the wardrobe. During which I managed to step back off the two step stepladder that I have and break the glass in one of the big pieces of art in the bedroom. Not really a good start to sitting down to build LEGO. Much fucking around with broken glass was required. On the plus side, I neither injured myself nor the art. Well, I got a minor cut from the glass after the fact, but that was fixed with a band aid.

So Monday I needed to go and run some errands, and it turned out that Frame Connection, where Ma and I went a number of times in the Before Times, was just down the same street. I got a quote for the glass, did my other errand and then stopped off at the tyre store on the Parade and set "hey, I have a really embarrassing problem, I can't work out how to put the air in my tyres". The very nice man took my car keys, disappeared in the car for a couple of minutes, came back and told me that the tyres were supposed to be at 32 PSI, and they were at 12. Yep, story checks out. So thank you Mr Tyre Man.

Tuesday the landlord came to fix the bedroom window. So, at least that's done. Thursday I went back to order the glass. I had expected that it would take a couple of days. No, they did it on the spot. Gotta love that.

Also this week I attempted to start The Witcher 3. For a variety of reasons I just did not click with it. Part of that was the game just did various things that annoyed me, part of it was the combat was needlessly complicated right off the bat, and the movement... I have never before been made nauseous by a game. The movement in this made me start feeling sick. And once the game dumped me out of the tutorial and into the game itself, I played for maybe 3 minutes before nopeing the hell out of it and deleting the game.

Instead I installed God of War. And I'm loving the hell out of that. Which is slightly weird because the personalities of Kratos and Geralt are not miles apart. But Geralt just annoyed me from the jump.

I do know a number of the reveals from God of War though, just from being a person who exists on the internet. Plus being a person who knows things about Norse mythology. Or some combination of the two.

Friday Night DnD was more dungeon exploration. And pressing the big red button only to find that the button is going to kill us. We have survived thus far though.

Anyway.

Today had a non zero amount of ignoring the election. Because Ma and I did postal voting.

Otherwise it was just the usual supermarket stuff. And then taking a quick trip to Spotlight just for looking at things. Nothing hugely exciting. 

character saturday: leadership realness

Happy Birthday to me. I am now as old as there are weeks in the year. Do with that what you will.

Now, we've done the Icewind Dale Rangers before. But I accidentally gave a bunch of them a makeover. I went into Hero Forge with the intent of doing something else altogether, and got distracted by the very old model of one of them. I'd already given a couple of them a makeover, but never posted those and realised how shitty some of the other ones looked.

My favourite of the bunch though was the leader of the Rangers, Dreth. Partially because I always liked him as an NPC during that game, he was also the only one I didn't make up, but rather the one that DM Fluffy made up.

I'd done a partial makeover of him, but still didn't love the finished one. Weirdly, taking his hat off and putting a slight smile on his face make me instantly fall in love with him.

Anyway...

Let's start with Mini Media Reviews for this week. The theme of the week? Snowpiercer. All Snowpiercer, all week. And I still have half of the final season to go this weekend.

And damn it's good. Like really, really good. It's also incredibly intense at times. But the writing and the performances are fantastic. It takes a very special kind of show to have me wishing a character would be killed off in the first season and then have that same character being literally my favourite character in the show by the fourth season.

I'll be sad to get to the end to be honest. But I hope it ends on both a "finished" note (as in, the show was planned to run four seasons, it ran four seasons and ended, rather than it just randomly got cancelled after a season ended) and also a satisfying note. Even if that last bit is achieved by a "some amount of time later" flash forward in the last 10 minutes.

This week I also made tuna mornay. Not the spiciest of versions, but tasty.

Friday I went out to get my Birthday Boost Juice, because I love getting strangers to wish me Happy Birthday. It's a very niche kink. I also picked up Untitled Goose Game and basically knocked the game over in one sitting.

Friday Night DnD was also Birthday Night DnD. Fluffy showed up at my place with a present, but honestly, the bag the present came in was almost more exciting that the present itself. Which says everything about the bag and nothing about the present. The bag was a Toothless bag, just his big dumb face, which is currently hanging from a doorknob across the room where I can see it.

The actual present was The Witcher 3 and God of War. Fluffy was quick to point out they were preowned versions, which is totally fine. Now whether or not I'll vibe with them, who can say. I am going to start with Witcher, partially because I've watched someone play a good chunk of the first third or so of God of War. Which also makes me glad I knocked Goose Game on the head earlier in the day.

It was fascinating that when I opened the present from Mr and Mrs... it was the Toothless Lego set. Which I absolutely did not expect. But just funny that both of the presents had a Toothless themed element.

Also cheesecake. 

The actual game was more exploration of the dungeon complex we were in last week. We're also finally starting to get to the weirder elements of the adventure, which is good.

Anyway...

Today wasn't particularly exciting. Mostly because I honestly wasn't really all that bothered. We did the supermarket thing, I got my Birthday Scone from Baker's Delight. We didn't really have any other plans, and I'll be honest, I wasn't really bothered about going out to lunch or anything because that would have required killing at least a couple of hours.

character saturday: devoted dragonborn

It's been a hot minute since Zzilar, aka Two-zies ("two z's, at the front" as he usually introduces himself), has featured in a DnD Character Colouring Book. Way back in the Photoshop colour days. This version does look a little older and a little more regal if I'm honest.

Does it say something about my brain right now that I'm posting paladins? Do with that what you will.

Anyway...

I worked out that the correct alternative to "pasta bake" is just a variation on my lasagne soup. So that was this week.

My Mini Media Reviews for this week start with Your Name. A strange one, but I did have a little bit of a teary moment at the end.

I followed that up with my second attempt to get through the French version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Not because the move is 3 hours long, but because the last time I tried the disc had huge scratches and became unwatchable. This time the disc had a very minor scratch... and the same problem occurred. In roughly the same spot in the movie. So clearly those discs are just cursed. But I did mange to find a way to finish watching it (thanks Reddit). The ending feels a little... soft. But overall it's quite good. So long as you can let go of the fact that they're clearly using modern prosthetics for some of the "disguised as somebody else" scenes while the movie is trying to tell you that those are hard masks. But overall I liked it.

And rounding out the week was the first season of Snowpiercer. The TV show. And I quite enjoyed it. Will definitely be watching the rest of the series.

Friday was Chiro Day... and then Friday Night DnD happened. We're on a dungeon crawl. We finished out on the verge of totally fucking up a sassy medusa. Good times.

Anyway...

Today was the usual supermarket followed by a wild goose chase. Well, more a Looking For Things In Places Where Things Were Not.

Because it turns out there are only a few places that sell the foil covers you put over the steering wheel. And none of those places were the ones we went to. So there's that. 

character saturday: my favourite little scoundrel

Sometimes you just need your charming, talkative, meddling, protective, lying little scoundrel of a character. I realised that while I've posted various images of him, I never posted just the solo version since he got his new face.

And I just need some Peregrin "Pery to my friends" Swiftfoot energy this week.

He's a design that I look at and think "you know, I should really redo a lot of you because that armor is the very early stuff and it's janky as hell". And I think I tried at some point, and it just... didn't come out like him. For better or for worse, or until Hero Forge completely redesign those armor pieces, this is him.

And I'm not gunna lie. I do miss him. There are only a couple of characters that I miss and that really live in my head rent free. Pery is absolutely one of them. For all the reasons previously discussed.

Anyway.

For the purposes of keeping this as on ongoing diary of sorts, but also not getting into certain things, this is me reminded myself that This Week Was The Week Were All The Things Happened. Or at least started to happen. The Process Begineth. And you survived.

Unnecessarily cryptic, yes. But honestly, I also don't really want to go over it in detail anyway. Just know that it's all good and positive. And let's move on.

This week was Toona Noodle Doo. It's not thrilling, it's just easy.

The Mini Media Reviews for this week were...

Bad Guys 2. Unlike the first one, which was a primer for Furrys with a Praise Kink, the sequel was... boring? And more than a little unfocused. Like I never completely understood why the "bad guy" was doing the thing they were doing. Not The Bad Guys... but the actual villain. I mean superficially I got it, but if that was all it was, it was a little weak.

Tomb Raider. Not the Angelina Jolie ones, the 2018 Alicia Vikander one. Now I fully understand that that movie is based on the rebooted games from the same period. But in that case, both that game and this movie are absolutely somebody's kink. Just a young woman being tortured (not literally, but not not literally) and moaning a lot. The problem is that the plot just feels like a shitty remake of the Angelina ones. Or at least it just made me want to rewatch those ones.

And then I rewatched Murder By Death. Still weird, still very racist, still fairly funny.

I also finished the poncho I've been working on for a while now. And for a change, I actually finished an article of crocheted clothing and didn't immediately frog the whole thing and start over. How useful it's actually going to be once we get to winter remains to be seen. But at least I like the finished product. And if I needed to make a change or two (like actually turn the "sleeves" into a tube), that's still doable.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week because Mr and Mrs were otherwise occupied. Which was also fine, because I'm not sure I had the mental bandwidth anyway.

Anyway...

Rain. Humid, humid rain. Which woke me up at 5am. Because it was loud and heavy. Currently we just have Wet Air. Hopefully that will lessen slightly if the big rain that's supposed to happen in the next hour and a half actually does it's thing.

Thankfully everything we needed to do today either happened indoors or else during the lulls in the rain. So that was helpful.

Otherwise it was just the supermarket.

And then some general Doing Of Things. Including applying for postal voting for Ma and I. Because fuck going on the day and fuck having to deal with what happened last time. No thank you. I mean, I barely care anyway, because the whole thing is essentially bullshit, but I'll do what's required. Just on my terms.

That was it really.