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. 

character saturday: wilderness wanderer

I'm feeling in the need of some deeply caring gnomish Mom energy right now. So we're dipping back into Friday Night DnD History for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book with Quillamina Silverthread.

The end of game, unfrozen, off to wander the wastes Quill. Complete with the staff she picked up during the campaign. Which isn't magical at all from memory, just a memory of lost members of her circle.

Weirdly original Quill is one of the last of the "coloured by Photoshop" models and the one that it took a while before I was happy with the Hero Forge colour version. I do think I'm finally happy with this version though.

Anyway...

Can I just take a moment to scream existential dread into the void without needing to explain myself? Can I just do that real quick?

[sustained screaming into the void in the manner of existential dread]

Thank you. 

I had another go at Cowboy Rice Salad this week, using actual brown rice. Which I always forget takes forfuckingever to cook. But it was quite good. Even if I ended up doing the reheating trick for the majority of the week.

I also finished Ghost of Tsushima. Overall I was mostly pleased with the game, although a number of pain points exist for me that stop it being a truly excellent game. Part of that is around some of the way quests are laid out, and just how infuriating I found some of the characters.

The game is incredibly beautiful though. And worth playing.

In other Mini Media Reviews... 

I started out with Penguin Highway... which is a deeply, deeply weird movie... that is entirely too focused on a 10 year old boy obsessing over breasts. And less focused on, you know, the penguins.

Next up was And Then They Were None from 1974. The third version of that story that I've seen, and honestly, the worst. Even if it does star two Bond villains. The hotel location is gorgeous though.

Then it was time for Ballerina, a John Wick spin off movie. That wasn't written as a spin off, it was written as it's own thing... honestly, I think that the drama surrounding the making of the movie might be more interesting than the movie itself. It just really lacks something compared with the John Wick movies. Ana de Armas does her level best, but she can't save a fairly generic script. It also makes the mistake of trying to explain some of the stuff that the John Wick movies absolutely didn't attempt to and didn't need to.

Not terrible, just not great.

I did also discover that the 2001 movie Josie and the Pussycats is free on YouTube, so I absolutely took a journey back to the deeply, deeply early 2000's that is that movie. And, while everything about that movie is intensely, violently of it's era, but the story holds up surprisingly well.

Friday Night DnD was us finally ending an NPC that has been a pain in our collective asses. But also funny, because at this point, because of character turnover, there's only one character in the current party who actually knows who the hell the NPC is. Which did lead to a tiny bit of cognitive dissonance.

But she did mess with the wrong group of people and we happily handed her her ass.

Anyway...

Today was...  a series of things that happened.

My brain was a little fried this morning, so everything was like 15% harder than it needed to be.

character saturday: reaper realness

A redo of a redo of a redo for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book, Fenris of the Reaper Clan. And something of a minor redo in this case, mostly just a new face. And a minor name adjustment given that him having a surname rather than a clan name never really made a lot of sense.

I do (and did at the time) enjoy Fenris. I'm not 100% sure he would work at a normal table though, because I played him in 2020 during the brief period when the Thursday group were playing online. He kind of works better over chat, weirdly. Or at least that's the only way I've ever played him. But I very much enjoyed my time with him.

Anyway...

I'm going to be honest here, this is the second time I've tried making a baked pasta dish and both times the results have been slightly disappointing. I mean, good, edible, fine, but just not as good as... the unbaked version would have been. So next time I'm going to just do pasta normally and cut out the middleman. 

Okay... so, this week's Mini Media Review is... going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

We start with Nina and the Hedgehog's Secret... which was... fine. It was just... 75% less whimsical than I wanted it to be. I'll fully admit that I went into it not really knowing what the story was, so I only have myself to blame.

Next up, Abominable. Surprisingly sweet. I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, the story isn't breaking new ground, but for what it is, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I kind of knew going in that I wasn't going to enjoy the 2024 Nosferatu. I'd been knowing that since the first trailer. But I still had it on the list, because I did mostly enjoy The Northman, so... maybe I was wrong.

What I was was BORED. Deeply, annoyingly, ongoingly bored. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is horrifically either miscast or just stunningly out of his depth. Likewise Lily-Rose Depp is making some choices that the director clearly agreed with but I found incredibly irritating and performative.

And I love a Skarsgård. I do. And Bill absolutely disappeared into the titular role, but any creepiness or presence or horror he brings to the role is 100% undermined by the insane decision for his character to have a big stupid 70's porno moustache. And it doesn't need to be there. Sure, it might have been historically accurate, but it looks dumb as hell.

I think it also massively suffers from fact that the story is a redo of a redo of the Dracula story. So it just all comes off feeling lackluster. It's just style over substance.

Speaking of going in knowing it's not going to be what it needs to be... Paddington in Peru. Sure, it's the weakest script of the three. And while I don't blame her for taking a look at the script and passing on it, but Sally Hawkins is literally the glue that holds those first two movies together. And Emily Mortimer just doesn't have the acting chops to make that work. So... it was okay, but we should all collectively forget it exists.

Last up... Valmont. Which is another one of those "two movies that are functionally the same movie coming out at the same time" situations. But more literal in this case, because this is also a version of the source material for Dangerous Liaisons. There are some things that I think Valmont does in a more interesting way, and some of the casting choices give it a different edge. And Valmont is a much... kinder movie overall. Dangerous Liaisons is the much, much, much better movie overall. Valmont is more of a melodrama. Dangerous Liaisons is a deeply emotional chess game.

I also played a lot of Ghost of Tsushima this week. More on that when I'm done.

Friday Night DnD ended up being A Story In Two Parts, because DM Mr and I had a separate session before the main session. Which honestly went in about four different directions other than where I thought it was going to go.

And then my boy Whisper got to briefly guest star in the main session. I did make it easier for myself by sending Molly off into the bushes while he was around. Because I didn't really want to have to talk to myself...

I did have them wander off and have a moment between the two of them, and that conversation probably already lives in my brain without actively having it. But he was impressed and bemused by her. Which is always nice. When two of your characters like each other... hehe.

Anyway...

Today was the usual shopping thing.

But I wanted to do a run to Spotlight. Which turned out to be the Universe absolutely pointing me in the right direction. Because not only because the yarn I've been using for the poncho I need to finish up (and the reason for going) just happened to randomly turn up in those "mill ends" bags that I so enjoy. And so I got 400g of yarn for the price of 200g. Bonus.

We also tend to poke around the bedding department, where I saw a quilt cover set for literally $7. And a really nice one I considered buying. And then I found another one for $10 that I liked even more. So Ma got the $7 one, and we collectively spent $17 on bedding.

We also dropped in at Officeworks, so I finally have a fully functional TV remote. 

Definitely a worthwhile excursion.

character saturday: doppelganger danger

Sometimes the universe is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sometimes you design an NPC that is important to one of your characters and then a major plot point ends up revolving around that NPC. And possibly somebody else pretending to be that NPC. And you designed this week's DnD Character Colouring Book to be two versions of the character.

More on that in a minute though.

I do love how anybody looks in some version of the Crimson Gentleman uniform for my boy Whisper though. Of course, young Hark isn't officially a Gentleman yet... so he doesn't get the tie.

Anyway.

This week. Urgh.

So we start with cleaning for my Inspection. Not fully arduous, as usual I split it over a couple of days, and fortunately the weather was reasonable enough that it wasn't painful.

Tuesday I had the doctor's appointment about this flu that just won't go away. Which was also relatively painless, but I also assume that doctors have had so many people through their doors with this same thing that they're just going off the script at this point. I think we spent slightly more time teaching the med student who was sitting in how to actually measure somebody's height than really diving deeply into what was going on with me.

Okay, that's slightly unfair. And honestly says slightly more about the med student.

But the doctor gave me a script for some drugs and a referral for a bunch of tests. And did you know they do prescriptions by text message and QR code now? News to me. Handy, but weird. So I went and got the good drugs. And then wasted some time at the library before heading home to my nice clean house.

Yay.

I was slightly surprised to discover that the good drugs amounted to three tablets. So that's some nuking the aliens from space kinda antibiotics. On the plus side, they seem to have done... something. It's still not gone, but it's much improved.

I didn't go and get the tests done until Thursday morning. And that time the woman literally spent longer doing things on her computer than she did talking to me or sticking a swab up my nose. But at least I was in and out of their relatively quickly, and I could just call in at the end of my morning walk.

Circling back around... this week was quiche. Because it was simple. 

The Mini Media Reviews was the second and third season of His Dark Materials. I liked the second season more than the third. Mostly because the second season was more focused on the two kids, and the third had a lot of the adult characters who I just like less. I also think the second season is a vast improvement because the teamed the male writer who wrote the entire first season on his own with a different female writer on each episode. Now I don't know if that was one of those things where he wrong the general outline and the women came in and polished, or they wrote it and he polished or what. But the characters were much improved, not least of all Lyra.

Part of that as well was the actress progressing from being a 13/14 year old in the first season to 16/17 by the final season. She goes from a slightly precocious child to a young adult. 

But the whole thing is beautifully made and shot, and didn't get quite as Stealth Jesusy as, say, the Narnia stuff.

Friday was Chiro Day... and much needed, between all the coughing in the last month, a lot of crochet and a lot of video games, my neck and lower back were slightly screaming. Plus of course having done the full clean.

Then I went and poked around the library in town.

Friday Night DnD was... honestly, mop up. And it was very funny that my insane goblin girl Molly had a moment where she could very much have ended up as the new chieftess as a tribe of goblins. And sometimes having gore on your arms up to the elbows helps.

But then we cut back to my boy Whisper... and thanks to a Perception roll of 3, he's currently unsure whether the version of Herald that is in the room with him currently or the one that he saw outside is the real Herald. So that's going to be fun to resolve during the week. He'll be fine. Or he be dead.

Anyway...

Nothing much to report again today... just the usual supermarketry really.