Sometime Hero Forge adds items where I look at it and think "yeah, I'm never going to use that for an actual character". But then there are items that show up that just niggle at my brain slightly. The Letterman Jacket was one of those.
And given that the items were all from Dimension 20's Fantasy High, (which I'm aware of, but haven't seen) I started thinking about what character I might play in that kind of game.
Thus, we ended up at Berg Ken'ervs, or Ice to his friends. Because icebergs. Half-drow swim team dude-bro. Or, not dude-bro... 80's teen movie villain. Basically. And the nickname happened organically. I was looking through a Drow naming table and after a couple of names I discarded, found Berg, which means "graceful, fluid, like water", so of course that's his name when he's on the Swim Team and also a Fathomless Warlock.
Because of course he made a Warlock pact in order to get a swim speed in order to win. He's an 80's teen movie villain.
Also, I did the usual Photoshoppery on his jacket to add the letter (because, for no well explain reason, the Letterman Jacket, the defining feature of which is that it has a letter on the front, doesn't have a front facing decal, but does have a big letter A you can put on the back for no good reason) and the nickname, I also modified the sneakers to add a Converse-style patch with a spider logo, because drow, which is also where he stores his spider familiar when it's not in use.
My headcanon would be that whatever school Fantasy High takes place in, he's a transfer from a rival school and isn't happy about it, and is still wearing his jacket from his old school.
And of course, I shared Berg with Fluffy, and we threw around ideas about what his character would be. So, going completely against type, Fluffy decided on the school stoner/dealer. Basically, Shaggy from Scooby Doo but with actual drugs and not dog treats.
Then Hero Forge dropped their "Near Future Fashion" set, and while it was another set I probably won't use most of, I instantly saw the way to use several of the items in order to make a version of the character Fluffy and I talked about.
Initially I made him a druid, but an artificer makes so much more sense, because I'm pretty sure that he's making the pharmaceuticals himself. And then wraps them up like candy. Or else he's literally embedding the drugs in chocolate. Because that seems like I think a gnome would do.
Also, if Hero Forge had a skateboard, he would 100% have a skateboard.
And, because the school dealer always knows everyone, that's why he and Berg have any kind of relationship, even though Berg wishes that there was ANY other option. Pog just enjoys watching him squirm.
Anyway...
This week was a slow slide into [endless screaming across the void].
Which is also me being super overly dramatic, it was just a lot of minor niggles. But still.
Soup was good. I made my non-minestrone minestrone. And that's always a good time.
This week's mini movie reviews picked up an extra movie. I started with Venom 2, after having watched Venom last Friday because we didn't have DnD.
What I will say is the very best things about the Venom movies are Tom Hardy, both as Eddie and the voice of Venom. I love their bickering and their interactions. Occasionally we can include Michelle Williams in that list. The worst thing about the Venom movies is literally everything else. And specifically I'm bored with the fact that the only bad guys that show up in Venom movies are other symbiotes. So it's just Big CGI Thing fighting Big CGI Thing at the end. And I know it's partially because Sony is limited in what IP they have access to, but, seriously, can we not include somebody else?
Second movie was Black Widow.
Back in 2015 I said this...
But I still hold to the idea that I don't want a Black Widow solo movie... not because I don't think Johansson would be great, and with the right writer and director it wouldn't be interesting, but I still like being able to just see tiny slivers of her past rather than laying it all out. And given what we've seen so far, I also think it would be hard to make without making it really, really dark and borderline depressing.
Turns out I was right. I don't want a Black Widow movie. Because this movie was... pretty terrible. And they managed to not make it dark and borderline depressing by making it stupid and borderline depressing. I also don't know if Johansson just didn't care by that point because this was the last contractual obligation she had with Marvel, but she's pretty flat in the whole thing. Black Widow works as a member of the ensemble, not as the main focus.
On the plus side, Florence Pugh is phenomenal. I would watch her all day. Also, the fact that most of the time she's actively mocking Black Widow is great.
Last on the list was Steven Universe The Movie. I cried. I just did. I enjoy those characters so much, and they did a good job at hitting the right beats (for the most part) around those characters, that it just hit me all in the feels. What I didn't really like was the end of the movie, because it just seemed like creating a problem for another day by sending one problem off to solve a different problem, creating a big toxic problem. But otherwise, good.
And then we started the slow slide...
It started when my back started making rumblings. Not enough to be a problem, but definitely enough that it affected my week.
Then it rained on Thursday and I managed to step in a puddle on my morning walk and also cut my finger on a sharp piece of metal on my umbrella that I should remember because I catch my fingers on it every time I use the umbrella.
Then Friday morning, while there was no rain, there were large piles of leaves, one of which contained the uneven paving that Norwood has in abundance. Or, you know, there was nothing there at all and I'm too clumsy to live and I fell down, banged on knee and slightly twisted the ankle of the other knee.
BLAH.
Also, I have a rental inspection next Tuesday. So I now have to clean my house with all that going on. I did make a start on Friday, mostly because it was easier to be up on my feet than sitting when bending either of my legs hurt for different reasons.
Then we come to Friday Night DnD. And it all started well. I did some recon, I made some magic items. We got the information we needed. It was all fun and games.
And then, we, as a group, became the dumbest dumbasses who ever dumbed a dumb. In fact, Fluffy and I spend the entire car ride back to my place almost exclusively telling each other that we were, in fact, idiots. And Discord chat this morning reiterated that, yes, as a group, we are actually stupid.
Because when you know that the big bad of the adventure can turn into a cloud giant and a cloud giant shows up out of nowhere right after a big storm, and has a name that is basically the second half of the big bad's name, and nothing about this cloud giant really seems to check out, and she essentially seduced/magically charmed our giant friend... and it was only when we left the room and encountered an NPC who said "yeah, there was a blue dragon here, and then we saw somebody walking into the place you just were"...
And the penny finally dropped. Mostly that we are intensely fucking stupid.
But also, it proved something that I've known about DnD for a while, that you react to things based on the verbal description you're given, rather than actually being in the space with the creature in question. Because as soon as DM Mrs brought out the mini for her, we all took one look and went "oh, yeah, she's OBVIOUSLY super fucking evil".
What's fascinating is that we went from "we don't have a plan for this thing we're doing next" to "we have a very clear and obvious plan for the next step because we've been such literal dumbasses, and now here is exactly what we want to do".
I also think that this is one of the very clear moments in the campaign that knocked some of the New Adventurer Smell off my character. There was one a while back when he saw people get squished by giants in a big battle. And I feel like this was another one. He knows he's not insightful, but there was no reason he should have been taken in by her, or that he shouldn't have put the pieces together quicker. He was also incredibly mad afterwards, which is, for the most part, also new.
We'll see where we go from here.
But, just to reiterate... we are, in fact, dumb as fuck.
Anyway...
Today started off with slightly more drama than it needed to. When I tried to text Ma yesterday to remind her to bring something today, my messages failed to send. So I called her, reminded her, told her that messaging was being stupid and if my messages came through, to ignore them.
And then fixed the problem, sent her a message, that she normally would have responded to anyway. But she didn't, because I had told her not to bother.
So, this morning, I didn't get my usual "on my way" text from her. And while I knew that either text messaging was still being dumb or she'd forgotten, I still tried to call her, which I also knew she probably wouldn't answer because she should have been driving. Mostly I knew all the reasons that everything was fine, and still...
Turns out she was fine, was driving, had messaged me and the messaged failed. Why I have no idea. Because I couldn't see any issues on our phone provider website, either existing or resolved.
And I got her to switch her phone off and on again, which is how I fixed mine, when she got here, and the two text messages I sent her yesterday and the alert to say she had a missed call all came through at once.
So that was drama nobody needed.
Otherwise, it was the usual. Supermarketry. And I didn't really want to do anything else given my ankle. So we didn't.
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