photo saturday: le petit chat noir

So... this week's DnD Character Colouring Book was... a journey. Which started when I wanted to play around with the new "opera gloves" and their variations. One of which is what the site calls "Long Fingerless Glove". And originally I was aiming for Shadow Sorcerer... forgetting that they didn't actually bring that across in the 2024 rules. So I pivoted to Shadow Monk. The Rogue part came a little later.

The longer I looked at her, the more I realised she was giving me slight Catwoman vibes... and I tried a version using the cat ears and a domino mask... and I liked that... but then I remembered that recently they did a wrestling pack... complete with a Luchador Jaguar mask.

One thing led to another... add in my favourite Hero Forge jacket...

And voila, The Cat. Halfling criminal, Shadow Monk and Thief Rogue. Is a full head mask that limits your vision and muffles your hearing a good idea for someone who relies on sneaking around? No, of course not. When has that ever stopped any superhero or supervillain ever.

But other than the fact that the character wouldn't completely come online until Level 6 at the earliest, this is absolutely a character I would play.

Anyway...

This week I made a much better quiche and added some mustard to my potato salad... which was a good plan.

For Mini Media Reviews this week... well, these are a little more Maxi, but still not full reviews, although I did consider it for the first one...

First up is Boy Kills World. And this absolutely is going to show up if I do a list of the best movies I watched this year, regardless of then they came out. Firstly... Bill Skarsgård. Who is a beautiful, beautiful man. But the whole premise, which I was intrigued by when the trailer came out (although, I'll full admit I had completely forgotten the movie existed until Fluffy mentioned it again), of a "deaf mute" assassin who doesn't remember what his own voice sounds like, so his internal monologue is the voice of his favourite video game, aka H. Jon Benjamin (Bob from Bob's Burgers). And the writing is perfectly pitched and very sharp. 

Yes, it's incredibly gory and bloody and brutal. But also, unlike a lot of other movies, the violence in the finale of the movie actually means something and has stakes to it. It's just a very smart script. The cast is incredibly solid and playing up just the right amount of ham. I can absolutely see this picking up a cult following over time, because it deserves it. If nothing else, it should tell you a lot that I watched it a second time before I took it back to the library. Just because.

The other thing was the very odd anime, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. The main character, Human Man From Earth (he has a name, I forget what it is), who... well, the title basically sums up what happens to him... he is a complete pervert. The last thing he tells someone before he "dies" in the first episode is to put his computer hard drive in the bath and make sure it can't be accessed. That tells you everything you need to know about the pornography he has accumulated. Also, he, and the show, are a little too obsessed with bewbs. In a "if you weren't a little round slime, women should be slapping your face continuously" way. I also kind of hoped the show might be self aware enough for him to, for example, lust over Lady Elves, and then have the whole idea flipped on it's head, and have all the elves be highly androgynous or something. But no. Bewbs.

Having said that though, and putting that to one side, it's actually a really interesting concept and executed incredibly well. While he's a little bit of a "oh, he can do everything and is super powerful, blah blah blah" aka Marty Stu type character, the idea that he can just absorb other creatures powers because he acquires a certain set of powers due to the things he said while he was dying is a fun concept. As is the show's premise that "monsters" (I'm sure the show uses Japanese names for most of them, but the English dub and subtitles default to some fairly common fantasy races) don't have names, but once a powerful creature gives them one, they essentially "level up". I only borrowed the first half of the first season... so I do want to at least finish out the season. I don't know if I'm in it for the long haul beyond that though.

I figured I would do what little decorating I do for Christmas... which is essentially the knock off Lego Christmas wreath, the three Christmas themed Winnie the Pooh critters (my three spirit animals, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore) on a ribbon, the baubles on the support cage for the (slowly dying) parlor palm and the neon Christmas tree. Admittedly, I did also add a little tealight candle holder thing and the clear resin reindeer with the bells that I haven't gotten out in a hot minute.

The intent was to get Fluffy to plug the neon tree in when he got here yesterday, because it involves some Lying On Floor and Reaching For Things, both of which my back has previously not been a fan of. So I was just connecting the neon to the base and I heard a snap noise. Yes. After a very long time, the neon broke. Admittedly, the tree has had a good run.I didn't initially know when the hell I bought it, although I did remember that I got it from Arndale at The Reject Shop. But after a little bit of a deep dive into the blog, specifically the first couple of Decembers, just in case... and I found a post detailing previous Christmas decorations, which lead me back to an "ABC's of Me" post from 2005, including the immortal entry...

N is for Neon Christmas Tree... I got it the other day... it's tacky, stands 32cm high, is really really bright and only cost $10, but I like it

Turns out "the other day" was a post for when we went to see The Corpse Bride. It does actually astound me on occasion how many things I've actually detailed in the blog that eventually, if it happened after July 2005, I can generally find a reference. Which means it was a 19 year old neon tree. Also, for some reason I had $25 in my head... but yeah $10 makes a whole lot more sense.

So, pour one out for the very cheap and elderly neon homie. Who bathed various apartments in green and pink light and made many of my Christmases feel slightly more festive. And absolutely was worth the price. Ye shall be missed.

Friday Night DnD was cancelled for reasons, so instead Fluffy and I did a movie night.

And his choice was One Cut of the Dead, a Japanese movie from 2017. I'm not going to say a lot about it, but it's absolutely worth watching. I went in knowing nothing, was somewhat confused for about 10 minutes, spent the next 20 minutes waiting to see if my theory was correct and then enjoyed the rest of the movie. It's very "low budget indie movie", but it's worth a look. I think I enjoyed it more for what it was trying to do than the movie it actually was, if that makes sense.

In return, I showed him Soapdish from 1991, a movie that completely accidentally, has some superficial connections in theme to One Cut. Also, it's a movie that, in 1991 seemed perfectly fine, but in 2024 absolutely shits the bed in the last... three minutes. And it could absolutely be fixed with two to three very small changes. But it's a movie that is amazing for 95 minutes and stumbles as it takes it's bows.

Anyway...

Today was... a lot of doing things we probably could have done in the last several weeks, but didn't because of reasons.

We started with Supermarketry. This week I'm defaulting to Tuna Noodle Doo. I'm trying to not just make the same thing every single week like I did last Summer, even if I can swap between like three different options, it's enough.

Then we did the Big W/Kmart loop. Ma wanted to poke around Big W, I needed some things at Kmart. It's been a minute, but also, I had slightly forgotten that I need to not be anywhere near the shops for pretty much the whole of December. Because people is nuts in the lead up to Christmas. Obviously.

Kmart was the better result overall. What I did find was an accidental Christmas tree replacement. Not neon, obvs, because lightning does not, in fact, strike twice. But I found a three part candle (well, two parts are a candle, the top is... the top) that make up a tree. Is it perfect? No, the colour is slightly too sagey, and for no reason I can think of, the top is two shades lighter than the rest of it. That would be fine if they were going for an ombre, but I'm pretty sure the bottom two are exactly the same colour.

It's pretty enough though. And also candles.

I also got a gummy bear "drink jar", which is very cute, and some beads with which to perform crochet experiments.

Not a bad run, honestly.

photo saturday: making things go kaboom

Today's DnD Character Colouring Book is a companion piece to last week's mentors for my current character. This is Sindri, son of Craftmistress Ulla, and Hali's best friend. Technically also his first friend. And the first gnome he never met.

He originally had a very different design, but I wasn't necessarily vibing with that. Plus he's kind of my Emergency Backup Character if the worst should happen in these last few games. Because, honestly, I can't be bothered pivoting to a whole new class. A new subclass I can handle, especially as I don't know that I'll be coming back to the Artificer well any time soon.

Also pictured is his Homunculus Servant, Bubble. As in "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble". Because I never quite got to the place where it made sense to have one on Hali.

Anyway...

This week I attempted a pasta salad recipe. And it mostly worked. It's just that the Greek yoghurt dressing kind of needed a) more actual dressing and b) a flavor other than Greek yoghurt. The idea is definitely sound... although it probably needs some refining to get it to a point where it really works for me. But it's better having two different options than making the same thing all Salad Season.

I also finished my crochet project... snek amigurumi for the win. I named him Henry Spofford III... from a minor character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, for no real reason. It just seemed to fit in the moment. Plus it's fun to say.

I do need to take some photos of everything I've stumbled my way through this year, since I really haven't been doing that. And before I give things to people at Christmas. So there might be spam at some point.

Also... just as a general "Fuck My Life"... it says something when you tear up the roof of your mouth on the pointy part of a peach pit. That something is nothing good. But it says it anyway.

The Mini Media Reviews for this week are Over the Garden Wall, which I did not care for at all. I found the characters annoying and the storyline weird and random for the sake of being weird and random. Mostly I was just bored by it. By the time it got to the "reveal" at the end of 8th episode, I could not have cared less.

The other mini review is for The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan, the first half of a two-parter (the other half is on it's way, although it might take a minute). And it's the first Musketeers movie I've seen that is actually French. Also, they made D'Artagnan hot, they made the King of France hot and they made Porthos bisexual. What's not to love. But it's very good. It's a little "we set a movie in the past so everything is brown" that you often get with this type of film, but otherwise it was excellent.

This week was slightly strange, as the second to last week in November generally is... because it was the Norwood Christmas Pageant today. Which means that the way to the supermarket is terribly convoluted. So like in previous years, shopping got moved to Friday morning instead.

Which meant that, unlike a normal Saturday morning, I decided to go my Friday morning walk, had Friday morning breakfast and then did Saturday morning shopping with Ma. Which, as always, threw off my brain for the rest of the day. And then because it was going to be quite hot, I sent Ma home relatively early.

Friday Night DnD was relatively short and sweet. Annoyingly the drive there and back wasn't, because just like last week there were roadworks on the very direct route which meant that we had to take the very indirect route along a road I fucking hate driving on, even at 11:30pm. But the game itself was okay.

Anyway...

Today was... nothing. I slept it. I made breakfast. I pottered about. T'was good.

photo saturday: home town teachers

Something a little different for today's DnD Character Colouring Book... NPCs. The backbone of any good campaign. In this case, the leaders of the Kaboom Collective, where my bird boy Hali learned his trade. The Craftmistress Ulla Horcusporcus (and yes, it is one of the more ridiculous gnomish surnames, but also one of my favourites), and Forgemaster Tygus Ironcloak.

I also wanted to go for more of a "full scene" for these two, so that both my DM and the other players got a sense of the location. I don't exactly remember where the art behind them came from, but it fit the bill pretty much exactly.

And honestly, I possibly should have posed the the other way around, but I like that it looks like either Ulla has just handed the gem off to Tygus or he's about the hand it off to her.

Anyway...

So, fun fact, that became blatantly obvious once I thought about it for five seconds... when you make something and put a lot of chopped, fresh parsley in it, the water in the parsley has to go somewhere. Which meant that this week's quiche was a little damp. Overall not bad, but it didn't hold together quite as well as it should have.

I also started another crochet project... just for me, and for no real reason... I just decided that I wanted to make myself an amigurumi snake. Mostly because I'd worked out exactly how much fucking yarn I currently own. But also just to make myself something cute.

Weirdly though, while I could work on the previous shrug cardigan project for long stretches of time, I've been doing the snake in shorter bursts. Possibly because I'm basically working a tube that I have to hold with my first two fingers and thumb. But it's coming out super cute. I just have to work out when to stop... because it's a snek, so while I can just keep going until I run out of this particular yarn, I have quite a bit of it left. And there will come a point of ridiculousness. I assume I will stop just on the other side of that point.

Because, you know... me.

There wasn't really much of a Mini Media Review this week. I just watched the third season of The Legend of Vox Machina. It was... fine. I think there's a slight cognitive dissonance with doing twelve half hour episodes for a storyline that was over 50 hours of table game time. And it just kind of squishes things down a little too much and turns what I know would have been impactful battle scenes fighting literal dragons into a five minute sequence Which I get, I do. But both things can be true at the same time. I also don't have a huge knowledge of or emotional connection to the first Critical Role campaign. So it just left me a little underwhelmed.

It wasn't terrible. I just found myself zoning out a little.

Also, insert my yearly vague complaint about car races and the need to also have jet planes flying directly over where I live repeatedly. I mean, do all those things... just do them elsewhere.

Friday Night DnD was the introduction of the aforementioned NPCs. We finally make it to Hali's backstory, which will only really be a flying visit, but it was good because I got to kind of step temporarily into the DM seat in order to introduce the location, rather than just trying to download my entire brain into the DM's brain. And it doesn't completely wrap his backstory up... there are still things to tie up and at least one plot thread that I definitely want to tug on.

It was a good session overall honestly, although, I would say that because it was very My Character focused. But look, everybody else has had those moments, mine just came last. Which I'm fine with.

Anyway...

Today was... warm. Not as warm as it was forecast to be. But still "hide indoors where the sun can't find you with the air conditioner on" warm.

So, we just did the supermarket thing, and then I sent Ma on her merry way before it got too warm.

photo saturday: dancing queen

So, I kind of backed myself into a corner with the Bard in the 2024 PHB Character Colouring Book. Because, honestly, while I like the College of Dance Bard, I'm still not really here for Bards. Plus because of the way I'd assigned the other species and done a distribution of gender, I was slightly stuck with "female Aasimar noble" as my starting position.

I mean, nobody but me is making these rules, and I could ignore them, or I could have made a non-binary character or something... but I feel like if I was doing this for real, it would be a world away from that as an idea. And I did already do a trial run of that concept with Micah. There's also a non zero amount of Micah DNA in Oriel's design.

But Oriel is the third iteration of the idea. Not counting Micah. Because I'd also gotten it into my brain that she needed a shaved head. Which was nice, but kind of walled me into a mental cul-de-sac as far as design went.

Have I done this outfit combo before? Not 100% specifically... but Countess used the same jacket and top. And I've used the jacket a lot, including last week on Nightingale. Plus there are some characters who haven't seen the light of day that definitely use a similar combo.

The new nails, the bracelets and the choices I made with the face did make this the one that I finally considered good enough though.

Anyway.

I delved back into the world of quiche and potato salad this week. I am considering leaning into a whole pasta salad vibe as an alternate, because honestly, just iterating on the same thing gets kind boring.

The first dip back into the pool was still tasty tho.

So, this week's Mini Media Review (because I'm still flipping between movies and TV), is the end of Teen Wolf. More on that in a second.

Well, technically I did try to watch Violet Evergarden, but it was absolutely not my thing. I was mostly bored to the point where I half fell asleep during the last episode I watched, and when I was awake I was somewhat icked out by whole "is this woman who make be a robot or some weird genetically engineered slave supposed to be 12 or 37?". Honestly the only part of the story I was vaguely interesting in was what the hell Violet actually was, but the show was interested in something that definitely wasn't that. And I know that there's a lot of technical aspects behind the look of the show that make it "important", but, honestly... m'eh. It wasn't ugly, but there wasn't ever a single moment when I stopped and went "wow, that's gorgeous".

So, yeah, we're filing that squarely in the "not for me" category.

The final season of Teen Wolf on the other hand. Holy fucking shit.

Technically speaking, there are "eight" seasons in Teen Wolf. But seasons 3 and 6 are both divided into A and B parts that each take up half the season and that were aired about six months apart. Seasons 1, 2, 3A and 3B are all 12 episodes long. Seasons 4, 6a and 6B are all 10 episodes long, and Season 5 is the only "long season" that has a single storyline that lasts for all 20 episodes.

But I'm talking about both Seasons 6A and 6B here. They're both amazing. 6A might be the best Teen Wolf season though. And if I had to rank the whole show... it may well be 6A, 3B, 5, 6B, 3A... and then 1, 2 and 4 is some random interchangeable order. If I'm counting the two split seasons as a whole, then I think the ranking is 6, 5, 3, 2, 1, 4 maybe. Again, the last three are a little switchable.

Season 6 as a whole is very, very strong though. I will freely admit that I cried or teared up in pretty much every single episode of 6A at one point or another. And if it wasn't every episode, it was pretty damn close. I love the choices, both the ones the production made and the ones caused by circumstances that they had to adapt to, I love everything about it. Is it incredibly silly at times? Absolutely, but that's Teen Wolf. It's basically a Supernatural Soap Opera, of course it has silly moments. I still fucking love it.

And then we come to 6B. Don't get me wrong, it's excellent. It's just, intentionally, hard to move through. Both halves of the season deal with the same theme, they just come at it from opposite ends. I will also say that given where the world (specifically the US) was in 2016/2017 when this was produced/aired, 6B makes perfect sense.

Are there parts of 6B that I found it hard to watch? Yes. Are there also parts that made me clap my hands like a demented clockwork monkey? Also yes. And as I said to Fluffy earlier in the week as he still lags behind me by a couple of seasons, there are a couple of ways you can end a series like this. One of those ways is the Buffy route, where you just drop the entire location of the show in a giant hole in the ground and leave it at that. Or you can go the Angel route and proudly proclaim that this is probably the end of the world and then never resolve that.

Or, you can do what Teen Wolf did. Life keeps going. We're not going to be watching it on a weekly basis anymore (or, you know, binge watching it over the course of a couple of days on DVD, whatever the case may be), but the characters pick themselves up, dust themselves off and carry on. And it's a fitting way to round out the season and the series.

The movie will be on the radar at some point, but Fluffy made me promise we'd watch it together. So fully expect that to show up in the Christmas/New Year slots at some point if we don't get to it before then.

I also managed to finish my crochet project. I wasn't tracking the length of time it took, which I possibly should have been. I know that it was many, many hours of both Teen Wolf and watching people play video games though. And I did turn it into the cardigan/shrug, which mostly works. If I knew when I restarted it what I know now, would I have made different decisions? Sure. But I gave it a test run last night and it works and it serves it's purpose, and I once again mostly just made it up as I was going along (if making a rectangle and then attaching two parts of it is "making it up").

It was also designed as something the throw on when I was just a little cold, or on DnD nights when I need a little something for the drive home. Because it's not a full on Winter clothing item... it doesn't have any real arms... but it will be useful for just sitting around home at certain points.

And I like how it looks.

It does mean that I am "in search of a new project" at present. I have a few ideas... but I need to get past the "how the fuck do I start this" of it all first though.

Friday Night DnD was... not exactly chaos... but more "expectation of doing A, however B happening instead". Which has happened a few times this campaign and is totally fine. I'd just set my brain to A already.

Anyway...

Today was basically just the supermarket. Nothing much to report other than that.

photo saturday: complicated woman

So... it's weird. I was certain that I'd done an updated, post Face Customiser version of Nightingale. Turns out, no, I had not. And I know this version has been around for a while, because the bustier is from the 2023 Advent Calendar, and there's a version of her in a different top from before that. The jacket is from March though, so that might be when this particular version was finished.

I did, of course, need to update her with the new nails.

But this is another one of those where you compare the old Photoshop coloured version with this version and just go... well, clearly that version that I thought was pretty good was actually just hot garbage.

I also added a Flaming Fist badge from Inky's waistcoat... because, honestly, those badges have all been the gift that keeps on giving, and I've reused them on numerous other models. Does it makes sense that the post campaign version of Nightingale would be wearing it, even though we definitely had badges at an early point in the campaign. Not really. But I like to think that maybe she did some additional work with them as an Outside Contractor. Or maybe she just wore it as an accessory and to remind the Flaming Fist guards she encountered not to piss her off.

The second one feels much more Nightingale, honestly.

I do also wish that maybe Hero Forge would see their way to updating some of the more basic instruments with other basic versions... and not ones all crapped up with skulls and demon wings. Because I could do with a nicer, less chunky violin. It's also somewhat weird to me that her violin became so integral to who she was... and that I kind of stumbled into the idea of plucking or pizzicato without specifically knowing it was a thing. And she definitely did that a lot.

Anyway...

I think this week marked the last week of Soup Season. We're in November now and the weather is definitely leaning away from soup being an option. But as a last entry, this week's soup was basically chicken and vegetables, and pretty good. I think that a shot of paprika does help any slightly generic soup though.

I have also continued to mainline Teen Wolf. I finished Season 4 and Season 5, although I did have a little break between the two. I also have little to no actual memory of most of Season 5. I was pretty convinced that I'd only seen the first three or four episodes, but I was just doing a little poking around in the blog archives... and found this from the beginning of July 2016...

And I mainlined the entire fifth season of Teen Wolf between Sunday and Wednesday.

 Given the context of the rest of that post, I 100% understand why I do not remember any of it beyond the first couple of episodes. But it's weird. There have been things in other seasons that I didn't completely remember, but there were also things I definitely did. There was nothing beyond the first couple of eps. No elements pinged any memories of any kind. Which is weird, because it's actually one of the best seasons. Definitely on par with the third, which I have long touted as being the best.

And I didn't get Season 6 on DVD until Christmas 2018... so I think given that there was such a gap, I was just waiting to rewatch the whole series before diving into the final season.

But that's basically where we are now. And I definitely haven't seen any of 6... I don't believe.

Also, this was the first kind of complete fail I had regarding library DVDs. I got two DVDs in this week, one a series, the other a movie. But it turned out that the disc the series was on was completely busted and I couldn't play it. And the movie was the final Resident Evil movie. Which I was sure I hadn't seen... got it in from the library, though to myself "I might just check what the last one I own is, watch that one first maybe"... turns out, I own the last Resident Evil movie. I got it Christmas 2017. And according to my records, I watched it in August 2019. No fucking memory of it.

The other thing I've been doing a lot of this week is crochet. Well, and crochet related things. Because I got a slight bee in my bonnet early in the week about the fact that I still had a bunch of yarn in a sports bag by my bed, and space in the big plastic tub. So I lost a good chunk of time winding skeins into cakes and untangling skeins that got tangled in the process so I could keep winding them. I didn't manage to completely empty the bag, but I at least managed to get all the large cakes of yarn into the same place, and shoved everything that was leftover in the bag.

I also continued on my Is It A Shrug Cardigan Or Is It A Rug. Because, honestly, a couple of people have asked me "what is it" about the current project, and my default answer is "yes". It's gunna be something. If I can make it a cardigan, it'll be that, if not, lap rug.

But I've switched from the very pretty jewel tone yarn to white yarn, which was part of the plan given the amount of the jewel tone stuff I had and the general size this thing needs to be, but I'm just enjoying making what, right now, is just a big old rectangle.

What I do want to do next is also a little thing for me... I wanna make a little snek. For no specific reason... but also, it's just a tube essentially. And now that I have sorted out my yarn and can see exactly what I have, it might be a nice stashbusting project. Of course the other issue is going from "I have a lot of yarn in this nice neat box" to "I have now made a thing and need to put it somewhere". But fuck it. Some of that issue is solved by giving the thing to somebody else.

Friday was Chiro Day... I also stopped by Dymocks intending to pick up the new D&D Players Handbook... but because things are stupid, the literal books made by Wizards of the Coast are classified as "games" not books, and they come from a completely different distributor, and the very nice woman I spoke to couldn't a) order me a book in or b) tell me literally anything about when it would be available. And yes, I could have walked down the Mall, gone into my Friendly Local Games Store and picked up a copy. But I have a perfectly good gift certificate with money still on it at Dymocks that I want to use.

Urgh. Irritating. But I will bug the hell out of them until they can actually tell me something. Because it makes literally no sense they wouldn't get at least some copies in. But it's also not going anywhere and if it turns out that they're not getting it in, I can, as I said, literally walk down the Mall and get it.

It's just needlessly dumb and annoying.

Friday Night D&D was good... still wrapping up the end of our downtime. But we're back out in the world now and headed straight into my character's backstory. Which, as I said to Fluffy on the way there last night, it's been interesting to play a character who has so little backstory and so little high stakes, emotive backstory at that.

It's nice.

Anyway...

Today was warm... but windy. So, less unbearable than days that are warm but not windy. I haven't given up and put the aircon on anyway, at least not yet.

But otherwise, we did the usual supermarket thing, I bought things to make quiche and potato salad this week... so basically returning to the Summer Menu here at Casa Yani.

We didn't do anything after, because of the aforementioned potential for warm weather, I sent Ma home relatively early.

So, that was it really.