photo saturday: hi tech duo

Today's Character Colouring Book is both a slight sidestep and comes with something of a story. These are clearly not DnD characters... they're Cyberpunk characters, it says so, right up in the top right corner. Except anybody paying attention to the banner at the top of the blog, or my ongoing ramblings, might recognise the character on the left as my terrible, terrible human dumpster fire cleric, Demyan.

Because since the early days of the Cyberpunk 2077 video game, I always maintained that if I was going to play the game (which is unlikely), I would play the Corpo origin storyline, and would make a version of Demyan as my character. Because he fits so wonderfully into that idea of a Cyberpunk Corpo/Exec.

Then I got an email from Demiplane, where I've messed around with their various Tabletop RPG character makers before, saying they now had the Cyberpunk Red game. So, I went off to make me a Demyan.

It could not have been a more seamless fit, honestly. Every narrative option I was given, there was a clear parallel to Demyan. It all just worked.

When I mentioned this to Fluffy, we talked about his Demyan equivalent, Moss, because, honestly, these are two characters that neither of us can fully let go of. They live, rent free, in our collective heads for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of. Maybe it was because we never got a chance for them to have a proper narrative end. The campaign, such as it was, just kind of fizzled out and the last we left our boys, they were taking a long rest with their other two companions in the middle of a wizarding school for magical asshole teenagers deep underground, part way through an adventure.

So we never got to give them a "narrative wrap up", or really cover what might have happened next.

It's also interesting because there is a different version of Demyan that lives in Fluffy's head than the one who lives in mine. Which is, actually, fairly on brand. There's the Demyan that he projects into the world, and the Demyan that I was fully aware of as a much richer character that existed only inside his own head. I'm not saying he wasn't a complete asshole. He was. But he also had layers and nuance.

They are also the two characters that Fluffy and I end up talking about the most. It always comes back to them. There will be a song or a movie character or some piece of media that one of us sees and is very "Demyan/Moss coded", and we end up talking about them. 

So, of course, if there is a Cyberpunk version of Demyan, he absolutely has a Cyperpunk version of Moss in his life.

Moss, who was a tabaxi (catlike humanoid... see also my speedy floof boi, Rain), but in this universe we replace the black leopard aesthetic with African heritage, tattoos, cybernetic eyes and an outfit that comes with a holographic tail and ears. Plus a robot arm and robot leg, because Fluffy said that Moss would have "too many implants". Where did he get the astronaut boot? Nobody knows and he absolutely has no memory of getting it.

Also, funnily enough, it's not the first time I've used that exact same jacket and pants for a "modern" character for Fluffy.

What's also interesting is that I went with much more stretched out human style proportions rather than the usual Hero Forge proportions. Which makes Demyan look the 6'1" he actually is, although actual Demyan would have a much narrower/skinnier chest than HF allows.

Fluffy's response when I showed him the Cyberpunk Moss... "I would play the fuck out of that".

Their former DnD relationship does slot wonderfully over to a Cyberpunk world. Demyan being the Exec that works for a large, multinational corporation (the church of his evil DnD goddess) and is in a power struggle with an Exec from another division (the head of the Waterdeep branch of the church). So since this Moss is a hacker/netrunner, Demyan went "off the books" to employ him to find dirt on the other Exec, only to find that Moss finds said information, but is also full of his company's faulty cybernetic implants which are driving him slightly insane, so he hears the voices of rogue AIs or NET Ghosts that nobody else can hear (which accounts for OG Moss's Wild Magic sorcery and warlock patron). So, much to his chagrin, Demyan now has to keep Moss safe.

Thus, hijinks ensue.

Not that I think we'd ever play these characters in a Cyberpunk Red game... but at least they're there if we need them. Hence the story time.

Anyway...

There isn't a lot that happened this week...

Mini Media Reviews were a little all over the place. I started with Memoirs of a Snail, which Google lists as a "Drama/Tragicomedy", and I would 100% agree with. It's beautiful, but it's also deeply fucking depressing. But that does seem to be the directors personal wheelhouse. I have a very vague memory of watching Mary and Max and feeling much the same. Good though, but not for those days when your mental health is a little ragged.

Next up was Alpha Rift... well, kind of. It was so monumentally terrible that I lasted about 20 minutes before I noped out of it. Actually, it was the point that I realised that the incredibly annoying female sidekick was going to be sticking around that I called it quits. It felt like somebody's bad DnD fan fiction made on a shoestring budget with heavily improvised and unnatural dialogue.

Instead of that I ended up watching a documentary called Saucy!: Secrets of the British Sex Comedy, which was very interesting and occasionally a big tragic. 

I followed that up with Shaolin Soccer, which I'm not sure I liked as much as God of Cookery.

Then I rounded out the week by finally getting around to Season 2 of Romulus, which I watched back in 2021. Originally, I wanted to watch Season 1 again first, because they were both of SBS On Demand last year. But I waited a little too long and the first season is gone (for now). So I just watched the second and had to kind of piece together some of the characters and plot points from my memory.

It's still an excellent TV show. Full of deeply flawed characters who occasionally I want to slap the shit out of. But I still highly recommend it.

Otherwise there wasn't a Friday Night DnD this week, because people who aren't me get sick and stuff.

Anyway...

Today was hot. But weirdly, unlike other hot Saturdays, the supermarket wasn't packed super early. So it was just a casual wander around. And afterwards, we just came back here and hung out for a couple of hours before I went Ma back up the road.

photo saturday: what a big axe you have

There are times when half of an idea leads you to a fully formed character just dropping straight into your lap. Thus was the case with this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. It started off with just looking at potential paladin ideas. And I also realised that I don't use that nice axe as much as I perhaps could.

And then I went with the missing/blinded eye. And I think that's when it all started to take shape. The claw marks, the whole vibe started taking shape as a take on the Woodcutter from Little Red Riding Hood.

So we got Marrok Strongbones, a woodcutter and farmer whose family/home was attacked and killed by a wolf... dire wolf... werewolf... I'm not sure... one of those. Werewolf is the most fun, but they also have 71 hit points, so that feels a little less doable for even a Level 3 character. I am formulating how that could work in my head though... because the new werewolves don't have the immunity to everything but silvered weapons that the old versions had. Which seems a little silly, narratively. I'm sure it makes sense to them mechanically though. And who is to say that he killed the werewolf, just drove it off.

There are a few little details I like... the wolf teeth and fur on the bracers, the ragged remains of the lumberjack shirt around the waist. The whole face. Also using the breastplate from this year's Advent Calendar, even though I wasn't sure it was ever going to be useful.

Marrok is definitely on a shortlist as a potential character, but it would have to be the right kind of campaign. Something with some definite lycanthrope theming.

Anyway...

This week has been a literal and figurative hot mess.

Literal because it got to over 40 by Wednesday. Figurative, because even though the temperature dropped to a more reasonable high 20's on Thursday, I was also without electricity from just after 8am until just after 3pm. I knew it was going to happen, but I was both slightly too warm without any kind of air movement in the house and also hugely bored. Should I have done elsewhere for most of the day? Probably. But I was also hoping against hope that they actually finished earlier than the time they said they were going to.

If the weather had been like it is today, I might have been fine... but sadly, twas not the case. I made it through, obviously, and smashed through the book I was reading and a graphic novel, but I still slightly lost my mind.

Thursday was also doubly weird... and I'll let me from Thursday explain why...

This is Dennis… I rescued Dennis from the middle of the footpath so he wouldn’t get stepped on. I expected Dennis to fly away pretty much immediately. Dennis had other ideas and I spent the rest of my morning walk carrying Dennis on my finger like I was a fucking Disney princess. I tried to drop Dennis off at the park, but Dennis was having none of it. Dennis stayed on my finger until I got home where he was last seen sitting on the hood of my car. Godspeed Dennis, and thank you...

So, yes... just like past me says. Dennis is a Tailed Emperor Butterfly, and based on how raggedy the edges of his wings were, possibly quite an elderly butterfly as these things go.

I also hope that the many people who walked past me on my walk and didn't ask me about the butterfly or otherwise seem to notice, actually went home/to work/out in the world and said to numerous people in their regular lives "hey, you'll never guess what I saw this morning...".

Basically I hope I was somebody's (or many somebodies) Interesting Story Of The Day. Or everybody is terrible at noticing things and they had no idea why I was walking along with one hand in the air.

It was just one of those singularly strange but lovely experiences though. Also, I have no idea why I settled on the name Dennis... it just popped into my head.

There wasn't really much of any Mini Media Reviews this week. I'd picked up the second half of the first season of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and... no. Just no. I wish they'd finished out the storyline from the first half on the other DVD set. It was only missing two episodes. But the after that a whole new storyline starts, and introduces the point at which I absolutely drew the line. That point was Milim Nava. IYKYK. I could put up with Random Boobs in the first part of the series. But just no to everything about that character.

So, thus far, I'm not really finding anime that doesn't either squick me out (this) or put me to sleep (Jojo and Violet Evergarden). I might just have to make the executive decision that anime is just not my jam. Or at least not anything I'm getting hold of from the library.

There was, however, the 8+ hour finale of Critical Role's third campaign. I've enjoyed this campaign a lot less than the previous one, but this was a decent send off. It will be interesting to see where they go next. They are being uncharacteristically cagey about future plans right now though, which is slightly frustrating.

Friday Night DnD was... slightly delayed, but... eventful. We gathered some additional information, we didn't have to fight a banshee, which is always good. But remember last week when I said that my character joining up with the Very Obvious Bad Guys while in pursuit of a threesome was going to come back and bite him in the ass. Yeah, it already happened. Well, is about to happen, because my boy is now supposed to go and beat up the barmaid who is both resisting their control and also happens to be the daughter of Oldy McOldbeard.

I have... A Plan though. Well, part of A Plan that may be dependent on dice rolls, but at the very least, it's something. Because as much as I kind of would love to just let things play out as they would do without him there, and just deal with the consequences... that doesn't feel quite like my boy. I dunno... like I said, while there is the start of A Plan, we'll see where things end up going after I think about it for the rest of the week.

Anyway...

This week we definitely made up for spending less at the supermarket. And then not really much of anything.

photo saturday: fairy princess

I'm currently batting two for two when it comes to making Other People's Characters. Today's DnD Character Colouring Book winds the clock back to when I was running The Wild Beyond The Witchlight. And Mrs never managed to make a Hero Forge model of her character that she liked. I did attempt something at the time, but looking back on it, it definitely wasn't quite there.

So, after having Mrs decide that the version I made of her character for the current campaign was to her liking and she order the physical model, I went back to the conversations I'd had with her at the time about what was going on with her character, and pulled out one of the models that she'd sent me.

And while I didn't strictly follow everything she'd said, I did go with the underlying themes and with the added benefit of hindsight (and the many new elements that have shown up on Hero Forge since then), crafted Princess (and, yes, again, not her real name... while I might share the models, I am going to avoid using the names of other people's characters).

In the end, a large proportion of the key to getting her to feel right was the simple white outfit. There's already so much colour going on that any additional colours you add just tended to swamp her. Black would also have worked, but they weren't right for her character.

So after several days of very minor tweaks, I showed it to Mrs last Friday and sent her the link during the week. And much like with her current character, she messaged me towards the end of the week to say she'd ordered this model too. Which, honestly, feels pretty good.

Anyway...

I spent a pleasant couple of hours on Sunday putting together the LEGO Polaroid OneStep SX-70 Camera that Fluffy got me for Christmas. I did think that I'd lost a piece along the way, but it turns out to have fallen under one of the chairs, and I only found it after I was done.

I think I possibly screwed up the internal mechanism a bit... I think it's supposed to do a think that makes the photos pop out, but mind doesn't for some reason. Mostly I'm fine with that, because it's just going to sit nicely on the shelf with all the other LEGO cameras. But also one of the sides came loose this morning after showing it to Fluffy last night and Ma this morning, so I might need to take it partially apart because of the bit that came loose, so I'll just poke around the innards while I'm doing that, see if I can spot what went wrong.

It was a fun build though. It's been a minute since I did a LEGO build, and one of the things I really liked about this one is that a lot of the inner mechanical pieces were in the same rainbow of colours on the front of the camera/film box.

This week's Mini Media Reviews is just one movie. The 2024 remake of The Crow. And while there were some minor character elements that I felt were a little more fleshed out and interesting than the 1994 version, at the end of the day, the whole thing just ended up being... dull. Which, honestly, is the ultimate sin here.

Otherwise I ended up kind of rolling through some of the B movies from the 50's and 60's that just sit on YouTube. Nothing earth shattering, and a lot of them ended up being things that I mostly watched in the background rather than something I was fully paying attention to.

Friday was Chiro Day... I ended up wandering around the library in town after doing my usual wanderings. The city library's range is... slightly weird. Or feels that way. But maybe I just spend entirely too much time wandering the stacks.

Friday Night DnD was... the longest foreplay before a threesome possibly in history. Or, possibly the longest foreplay full of many bad decisions. Because when you state that you're essentially playing a bisexual disaster, and the first two of the very clear and obvious Bad Guys in the small town you walk into are a man and a woman and you decide to fuck with them by smiling at them when everybody else is afraid of them...

And they come back into the bar the next night... and it becomes one of those evenings when you just kind of roll with things. Also, you realise that you're getting a lot of unintended information from just tagging along with these idiots.

So now my boy has "joined" the Bad Guys, which is absolutely not going to end badly for everyone. But he also had himself a decidedly average threesome.

But the end result of all that is that for most of the first two hours of last night's game, I was basically running off on my own because events just kept unfolding. I didn't hate it. But I also definitely got out of the way a little bit once our characters were all together again, so I wasn't intentionally sucking all the oxygen out of the room. And everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves.

Anyway...

Today was a slightly weird supermarket day. It didn't necessarily feel like it at the time, but we ended up spending a bunch less.

Afterwards we went Looking At Things. Mostly the things in question were trying to find Sodastream bottles that seem to have been discontinued, and also looking at potential new kettles for Ma. We came away with none of that. Honestly, we came away with not much of anything really.

But that happens sometimes.

photo saturday: lucky little guy

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book covers quite a bit of ground. Firstly an idea that has been floating around in both my brain and just in the DnD collective space for a hot minute. A halfling Divination wizard. So, basically, just finding all manner of new and unique ways to mess with dice rolls.

It did partially start with the idea of using one of the "star patterns" on a wizard robe/hat, since the ability to add patterns to hats is relatively new. It took me a while to work out what to do with the trim at the top of the robes though, until I accidentally made it all leather and realised that it worked really well that way.

Also, Theordoric is the first halfling where I've changed over the ear styles. Previously I was using the default Hero Forge halfling ears, which are pointy. And those are cute, but current DnD art direction has halflings with round ears. So after a little bit of a play around, I decided on a specific ear style for my halflings and may have changed all the halflings accordingly.

And, honestly, it makes more sense looking at them next to the gnomes. It just means I need to go in and finagle a different set of ears from the default.

Anyway...

This week was mostly taken up with my rental inspection.

As usual, I split the cleaning over two days. I just can't do it all on the same day any more. After all the cleaning on Monday, I reorganised a couple of shelves on the bookcase in order to make a space for the LEGO Polaroid camera I got for Christmas.

Tuesday was the usual mopping and such, but I managed to be done by about midday. Then Wednesday I cleared out and killed some time at the library.

But as usual, the best part of the inspection is coming home after it's all over.

This week's Mini Media Reviews started out with the first season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure... and I made it through about four episodes before I was so bored I started to fall asleep. I just wasn't vibing with it. I find the art style kinda fugly and the whole thing is so incredibly overwrought. Also, those early episodes aren't at all what I was expecting... or rather what I'd been led to believe the show was about. I'm sure it would get there eventually... I just honestly couldn't be bothered waiting that long.

Fortunately I had the third and fourth seasons of The Umbrella Academy to watch instead. And, honestly, while I agree that the first two seasons are probably the very best ones, I also think they're all equally good. Each one has it's own charms, and all of them have unique issues. I really liked the final season, even though I wish they'd been given the full 10 episode run to round the story out. And, for the record, I was perfectly happy with the way it all ended.

Favourite character throughout the series, who never had a season where I didn't really dislike them... it has always been and remains Five. Best character, literally no notes.

Otherwise, Friday Night DnD didn't quite go the way any of us were really expecting. I'm starting to fully get a handle on my boy Whisper. And plot threads are starting to present themselves. It was a good session overall though.

Anyway...

Today was just the supermarket. Nothing exciting.