character saturday: bark boy

Okay... I'm absolutely running out of viable options for DnD Character Colouring Book... so we're kind of rummaging around in the bottom of the barrel... and most of the stuff left in there is just failed Barbarian experiments.

I've played with the "wooden skin" idea before, but I can't find the post right now, but I quite like how this came out on Eryn here. This is a pretty on the nose version of the idea of a World Tree Barbarian. A wood elf who is so wood elfy and so aligned with the World Tree that he becomes kind of a tree himself.

Honestly, that's about as far as I got.

Anyway...

I would like to formally request a refund on the whole of January. The user experience has been terrible, the user interface has been unhinged. It's just not meeting the key performance indicators in any sector and I would like a full do-over or at a very least a full refund to compensate.

The flu or cold or whatever the hell I've had for the majority of the month is still lingering. Malingering, one might even say. At least I can breathe through my nose at present, but there's still a vague snuffliness, a cough that makes me very happy that I went and got Ventolin last week, because that definitely helps. And because the Universe is an evil beast, the sinus issue kind of relocated into one of my ear canals, causing a who new reason for partial deafness.

Urgh.

But I did make a doctor's appointment for next week. Just to get this last bit checked out. Although, as always, I'm not expecting a lot. It's also a new doctor because my old one retired and the practice moved and nobody fucking bulk bills any more and everything sucks.

I finished the main campaign of Assassins Creed Mirage. And then legitimately had to look up one of those "wtf just actually happened in the end of that game". I'm messing around with the DLC right now, because my library loan was extended, so I have it for another couple of weeks, so why not.

Generally speaking, the game mechanics and story are good. It's much more of a game that is reliant on stealth than some of the other games. In a lot of ways it throws back to the early games. And it's a short campaign, it doesn't outstay it's welcome. I have positive things to say about the majority of the game.

Except for two things. The parkour. And the fact that it doesn't really tell you certain things. To be fair, it's less the parkour itself and more the "edge detection". You take Basim to the edge of something and press the button that is supposed to let you drop down and... he just doesn't. Sometimes he leaps into space, sometimes he does nothing, sometimes he crouches.

Because the drop down button and the jump button and the parkour button and the crouch button... they're all the same damn button. So it just all gets a little fussy. And, I'll be honest, there really isn't a fully need to parkour through most of the environment. Like when just travelling from A to B.

The problem is that parkour is such at the heart of the AC games that when they screw that up, the whole thing just feels a little... blah.

Next up is a bunch of quality of life things. Firstly, the game really didn't properly tell me that, hey, you should be pickpocketing every single person you encounter because that's the way money and the specific tokens you need for stuff work in this game. They all come from pickpocketing.

Also, just give me back the "match pace" button when talking from A to B with somebody else. Or make their pace just match Basim's by default. You did it in one of the games. Maybe more than one. Why the hell would you not just do that in every single game.

In other Mini Media Reviews...

This week was Crossbones. The John Malkovich TV show/miniseries where he plays Blackbeard. And my review for this is very simple. And that is... watch Black Sails. Crossbones is just... not great. Mostly it's the writing. It's just not where it needs to be. It was funny to realise that two of the other main actors were also in the leads in the Going Postal miniseries.

Next up was the first season of His Dark Materials. It's a beautifully done season. And, honestly, the only problems I really have with it are mostly the problems I have with the original books (which I've only read once). That it's a little too Stealth Jesusy. But that will be more of a problem in the second and third seasons (which I will be watching this week). But also that it's very clear that this was written by a middle aged man (both the book and the show) because no child talks or behaves like that.

But it was pretty enough that I wanna finish off the series.

This week's salad was a very unsuccessful tuna rice salad. It was fine, it was just very uninspired.

Hey, guess what... Friday Night DnD is finally back. Woo. And we accidentally did a giant boss battle. While also being under-leveled. And haven't played these characters for basically a month. So we nearly died. But managed to pull it together at the end.

Anyway...

Nothing too exciting from today. I had massive indecision about what the hell to make for dinners this week just because I have to clean for the inspection.

And given that the weather has been shit all week, and today started off with a thunderstorm that did nothing but make everything hot and muggy, we called it a day pretty early. 

character saturday: late night lady

So this week brings us back to the collection of characters I was working on back in November last year... the subclasses from the new book that came out and that I got for Christmas. And yes, I don't much care about bards, but I do like experimenting with building a lovely lady now and then.

She did get a last minute update because we got some new instruments during December, just not from the Advent Calendar. And she needs to be a little bit fancier.

Anyway...

Let's start at the beginning. Still sick. Annoyingly sick. Blocked sinus and hacking cough but otherwise fine sick. The muscles in the back of my neck hurt because I keep coughing sick. Finally went and got the Good Drugs from the chemist sick.

We'll circle back around to that later.

You know when you are sick though, and things that you know how to do just become more complicated than they should be... and that you get fixated on the wrong things. So I was attempting to make Baked Ziti this week... a pasta dish, because it's just easier to be able to serve it hot or cold and it being essentially fine. And the recipe was fine...  but suddenly I just forgot what "making a meat sauce" means. And I also used more pasta than the recipe... so the whole thing was a little dry, a little under salted and spiced enough that I could actually taste it fully. So not all bad.

I will definitely return to that as an idea... just use my actual brain.

This weeks' Mini Media Reviews... 

I accidentally managed to watch the first season of two TV shows where the library does have the second (or third) seasons. Which is a shame because I very much enjoyed the first seasons.

Firstly, Legion... or X-Men Lite. Like, it's a show about mutants from Marvel and it's definitely going to head in that direction. What I find the most fascinating is that it's a show about a man who can, essentially, reinvent reality, and the entire show might actually be happening inside his head. Now remember that this is me making assumptions based on the first season only, I haven't looked anything up.

But the show doesn't actually have a time frame. A character mentions the 60's... he's been gone for 20-something years IIRC, so that should make it the 80's. But somebody mentions email. Which, could point us to very late 1980's, because that's when email started to become commercially available. But there's a scene where there's an iMac G4 in the background, and that came out in 2002. But people dress anywhere from the 1950's through to the 1970's and 80's.

I had just assumed early on that it was set in the 70's. After the end of the first season I am thoroughly confused. And also sad that the library doesn't have the other two seasons.

Then I followed that up with Gentleman Jack. A show directly suggested to me by the Instagram algorithm. Because little clips would occasionally show up. And it's very, very good. Based on the diary of the "first modern lesbian", Anne Lister. And Suranne Jones is outstanding as the title character.

I rounded out the week with 30 Days of Night. Because somebody somewhere recently recommended it... and I have no memory of where or who. But it turns out to be a very, very good vampire movie. Definitely doing it's own thing, and very much rocking an early 2000's visual style, but the first 20 or so minutes before the vampires really show up are something of a masterclass on telling the audience just how screwed these people are about to be.

It's also definitely pulling some elements from the Dracula story, with a Renfield character and the vampires showing up by ship. But just a gentle head nod in that direction.

Also, mid 2000's Josh Hartnett. Always a good time.

I'm still working on the crochet poncho... did I already say I was working on a crochet poncho? I'm working on a crochet poncho. Mostly to give my hands something to do while watching TV.

But it will be good to have something I can just throw over whatever I'm wearing when it's cold.

Also I would like it to be cold again please.

I continued on with Assassins Creed Mirage. I still don't love it. For a number of reasons. Not least of all because like the third major mission is too damn hard to find your way into. So I ignored it for a really long time and went around visiting everywhere on the map and just doing whatever I felt like doing instead. And eventually came back and fumbled my way through the mission enough to continue the story. I'm not sure I'm going to bother finishing it, because I really don't care that much. But if nobody else wants it from the library and I can keep it for another couple of weeks, I might. 

There still wasn't any Friday Night D&D.

Anyway...

Look, I know it’s going to be a hot day today, I know it’s going to be a public holiday on Monday. However, dearest Unwashed Masses, that does not mean you all need to crowd the supermarket and act like you lost your damn minds. Please also remember that I will cut a bitch, especially when I've been sick for three weeks.

I did, however, discover that the chemist sells over the counter Ventolin. So I got some lovely Sudafed and a lovely inhaler. Good to know for later.

And because it's hot today, I sent Ma home relatively early.

character saturday: molly is friend

Meet Molly.

Molly is, for want of a better term, nuts. Or at least hearing things other people can't hear.

Molly is also what happens when you realise that your current DnD character really doesn't have a reason to go on the rest of the adventure for a variety of reasons. And you just start playing around with possible ideas. And Molly essentially falls out of the sky into your lap. And barring one change to her hairstyle, you really don't change the look of her at all. But you do rebuild her character sheet a couple of times until you get what you want.

Also you reskin a pseudodragon into a cranium rat, because while you can have the rat as a familiar with DM permission, if doesn't fly. And just having a weird little rat familiar with an exposed brain that you can just yeet into the air and it flies really fast just works for me. 

And then you go and start writing her backstory and write a very unhinged stream of consciousness that covers all of the things that she knows already so that she doesn't need to be brought up to speed on the events of the game. And it just pours out of you, until you have to stop and realise you wrote something incredibly unhinged.

And when you show it to your DM, he reads the first line and says "oh my god" out loud. Your work is done.

But it's also one of those characters where they don't remember a lot of their backstory... so you really get to just make things up.

I realised at a certain point that part of what I was channelling was Drusilla from Buffy. Very...

Drusilla: I'm naming all the stars. 

Spike: You can't see the stars, love. That's the ceiling. Also, it's day.

Drusilla: I can see them. But I've named them all the same name. And there's terrible confusion. 

I will fully admit I haven't fully gotten a handle on Molly, but I've only had a couple of opportunities to play her, and haven't been able to play her at all yet this year. But I'm enjoying her so far.

Anyway...

Hey, could everybody check that junk drawer in their kitchen, you know the one where you shove stuff and forget you have it... check that drawer for a very, very sharp ice cream scoop... and then come over and just scoop the entire top half of my nose clean off my face, I would be highly appreciative.

The "not well" from last week turned into either flu or cold with sinus congestion. I mean, that's essentially what was going on last week, but we've developed along a timeline this week. Until we get to the point where I hate the inside of my face. Very much a "can I please swap my head for one that works" Return to Oz style.

Urgh.

I actually followed a recipe for this week. Mostly. 

Cowboy Rice Salad. Except I put some chopped Kransky in. I will be making it again. Probably with brown rice. And definitely with more sausage. The best thing about it was that it was very nice cold for the first couple of days, but I also able too throw a portion into a frypan and heat it through and it was even better. Mostly because the only thing that I'd cooked the first time around was the rice and the sausage.

Definitely a keeper.

This week's Mini Media Reviews...

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim... So fucking boring. Sorry, but it just was. And it was really just "we copied the homework of original LotR movies and changed some bits". If felt very uninspired. The animation was... fine. But also, did this really need to be animated? It didn't really add anything.

Next up was a rewatch of the live action How To Train Your Dragon. I didn't cry this time around though. Admittedly, I've watched the whole trilogy and the live action movie within the last year, so that might have been part of it. Still good though.

Then it was Wolfwalkers. From the talented folks that brought us The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea. It really is the counterpoint to Kells though. And beautifully done. Just gorgeous.

I will say that I attempted to watch The Taste of Things based on a recommendation from Fluffy. I got 40 minutes in and died of boredom. I may give it another go at some later point once I'm no longer entirely made up of sinus congestion. But I also may not.

Instead I decided on the dumpster fire that was Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. Don't get me wrong. The production design, the effects, the Pokemon CGI, all outstanding. The plot was three dot points written on the back of a napkin and then given to mid-talent actors.

But I still want a real life Bulbasaur.

I rounded out the week with Scoob! Which is a movie that was trying to ignite a Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe in the world possible way... and just completely failing. It's also humorous to me when a company tries to make a movie based on an existing IP and just completely fail to understand why people love that IP in the first place. Oh, you have us a Scooby Doo movie and made Scooby and Shaggy be at odds with each other. Oh, you put Blue Falcon and Dynomutt in the movie... except you made it that Blue Falcon is actually retired, so this is his useless son trying to fill in as his father. Oh, you had Captain Caveman show up, and just had him talk normally and be voiced by Tracey Morgan.

The point, you missed her.

Also, did everybody involved with that movie just hate Fred? You got Zac Efron to voice him and then made him look like a background extra and gave him nothing to do. At least Daphne got a plotline.

I've also been working on a crochet project. Not least of all to have something to do with my hands at various points while I'm watching other things. And I say project, because I've started it, frogged it, restarted it and refrogged it about four times thus far. At the moment it's progressing.

Anyway...

Today was not that different from last week. I wore my mask to the supermarket, and while dealing with the groceries once we got back. And then Ma went home. I did give her the option of coming to the library with me, since I didn't have anything to watch some in last week, but she decided against it. So I just did a quick spin up the road myself.

I had originally grabbed one of the later Assassin's Creed games (Mirage) at my library on Friday with the intention of just using to stand in for watching stuff this week. But after playing it for about an hour last night, I was already somewhat over it. I'll give it another go later today, but the controls just feel very loose and floaty and bad.

character saturday: joy boy

Now that the Advent Calendar is over, we can return to our regularly scheduled program... starting with Fluffy's third character for this campaign. First old dwarf monk, then lying goblin rogue, now half-drow ranger.

I've also decided that these are what I will be calling "fan-art" of the other characters that I play with going forward. This isn't supposed to be what they actually look like, this isn't a redo of their character, this is me making my version of the character. So this is where I can do something I've done before, where I reflavor a tambourine as a shield. Does that make any sense? Not really, but who cares.

I'm also never fully certain of the background or the subclass when I make these things. Turns out I was spot on about the Ranger part... still not completely sure about the Bounty Hunter thing. But then it turns out that the little goblin was actually a Faction Agent and a Swashbuckler Rogue.

Honestly though, we need more swords like this. More rapier style swords honestly, but also more swords with thin and delicate hilts.

I did enjoy reworking the jester motley top into some leather armor though.

I also find it very funny that Fluffy finally made a character that my character could definitely hit on, and then I decided to change characters almost immediately. Typical. Not that I want to necessarily flirt with his characters, but given the number of characters we've played together, you would think it might have come up naturally at some point.

Personally I blame his penchant for making Freaky Little Weirdos.

Anyway...

There's kind of a lot of Mini Media Reviews for this week...

We start with Electric Dreams... an anthology series based on the work of Philip K Dick. Technically I watched it last week, but I didn't finish it until last Saturday. It's very good though. Strong recommend. It was a very pleasant surprise, and full of fairly well known actors.

Next up was the absolute dumpster fire that was Alita: Battle Angel. Wow... that movie is... something. It's like they had four different scripts and just tore them all in half and taped pages back together. Nothing actually holds together in a coherent manner. Characters have literally no motivation and go from "we met 12 seconds ago" to "we have a bond that only makes sense if we're been friends for 10 years". The whole thing just came across as being written by a room full of monkeys who had been given non-functional typewriters. Honestly, the girl with the giant anime bug eyes was the least unbelievable/inexplicable thing about the movie.

Then there was The Lost City. Which is a very, very soft remake of Romancing the Stone. Which is a movie I very much enjoy. And other than the unmitigated cringe that is a large chunk of the beginning of this movie, The Lost City is very good. Basically once Daniel Radcliffe shows up, the movie gets good.

Now, in order to watch the 36 year later sequel, I watched Beetlejuice. Honestly, very few notes. It could potentially use like an extra ten minutes just to let certain things breathe a little... but generally it's very good.

Which brings us to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Did I miss a memo? Like was there some agreement that movies have to have 19 different plot lines and successfully service literally none of them these days? What the fuck is up with that? Because in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice we have Beetlejuice's Ex Girlfriend as a plotline that goes literally nowhere and does nothing. We have Lydia's "Boyfriend" is a Douche plotline, which overstays it's welcome massively, and also never actually gives Lydia a proper "coming back into her power" moment. We have the William Dafoe Has Scenery In His Teeth plotline that is mostly about the Ex Girlfriend plotline... and adds nothing. Then there's the Delia/Charles plotline, which leaves a slightly bad taste given the reason that Jeffery Jones needed to be written out of the plot, but we still spend entirely too much time with that character. And then squashed into the back half of the movie we have the Astrid and Jeremy plotline, which absolutely should have been the major plot of the movie. It's the thing that actually motivates people to do anything.

Maybe if they'd waited until 37 years later somebody might have been able to come up with a decent version of the script.

I also have some issues with the fact that the older Winona Ryder just always looks slightly baffled to me these days. And this character should absolutely not have gone the route they took her in. She was strong and independent in the first movie and this should have been more of that.

Mostly it was just a disappointing mess. Costumes and effects, good. Script, in need of another go.

I rounded out the week with the second season of Raised By Wolves. Which was infinitely weirder than the first season and still included many characters that needed a real big slap (mostly the children, honestly). Sadly the show got cancelled after two seasons, and even if there was a way to bring it back, the kids are all 6 years old than they were then the show first started.

And they haven't taken the logical step and just turned the last season into, like, a graphic novel series. Somebody should get on with that, honestly. That's just general advice to any show that gets cancelled like that. Past a certain point, just start talking to artists.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week... and it was my fault for a change. After a couple of very hot days in the middle of the week, and not feeling great, but you know, when it's over 40 degrees, who can tell the difference between just being too warm and feeling a little ill. I then woke up Friday feeling worse, so pulled the pin just to be safe.

I still went to Chiro, but wore my mask.

Anyway...

Today I also wore my mask, just to be safe. Mostly for Ma's benefit, but you know, just generally. And while I'd felt better later in the day yesterday, my voice was very in and out, I haven't quite lost it, but it's definitely doing hoarse scratchy thing still.

So, we just did the supermarket, and I sent Ma home relatively early, just to be safe.

character saturday: adventing 2025, part five

And thus, the 2025 Hero Forge Advent Calendar comes to a close. A slightly distressing and terrifying close.

If I'm being generous, there are probably 8 or 9 days worth of stuff that I will ever bother to using. So, like a third overall. The most likely thing being the socks from Christmas Day, that have already been added to a few minis. But mostly this year was a little lackluster. What I do want though is whoever designed the tied sweatshirt to be given a lot more clothes to make. Because the modelling on that is delightful.

But we made it though the whole month without a single pair of pants. Or a shirt. We got a couple of jackets, not a single under layer top.

On the plus side though, at least we got both the Cyclops and the Stoatfolk out of the way inside the calendar, and not clogging up a regular Treasure Tuesday.

Mostly though, while I fully appreciate that it's a whole month of free stuff, this year was incredibly uninspired. Four swords... when what we already have is 900 swords. One of which was designed by the work experience kid. Four pairs of shoes. Two of which were sandals.

But it is what it is.

As I said to somebody recently, I don't know where these two characters are going, but I know that I'm absolutely not going with them.

Anyway.

This week's Christmas Leftover Salad was a little bit of a damp squib. Mostly my own fault because it ended up being something of a loaded potato salad, but what I should have done was roasted the potatoes, I just couldn't be bothered.

The Mini Media Reviews for this week were Vesper, a post-apocalyptic movie that... was very good, but also didn't necessarily feel like it was treading any new ground. The world building and art design was excellent, the story just felt a little thin. Decent though.

I followed that up with the first season of Raised By Wolves. Which, although not headed by Ridley Scott, is clearly set inside a Ridley Scott/Alien inspired universe. Because when the androids have white blood, you know what universe we're in. Scott also directed the first two episodes. Although none of it was written by him.

It's good. It's very strange at times, and there is a lot of switching back and forth to who we consider to be the "good characters" or even the "heroes". It also got cancelled after two seasons, but after watching the first season, I had to get the second one.

A dishonorable mention goes to Operation Fortune, that I also picked up at the library before Christmas. When I tell you that I got like half an hour into it before I turned it off, because I'd been watching it with no sound on for ten minutes because the absolute fucking cringe I was experiencing was off the charts. And when I discovered just now that Guy Ritchie encouraged everybody to improvise as much as possible, that explains so fucking much about why this movie is terrible.

Absolutely fucking not.

The week between Christmas and New Year is always a bit of a black hole. On Monday I tided the apartment, took down the few Christmas decorations around my place, put away my presents, reorganised a few things as a result, and generally spruced things up. Noice.

We already covered New Year's Eve/Day... although the afternoon did culminate, shall we say, with a gentleman caller. Which is either a good indicator for the year ahead, or given the inherent mild weirdness of said gentleman, the proverbial kiss of death. In truth, it's probably neither, it is what is is. A pleasant enough way to kill part of an afternoon.

Friday I drove down to Burnside Library to drop some things off, but also because my library isn't open again until next week, and they had the second season of Raised by Wolves on the shelf.

Then I came back and spent an hour putting together the Lego Lucky Bamboo set that Fluffy got me for Christmas.

It's a simple set, it only took me an hour to complete it, but it's a beautiful end result.

I also love the little details like the fact that there is a little coin inside the build under the bamboo to represent that lucky bamboo is supposed to represent "wealth and prosperity" in Feng Sui.

Honestly, the green photographs a little better than it looks in real life. It's just a tiny bit off. Not terrible, but generally speaking real Lucky Bamboo is a little bit more of a yellowy green. I still love it though.

We also had no Friday Night DnD this week. 

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything. We did the supermarket and that was it really.

2026

2026. Weirdly it feels like a made up number. Like what do you mean the year is 2026, that's not a real thing. Admittedly, 2025 felt kind of the same.

In addition to being the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, it's also the International Year of the Woman Farmer as well as Volunteers for Sustainable Development. So, naturally Hot Boy With Farm Animal was the go-to. And this particular Hot Boy is Francesco Soave, in a photoshoot by Johnny Lopera.

Yesterday was a little atypical, relatively speaking. I did the usual stuff, changed the bed to the soothing black and white bedding, generally tidied up, although I already did the lion's share of that earlier in the week, ran the vacuum over the floors... and then finished reading the book I was on because I wanted it done before the new year. You know, nothing exciting.

I also realised, fairly late in the afternoon that I hadn't made my usual year-in-review post... and looking through the blog last year... really there wasn't enough interesting stuff to justify bothering. I made a few crochet scarves plus a cardigan for Ma, I befriended a butterfly, I broke my toe... that was it really. So I didn't bother. There will be a books/media "best of" post sometime in the next week or so though.

The evening was where things weren't The Usual. For the first time since 2021, there was no Fluffy Movie Night. In all honestly, there wasn't even a "movie night" at all. Because I'd grabbed TV shows at the library last weekend without necessarily thinking it all the way through. So I finished the last three episodes of the season I was watching (more on that on the weekend). Which at least felt apt, even if there's a second season I really need to grab soon.

And that finished up around like 10:30... so I tidied things away and just went to bed by about, I dunno, 11 or so. Granted I messed around on my phone until midnight and did hear the fireworks from town, but I basically crashed out before 12:15.

This morning was a very quiet walk, as New Year's Day tends to be. And then the plan for later today is probably putting together the Lucky Bamboo Lego that Fluffy got me for Christmas. And then working out if I can actually get it in one of the cloches that I already own.