character saturday: witch of the north

I hadn't originally intended to add to my Wizard of Oz themed foursome... but honestly, all heroes need a villain. And I got a little inspired for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book.

Now this isn't the Wicked Witch of the West... this is either an entirely new Wicked Witch from the North, or else a reinterpretation of a witch that shows up in the later books, Mombi, who was a previous Wicked Witch of the North, and also described as "not a very powerful sorceress by nature" and also "dedicated her long-life to the magic arts and has mastered the art of black magic due to lots and lots of practice". So, wizard made perfect sense. And Mombi also has a penchant for "transfiguration"... thus, the Transmuter. 

The brooch allows her to not only cast Alter Self, but lets her put an illusion over her outfit. The spellbook can't be damaged by "fire or water", which seemed useful.

And because she was the Wicked Witch of the North, that puts her in Gillikin...

The Gillikins prefer the color purple in their landscape, clothing and general surroundings as purple is the Gillikin mascot color that represents them and their land on Oz's official map and flag.

So a purple themed tiefling made the most sense. Chthonic tiefling meant she could be descended from a Night Hag, which also felt right given the colouring and also just hags in general. And yes, she is based on a previous tiefling character, Pain.

Jack will be familiar to anybody who has seen Return to Oz. He shows up in the later books, but he is a construct brought to life by Mombi. And I went back and forth as to what Jack actually is in universe. At first I thought golem, but the ones that made sense tend to be large creatures. He could really be many things, up to and including a fancy familiar (but it's really only the Warlock that gets access to a skeleton familiar, which would also work). So I just went with the "domestic robot" from one of the recent books. It's the closest thing that really works.

He was also originally in a more canonical Jack outfit... purple trousers, a pink shirt and a red vest. But the black just made sense when I put him next to the Witch.

I've also played with this pumpkin man idea once before, but I like this version much more now that we can modify the bodies. He should probably be much taller than her, but I just figure she's a little unnaturally tall also.

Anyway...

Soup this week was the Tomato Chicken soup I've made previously, but this was with little tiny pasta instead of rice. Very good... and it actually worked cold on the day that it was too warm to be bothered heating it up.

Mini Media Reviews for this week goeth thusly (it was an All Movie Week)...

Phantom of the Paradise. A camp extravaganza that I've actually seen before, but I had mentioned it to Fluffy recently as being a movie that existed, and he watched it and enjoyed it, so I wanted to revisit it. Decent. Although the songs aren't as memorable or earwormy as something like Rocky Horror.

Black Adam. This movie has literally no idea what it wants to be. Is it an anti-hero movie? Are we supposed to care about any of these characters? Is it a "Colonialism is Bad, M'kay" movie? Is it just another plotless DC Smashathon? Yes, the last one. It's the last one. It's a bit of a formless mess which feels like it's stealing other movie's homework.

Frankenstein's Bride. If you know what The Asylum is when it comes to terrible movies, you'll understand why I was both amused and terrified when their name popped up at the start of this. Was it made for about $1.50 with a lot of terrible actors? Yes. Did the end of the movie degenerate into an AI generated slopfest? Absofuckinglutely. Was the movie definitely filmed in Australia, and possibly even South Australia? Definitely the former, very probably the latter. Were all of the shots very tight on the actors so they didn't show things like street signs, cars, shops, people's houses, etc? For certain. Is the whole thing entirely stupid? Absolutely. Was the script better than I was expecting? Also yes. Was I entertained the entire time? Essentially, yes. The aforementioned slopfest notwithstanding. Do I recommend it? Oh, hell no.

Deadpool and Wolverine. It's very clear that Ryan Reynolds love this character. And comic book characters in general. And the history of Marvel movies thus far. Also that he takes literally none of it seriously. The first five minutes where both Disney and the Logan movie got royally pissed all over in the best way. And the movie does take a little while before it really finds it's stride. But tell me why I got emotional at the end, especially during the end credits.

Poor Things. Essentially this is a fairy tale. A weird, fucked up, adult fairy tale. With a lot of nudity. And amazing costumes, sets and general production design. Interestingly, I did expect the movie to fall over the edge into "abusing women" given that it's set in the 1880's... but it never actually does, which was refreshing. Emma Stone is amazing in the lead role, Mark Ruffalo likewise does wonderfully.

Chaos Walking. Toxic Masculinity: The Movie. They also saddle Daisy Ridley with a horrendous blonde wig. You do get to see Tom Holland's naked ass though, so not a total loss. Seriously though, this suffers a little bit from having been adapted from a young adult trilogy. Holland and Ridley's characters are supposed to be 12 or 13 year olds, there's a completely pointless addition of an alien species that shows up for five minutes and plays no actual role in the movie. And the main reveal of the story really could not be telegraphed any harder. See also toxic masculinity.

9 to 5. Fluffy and I have been intending to do this on one of our movie nights for a while now, but with Dolly's passing in August, it shot to the top of the list. I've seen it many times before, but it's always fun watching Fluffy encounter things for the first time. Still a great movie, even more so considering it was Dolly's first film and, I think, only Lily Tomlin's second movie.

I also played some Hitman 2. It's the kind of game I like, but I've also seem other people play it quite a lot, so some of it doesn't feel especially new. But I'm still having fun with it.

As previously indicated, there was no Friday Night DnD this week, but Fluffy and I still did Movie Night, so it wasn't completely wasted.

Anyway...

Today was the usual supermarket adventures... after which we took a ride down to Big W, mostly for the Looking At Things. I did want to look through their Christmas stuff, and while they had the thing I wanted, after seeing it in person, it didn't actually work for what I wanted. I did find some new slip-on shoes, so I grabbed those. And Ma tried on a bunch of dresses, none of which worked for her.