photo saturday: royal beasts

Let's see...

We might revert to a very old standard this week... because I'm not really in the mood to be particularly chatty... the dot point list.

And so...

• This week's tomato and beef soup was successful, I threw a little BBQ sauce in it, which picked up the flavour.
• Monday's DnD was... well rehearsed and scripted. I needed to say a thing, and unusually I wrote it all out. Usually when that happens it becomes an in-game letter. Not sure it was the best approach to be honest.
• I ran Wednesday's DnD... it was... acceptable. I ran it hardcore, because that group walks all over everything else, and it was fine.
• Friday's DnD was... I don't quite know how to finish that sentence. It may have been designed with a specific outcome in mind, however the more I sit with it, the more it's having the opposite effect.
• My land agent as an organisation needs to get their house in order, my land agent individually is okay, but if a problem in your process has been pointed out and you haven't corrected it, you need to sort your shit.
• In related news, I still don't have a functional oven door.
• Friday was Chiro Day. I got on the bus to town. I went to the chiro. I came home.
• The supermarket was supermarket shaped. We're having generally bad luck with checkout operators of late, since none of them seem to be able to effectively pack a bag.
• I'm making some form of chicken soup this week. I'll probably shred the chicken, I haven't done that in a bit.
• After the supermarket we didn't do fuck all.

That's it.

Current mood:

movies: onward

So, it's June and this is my first 2020 movie review. And we didn't even see this in the theatre.

But, onward to Onward.

Pixar, man... always right in the feels. And in the feels in a way I kind of didn't expect.

I wasn't at all surprised to discover that Pixar worked with Wizards of the Coast on this movie, and "borrowed" references to the gelatinous cube (and supposedly the beholder, but I have no memory of there being a beholder in the movie). Because this movie draws on Dungeons and Dragons a LOT.

From fantasy creatures, to quests, to an in universe "historical role playing game" that sounds like a simplified verison of DnD, it's all there. I'll be honest, to a distracting degree on occasion.

On top of that, it's a hero's journey story. They even specifically go to a tavern to start their quest.

And as I say at every new Pixar release, everybody say it with me now, this is a gorgeous movie. A combination a modern city (with fantasy trappings... the castle crenellations on the tops of the skyscrapers was probably my favourite touch) and some gorgeous natural wilderness. There wasn't really enough wildlife to be honest... thinking about it now, that seems a little weird. Or maybe it was all in the background and I just didn't notice.

I do have to give a shoutout to the sound designer who put a horse neigh sound under the sound of the van engine every time it started up. Because the van is the noble steed in this story.

I'm going to avoid specific spoilers, but this might still be too spoilery for some people, be warned.

While the end of this movie got me right in the feels, it was also partially emotionally unsatisfying. For me anyway. I get how it was emotionally effecting for the main character, and I got emotional based on that. But it was also reliant on a lot of information we didn't have for the duration of the movie. So it feels like it comes out of nowhere.

I just found myself wanting the ending the movie had spent the entire run time setting up and then took away from me at the last minute. Sure, that might also have felt unsatisfying for different reasons. But it felt like a bit of a bait and switch. It might have also been more satisfying if the movie didn't go out of it's way to say "look, we're putting this literal wall between these characters so that he can't do this thing"... for no real reason. If you want that, extend the final fight, have him miss his opportunity that way, don't just put up arbitrary obstructions.

What I did like though, was the role of the mother in this movie. It would have been very easy to fall into the usual Disney formula where the kids go off and have a big adventure, and we don't see the mother until the very end. Adding her in as an active storyline with a throughline certainly helped.

I could have done without the mother's boyfriend storyline. Sure, keep the character, but it was mostly a pointless plot point. It honestly doesn't go anywhere, and it makes me think less of the mother. I kind of wish that they'd finished the movie with the mother and the manticore having hooked up (ie put in a lesbian character who is integral to the plot and has more than like two lines). Because they did that thing they do yet again. A blink and you'll miss it gay reference. And I know now that the character only referred to her "girlfriend" because the actress involved asked to change it from husband, so it's not even like the filmmakers did anything. But just stop already.

Likewise there was some of the general awkward and cringe in the beginning of the movie that I wished they'd skipped (awkward high school boy is awkward and says dumb shit, is embarrassed by his own brain and also brother, cue cringe). Fortunately it didn't last long enough to really be a major problem.

Although making the "curse" at the end of the movie take it's form by ripping apart the high school, while excessively on the nose, is also a great story decision. Because as everyone knows, high school is a monster that must be defeated in single combat.

I'll also say that there were some very obvious "Chekhov's gun" tropes. Mention something at least twice and obviously it's going to show up before the end of the movie. And somewhat random settings that show up at the start of the movie out of nowhere will probably reoccur before the end.

Having said all of that, it's one I will definitely rewatch and try and pick up all the references I missed the first time through.

yani's rating: 4 feral unicorns out of 5

photo saturday: bricking it

I have so few decent photos left...

This week's soup was of the chowder variety... but I let it catch on the bottom, so the whole thing ended up slightly darker than it otherwise would have been, and all kinda smelled like burning. I mean it tasted great, but it smelled of burning. At least when it was freshly made.

I also cleaned out my fridge before I made soup... I can highly recommend it as a mental exercise. Clean our fridge, feel better about life. Granted that also involved me taking out the shelves and cleaning them, so undertake at your own discretion.

This week's DnD was the usual three games... however, break out the champagne, Friday's game was the first time we've played face to face since... the end of March... and the first time since we were all in the same room since the week of my birthday. Just having Fluffy come over and driving to the game was weird. And not least of all because the last time we did it he got to my place while the sun was still up and we usually got to their place around sunset. Now it's just pitch black before he even gets here.

We also had a game you can only really have when you're all in the same room. We kind of advanced the plot but mostly it was interpersonal stuff. And I finally got to give my character the sexy makeover/haircut I've been wanting to give her since we arrived in Hell.

Yes, I'm that person that gives their dark elves a sexy hell-based makeover. But not in like a creepy way.

The Wednesday game was good... my character got super excited about arm wrestling, because it made more sense to him than, say, bribing people for information, which he also learned about... and was unsurprisingly bad at.

Otherwise, I followed up on my busted oven this week. And discovered that my land agent, as an organisation, it totally and utterly useless. Because they never bothered to tell me that my land agent was now a totally different guy... yes, I'd dealt with him previously, but when my land agent was presumably still the other woman, I dealt with and was in contact with other people in their office. But because of this, the website they use to log maintenance requests has, for a while, had two entries for my address. One where I've been putting jobs and a second one which I ignore.

But when I tried to contact them previously, nobody said "hey, don't contact this person, contact this person", or the previous agent didn't say to the new agent "hey, deal with this", therefore potentially uncovering the problem. No, the problem was only discovered now.

So my actual agent didn't know fuck all about the status of the job about my oven. After two weeks of me presuming that wheels were in motion. After a number of weeks of the same. So I've now not had a functional oven for a month and a half because my land agent can't pull their head out of their own ass.

*Le sigh*.

If the landlord decides to try and replace my giant oven instead of just spending the few hundred bucks on repairing it (especially if they try and replace it with a smaller, cheaper oven), then fuck everything.

Of course, at present, all I want to do is make things that go in the oven. Like bread and tuna mornay and cake and roast potatoes and suchlike.

So today rolled around. Like it does.

The supermarket have started pulling up some of the "stand here while ordering from the deli counter" stickers/tape/decals from the floor. I'm unsure how I feel about that.

I'm aiming for something approaching beef stew this week. I mean it's very much going to be "put beef and vegetables in a pot and cook until later" style of thing.

We did the shopping, had a completely useless checkout operator, and came back here.

From there we actually went out to Big W for the first time since... March? And we picked up Onward, the Disney Pixar movie that we should have gone to see in cinemas around the time of my birthday, before the end of the world. More on that later.

Then we took a trip to Spotlight, because Ma is kind of obsessed with knitting and/or crotchet right now. So she looked at wool again, I wandered aimlessly. And then we came back here, grabbed some lunch from the Village and sat down to watch Onward.

And that was that really.

Current mood:

photo saturday: hydro colours

Some more DnD colouring pages for today... this time the artwork is by Hydro74 (a very good year, obviously), colouring by me. I adore Hydro's work, the first time I remember seeing it was for the alt cover of the Xanathar's Guide to Everything book (and the only reason I don't have a copy with that cover is because I'm an idiot and didn't preorder) and it was love at first sight.

So I went with a 60's/70's psychedelic lich and a blue dragon (even though I think that's actually a red maybe given the frills and horns), because blue dragons. And also because blue dragons really don't seem to get all that much love. I can think of adventures where I've encountered (or run) gold, black, green, red, and white dragons... maybe also silver... but no blues. Weird.

Granted there is also a dearth of adventures set in the desert... plenty of mountains and snow, a lot of forest, some jungle, but almost no desert. And given that it appears the new hardcover (which always gets "leaked"... and if that's the case is it really a leak... and shouldn't they just get in front of that and announce it early?) is set in the snow and ice, no luck there either.

Anyway...

This week's DnD was... basically non-existent. Monday was so cancelled we didn't even do something else to fill in the space where DnD would normally be. Wednesday we had a late player cancellation, and a distinct lack of preparation time and desire to run something else. So I ended up just playing board games online with two of the players. Which was pleasant enough.

Friday night's game was... short. Frustratingly so. I understand when you say you want to finish the game by a certain time because of perfectly reasonable reasons. I understand why you have responsibilities you have to fulfil before you can start the game. But when you say at 7:30 that you're ten minutes away and then don't appear for just shy of an hour, that irks me. So instead of a two and a half hour game we only manage an hour and a half.

However, it's also intriguing to me that one of the other characters (and the player) is mystified by my character's reactions to them. I won't say that it's perfectly obvious, but there are a set of reasons, each one resulting from a choice his character made, which my character sees as black marks against them. Including one in Friday night's game. Which then led to a ridiculous conversation between his character and the other character about my character... and advice was given that will be a Very Bad Idea if it's acted upon.

And given that player, he's totally going to act on it.

I mean, all he has to do is ask my character what the problem is... but he won't.

We'll see what happens.

I made faux-nestrone soup this week (you know, fake minestrone), it was decent, but I just wasn't feeling it on Friday... which is fine. Otherwise... the weather was nicer this week (well, freezing cold at night, but sunny during the day) and I was able to have the door open, get some of that winter sun up in my life.

Until today when everything went to crap. Weather wise anyway.

Ma had her hair-did today (that's a thing that people did in the before-times, when you didn't have to flee from strangers)... so I was on my own with the shopping. Which was all good.

Did the shopping, came home, did the unpacking, poddled around til Ma arrived, and then because of shitful weather, we just hung out here. Did the YubTubs thing... also Ma had been looking through her cookbooks for an old family recipe and found a bunch of recipe books, some very old vintage handwritten ones, the oldest of which was from maybe the 30's... it could be earlier, I honestly have no idea. And one of those ones that were clearly originally typewritten books full of recipes gathered from various people (I know we had one that was collected from parents at my school and full of horrid 70's or 80's recipes)... sadly this one was lacking a cover, so we have no provenance for it... but given the names, it seemed like it came from some eastern European social group, again, probably the 70's... and wow.

Not a good wow. I did a good half an hour on the recipes, because either the people involved didn't understand how recipes work (one, titled Egg and Cheese pie, had a list of ingredients... egg was not listed... it only appeared suddenly in the middle of the method), and others didn't appear to understand food. It was hilarious yet horrifying.

That was that really.

Current mood:

photo saturday: colour tones

I've been sitting here staring at a blank page for the last 16 YouTube videos... And I just had some handmade toast. I mean technically all toast is handmade, kinda... you don't buy toast at the supermarket. But this was toast made with the first loaf of bread I've made since, like, Easter.

Yeah, this is what happens when I sit and stare at a blank page... you get babble.

Anyway...

I made a fuckton of chilli this week. It was pretty damn good, I grated a bunch of vegetables and added those in, which added some veggy goodness without changing the texture of the chilli. There was a lot of it though.

This week's DnD was in the Monday, Wednesday, Friday groove... with Friday actually being boardgames instead. The only real difference to any of the games other than that was the fact that one of my former Monday boys, the previously mentioned Canadia, joined the Wednesday crowd. I think he had fun, or at least I hope so. We'll see if he actually shows up again this coming Wednesday.

Friday was supposed to be our first game back in-person since the world caught fire, but at the last minute, as in the morning of, there was a change of plans and we decided to go back to online, and then we didn't end up actually playing DnD. So technically it all worked out I guess.

It was certainly better than going to actual effort and us not playing. I say "actual effort", but as the top of this post indicates, I had already made bread at that point. I risked opening my busted ass oven door in order to make bread for a game that didn't happen. And it nearly didn't close again. Of course it didn't close after I'd opened it to get the tray out, close it after getting the tray out, opened it to put the bread in and then was closing it with the oven at temperature and the bread in situ. Grrrr.

I mean I managed it, but yeah, that's it... not touching the door til they come and fix it properly. And if I don't hear from them about it about midway through this week, I'll send them yet another email. Like how hard is it to keep someone informed about a maintenance request? I mean, that's part of your job, right? Urgh.

Anyway... massive distraction while I messed around with Photoshop for a not insignificant amount of time.

But that brings us to today... which was... not much of anything honestly.

We did the supermarket thing... I'm making "random soup with chorizo and tomato" this week... I'll make it up as I go I guess. More so than usual I mean.

Then it was back here, the usual stuff... Ma wanted to go to Spotlight, I needed to go to Officeworks, so we did that. We didn't linger in either place honestly.

On the way back we decided to go grab some pizza, then came back to my place to eat.

And that was it really.

Current mood:

photo saturday: washed out

This week was weird. By the current definition of normal anyway.

I made pretty good beef and vegetable soup this week. Helped mostly by the spicy kransky and spicy salami I added. I often think that that is the secret of good soup, adding something spicy.

Anyway...

This week's DnD was Monday, Wednesday and Friday... not bad overall to be honest. Monday was a game of doing the dumb things and living to tell about it. Until we walked into the room with the baby dragon right at the end. We'll see how that goes next week.

Wednesday was good. I've settled into the groove of a new character, he has already acquired a personality trait he didn't have when I put him together, and he's about to get a lot more interesting.

Friday we didn't play for super long, and we ended up doing a bunch of roleplay, which I love, and proceeded onto the next part of the story, which I've kind of been hanging out for for a while. We'll see how long that lasts. Depends on what happens next I guess.

I also heard from one of my previous Monday players, and he did enquire about whether I was playing online... so I ended up inviting him to next week's Wednesday game (after I checked with the rest of the group). Which will be an adventure.

The tradie turned up to look at my oven on Thursday morning. And, obviously, he was able to shut the oven door immediately. Grrrr. He did confirm that one of the hinges is completely screwed, and I pointed out that the seal has split at the bottom of the door, so now we just need to wait for confirmation and parts and landlord approval and whatnot.

Also, one of my Friday night DnD crew dropped by to drop something off to me, which was very nice. We stood the required 1.5 metres apart at all times, but it was still very pleasant.

Then Friday I was off to the chiro. My first trip into town since my last chiro appointment. Which was also my last trip since the previous chiro appointment.

So I went into town, went to the chiro appointment, walked most of the way down the Mall, then got back on the bus and came home.

Exciting.

Today was mostly the same as all the previous Saturdays... we did the supermarket thing, which almost feels like we're back to normal, except for the arrows pointing people in the same direction, and the fact I'm still wearing latex gloves, because it's just easier.

I'm planning on making chilli this week, which should be fun. Or at least something different.

Then we came back here, started doing the YubTubs thing, then got distracted and we ended up doing a Google Maps tour of the town in England where Ma grew up. Which was interesting, although a little bit of "if she'd stayed, what would my life be", albeit that I wouldn't be ME, because choices.

Anyway...

After that we took our first trip into the city since... I think the end of February... yeah, so there's that.

It was mostly just to pick up some socks and a phone cover to replace the phone cover I fucked up putting on earlier in the day (grrrr, don't ask).

We thought about wandering the Mall, but honestly there were kind of too many people and then there appeared to be some protest or rally or collection of people with signs and shouting, so we gave up and headed back here.

Current mood:

photo saturday: weird and random

I'm getting to that point in the photos folder where it's kind of hard to make a coherent set of four that I actually like. Which is a problem. Not a big problem, obviously, but still.

So this week you get these four which are nominally colour themed... but there's also a case to be made for textures.

Also weird random shit.

This week's chicken chowder was... decent. Perhaps not quite thick enough, but it did make eight servings (nine technically, but I don't count the portion I have on Sunday).

Otherwise we return to the three DnD games this week. The Monday game continues, and I remain somewhat ambivalent to it. I mean it's fine, I just don't much care.

Wednesday's game was good. I started a new character I quite like (teenage human barbarian, because of course), who I'm actively playing as someone who stands back and doesn't take the lead in social situations. Which is a change for my DnD characters for the most part. It also kind of fits in with the way I'm feeling about playing the Wednesday game. And sometimes you just want to be able to run in and smash things.

I also dug into the role of male children in Ancient Sparta for his backstory, which was highly informative. And honestly, sounds like something that somebody made up, since it's so over the top. But it's actual history, which is always more out there than stuff people just made up.

Friday night's game was likewise good. Not super exciting, but good. We travelled with a "friendly" Mezzoloth for most of the game, and my character may or may not have flirted with him to keep him friendly and on side. I mean he was awesome because our DM made him so, but sometimes that's all it takes for a memorable NPC.

And next session we actually get out onto the plains of Hell. Or Avernus as it's also known. And I'm kind of excited. I'm sure it will all go tits up in a matter of seconds, but it'll be fun while it lasts.

Plus I'm going to transform into a Giant Eagle in the next game, so that'll be fun.

In other news, there is no news.

Today was still a rinse and repeat of the last... forever.

I was originally going to make some sort of chicken soup... I mean I know I made chicken soup last Sunday, but a different kind of chicken. And somewhere along the way it just turned into beefy tomatoey soup. Or it will when I make it.

Otherwise we shopped, we came back here, we watched a bunch of stuff on the YubTubs, we went and got some lunch and then Ma toddled off home.

So yeah.

Current mood:

photo saturday: kite colours

Late Autumnal sunshine... if I was a housecat I would lie on my back in it and dissolve into the catpuddle state. Otherwise, I'm just grateful that this apartment is orientated where Summer sunshine doesn't actually hit the front windows of my apartment, whereas Autumn and Winter comes right in the door.

I feel like that was massively incoherent, but I've been staring at a blank screen for a while, so that's what you get. Which may be a metaphor for this week. Or not... I may have forgotten what a metaphor is also.

So...

I made beef and vegetable soup this week. I bought the "wrong" kind of beef to be honest. As in one that didn't fall apart after cooking, like a gravy beef... I mean it wasn't bad, just not what it could have been. I also cooked the onion with some balsamic vinegar which was interesting, flavour wise.

On a totally unrelated note, I discovered a couple of amazing movies this week. In a genre that I didn't even necessarily know was a thing... Korean zombie movies. The movies in question are Rampant and Train to Busan.

Rampant is doubly unique in that it is also a period movie... and I don't think there are many period zombie movies (that are actually good). It's not quite a "wire-fu" movie, and I will say that one of the things that entranced me was the costume design (because who doesn't love a fabulous hat). Train to Busan is just AMAZING though. An interesting zombie mechanic, a great location (the aforementioned train) and a hell of an ending.

Both movies have a similar narrative structure in a number of ways, which I actually didn't mind, because there's always going to be some level of formula to this type of movie, and it worked well in both cases.

So if you like the zombie genre, take that as a recommendation.

This week's DnD games counted to a total of one. In the first case caused by non epidemic sickness of small child and in the second case, because I just wasn't feeling the Wednesday game. Honestly I don't even know if there was a Wednesday game. I haven't checked.

 Friday night's game was decent... the first one we've actually done in... I dunno... a month maybe... three weeks certainly. And we did very well for the first half, and then during the second half it was combat after combat after combat. Not sure there was anything we could have done about some of them, but some of it got confusing.

And the explanation for the confusion will have to wait until next week. So there's that.

Otherwise the week was a whole lot of nothing.

And I'm still waiting for news about when someone is coming to fix my oven door. Which I will definitely follow up next week.

Today was 100% rinse and repeat. Supermarket with latex gloves and social distancing. The ingredients for a chowder based soup. YubTubs. And then we took the trip to Haighs we attempted last week. And succeeded.

And that was that.

Current mood:

photo saturday: outlined adventures

Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Dungeons and Dragons, have been releasing free content for a number of weeks now, so that people can either play at home or play from home using online tools. Which is great, and I love. Amongst the adventures they've also been releasing colouring pages "to download and complete by artists of all ages". And I've been downloading all of them.

And while I never really got into the whole "adult colouring" craze, with actual physical colouring with pencils, I do love digitally colouring things. So I did some colouring. Imperfect colouring in a number of cases, but enjoyable colouring.

All four of these are from the Dungeons and Dragons Adventures Outlined Coloring Book by Todd James. Clockwise, from the top left we have the all consuming gelatinous cube, the creepy grell, a bunch of sweet, harmless flumphs and a very hungry mimic.

In other events...

I made potato, leek and bacon soup this week... all blended up and what have you. Pretty decent too.

This week's DnD total count came to two. With an additional round of board gaming.

Monday's night's game with the Friday night crew was good. I may need to make some adjustments to the character design... not the stats or anything, just the personality traits, since the way I'm playing doesn't gel with the way I designed the personality... and the way I play very much depends on the personality of your DM also... or at least it does for me.

We finished the long, drawn out game on Wednesday night. And it's a module I love. But like I think I said last week, this might have been the wrong module for the wrong group at the wrong time. Like, I might have been able to play this with a different group online... or I might have been able to play it with this group if we were doing face-to-face games. Or a different adventure. I dunno.

Or maybe I'm in a mood in general, or that group specifically. Or who the hell knows what's going on right now.

Friday's game-to-be was deferred due to sickness of small child. So we played some board games instead and did a little bit of chatting, but not a huge amount. It was required... therapy?

In other news, the door to my oven will no longer close. It's been temperamental for a little while now, but on Friday, after I finished making roasted mushrooms for lunch, I opened the door to put the big oven tray back in and the door wouldn't shut.

Fuck, fuck, fuckkity fuck.

Hopefully my land agent/landlord actually gets off their proverbials and gets somebody out to take a look at it/fix it... because it's almost time that I can make bread again, and I want to make bread (and then share it with other people) goddamn it.

It also meant that everything that caught my eye at the supermarket today was oven based.

Because as soon as you tell me I can't have something, it makes me want it all the more. I'm peculiar like that.

As far as today is concerned, copy paste from the last several weeks honestly. The supermarket seemed less crowded honestly. And the shelves definitely had more things in them... things of the previously missing variety anyway.

We did the shopping thing, we came back here, we did the YubTubs thing... Ma made the very silly mistake of suggesting we head over to Haighs on the Saturday before Mother's Day during a pandemic. I mean we took a drive anyway. And then saw the line down the side of the building and didn't even really slow down before we legged it. Or wheeled it, because car.

Current mood:

photo saturday: ferries

Lady Herron, the "double ender" ferry in the top left was quietly retired this week along with her sister ferry Lady Northcott. Which is super sad. I mean understandable if the maintenance costs were five times the newer boats... but still.

These photos have all appeared in the blog previously, but it seemed appropriate to bring them all together for today.

In other news... it's been 84 years. Like, just generally, it's been 84 years... 84 years since my last post. Or since the last time I left the house. Or something. I dunno, this isn't my best material.

Mostly because it's been 84 years.

Anyway.

Two and a half games of DnD this week. Well. Two games. The half a game was either a game nor DnD. Have I mentioned it's been 84 years?

On Monday the Friday group did a different thing. Which was fine, but honestly, I'd kind of rather just been playing more of the Friday game. Especially since we didn't actually play the Friday game on Friday.

Wednesday's game was... functional. I mean every body did well, and there were a few interesting moments, but given that the Wednesday game is voice only, it definitely didn't work as well as it has done in the past. Also, it's possible the group isn't the right group for this particular adventure, I dunno. I'm not sure if I want to run again... not because of this, but just generally, I don't know if running online works for me honestly. I dunno.

I dunno a lot of things at the moment honestly.

Friday was supposed to be DnD, but we had a last minute drop out... or I got told about it last minute... or whatever. So instead we just hung out, played some video games online and ended with a tour of my DM's Animal Crossing island. Because everything is about Animal Crossing right now. Except me. Because I don't have a Switch. And if I did have both a Switch and Animal Crossing I may very well forget to feed, bathe and dress myself.

But if someone wants to send me a Switch and AXNH, I'll take that risk.

Otherwise, literally nothing this week. I made chicken noodle soup, with ramen noodles. And it was decent.

This week I'm just going with flat out potato soup. All blended up and stuff.

Oh, they announced a new Assassin's Creed game this week. By way of the most ridiculous 8 hour livestream photo manipulation of a teaser image that a) was obviously vikings when I tuned in a couple of hours in, b) incredibly tedious to watch and c) either specifically done to be long and drawn out given that the artist seemed to be changing the same things over and over and over again, only to then totally cover those details with later details. Yeah, let's not do that again.

The trailer looks... very pretty. But I went back through some of the trailers for the last few AC games, and they all have very much a focus on being an assassin. Sneaking, freerunning, what have you. The most over the top version of that being Unity, where a wave of free running hooded dudes flood through the streets of Paris. And in the Origins trailer you don't even see the main character until like the last ten seconds of the thing.

And I still maintain that Odyssey isn't actually an Assassin's Creed game because a) it takes place 400 years because the canonical beginning of the assassin's brotherhood, as featured in Origins (also the game is fucking called Origins) and b) no hidden blade.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla doesn't look especially assassin-y either. The trailer is just one big battle. And yes the hidden blade is back... but yeah, the series seems to have gone in a different direction now and I don't think that direction is for me. Which is fine. Especially if they're going to put more of those dumb sailing/boat missions in (which they totally are going to do because longboats), because I'm so fucking over those... since Black Flag basically.

I also understand that there's a whole base/settlement building mechanic... which is... fine? But it that means the settlement will get attacked continually and you need to defend it, I don't know I'm that bothered.

Stupidly, the one thing that is a draw for me is that in this one the bird companion that has been with you in the last two game returns... as a raven. Which it originally was supposed to be I believe. And makes sense given the setting. But... raven!

Anyway.

Compared with last week, today's supermarket trip, today was super chill. Granted we were there a little earlier than we have been of late. But yeah, it was much better. And the shelves are starting to refill slowly.

After shopping we headed to Haighs to see if they had any of the broken eggs left. Sadly no. But we'll live.

Then we came back here, did the YubTubs thing, then Ma went home around 1pm.

Current mood: